painting update and some tips!

1. First image was shot after the first 8 hours of pushing oil paint around. I've said this before but I highly prefer oil over acrylic because 1. acrylic is a different color when it is wet vs when it is dry and 2. acrylic dries super fast and requires you to mix large amounts of a color in containers to preserve the accuracy of the colors. 

Oil takes longer to dry meaning you can seriously wipe it off or mix on the canvas (you shouldn't because colors get muddy but it's nice to have the option) Oil also is really messy and I mean you need solvents to clean brushes and once its on your clothes, it's there forever! Anyway~~~

2. A neat trick I've discovered that helps is after a long day of painting, I use (literally any) digital painting to guide my work. I paint starting around 10am  and stop around 6pm. I don't paint at night because the lighting is artificial and makes all the colors inaccurate to my eyes. I highly recommend painting during the day, it's a huge difference! I took a picture on my ipad and started digitally sketching on top of it (picture 2). This kept me motivated after a long day and allowed me to plan for tomorrow's agenda. I refined the bunny ears, gave the characters a bit more love, designed a shoulder... robot... thing. and added vibrant colors because everything was looking super grey. Starting out with a grey-ish composition isn't a bad thing! You generally want to work dark to light (meaning add your brights & whites last) so they don't blow out your painting and make your eyes adjust to hyper bright colors. You want to use those to make things pop at the end. 

3. Third pic is a photo of the real painting after a 2nd day of painting (I pushed for another 8 hours). As you can see, I followed my guide pretty thoroughly especially when I felt lost or had no idea which way to go. This happens a lot in painting and I was constantly thanking my past self from the night before for creating a literal painting map. SUPER helpful!!! Clearly my painting missed the map in several places where it's just super bright.... but it's inching closer to the goal!

4. Ok I can explain the 3-legged photo. The original photo reference I used for the guy was wearing super skinny pants... which is not a look for giant shoes IMO. I wanted big baggy pants. After searching the internet like an idiot for a good reference I gave up and had a genius idea. I put on a pair of my baggiest jeans and stood infront of a mirror to mimic the pose. I had to isolate the pose of each leg and then (poorly) photoshopped the legs into the same composition. This is seriously a life changer, as you'll see in the next pic. Good artists draw from the imagination but great artists use reference. It can be a design reference, a composition reference, a color reference, or in this case, a lighting reference. Painting is literally just knowing where the lights and shadows are and there's no way my pea brain can imagine a perfectly realistic scenario for baggy pants in this pose... if I had done it from the imagination, it would have looked okay, but now it's going to look really mf good instead. >:)

5-7. Details! As you can see, pants are getting the love they deserve. Probably going to give the girl some kind of wand... and I put bright reds into those big eyes! I'm going to have more fun in the detail phase in the upcoming days adding little jewels and beads everywhere (especially in the eyes). Also, inspiration is kinda everywhere!

8-9. Just because you started doesn't mean the mood board can't change. I actually didn't really finish my "mood" phase before I just jumped in and started putting colors and bodies onto this massive canvas but! I've recently found the massive community that is beading. Okay for those who do not know, it's a new trendy wave of small businesses that are mostly fae/fairy-inclined but basically it's mostly people making the cutest shit I've ever seen. I'm a huge fan of a lot of these pages but this one is a screen shot from @differentbugs. This image alone got me excited about colors, iridescent textures, shiny pearls and glossy glass beads. Clearly a color and texture reference I needed to spice things up! The next image is the sky last night when I went on my run (yes.... I've been running and I do not want to talk about how sore I am). The clouds were doing some crazy shit covering the moon and I was like um!!! this texture!!!! so I'm also going to use this as a texture reference for when I fill in more of the background.

10. lol bonus pic of me the end of the first night, I had to move tiny childhood bedroom around to accommodate the painting. I was also big tired and wondering why I made it so big but fast forward to today and I have NO REGRETS!