Watercolor Study

This took so much longer than expected, however alot of the time was spent getting used to the new tablet and creating brushes that I was happy with.

I still have not gotten the refined brushstrokes that the original artist can get with a real brush, but for a study I am not that unhappy about it... The garlic bulbs look a little awkward, accuracy in freehand drawing is not really my strongest point and is something I definitely need to work on.

My study is on top:

Tonight I plan on finding a new project to work on for a little while, but I intend on going back and retrying this image again.

Progress in master study 1: part 2

Top image: Josh Agle

Bottom image: my study

The colors and the monkey's shirt still need tweaking...I started to make the shapes seem more humanistic as suggested by professor Babcock. The recreation of the seasponge on canvas worked really well.

Running a gradient map over the above image replicates the texture perfectly.

Also my new tablet came in this afternoon...Its a little tiny but surprisingly came with a copy of photoshop elements 6, corel painter and some program called Nik Color Efex Pro that I have never heard of. It was definitely worth the $85 investment and highly recommended.

(Edit: after looking at the zoomed in image on here, I noticed the canvas texture was a little too prominent. On my next pass I plan on turning down the opacity on the texture layer to fix this)

Current Progress in master study 1

So this is my first study of Agle's work. Tonight I plan on recreating the entire image now that the skeleton guy is mostly out of the way. (I am betting he is the hardest part by a long shot [not really that hard...just obnoxious with the little details and the sometimes random nature of the pen tool]) The image is drawn in illustrator using the pen tool except for the space inbetween the boat and the buildings. That is a scan of a wood plank with a gradient map applied overtop of it.

The wood plank scan was found at textureking.com, an amazing resource for textures.

Frustration

This morning, right after I made that previous post about working with the watercolor, I had full intention of using my tablet. Well when I went to hook up my Wacom Tablet, the tablet decided it did not want to cooperate. After being on the phone for 5 hours with Wacom support, they determined that my tablet failed and needs to be replaced. After driving all about town, all the tec stores in the area do not carry tablets so I just ordered a new one and will be waiting for its arrival. Right after I made the purchase my dad suggested going to art mart after I get off work tommorow which now in retrospect probably carries them.

Until then I am going to wait on that watercolor and sketch study and work on a project that seems a little more realistic without the use of the tablet.














This is a painting by Josh Agle called "Monkey and the Hudson River Cruise". I love Agle's style and he is one of the artists that drew me into art to begin with in high school. His cast of characters all have a amazing personality to them. I have attempted to work with his style in the past before in Painting 1 and package design but always felt like I came up a bit short.

Things I want to work on in this study:
1. replicating the background that is done by scraping a sea sponge across the wet canvas
2. Keeping the loose shapes yet incredibly tight lines
3. maybe attempting to recreate this image in a different color scheme to get a better understaing of how his palettes work...they always seem to be within a small range but always come out so broad for only using 5-6 colors

I plan on completing these studies by tomorrow night.

(Also as a FYI: Amazon.com currently has something like 20% off wacom tablets and a deal where you can get overnight shipping for $4. When I checked out it had that side by side comparason thing. I got a new tablet with overnight shipping for $85, Usually the tablet i got is $100 and overnight shipping on something like that is $20+....If you were looking at buying a tablet, I highly recommend getting one through amazon during whatever deal this is they currently have.)

Project 1 ideas

This is an illustration from Stina Persson. I really like the integration of watercolor within her work and thought this would be a good place to start. I have tried doing work like this in the past except without using photoshop and only working on watercolor paper. The three things I want to take away from this excersize is

1. Replicating the pen drawing
2. Replicating the watercolor brushstrokes
3. Replicating the randomness of color that watercolor has

New Blog Place

Hey, thanks for stopping by. This is going to be a blog that I will be starting for a class and hopefully maintaining after the class ends.

Don't got much more to say except stay tuned!