Art from January.

I figure it's probably going to be easier if I split the monster art dump post up into sections. Plus, that way it's easier for me to know what's been posted and what hasn't. I don't have much for January, but it's a start.

This was the first art thing done in 2014. It's a scribble in the A6 sketchbook (which is totally unsuitable for watercolours, but it's what came in the set), referenced from a photo I took of some flowers my mom was given. I used watercolours and white gouache.

The next two are the traditional art tutorial piece that was done for the January goals. I followed a tutorial by Wendy Jelbert, and apparently I only bothered to take one photo of the process. Mine is 10"x7" and landscape and I'm pretty sure the one in the book was bigger and portrait, so I struggled a little with that because I didn't have the same space to work with. The tutorial used artist's watercolours as well, something that REALLY REALLY ANNOYS ME, so I had to improvise with my own colour mixes in places. I flatly refused to use masking fluid because all it seems to do is fuck whatever I'm doing up for me, and I figure that I do an excellent job of that by myself, so I ignored all the steps involving masking fluid. I still can't paint foliage, even with the help of Wendy Jelbert. I kinda like the end result though.

The tutorial was finished on the 10th January - I didn't want to scar the front with the date, because it was one of the few things I've done that ended up looking "finished", so I wrote the date on the back instead. This was (I think) the first time I used a watercolour block.

I did do another A6 painting in January of a fish, but it's awful and my blog is really better off without it. Sometimes I do a quick watercolour sketch and I'm happy with the result, and then sometimes I do a quick watercolour sketch and it ends up looking like that fish.

Art Challenge 5 - 15th-28th March - "Vicious"

This is an unfinished one, I'm afraid. I want to be able to put a lot of time and effort into painting this and the art challenge doesn't really allow for that unless it's all I do, so this is just the drawing, pre-watercolour.

It's a fanart piece of the Fallout games. I couldn't think of the word "vicious" without "deathclaw" coming to mind. They're renowned for it.

I used two screenshots as reference - one for the main pose which was a deathclaw in the quarry in New Vegas (the alpha male, I believe), and another one because I couldn't make out what the hell was going on with their teeth, which I think is from Fallout 3. It's still not very accurate, probably, but I'm past caring. They don't kill with their teeth anyway and it still looks mean.

I apologise for the utterly awful photo; it's too dark here to get a decent one. If I remember I'll retake it in daylight. Unfortunately it's too big for me to bother scanning it until it's finished. It's the biggest thing I've done so far (still not huge by art standards but the largest I usually work at is 10"x7") and will need to be scanned in parts and then put together digitally. I don't fancy doing that twice.

The painting will be completed for a goal in April. I'll probably upload progress photos to Twitter, as per usual. This is half my blog title - the broken dreams half - but I hardly ever draw things that aren't pretty flowers these days, so it was nice to exit the comfort zone and do something else. It's actually been quite fun to do.

The next art challenge starts on the 1st of April, so we have a little break from art challenges now, and the word is "ruin". End of the month recap in a few days and I'm still preparing a monster art post!

Art Challenge 4 - 1st-14th March - "Colour"

I finished a traditional version of this yesterday (I know, a day early! Weird!) and then decided that actually, I'd rather do a digital version as it'd be "cleaner" (and "much better"). So, this time my art challenge submission is a digital piece, which I don't think has happened before. I don't think I've put a digital piece on my blog for ages, either. The label must be covered in dust.

I used the traditional painting to get the rainbow colours: cadmium red, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, emerald, ultramarine, dioxazine violet and mauve. I used Photoshop to paint over everything except the umbrella and the blending in the sky, where I switched to a very temperamental Corel Painter. I used to utterly adore using that program and now it seems to be a million miles away from what I need it to be, which makes me feel a bit sad.

I have a HUGE draft post in progress with EVERYTHING that I haven't bothered to post over the last two years or so. It's going to be a monster, so don't hold your breath on me finishing it soon. There's a lot of things to scan and photograph!

Next art challenge is "vicious" - at the moment I'm thinking "deathclaw fanart"...