Experimenting with complementarity. 45? minutes
Category: color
Dragon Icon
A two hour sketch of a dragon. I had allot of fun painting it. I liked it so much I used it as my icon. I been in a strange mood as of late. I been thinking of changing the blog name to that of my own “Dean’s Art Blog”. I thought having a pen name would be a cool, but now I’m not so sure. I thought Maugryph would be easy to remember but few can pronounce it right. The named deviated from a gryphon character I had designed for a comic two years ago but never used. I’ve been using this blog for 2 years now, I am embarrassed by the art did two years ago, I’m so tempted to delete the old stuff, but it does chronicle my evolution as a artist, so I leave it be.
Posting will be less frequent for a little while, so I can get some things in order 😦
Dragon Doodle (Daily Doodle)
A quick dragon sketch, I am really only happy with the mouth and the neck. Don’t ask me why it’s purple, it seemed like a good idea at the time..
Also I apologize for not posting for a few days and then bombarding you with art, there is too much going in my life at the moment to post on a daily basis. I try to limit at three a day so I do not annoy anyone.
Dragon Portrait Version 2
I decided to revisit this painting I did for a client a couple weeks ago. I didn’t want to paint another dragon but I wanted to experiment with creating better scale and horn textures. This is probably the best dragon painting I have done so far. This will be the final dragon painting for this month unless I get commissioned from a client.
Dragon Metamorphosis
This was a homework assignment for my Advanced Drawing class. The theme was metamorphosis. I have drawn many dragons but never a man turning into one, so I found it a fun challenge. I created the drawing in charcoal. Afterwards I scanned it in, fixed some minor issues in photos that came to my notice when it was critiqued, and added some color to the charcoal drawing. It took around 8 hours total just in the charcoal phase. Charcoal is a new medium for me and was struggling with it. A word of advice, never use vine charcoal to shade, use a compressed charcoal stick and a charcoal pencil instead.
Still Life 10 – Glue Bottle in MS Paint
Trying to get out of my comfort zone. I had this glue bottle on my desk and decided to paint a still life of it. I asked myself “What is the most uncomfortable way to paint this thing? I know! MS Paint with only the pencil tool and the default pallet!” MS paint has no wacom sensitivity or transparency and a stupid loading circle would show up every time I pressed down onto the tablet. There are some new brushes available but they are a joke and have no control options. when I was a kid i used to make pixel art with it because it has decent zooming tools. you can still make some great work with it if you are patient (I’m not). What is disappointing about ver 6.1 is that the halftone patterns are gone. it would of helped allot with this painting to able to use halftone gradients. It’s amazing how MS Paint is still the dinosaur of paint apps after all this time. 25 minutes.
Still Life 7 – Light up the night
This still life was more of a challenge for me. It was a oddly shaped flash light. I didn’t set up the still life in my studio, so there is no fill lighting and whatnots. It just painted it on my friend’s kitchen table. Rendering the reflectivity in the glass was fun, but I didn’t get it a 100%, I will try another glass study such as this in the future. I spent about a hour painting this. I painted this from scratch in Photoshop using a wacom tablet.
Still Life 6 – The ROCKy road + 1000 followers
Dragon friday is tomorrow.. The puns worsens every day :D. I spent 40 minutes painting this awesome rock. Forgive me for abusing the purple fill light.. It’s the only bulb color I have at the moment 🙂 On the other hand if I hadn’t added the fill light, the painting would of been a little boring. I’ve been taking a color workshop, It’s amazing how much it rubs off on me. I am a chronic note taker..
My blog has reached a 1000 WordPress followers. 🙂 Thank you readers and friends so much for all your input, encouragement, and for looking at my paintings 🙂
Daily Painting No. 102 – Dragon Portrait (Finished)
yes! I have finally completed this painting, after working on and of on it for two months. I finished cleaning up the lines, played around with the colors, and I am done (I think). Tell me what you think. I spent at least 12-13 hours on this painting. I learned allot about the importance to experiment, create and destroy parts of the painting , and to have a more playful attitude when painting. It’s so important not to get tight when painting. best to start loose and build on the picture instead of worrying about everything being perfect. I made it to 102 daily paintings!
Daily Painting 101- Crocodile Monster in Robes
I was originally going to finish up the dragon portrait but I got caught up in painting this monster when I had more important things to do. I wanted to make a painting off a collage I did for a homework assignment It’s amazing how much I struggled with the robes compared to the croc scales and snout. the reason is because I had good reference image of a croc. I couldn’t find anything suitable for robes. I did my best for now. 3 hours. Photoshop with wacom tablet.