Where it’s at - Illustrator looking to build skills!

[waronmars]

Here's some recent work. 




Self portrait. Experimenting with starting out with big soft brushes, thinking about form and light sources, moving in to smaller harder brushes at the end. I am happy with how it turned out. Around 6-8 hours?




Faster study, experimenting with a more colour shape style approach and some different brushes.



A couple of character commissions. Experimenting with rim lighting and pushing my rendering. Pretty happy with them. 





Just getting started again with some oil painting. I have done a bit of gouache painting but oils is always the 'rolls royce' of mediums I guess. I really enjoyed it. I drew the linework straight on the canvas in pencil last night and sealed it with acrylic matte medium, then today started with a thin wash of turps and burnt umber I think. Went over with some coloured wash on the red but decided to be more direct and just start painting as I go. Pretty happy with how it's going. Size is 9x12"

I was using citrus turps but the smell is still overpowering, went out and bought some Gamsol to save my lungs. I used 50/50 turps and linseed oil as a medium, which I used quite a lot as I found the paint to be too thick for my liking and hard to paint in to the canvas - it would sit on the surface but not go in to the little divots.  I might try 'couching' the canvas where you paint a thin layer of oil over the surface to make the paint flow on easier. The acrylic medium layer ended up with some bubbles in it somehow, I'll have to figure out why. I will have to try just full on alla prima without the pencil safety net as well sometime. 

The palette arrangement and making strings of colour I learned at my art classes at Julian Ashton art school here in Sydney. A total revelation after a long time of just throwing paint wherever and mixing as I go, haha. 

The subject is a Balinese mask of 'Rarung' an evil witch demon. I was inspired to paint it as we visited a really cool bar in Penang, Malaysia and they had a bunch of interesting stuff on the walls, including some Balinese masks. I wanted to paint  a couple to put on the wall and remind us of the trip. Kind of a dark subject, but I love the design!