Lillen's Sketchbook

[Lillen]

Clouds II (1.5-2 hrs)

Initially, I thought this study was about the same as my previous one in terms of quality. I felt very neutral about it, but after receiving some feedback from my trusted partner, I started to feel much more positive and hopeful.






Clouds III (2-3 hrs)

Now, it was time to move on to more interesting lighting scenarios. In comparison to my earlier studies, everything about this study went much smoother. I’m feeling good about it. The most difficult part was the rocks, which I’m considering adding to my never ending ‘things to study’ list. The method that I use is painting grayscale and then applying several gradient maps (and masks). I did this in 1 sitting, in about 2–3 hrs with mild sleep deprivation setting in. A friend pointed out to me later, I did make a careless mistake where the clouds form a tangent with the rocks. (Reminding me I should wait a day or two before I post.) They also said that my shapes initially were much stronger, but I had changed them to be more accurate like my reference. I had forgotten the lesson of my previous study, where I had focused more on editing the reference / designing my shapes. I still struggle in my mind between exaggerating shapes and pulling back to reality. I asked myself why I might be having this problem, and I came to a realization. Typically, I am a portrait artist, and my ‘bad habit’ for a while was overexaggerating to the point where it broke anatomy. Mentally, I hold myself back a bit on what I wanted to exaggerate to compensate this tendency. However, this does not serve well for landscapes. There is much more freedom to change the shapes. The past few weeks I serendipitously keep running into things that talk about being bold, free, and fearless with art. I shall take this as a sign.

Please Note: Nearly all the artworks I will be posting in this thread will be compressed jpgs / webp and Glazed due to AI scrapping my work. As a result, you may see some weird artifacts.

Yay! Finally another member who likes portraits as much as I do! And into the same type of artists/painting styles. Zorn, Sargent, Sorolla, Schmid, etc., are some of my biggest influences in painting, along with digital painters who are also heavily influenced by them.

Regarding the clouds. I have used cloud brush packs in the past, I find they're generally more suited to commercial works where deadlines are always looming, as they're a bit like shortcuts. But when doing personal works, I much prefer to just use general painting brushes I like and let the inherent texture/bristle marks of the brush show, as the results always looked more like the kind of organic and expressive painting I prefer.

I'm happy to meet another artist I have something in common with, and can learn from. Thank you very much for the kind advice! I will be practicing with my general painterly brushes.