Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

Really digging the illustration ideas as well. Sounds very promising!
I'm getting some old 50s radio show or Twilight Zone vibes.
Also really admiring your committment and all the thumbnails/roughs you did for this and I think the shifted perspective will go very well with your theme.

Thanks man! :) You are really gonna hate me since I went ahead and changed my rough comp to my second choice since I kept having so many issues with it.

Update

I was meant to post sooner but ended up being sick the past week and long story short I just tested positive for covid today..... Feeling much better now, thankfully haven't been too bad, it's pretty muich been the same as a mild cold that I can't quite shake. Mnaged to make some progress but I've had to take it slow.

Comp

Initially I shot some reference to match my final comp above and started work on a more refined rough comp but I felt like I kept having issue after issue with it, mainly the perspective. I had to correct the perspective compared to my rough comp and rely on my phoot ref more and in the end I felt like my design had changed too much compared to my intial design and was more reliant on my reference which I didn't want. Guess 3 point perspective is something I need to revisit.

Decided to shoot some photo ref for my second idea and develop that some more with the design on the left being the one I ended up going with.




Value Comp

Spent around 2 evenings taking the idea above and settling on a value scheme to help aid the final painting.




Colour Comp

Spent some time last night aswell as this morning working on my colour comp for the piece. I liked the idea of the shadow from the window pane being angled like in the value comp but once I added some colour I wasn't as keen on it so in my second comp I thought I'd go with the shadow being straight which I think works alot better.

ATM I'm settlede on the second comp, might see if I can improve on it some more before I start painting it next week or if anyone here has any critiques? Please note the face is not final! :)

[Peter]

Update

Still recovering so again haven't really made awhole lot of progress, keep alternating between feeling ok to feeling like crap so mainly spent the week recovering. Done abit of sketching in between and watching some art videos so my week didn't feel completely wasted.

Wasn't too happy with my original colour scheme, felt my colours needed to be more vibrant so with that in mind I re-did my colour comp (1) and after some feedback on another forum I revisited the idea of the angled shadow (2) which I think looks a whole lot better than my original comp so I've decided to go with this new one instead.




Plan on starting this tomorrow, it isn't too big so hopefully I can finish it in a few days, especially since I have classes starting up again aswell next week.

[JosephCow]

Sorry to hear your still not feeling well. I like this composition, very moody. I will say that I think the stuff on the mantle seems to be really prominent in this thumbnail. Like when i squint that plate is kind of the focal point, and the guy's face is quite a bit dimmer. idk something to think about. I'm not sure if you want his face to be the really obvious focus or not. In some versions you do have that shadow cast across his face, which adds a certain amount of mystery and gloominess to the scene.

[Peter]

Sorry to hear your still not feeling well. I like this composition, very moody. I will say that I think the stuff on the mantle seems to be really prominent in this thumbnail. Like when i squint that plate is kind of the focal point, and the guy's face is quite a bit dimmer. idk something to think about. I'm not sure if you want his face to be the really obvious focus or not. In some versions you do have that shadow cast across his face, which adds a certain amount of mystery and gloominess to the scene.

Hey Joseph! Sorry it took me so long to reply, as you are aware I suck at getting back to people haha.

Thanks for the feedback :) Trying to remember now since this was a few months ago but I think I actually reworked the areas you suggested but I ended up scrapping the painting as I wasn't happy with it (I'll explain in my next post).

I'm definitely going to revisit the idea so I'll apply what you said then :)

[Peter]

Been awhile since I last posted............

No excuses really, I remember I didn't have time to post for a few weeks in a row, had far too many photos to take and just fell out of the habit of posting  unfortunately. Trying to get back into the swing of things with posting/updating since I have a bad habit of shutting myself away to work on things so I'll see if I can back to posting once a week.

Update

I ended up scraping my illustration I was working on last time. I started working on the painting but the more I worked on it the more I hated it! Think it boiled down to my drawing not being refined enough (and just plain ugly). I still like the idea so my plan is to revisit it once I have some free time, probably around December.

Work wise I've been sticking to the same schedule as before which was taking 1-2 online classes a term and in the breaks trying to work on some finished illustrations so that I can have a starter portfolio complete by early next year.

Enough talking, I'll post some finished work first and in my next post I'll post some of my studies for the last few months.

Enjoy :) 

Think I posted a crappy phone photo of this last time but here's a better quality pic. Actually entered this into a few competitions but unfortunately wasn't successful.




Masque of the red death

Decided to enter the Folio book competition this year, albeit rather late so it was abit of a rush job. Start to finish was a week but with my day job it was probably less time. Unfortunately wasn't successful with my entry but what can you do.

 Rough comps




Finished line drawing




Finished value comp




Finished painting




Chelsea Illustration awards

Started work on an illustration for the Chelsea competition but had some personal issues crop up which meant I wasn't able to get this done in time for the deadline. The "brief" for this was "Digging Deep" so my idea was something pirated related.

Rough Comps




Rough Value Comps




Rough Colour Comps




Finished Drawing




Finished Value Comp




Refined Colour Comps




Wasn't 100% on which colour comp to go with so I asked a friend who liked 1 and 3 combined which is the image below. I have some frailly visiting atm so plan on painting it once they leave next week.

[JosephCow]

wow, those are some really nice compositions. I really like where the dig deep one is at. It looks like you made some big improvements in a lot of areas over the past months!

[cgmythology]

Very solid updates here, really enjoy the play of light and shadow with your recent images. Excellent color choices with the pirate themed illustration as well!

[Peter]

JosephCow - Thanks! :) Not gonna lie the past few months I've felt like I haven't had as much time as usual to study and improve so I was really unsure if I had gotten any better or not but I'll take your word for it :)

cgmythology - Cheers man! must confess I "borrowed" my colour schemes from other artists that I like since I quite frankly suck at coming up with my own schemes haha.

Apologies for the delay in updating, just gonna blame plain old laziness on my part......

Digging Deep

Oil Comp

I painted some quick comps based on the last digital image I posted just to see how close I could match the colours with my chosen palette.




Refined Oil Comp

Thought I'd try something different and work on a more refined comp in oil first to see how beneficial it would be since I usually just jump straight into painting once completing a digital colour version. I've definitely spent longer this time around with the extra steps compared to past paintings but I do believe it has been beneficial for me and helped me create a stronger piece.




Final Painting

Here's the finished painting. Wanna say it took around 20-30hrs to paint start to finish, hard to give an accurate time since I painted it over many days due to my day job etc. Feels like a step in the right direction atleast even though there are parts I like and others I don't such as the chest and grass but I guess I'm still learning    Also need to work on my dexterity since those heads where a struggle! The piece is 18x24 so the heads aren't very big.




Plein Air

To finish things off here's a plein air painting from the summer that I forgot to post last time :) 




Ref