St. Jerome Final

I Finally finished this painting. I'm pleased with the final result.

I will move on to face the "Laocoon" my new challenge.

I'll keep you guys posted on the progress.

Blocking

This was a quick blocking from a live model. Interesting how the shadow describe the form and features on the model's face. No details, just big planes of light and shadow.

Studio from a Live Pose in Oil

 

I thought that one seminar with Jesus Villarreal Jr. was cool, but two is way cooler.  Again, this month I had the privilege to participate in another Jesus' workshop, this time an academic figure painting. It was a workshop full of painting and observation from a live pose, I feel that I learned a lot from this guy. Here's my studio from this exercise.

St. Jerome WIP - Oil on canvas

This is a sight-size exercise I'm working on right now. It's a work in progress, at this stage I'm starting to layout the values finding the brightest light and the darkest dark to use as a reference for the rest of the mid tones. Also, I'm  correcting the drawing as I go. I don't think I have posted the stages of a painting on the past, but I will try to document this one as I go. It's going to take a while since right now I'm busy with other stuff and I can't work on it as much as I would like. I really like this cast and I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes out. It's always exiting to see how a painting evolves.

Bill Murray

I 've super busy with a lot of different things going on right now. But in the mean time while working in other projects I'm posting this watercolor of Bill Murray that I did some time ago for the caricaturama challenge. 

Yoko

No much to say, just watercolors.

Charcoal from life model

I had the pleasure to participate in a workshop by Jesus Emmanuel Villareal, an awesome talented young artist, who just graduated from the Florence academy. The knowledge and the technique of this guy is insane. Here is a link to his website, check it out it is incredible. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to attend. So here is my drawing from the class.

Adam West

I had the pleasure to participate in the Wizard Comic Con Miami this past weekend and it was an awesome experience.
Since the main attraction at the conference was Adam West, the original Batman from the 1960's TV series, I decided to give it a try and go for a caricature portrait of him while I was at the booth. So here is the final piece, I wanted to capture him as I remember him from his younger years. 

Planes of the Head

This is my latest sight-size painting, it is oil on canvas. It was a very fun exercise and it helped me a lot to understand how the head is divided into planes and how the light works on them as well.

Tommy Lee Jones

I love working with watercolors. Interesting subject and fun to draw.

Where is the undo command in watercolors? there's none

Not always everything works out as planned. This is a clear example of that. When I first sketched this, I had a decent likeness, but when I started painting I thought that some adjustments needed to be made. Unfortunately, the only way to find out if something is going to work is by doing it, and unlike digital painting, when you work with traditional media, there is no undo or save as commands. So, as I made the corrections I thought my painting needed to improve, but I end it up messing it up (as you can see in the picture above), the good thing is that it is just a painting, no more than paper and some pigment (besides hours of work and no sleep). So, after a week or so of thinking about what went wrong, I decided to give it another try, so I started from scratch and did a whole new illustration and here is the final result, better likeness at least I can now live with it.

With time I have learned that if something looks wrong with your artwork it's because it's wrong, no doubt about it.

Charcoal Sketch from live model

This is a quick sketch from a live model session. Interesting model from Rusia, very strong features.

Another Caricature

Quick Sketch

Here is a quick sketch in pencil.

Just for fun

For quite some time I've been interested in caricatures, I think they are an incredible way to capture the subject's personality (when done right, of course). So I found this awesome group on Facebook "Caricaturama Showdonw 3000" where a bunch of artists get together to make a caricature of a weekly subject, just for fun. Here my entry for this past week, I will post more of them here as I go.

Live model

This is a recent charcoal from a live model session . It was a great practice, I can't wait to do another of these, it was so much fun and the model was great. Now that is done, I realize that I should of been more aggressive with the shadows and dark areas, and definitely soften more some of the edges. So, it will be for the next one.

Screaming

I finished this drawing a few days ago. It is from a photo I saw on one of these stock photo websites, the photographer's name is Cameron Whitman, and his work is excellent Check it out. The expression of the model really got my attention and I decided to give it a try so here it is the result.

Tartan

This is my latest sight-size exercise, it is a cast called Tartan ( I looked it up on the internet to learn more about the character, but I couldn't find anything). This was done in oils with a limited palette of ivory black, titanium white, ochre and english red. Excellent practice to learn values and temperature. For my next cast I'm going to pay more attention to the transitions, since they are a bit hard on this piece. Again, the painting loses a lot of the middle tones and texture when photographed, hope to get this issue resolved soon.

This is it for now, soon I will post my next cast.

some color excersices

These are some studies of face features. I did them at the beginning of this year but I've been so busy that I keep postponing the post. They are in oils trying to achieve a painterly style. hope you enjoy them.

Three quarter from a upside angle view sketch of a face

This is a very interesting view of the head I found online, if any of you know the photographer please let me know so I can show him/her my interpretation of this photo.

The challenge in this pose was to capture the perspective of the face as well as to keep the softness of the model and of curse, at the same time make look fresh and loose. I play a lot with the design and composition of the subject on the paper, trying to focus on the main features 0f the character and fading out towards the upper and lower parts the pose. anyways as always your comments are welcome.