Weekly Roundup: Week the Second!

A couple of years ago, I was having a bad day and I doodled a baby panda. A couple of days ago, I was having a bad day and I drew a this. Much like the panda, it's innacurate, doodley and just a bit of a vent. 

I didn't get to do many spitpaints this week, but I did do one or two. So some forests and firetemples, capped at 30 mins.

The speed of the spitpaints has really come in handy for quick colour thumbs and colour scripting. It's pushed me down more of a select-it-and-go mentality, and pushed a blockier Mary Blair inspired approach. I've been hesitant of going that route for years, but I'm finding it very freeing and totally something I'm gonna play more with in the future.

I was trying a few different things in the stream, and after playing a bit of Skyrim decided to draw this fellow. Only when I was finishing did I think that sword looked a bit familiar. Oh well, I like it anyway.

 Last up is some games work for Brindysoft that I'm allowed to show. Chris Brind  is a joy to work with and I had a lot of fun mixing up different approaches for this one :D

 I've also been doing some Gallery of Mo Mo'traits  and if you'd like one of my very limited number of portraits get in touch through the site. All in aid of Movember!

This Week: Roundup

So a quick recap of some of the stuff I've been up to this week. First up, a WHOLE LOT of figure studies. I learned long ago that when something's not working for you, you need to go back to the basics and rely on your fundamentals.

"Mastery is based on mastering the basics." 

I then tried to put some of that into practice with this warmup that went on a little far, and brought back some Darklight characters from the ethereal abyss into which they had fallen. 

I polled on twitter (@ciaranlucas) on suggestions for the Monday night Livestream, and I got 'a werewolf; something fantasy'. Here's what I came up with. Thanks to everyone who dropped by, and if you want to catch the next one it'll be every Monday at 20:30 GMT at www.livestream.com/charco 

Alternatively, the streams for old sessions are going to be up there from now on as well if you'd like to check them out. 

 This was also from the stream; another tweet had asked for more inky things like the Darklight picture, and a quick poll of some thumbnails voted this little lady to be the warm down for the night.

Recently, Paul Canavan turned me on to the Daily Spitpaint group, where a number of themes are given and you have 30 minutes to complete an image based on the theme. No photo textures are allowed- just cold hard digital paint. This was my first offering, under the heading water spell. 

That's more or less all the fun stuff I've been working on so far this week; I've a lot more work from the Seed Project, but I'm saving that up for a post all of its own :) 

Have you been working on anything awesome that you can show? I'm really interested to see what people who read this are getting up to in their arting hours.

Red Riding through the Sky

Yesterday seemed hellbent of me not getting much painting done, but managed to doodle this skycycle thing. Not a finish pic by any stretch of the imagination, but hammered home a need to spend more time trying urban environments.

TODAY however, I wasn't gonna let a lack of internets get in my way and got to play around with the pic above. Work came a calling and had to shelve it for now, but it was the good kind of work so I was happy out. Add in Breaking Bad in the background and you have 11.45 with me still at my desk.

Should probably go to bed, I'm heading to the zoo tomorrow :3

Ahead of the game

Here's a thing. I'm after buying a bunch of painting techniques books, this is me beginning to go through them ;)