Portrait - Marsha Ambrosius

This picture was a gift for a friend and I only have a photo of it rather then a scan so excuse the blurriness...

Since I seem to be posting nothing but portraits lately...here's an oldie but a goodie portrait of Marsha Ambrosius. I doubt she'd remember it, but she seemed to like it when I posted it for her on the Floetry message boards back in 2006.  ^_^

Medium: Pencil

Portrait - Step by Step to Digital Portraits

Here's a condensed step by step view of the process I used to create the Jazmine and Jonecia portraits. I'm using the Jonecia portrait as an example.

1. Outline is the most important stage. Either free hand or traced, doesn't matter. Make sure everything is placed properly before proceeding.
2. Add flat colors to the appropriate sections.
3. Add in the shadows to the skin first to get rid of the outline overlay. Then paint the skin tones.
4. Add in the details to the mouth, eyes, and brows.
5. Add in the details to the hair, clothing, and jewelry. Clothing was the easiest for me and the most fun. it involved simply adding in shadows in a single color (varying pressure for opacity) and editing wrinkled areas of the stripes.
6. Create a background and add the signature. Done!

Portrait - Jonecia

I'm having fun doing portraits of my friends. Here's another one!

Most digital portraits take me about 4 hours on average. Depends on the level of painting. pencil/coal takes much longer depending on the size. One day I'll use actual paint...though actual paint usually hates me. However, the more I do digital painting, the more I learn some techniques for traditional painting.

One of these days I'll post the layers to show the progression. I guess kind of like a mini tutorial.

Portrait: Jazmine

As a celebration that I finally got Photoshop to work (kinda) properly on my old laptop, I wanted to jump back into drawing. I randomly chose a friend of mine to draw to get myself back into the swing of things.

Golden Koi

I Just finished this picture last night. It's done on 19in x 25in black paper using soft pastels. It has similar coleration to the koi fish I created for the Skate Deck Art Show. This one is more smoothly done, with softer colors as opposed to bold due to the smudging technique I used to color in the koi. There are a few marks from the pencil outline that showed up; however it doesn't bother me. The paper ended up having kind of a stressed look.

The lighting and the camera have discolored the photo a bit. I am not able to do and color correction on it at the moment, but I figured that's not a huge deal. However, I may replace it with a better photo later.

I have been a kind of obsessed with koi fish for about 3 years now. They are beautiful and the meanings behind them are inspiring.

FYI: I'm going to start tagging the picture differently and more evasively. I don't like the way the water mark changes the look of the picture. So starting today, you'll have to deal with my logo in the corner of every picture in a way that would be difficult to edit out (i.e. partially covering the picture).

Gift for My Brother

This was a gift for my brother. It is in a frame, so there is a reflection that shows up in the photo. The picture is 18"x24" and the medium is charcoal.

Dreams and Aspirations

This piece was done for the 2011 Skate Deck Art Show at Doogallery in Atlanta, GA. As the show title suggests the theme of the show was to create something using a skate board deck. This took about 10 hours and the medium is Sharpie permanent marker and acrylic paint.

When the Koi fish swims up a waterfall, it becomes a dragon. It represents aspirations. Lizards promote dreaming. I wanted this to be colorful and busy. The two animals are placed in a loose shape of a Ying Yang because both concepts of dreaming and aspiring can be opposites of each other even though they are two sides to the same coin. Dreamers don't pursue anything...but when you aspire you are in the process of making those dreams come true.