Sunday, May 23, 2010

First Digital ILL assignment : D

Hey everyone!
For this assignment we had to Livepaint in Illustrator a self portrait. It was encouraged that the piece be stylized and tell either a story in your life, something interesting about yourself that most people don't know or unique. This is me...In Belles dress from Beauty and the Beast. It is based on an event that happened to me in Kindergarden and me and Claire joke about ALL the time : D enjoy!





Monday, May 10, 2010

Finally something in the works

Hey everyone, I know it's been...a million years but I'm finally working on something I would like to share with you guys and Kinda show you a step by step... "How Does Michael Okey paint with Acrylic" kinda thing. So Anyway to the painting pics...

1. I start off all my paintings with a ton of sketches in my sketchbook and from there I finally arrive at the perfect composition.
2. I rarely draw on my canvas with pencil or anything. I don't like How pencil, pen, charcoal, ect. smears. I always draw with paint and I try to cover the whole canvas with paint. No matter the color or value, I just like to get a good base on the canvas.
*Tip* stay LOOSE. paintings are more about feeling in the beginning than detail. don't get all caught up in using reference and about the details at this point. I just draw! I don't use pictures or anything to just put down my idea.

3. At this point, I begin to work out the values. I like to take pictures of my piece throughout the developmental stages and put them in PS and make them Black and White, to see how the Values are working together.
4. Continuing to stay lose, I begin to harmonize the colors in my piece, using a triad of Blue, Green and Orange, I throw a little here and there to keep the unity in the piece.
5. well look at that...something is starting to form...DON'T KILL IT! step back!
this is a nice time to step back from your piece and ask yourself "is there something missing? something off? something just...not working? I thought the piece needed a little something in the bottom right corner..and in the next process picture...you can see I decided I didn't XD paintings are so temperamental! haha6. A splash of color there, a little detail there and DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!....and add : D When working on something for so long...you begin to see how things work together and sometimes they just don't play nice! I felt the blob behind the chair I am sitting on (which was going to be yellow carnation flowers) cluttered the piece and the "what were going to be coins" in the bottom right corner was just...to much. So with a swift brush stroke they were gone. As a good artist once said "sometimes...you just have to kill your babies" : o
7. well, now that you have a good base, put in some details! don't get so caught up in them...but start bringing the piece alive. I worked a bit on the cake, mountains, and water...but remember MOVE AROUND THE PIECE. don't just get stuck in one area...you don't want one part to look fantastic and the other parts...look like you did them last minute because you got bored of the piece and just wanted to get it finished : /

to be continued...