The Peonies: Chinese Painting

I've been pretty lazy in the art department of my life lately due to the fact that I am finally able to play games on my ps3 that I bought 3 yrs ago and the games that were x-mas gifts 2 years ago. There I admitted it. Out in the open. Done.

Sadly they were Dragon Age: Origins and Bakugon Battle Brawlers which is kind of like a Yugi-oh thing with the card game and monsters part but it is also basically an elaborate game of the old style Pin Ball machines in that you can run your 'ball' through an obstacle course to gain more points. Oh and you need to land your ball on a card in the middle of the playing field at the end or else you lose all the points you picked up along the way. Surprisingly this game was a lot of fun despite its obvious catering to the 8-12 year old age group, but it did get repetitive after awhile.

Anyways, on to the goods! I decided this year to paint some pieces for my parents for gifts. So far I only have a background going for my Dad's piece which is going to be some Jazz musicians. But I have finished a painting of the peonies for Mom.

My test piece of chinese style Peonies was done on a type of paper that is used for calligraphy and ink, making it incredibly resistant to the natural bleeding effect of water colors. The actual piece was done on traditional Xuan (rice) paper and I can easily equate the consistency of this paper to painting on a piece of paper towel.

Too much water in your brush makes your paint blush out in all directions without control. While I liked the way it gave rough edges to the leaves you can see how the colors just bled all over the place into a muddy wash of color. I am considering redoing it but I think I'll just get the same thing all in part to how this paper behaves when touched with water.

Behold! The test subject on ink paper!
(happy with how the peonies turned out... not so much on the foliage)

VS. Traditional Xuan paper! Curly edge Shadows of Awesome!
(happy with the foliage on the right but not on the left!)

Both side by side on my counter top for size comparison.
(the inked one is a regular 8x11 sheet of paper)

So yay for traditional media! I haven't done any for YEARS. Probably since highschool. How sad :( With how my dad's painting on canvas is turning out it sorely shows. But more on that later! For now enjoy the Peonies, I know I'll probably be painting these over and over again because they're so fun to do!

Oh and I'll get the jump on the wishing of Happy Holidays, Merry X-mas, and Happy Yuletide! I think that covers everyone :)

Progress

New lion sconces and some minor details. Still not happy with the gawd awful terracotta walkway but I'll get to it eventually... also water isn't flaming aqua but it works :p

System Crash

What a downer... I started today's painting off really well. I decided to go at it with a relaxed attitude. I identified why I didn't like the latest version of my greek town. It's too clean and sterile and dead... and digital. The previous one although it's a really bad quick sketch had so much more feeling to it regardless of how much a lack of skill I had when I made it. It seemed funny because I didn't change the colors of the buildings at all, just the sky.

So I settled to make it more artistic and less computer-like. I had an idea for some lion head sconces as spitting fountains at the base of the pillars. I got to painting, started off with wacky colors I didn't care about, put some roman pillars on my archway. The lions turned out so great! They were beautiful and really looked like they were carved from stone! I was so pleased!

And then... it happened. Horror of horrors PS crashed on me. It's never happened before and I was previously working with a much larger file. Blue dragon got up to half a gig and I was saving every time I paused to think for fear that the program would eat my work. I don't fully understand why PS crashed but of course I hadn't saved my lions and they got eaten. I briefly hoped I could recover them from the scratch disk but alas... the internet consensus is no, you can't. It freely eats your stuff when it crashes. Nom.

I think the most infuriating part is knowing the image is cached in your RAM and you can't get it. Then as you keep using your computer it gets gobbled up into nothing.

What an inspiration killer to a good start on today's progress.

I have a feeling the laptop's outdated 4 GB of memory isn't enough. I really wish I could use my imac with 8GB. But even then that might not be enough for a powerhouse program like CS4.

I guess I'll just have to muster up some courage to go back and redo my work while it's still fresh in my mind. The worst part is knowing that no matter how hard I try, it won't be exactly the same. Poor pretty lion sconces... RIP.

Rawr.

: /

Greek Town: Day 2

Alrighty... it's day two now and today I learned how to apply textures. That and amazing people make photoshop brushes that are essentially 'giant rubber stamps' that you can use as textures themselves and it makes doing trees a super breeze.

I still can't believe how fast Feng can make cities or towns. I think I've poured about 6 or 7 hours into this thing and I still have just a shell of a scene. Time and patience... but yikes is it ever frustrating getting there!



I look like a horrible CG rendered model but I promise I'll look pretty eventually!

Perspective

Perspective... being that it should be drawn on paper first with a ruler then painted later. I've never done cities or buildings before. I had an idea and it isn't working out. The sky kinda ruined it... I don't think an early morning thing is going to work out the way I wanted it to so it might have to be a mid afternoon scene with more light to get that dusty hot summer feel.

I'll play with this another day it seems.

Character Sketch

Just something that was in my head that I attempted to get out... nothing like I want it just yet but it's a work in progress.

Background of Fail

And I present to you more blobs of color! Two adventurers at the bottom right in the cave on a daring raid on the empress's nest because lo and behold there's treasure in there! Because dragons use treasure as nesting material..... yes... the shinies keep the eggs warm... oh just go with it :p



... I figure if I keep doing them eventually the backgrounds will get better... right?.... right?!

(I've just been informed that this would be a 'proof of concept'... so it isn't fail it's on purpose! mwahahaha!!)