I will officially be attending the Imaginism Workshop in February! I’ve known for some time now, but I didn’t want to post anything until I had everything in place with my job and the financial details worked out. So needless to say, I am extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity to learn from such an amazing group of artists.
In addition to getting that exciting news off my chest, I was thinking it would be a good idea to start writing down my thoughts leading up to the workshop, as well as cataloging my process prior to leaving for Toronto.
So with that in mind, let me start with the reasons why I will be attending this workshop in the first place:
It really comes down to the fundamentals of art and the skills that I feel I need to greatly improve on. My art education up till now has been mostly through trial and error, and focused primarily on learning art programs rather than strong drawing skills, structure, lighting and color theory. I’m sure that some of you could identify with this sentiment as well, and you may notice that (if your like me) much of your art training has been in the form of a photoshop tutorial. I know all kinds of things about how to use multiply layers and pen tools. I can customize my hotkeys and adjust color settings on the fly with various sliders, but at the end of the day I know that something is missing…. and it’s not the latest photoshop plugins. It’s a strong knowledge of the fundamentals of art that I need to re-examine, and I am so excited to learn from a team of artists that I admire and respect for reasons that extend beyond just their art.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, I will continue to update my bog in the months leading up to the workshop so stay tuned.
-Brandon
Here are some sample sketches I’ve been working on lately. I’m exploring a style that is targeting the children’s market more directly. It is an ongoing process of course but the overall goal here is to push my style in a direction that will hopefully lead to some illustration work in the future. I love drawing little kids and animals as you can see from most of my personal work, so it only seems natural that I would start exploring my potential in the children’s market.
It’s been a busy past couple of weeks at my day job (CMM) wich has limited the amount of personal work I have been able to do when I get home. Trying to balance them both can be difficult, but I just need to keep positive and do my best at both (insert Rocky theme song “eye of the tiger” here).
I’m trying a new coloring technique here and I think it came out pretty nice. I made some custom brushes that give more of a colored pencil feel to the textures.
This is a quick color comp I did at the start of my painting process. I liked the line art from the previous post so I decided to add some color and a background. Now that I’m happy with the basic colors, I can start applying it to the painting while using this as a reference. This will help simplify my palette and allow me to focus on rendering rather than color picking.
Just a little something I’ve been working on.
I drew this Seattle Boy a little while back and thought it would be a good exercise to color it and make some needed adjustments to some of the facial features.
Trying out some speed painting to loosen up a bit. Each one was done in 30 minutes. After struggling through my last post, I decided it would be a good idea to just pump out a few quickies in order to boost my speed a bit. I’ll try and keep this up on a regular basis, even if I dont post all of them. I think it will help in the long run by making me pick a hard stopping point and keep my from over working each and every painting. Cheers!
Now that I’ve fumbled around with this piece for far too long, I think it’s time to call it done!
So I took a break from this piece for a while and decided to come back and rework it a bit more. I ended up using the first sketch as a base for a new drawing all together. I made a new layer on top of the old black and white image and started sketching over top until I got it where I wanted it. Now I’m in the process of adding color, light and shadow. As you can see, it is still in need of some love, but I figured I’d go ahead and post my halfway point just for the hell of it.
Please feel free to send feedback and any tips or critiques that might help! I’m still in the process of “finding my style” if there is such a thing to be found. I’ve been trying some new techniques lately so hopefully I can start narrowing down my approach soon. Anyway, thanks for stopping by… if there is anybody out there reading this :)
Ok I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted something, but I swear it has been a busy month! Anyway, I thought I’d post my latest work in progress. I’m not sure what it is that I am struggling with on this one, but I need to come back to it some other time… It’s just not working for me right now. I think I reworked the goat’s head about 3 times now, and I think I just need to step away and try painting something else. Maybe later I’ll come back with a better sense for what I’m looking for on this.
