@crystalbrownart

I'm finally on Twitter as of today, which feels strange but hopefully it's a good thing. I'll be updating the goings-on in my artistic life on there, please follow me @crystalbrownart! Happy Tweeting :)

Foray Into Digital

Happy New Year! I'm going to try to make this a happy one at least. I've started doing digital painting recently and it's got my creativity going again, especially since I'm not relying on reality that much, it's mostly imaginative (for now). That kind of puts me in the mood to tackle traditional painting again. Here's what I've been up to:

"Green and Blue Day", 2012

"Sunset", 2012

Still-Life With a Tea Pot (June 30, 2011)

"Separated" (In progress, detail), Oil on Canvas, 2011

I've finally settled on a title for this painting. The concept was in place from the beginning but I was searching for a title that would be the most explanatory without being too obvious. Don't mind the lighting, the tea pot is not painted as light in person. Things are moving along and I'm about halfway finished. The hardest parts are the metal container and just turning those edges on the tea pot, which I haven't done yet. The only object that's basically done is the metal lid, everything else needs more layers and revision. So far so good though...

OAA Annual Juried Art Show (Thursday, June 16th, 2011)

"Laura Horseman" (2011) and "Ruins" (2011, Honourable Mention)

I've participated in this annual juried show for a few years and it's gotten better and better. The work was truly exceptional and I was lucky to be apart of it. I really wouldn't want to judge that collection of work! My recent still life drawing received an Honourable Mention, which is always nice. There are still a couple of competitions I want to enter this year so I better get cracking!

I just became a member of the Portrait Society of Canada, and I'm planning a portrait painting to enter into their annual competition later this year.

"Ruins" (Final Photo)

Ruins

Charcoal, Graphite and White Chalk on Tinted Paper

11"x7" (2011)

Still-Life Drawing: Finished! (April 14, 2011)

(click to enlarge for better quality)

It's done! I am getting this photographed tomorrow so hopefully that goes well. I prefer taking photos in daylight so maybe tomorrow morning I'll post a better picture. As you can see I'm preparing my board for travel and there better not be any smudges when I take the board out tomorrow, lol, or I'm going to cry!

Still-Life Drawing: Stage 2 (April 6, 2011)

I'm racing to get this done by the end of the month and being new to using white chalk so extensively in a drawing, I'm a little worried. But I'm actually having lots of fun! There's nothing like creating light with white chalk on tinted paper. It's feeling very intuitive right now, which is great. No wonder so many artists love this process!

Still-Life Drawing: Stage 1 (April 2, 2011)

I just started this today but I've been planning it for awhile. I broke a beautiful container a couple years ago that I was previously thinking about using in a painting. The funny thing is I was more inspired to use it after I accidentally broke it. It looked much more intriguing and I had a great opportunity to do something conceptual with it.

Once I set up the broken pieces, they reminded me of ancient ruins and they have a beauty that didn't exist when the container was intact. So that's what I'll call this drawing; "Ruins".

It will be on tinted paper but I want to incorporate white chalk, which is why I didn't start straight on the "good paper". I'll be using white chalk a little more than I'm used to and I don't know how it'll turn out. That's why its good for me to have a cartoon or blueprint (if you will) so if anything goes terribly wrong, I don't have to start from scratch.

I'm still a little unsure about the composition. I'll take another look at it tomorrow but I might just end up moving one of those little broken pieces around...

Drawing In Progress: Finished!

Laura Horseman, Graphite on Tinted Paper, 9.5"x12", 2011

She's finally finished and I'm so glad! I've also decided to add my new signature, which is the monogram I already use for my stationery. I think it's much better than my old signature, it's much more polished. Thanks for following and sorry about the graphite glare.

Inspiring Imagery from the Entertainment Industry

Just last year I was enjoying the music one of my favourite bands, Sade, when I noticed how incredibly beautiful their album cover was. The album is Soldier Of Love (2010) and on the cover is the lead singer Helen Folasade Adu and I could have swore this was a painting. I was immediately trying to think of who could have painted it and thinking I wish I did it myself! To me it’s clearly influenced by painting but it turns out it’s a photograph/Photoshop as usual. I think it’s interesting that it’s not the usual photograph with the band’s name on it and there is an attempt to evoke a very sophisticated painterly quality. There are numerous other artistic album covers but this one grabbed me because it looks to me like a contemporary realist painting.

Then yesterday I came across this movie poster for The Other Woman (2010) starring Natalie Portman and there she is but, again, not in the usual way. Are illustrators making a comeback in the movie poster business? It could have been the usual photo collage with the title on it but this appears to be a hybrid of a hand drawing with digital elements with the intent to appear mostly as a drawing. I think it’s really well done and it got me thinking that these types of images in entertainment could be helping contemporary realism right now. Granted it’s not painting but it’s a shift from just photos and text back to art. And again, there were always the occasional artsy posters but this one is clearly influenced by contemporary realist art.

I'm not sure this is a trend but I hope it is.

Drawing In Progress: My Friend Part 5

Here's update, finally. I've started working in some half-tones and softening edges. Just that little bit made a huge difference, she's starting to look real. There will be more soon. Comments are welcome and thank you for following :)

Drawing In Progress: My Friend Part 4

Still putting in those darks. This is helping me see the overall value range. I had to make sure I put the dark part of the hair in so that I could judge the values in the face better. She's looking like a brunette right now but she's actually blonde. What I'm doing is laying in a base to erase out of, which is the easiest way I know of to create realistic hair. There's a lot of edges to blend and I still don't know how I'll finish the bottom. Maybe I'll fade the bottom out...I don't know.

Thanks for checking it out!

Drawing In Progress: My Friend Part 3

*Note: Blogger seems to dull the contrast a bit on these photos.

My trusty 2B pencil (by Koh-I-Noor, my fav brand) snapped last night and I was forced to stop. Since there's no art store nearby I settled for Staples which carries some basic drawing supplies, but not Koh-I-Noor, Staedler. Of course, Staedler's great too but I have sentimental attachments to Koh-I-Noor because theirs were the first serious pencil set my mom bought me in high school. I must say they served me well.

In any case I got pretty far last night. I'm starting to remember some of the pitfalls of graphite such as shine of course which makes me have to tilt my paper to get my tones even at every angle. Also, I have to manage the graininess while not pressing too hard on the paper. Sometimes I get concentrated spots of shine that way...not good.

As you can see in the pics, I'm working strictly in the shadows for now so it looks a bit strange as it's only 50% of what makes something look 3D. My drawings never really look spot on until much later anyway, lol. I'm keeping things pretty basic for now, no details yet until I establish convincing form. I'm also not going to round off all my shapes yet, that will come with softening edges. After I'm done with laying in my tones, I'll go back over everything to get a smooth finish.

Thanks for following, and comments are welcome :)

Drawing In Progress: My Friend Part 2

There was a little scare earlier because I couldn't find my camera but I found it, YAY! So I get to post this update afterall. If you enlarge the picture above, you'll see how I'm using a bristle brush to push and spread the graphite into the paper. I'm doing this because the paper has too much tooth for me to get a smooth finish with just the pencil alone. If I were using a hot pressed paper like Stonehenge, I would skip this step. Once that's done I start placing some general dark areas within the shadow shape to start to gradually break things up. I'll show that step in the next post.

That brings me to the issue of "smudging": I don't like smudging, that's why I will have to go over this whole drawing with just my sharp pencil and refine my tones. Basically, this is the only time in the drawing I'll be using my brush or anything else in that manner. It'll be my pencils and my kneadable eraser from now on. That being said, holy crap, this drawing is gonna take forever! There's a reason why I don't love graphite, this is why. But graphite does have that subtle shine that can give a drawing that special quality, unlike any other medium.

I'm showing a little picture of my pencil as well to show you how it looks. I really can't use a pencil that's not sharp on this paper because every stroke needs to be clean, I can't have any graininess. But I'll explain more about how I'm shading with it next time. Thanks for following so far!

Drawing In Progress: My Friend Part 1

I finally started this drawing on Sunday and this is about a day's worth of work so far. As you can see, I'm concentrating on getting the shadow shapes right because that is the key to capturing the likeness and once that's done, I'll probably get into the eyes since that's always a good place to start. The paper is off some pastel drawing pad I had from about 4 years ago. It's a muted blue but I originally wanted a flesh tone...I just wanted to get started and I couldn't bother to go on another hike to the nearest art supply store, so I thought "This will have to do."

I'm using graphite for the entire drawing for the first time in years. It'll be a challenge on this paper because it's not smooth, it has a bit of tooth but I'll have to just use my bristle brush to work the graphite into the paper more. That's it for now, check back for more!

The Next Painting

I've been busy entering shows/competitions lately so I haven't had anything to blog about for a while but there should be another portrait in the works soon...In the next 2 weeks if I stay on top of things. I've been planning a full length portrait of my brother which will be fairly large. That's a scary thing for me because I haven't done anything like that in years--I work much smaller these days. But I think a larger scale portrait is necessary for me right now just to take things up a notch. The other thing I'm worried about is buying more brushes since I only have sizes for smaller scale paintings. I'll need a few large brushes and if you're a painter you know that can get very expensive indeed. It's all for a worthy cause though and I can't wait to start!

New Self-Portrait: It's Finished!

Blogger really doesn't show these pictures well at all but here it is. It's all done and now I have to find something else to start. I've been wanting to do a life size portrait from head to toe for a long time so I think I'll do that next but I'd like to do some drawing in between. Thanks to everyone who checked out my work here and stay tuned!

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress) Part 4

Since my last post, I've done my hair, the dishes in the cabinet, the background, the chair, and a bit of my left earring. You can see there's a lot of glare from the sun. I'm hoping I can get this done by Sunday because it needs to dry and get a retouch varnish.

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress) Part 3

A lot has progressed since the last update and I think I'm halfway there. I need to do more on the face and other parts but I thought I'd oil out some areas first using linseed oil so I could see the correct values again. Right now my favourite part is the top I'm wearing because I really got that satin texture right, YAY! I'll post detail shots later on. Also as a result of oiling out, some mistakes popped up. That "mustache" looking part, for example, only showed itself after oiling out so I have to fix it. Could you imagine me doing the final varnish and mistakes like that one popping up? And no time to fix it??? So glad I'm avoiding that!

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress) Part 2

This is actually my 2nd attempt at the face, I won't bother showing you the first. It was really tight and stiff before. I hated it so much I tried to sand it down but I just painted over it. I have renewed faith in this painting and my skills in general, lol. For anyone who's curious, these are the colours I used for my skin:

Base: Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ocher Pale, Alizarin Crimson, Ultra Marine Blue Deep (Old Holland).

Shadow: Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue Deep.

Lights: Titanium White, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna

That's the head so far and tomorrow I'll be working on it some more plus a bit of the background if I really push myself.