Didn't have a chance to work on the landscape as I was watching this week's movie (oh dear) and writing the script for tomorrow's show. But the portrait of Scott McCloud has been bugging me. Ever since I did the one of Dan, Scott's has been looking pale and improperly colored. So I opened the file, brought up the palette I used on Dan's, made a few changes and got something I think works a lot better. So THIS is the final version. I suppose, until I print them, I can mess with them any time I want. But I really would rather consider things done and move on. Still glad I made this decision.

 This one has been lingering for far too long. To be fair, it's going to be a monster. There's a LOT of detail that will have to be worked out. But if I don't start it at some point, it'll never get done. This will be a painting of Harvard Square, looking out at the Yard as viewed from the tables outside what was Au Bon Pain. It was a chance photo but it really worked well. I knew I wanted to make something for my best friend and this is his favorite place to hang out. I just wasn't sure how to approach it. Now, I think I do. So far, the part I like best is the bricks. The level of detail on the building actually seems too high to me, but we'll see. That's why I do these proof of concepts. The chair might be TOO simple and I might need to do some shading on it. Might be that most everything is 'flat' until items get closer to the viewer. Dunno. That's why I work these things out. Still, there's now some progress.

EDIT: Decided to try a little dimensionality to the chair. All I did was add a simple highlight layer and I think that added quite a bit. This means a little more detail to the bricks that are closest and to the tables that will eventually be there as well. But I think I will still refrain from putting shadows under things. It was an overcast day and there were no harsh shadows anyway and their lack will, I think, add to the image.

 Ok, so I liked. I managed to get in another quick self-portrait (like I need another one of those) before the holidays are over. It's just a quick and dirty, made from a sketch that was in my sketchbook that I hadn't used and had forgotten about. I took a photo on an angle to get some low-fi distortion in it and made some quick and purposefully messy marks to ink it. I wanted to play with some brighter colors, so I thought to make some palettes from Van Gogh paintings. Interesting thing; they're not as brightly colored as one might think. I made one palette from his famous bedroom painting and wasn't satisfied with the choices. So I made another from one of his iris paintings and was happier, but still really surprised that the colors really were more sedate than I thought.

 This is one of those meme things that's big on art sites like Instagram. Art vs. artist, eight images boiled down from whatever you did this year with a photo stuck in the middle. I don't think it really represents what I did this year, though this year was not as productive as most. I only did 9 portraits and 40 some odd pages of the comic, plus some random images here and there. Then again, I'm also in two podcasts (50 episodes of one, likely 20 of the other), I play in two bi-weekly RPGs and I work part time. So I'm pretty damned busy. Even though there wasn't as much work, I'm more happy with it than I was the previous year. Still need to keep branching out, especially on the portraits. I'd like to do some more figurative work, maybe another 3/4 size one instead of just the constant closeups. The comic also needs some visual tightening, which I will do thanks to insight from a couple folks. That all being said, engagement is down overall. Doesn't make me feel very good but I knew that wasn't likely to change. Just have to keep making myself happy, I guess.

 I never really post these video things. Don't know why not. What you can't see here is that I start out using the grid system. The grid is hidden from the video playback. The reason I do this is because it takes a lot more time. Wait, does that make sense? Yes, because it forces me to really pay attention and mentally decipher what I'm looking at, to make a decision of some kind. Tracing will not give you this information or time to think. To the trained eye, you can tell that I do indeed do some tracing near the final drawing, but just of the highlights of the jacket. And then, in the end, I end up dropping them anyway. There's also a different head originally chosen which I do away with. While it seems that the painting stage doesn't take any time at all, that couldn't be further from the truth. I try and make the drawing as solid as possible so I don't have to do as much work when it comes time to paint.

Once I get each layer down, I pop them separately into Supervectorizer so I can change all those nice organic shapes into vectors. This process will simplify and smooth out the original marks some, but that's part of the process and one I often find surprisingly good. Then, it's just a matter of assigning colors. If you look at the upper right corner, you'll see the palette I made just for this image. It was taken from a self-portrait of Rembrandt I particularly liked. And you can also see that in the final image, there are two layers turned off. They're still there but this process allows me to turn layers on and off to see what I like best. Sometimes I do a lot of work on something that I won't even use. That's ok as long as I get where I want to in the end.

 Finally had time to work on and finish this. "Dan Explains" is a portrait of a friend I got together with while in Chicago. We hadn't seen each other in over 25 years so had a lot to talk about. A good deal of that discussion was about gaming, something for which we both have a good deal of passion. I wanted to express some of the energy and passion he showed that night so used three photos to do it; one for the body, one for the hand and one for the face. As can be seen in earlier posts, his expression was one I changed radically as I did this. His response, "My hands are HUGE!" and "...I think it makes me look a little terrified." Ah well, can't win them all. I like it. I think it works. Was very happy to find that AD can make palettes based off images. As I really like Rembrandt's self-portraits, I chose one of them, adjusted the number of colors, added a couple of my own and was able to get those rich browns I love so much. I will likely play with this feature more down the road. Likely, this is the last thing I finish this year. But that's ok. It's all a construct anyway.

EDIT: As is often the case, I turned some layers off to see what I thought of less detail and...I think I like this version  better. Sometimes that's the way it goes; I have to do a lot of extra work which won't show to get where I want to. But this one feels less fussy, and more like the 'cut paper' style I was originally going for. So, there's that.

 Have to go to work soon but had time to work on this. I decided that the head pose I had was too dour and wasn't really expressing what I wanted. Luckily, I took a burst of 59 photos before Dan figured out what I was doing. So now I'm referencing three photos to make this one image; one for the head, one for the body and one for the hand.. So far, it's doing what I want it to do. The jacket looks a mess right now but that's ok as the lines and shading are only meant to be a guide for the painting to come. So far, I'm happy with it. We'll see what Dan thinks when it's done.

 Been away to Chicago this time. Traveling is over til February so it's just the holidays that will get in the way of making any kind of art. I've done damned few portraits this year, which is odd, but there you go. While in Chicago, I met up with an old friend, one I haven't seen in 25 or so years. We had a nice talk with drinks and of course I took some reference photos while we talked. Or he talked. Had some time tonight to get started on the portrait in question. This is as far as I got so far.