Paintblog – Apples

So, nothing much is coming to me on the “delegates” painting.  But I felt like doing something anyway, so I took some of the red and some of the raw umber and made this:

That was just a couple of minutes of work, but I liked it anyway.  So I added more.

Eh, that one’s not so good, but it’ll work eventually.  How about a couple more?

I added the fourth one in the back because otherwise it looked a little too planned or symbolic of something–yellow, red, green, why it’s one of each!

After that, adding highlights:

One thing bugged me–apple number four.  I was never able to get it to look “right.”  Besides, look at this thing.

That’s not an apple.  That’s Satan.

So, I removed it.  As of now, the painting looks like this:

It’s not much, but I like it anyway.  It has potential.

That’s it for now, thanks for dropping by!

Paintblog – March – “Delegates”

When last we looked at this canvas, it looked like this–

Well, much work has been done since.  Of course, when I say “much work” I of course mean mostly detailing what’s already there.  The main blocks are in place; this canvas is heading into the home stretch, there aren’t going to be major surprises.

As always, I have endeavored to provide photographic evidence of the progress at each step of each stage.  However, since there really isn’t any thing major at work, and some of the photos detail fairly trivial progress, I’m not sure how extensive this entry should be.  Plus, for some reason, the photos that I took along the way were lousy–grainy, with the colors off, not really terribly good.  So I’m hesitant to have too many.

Of course, I will ultimately create a time-lapse video of every stage of this work, from blank canvas to finished product.  And, spoiler alert, what we have now is not a finished product.  There’s still something left to do.  I’m not sure what, but read on….

And if you don’t like this post, here’s my promise–you can ask for a full refund, and it will be cheerfully given!

Above, you can see the Large Fellow now has a lot of eyes in his faceplate thing, there are straps holding his shell on, and the robot no longer has a faceplate.  Also, the Large Fellow has a couple of ribbons, or medals, or something, on his right-side shell.

Below, even more medals (and their attendant shadows).

Next, highlights on the eyes, and the beginnings of some background structures.

As mentioned last time, I didn’t really like the idea of these guys all appearing in a cave, so I thought I would take steps, as it were.

Now, we add even more background stuff.

And even more.  Plus, you’ll see the Fireplug Guy got some guts, and Large Fellow got a big red eye there on the right.  (Our right, not his)

Below, more ribbons, more highlights, and Ghost Guy got some rounding.

Below, the background on the right side looks pretty perfect to me.  And you’ll note we started working on the Human.

More work on the human, so that he actually has a sorta Captain Kirk-ish look:

Finally, we have the work as it stands today.  I fixed Kirk’s hand, gave his face a bit more detail, and added some upper ear-vents to Fireplug Guy.

I’m not sure what else to do at the moment, though there is a problem that stares me in the face, and that problem is The Red Problem.  There’s an awful lot of red in this picture (not really surprising, considering its origin).

(Of course, if you’re looking at the lousy pictures above, you probably know the problem as the Purple Problem.  This seems to vary with different monitors/graphics cards–on my laptop, everything looks purplish, on my home PC, it looks fine.  Your mileage may vary.)

I’m thinking the guy with the headdress needs something to offset all the red, but I’m not exactly sure what.  Should he be a totally different color, like green?  Or perhaps a different variant of red (like Alizarin Crimson) so I can keep the detailing I’ve already got?  I honestly don’t know, and nothing is striking me.

Oh well, it will come, it generally does.  Incidentally, while looking at this thing I realized these figures could be chess pieces.  There’s an obvious King, Queen, Knight, and the Fireplug Guy could be the Rook.  Obviously, the human is the Pawn, which, uh, leaves Ghost Guy as the Bishop?  I didn’t say it was a good realization.

Anyway, that’s where we stand as of now.  Thanks as always for stopping by!