The Monkey and Bulldog shirt is pretty new, and you can get it for the happy price of $16.99 during the week of 4/12- 4/18.
Everybody loves monkeys and everybody loves dogs. This here is a win-win situation.
Next Week I will be releasing an even newer design that’s newer even than the Monkey and Bulldog, which is pretty new. Stay tuned for that! What will this new design be? I’ll give you a hint: there are two animals, one big and one small, both have sharp teeth and are awesome.
So the painting is “done”.
“Done” is in quotes because even after I photographed this, I saw something that needed fixing. I made a smoother value transition in the upper left corner of Jon’s shirt. The tricky thing about acrylics is that they look lighter when they are wet, so what looks like a smooth transition now might actually not be. So I will have to wait until later to see if I’ve actually solved the problem. I have to wait until later to actually put it on my scanner, since the paint is still sticky. Ultimately, photos of the painting just aren’t clear enough to use for my product page, so I’ll have to scan it. I think even if that value transition isn’t quite right, I will stop working on this. I’m never going to be completely satisfied with it, but eventually you have to just accept it as it is and move on. See Finished Painting.
I’m getting close now. Hopefully I can have this finished by next weekend.
I’m starting to get used to these paints now. The slow-drying does make the whole painting process take a bit longer. I have to wait for certain areas to dry even to work on other areas because I can’t rest my hand in the wet areas.
I’ve finished Loretta, and just barely started Jon:
I’ve changed my mind about putting this unfinished painting up as the product image. Maybe in a few days. I guess I’m only half done somehow…
I am now 90% done with Loretta:
Really, all I have left is the hair. I wish I had more time to work on it. I’m thinking I will start using this as the image on the Monkey and Bulldog product page once Loretta is done, even though Jon will still be a pencil sketch.
I’m starting into the shirt now:
This is probably going to take a while…
Not much to say except that I got a little more done today:
Now that I am getting the hang of these Golden Open paints, I’m beginning to appreciate their benefits. For one thing, the paints in my palette don’t dry up, so I am not wasting paint. That’s a real plus, as these paints aren’t cheap. It also saves valuable seconds when I sit down to paint because I don’t have to set up the palette each time.
I have now started painting:
Getting this far took me much longer than I expected. I am using these new paints called Golden Open Acrylics, and it is taking some time to get used to them. The advantage is that they dry very slowly, so it’s easier to blend colors and make smooth gradients. What’s difficult for me, though, is that because it dries so slowly, you can’t put colors on top of each other without mixing them. I have to be careful not to make a big muddy mess. I’m starting to get the hang of it, so hopefully, it will go a little faster now.
I haven’t had a lot of time to work on this, so it may not even look much different than it did after the first day. I am done with the pencil sketch, at least:
I’m finding pros and cons to drawing on the gesso board as opposed to plain illustration board. On one hand, the graphite stays completely on the surface, so it can be completely erased, if necessary. That is helpful. On the other hand, the hard surface wears away at the pencil pretty quickly, and it’s difficult to have complete control of tiny lines without a good point. And since I have to keep sharpening it, I am burning through this pencil pretty quickly. I am also expecting it to smudge a lot if I have to lean on any parts of the drawing. When I start the painting, I’ll see if the gesso is helpful. I’m guessing it might be beneficial not to lose that first layer of paint. On plain illustration board, it soaks in. We’ll see.
So I didn’t get as far as I had hoped this weekend, but I would say the pencil sketch is about 75% done:
Now that I am working in acrylics, I am using a larger painting surface. That means I can’t fit the whole board on my scanner bed at one time. That means I have to scan it in sections and pains-takingly put the sections together in Photoshop. This is kind of time-consuming, therefore I will wait until I am all done with the painting to actually scan it. For these pictures of the work in progress, I am taking digital photos, which means there will be less clarity and detail than if I was using the scanner. I hope you can still see what’s goin’ on. One thing to note, if you look at the photos in yesterday’s post, you’ll notice that Loretta’s face looks a bit different than it does in the above sketch. That’s because I’ve decided to use a different photo for her face. I liked the way the t-shirt looked better in the one below, but I liked her expression better in the other photo, so I decided to combine the two.
