It took me way longer than it should have, but here it is:
I started the painting for the Black Cats t-shirt in the end of May I think, but was distracted with weddings and moving and stuff. I am pretty happy with it. I wish the expressions on our faces were happier or something. In the photos we didn’t look as serious. Oh well, now it’s on to the next project. Which may or may not be a painting. I still haven’t decided whether or not I will make X-mas cards this year.
It has been a crazy month or so. I got married, found an apartment, began moving, and took on a freelance project, all while maintaining my capoeira training and obsessive workout regimen. While it has all been very exciting, I have found that, during all this, I have had very little time to work on my current painting- The Black Cats t-shirt models. I started this in mid-May, and here is all I’ve done so far:
I am liking how its coming out, which is a good thing. When I don’t like how a painting is looking, then I don’t have fun working on it. When I am not having fun, then it is extremely difficult to stay motivated. As it is, my painting endurance is lagging these days. That means, even when I have the time, I can only sit and paint for about an hour before getting distracted and/or mentally drained. The part of my brain responsible for attention span needs exercise just like the rest of my body, and it hasn’t been getting it. Having so many things going on at once is sort of an excuse not to be focused. I secretly love having an excuse not to focus, and I find it difficult to fight this urge. I’ve been telling myself that once I am in my new apartment, I will be able to get back into this painting. It is all about momentum. Eventually, I hope I reach a point where I don’t want to wash my brushes after 3 strokes of paint have been applied. I bought a new Bob-o-pedic bed, so maybe I’ll start getting better sleep. I hear sleep is good for helping you concentrate and stuff.
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 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.
I hope everyone had fun holiday times n’ stuff. I thought now would be a good time to thank everyone for supporting Donkeyshines in 2008, and to let you know that we plan on doing our damnedest to keep you clothed in wacky shirts in 2009. We have some interesting surprises coming up, including a new design just in time for Valentine’s Day. One thing to look for this year is product photos, as well as a new style of painting for the product images. For years I’ve been using watercolor for pretty much everything, but recently I decided to switch over to acrylics. This medium offers more control, which will come in handy when painting the design details on the shirt. Here’s the current work in progress:
I wasn’t quite happy with the painting I had previously done for the Octopus Web models, so I thought that I would start with that one. What do you think so far? For the next one I do, I will post the project in various stages so you can see the new process.
