Shower

 

 

 

After the last piece I decided I wanted to give another go at flat colors. Turns out--they're great. This slaps and I feel so POWERFUL!!! AHHHHH!!!

This is heavily inspired by the work of @rhabarberei, specifically a Tifa/Aerith image set she did. For my money, Maren is the best wlw artist on Twitter, and the way she uses flat colors is gorgeous. Go check out her work! Again, it's a really incredible style, but I think I should do painting studies with it before I try another full image this way.

This took about 11 hours total because I was constantly figuring things out and trying new things. I really wore myself out with this one because I did the whole thing in a single day--I worked from about 8 to 4 last night, and then finished it from like noon to 3 today. I need to figure out a way to not get carried away painting because that's a really fucked up work schedule and I'm concerned for my eyes, my wrist, and my sleep.

Dancer

 This was the first piece where I actually felt like the painting was coming together. Originally I wanted it to just be flats. Oh well, I'm a fool. Important things I did here:

• Really push the line color in certain areas. The lines around her hip start to even blend in to the skin, and many inks around the background light are actually just really saturated, light colors. Worked out well--much better if I left them all black.
• Really incorporate bounce light. On the edges of her body and leotard it's super saturated. It looks good and really puts her in the scene (though there's not much of a scene to begin with)
• Break down light and shadow into shapes. This one's really hard, as you have to imagine how light works, and I only really succeeded with her skin. But, for example, look at her hand...light from below is coming up to define the form. Same with the face, hips, and tail (kind of).
• Think about color not as an inherent aspect of an object but instead a way that light interacts with it. This is kind of tricky to think about, but in this piece, everything is basically a different shade of purple. The leotard isn't white, it's a purply-bluish-grey (IIRC) but it reads as white. The skin is basically pink, and the latex is a dark purple. But because of the light, all these things look more natural than if they were white, beige, and black, respectively.
• Use reference, especially for the latex. Man materials are hard.

 As always, my anatomy needs to be better. For my next painting, I want to focus on improving light and shadow shapes as well as using a smaller inking brush. I think my inks are nearly always too big and dominant for the style I'm trying to achieve.

Again, I'm really happy with this, and I think it's a culmination of all the painting practice I've done. It was always frustrating for me to hear this, but practice and study are really the only things that matter. Trust me, do like, fucking still lifes, set them up next to your desk and paint from observation. Do exercises where you break things up into just lights and darks and then practice blending them. Look at artists you like and see if you can replicate their painting style, then reflect on why you weren't able to. As always, ctrl-paint is an excellent resource. Going on picarto to watch streams of artists you like has been very valuable for me as well.