Every once in a while when searching for references I find one I have to stop everything and paint. That happened here. Fantastic photo and composition and the model is gorgeous.
Bevdan Bridge was built in 1926 and is currently crumbling into Flat Creek. Some call it Crybaby Bridge. There are a number of unofficial Crybaby bridges around the country with various reasons given for the name. In fact there is a whole wiki dedicated to the life of bridges with that nickname. Bevdan Bridge is not listed there.
Tried doing some quick sketching outside lately. I didn’t like it, but still think it’s cute haha. Also had trouble photographing it; it keeps looking off in photos…
My first watercolor en plein air. Broke my book. Was incredibly windy so I couldn’t do much while holding the pages down and I didn’t think to bring a paper towel.
I tried really hard to capture the warmth, nuance, and beauty of the models skin and subtracting everything else. I think I did the best I have with hard and soft edges as well.
Messing around with Sketchbook App and stylus on my phone. I’ve got lots of weird ones llke this buring a hole in my hard drive if anyone is interested in more.
The reference model is wearing a black dress on a black background but not pure lightless black. I decided to push it and to give her skin a little sparkle to imply something supernatural. How’d I do?
I thought about something interesting. Emoji art, make art using emojis only. You’re allowed to stretch and resize, and color the emojis. cut up emojis to make new emojis and stuff.
You could find SVGs of emojis here https://icon-sets.iconify.design/noto/?keyword=noto
Trying to do something a little more stylized and less “photographic”. The model’s hair is in a bun and is also in gray scale. So a change this big is a big deal for me.
I tried multiple times to get his face right. Three hours of drawing and erasing. I couldn’t get it. Total failure. I’ll try again some other year. Hopefully before the cancer gets Bruce Campbell. But sometimes you don’t ink the drawing you want but the drawing you did.
Inspired by a talk I went to where a scientist was explaining how you can prove that animals use binocular vision for depth perception. You give them teeny tiny 3D glasses and show them images of food that you can only see if you’re using both eyes together. And yes, cuttlefish do it.
I’ve been saving this reference for when I felt confident enough to tackle it. That day is today. But I had to make my own brush (for the first time) to get the results I wanted. Thoughts?