Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Family Portrait

This is an oil painting I did of my sister's family. In general I'm pretty happy with it because I've never done a painting of this complexity. I think the likenesses are pretty good, which was my biggest concern. However, as my teacher pointed out, the main issues are with the colors. Everything feels a bit too plastic and cut-out, and the flesh tones are too gray. Also the yellow bench, the blue jeans, and the red wall are actually the three primary colors (or 'Triad' scheme, thank you Adam), which looks kind of strange. I'm going to be modifying this, but I just wanted to post it the way I submitted it.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

More Pen & Watercolor

Here are two more, also watercolor over pen. The left one is based on a photo of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. The right one was done on location at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. I'm finding it hard to photograph these watercolors because they are kind of light.

Pen & Watercolor

This one turned out really well. It's based on a photo I have of the Mission in Carmel. It's a technique where we do the initial drawing in pen, then add color on top of it using watercolor. Some artists use this to do travel sketches, one of my favorites being Delacroix's sketches in Algiers. This kind of looks like those, so I was really happy. However, this might have been a fluke, because nothing I've done since has looked as good. :)