Straberry Shortcake is all finished

I've just finished my picture for the Gag me with a Toon show coming up this weekend. I hope to see you there!

Strawberry Shortcake progress

I've still got some more time with this picture thankfully, but it's taking me more time than I thought that it would! On one hand I feel like I'm learning from previous paintings how to not waste time painting in things that I'll have to cover, but I've still done that in some places. I feel like I'm mostly happy with my value relationships, aside from some pushing and pulling on the rocks. I'm going to put some more orange mountains with purple shadowing behind her, and some purpled mountains further in the distance, and then some blue sky with yellow clouds with purple shadows at the top. ...That's the plan anyway. I find that this stuff changes as I go along.

I wanted to make an observation here as well. I've been mixing my shadows by adding complimentary colors to my body tone, and while that works, I was having a terrible time getting predictable results, and predictable warm or cool shadows. Also, I was struggling to make my shadows work together on different color surfaces. ...So started mixing black with my body color, along with purple, which is my overall shadow color. Boom. Predictable results, AND shadows that work together as a whole! I still have a lot of figuring to do before I can get any good with color, but I'm enjoying the process.

Gag me with a Toon is getting closer, and Steven Dailey has updated the show information here.

http://stevendaily.com/?p=84

I'm really looking forward to meeting some of you there! I think it'll be so unlike a convention experience, and it'll be nice to be able to hang out and party a bit with you.

First Post

Welcome to my blog!

I've been doing color work lately, and it's been something I've been persuing for a long, long time. Just lately I've been feeling like I'm getting a sense of what I want to do with my painting, and I wanted to have a place to share my thoughts as I work. I'm going to post progress on new pieces, and info on my process, along with my thoughts on artists that I like and why I like them.

I'm going to start with a Hellboy picture that I've just finished, and I've got some others that I can't show yet, but should be able to soon.