Little House on the Fjord

Today I found a picture from my trip to Norway some years ago and thought it might make a nice painting. It’s of a fjord not far from my Grandma’s house. In the corner there’s a glacier atop the mountain.

Here are the process pictures:

I’m still trying to get a handle on the medium of gouache. It’s interesting to work with it after painting with oils, which never seem to dry fast enough. With gouache, the paints start drying as soon as I put them on the palette! But I’m learning.

I also tried a technique called “limited pallet” where you only use a few colors for the whole painting. I heard it’s supposed to challenge you to mix more colors instead of using them right from the tube, and leads to a more cohesive painting. Overall I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out and I think in the future I’ll try an ultra-limited palette just to see what will happen!

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Winter House – a painting to start off the year

Today I decided to try painting with gouache again. This year (and every year) one of my goals is to paint more and improve.

I’ve never painted a winter scene before, but a big snowstorm came a couple days ago and blanketed everything in white. So I did a little painting of a house on my street. Hopefully I’ll get to paint more soon!

Inktober 2016 Week 1

Inktober, the notorious month-long drawing challenge, has begun! I made it through the first week with little problem, but have fallen far behind this week. I’ll catch up (I hope). Anyway, here are the seven drawings I made last week. The theme is witches.

Day 1: Spring Witch

Day 2: Modern Witch

Day 3: Vagabond/Merchant Witch

Day 4: Garden Witch

Day 5: Socialite Witch

Day 6: Oracle

Day 7: Seamstress Witch

From My Sketchbook #1

So, in addition to writing lately I’ve also been drawing. I’m constantly trying to improve my art and develop a unique drawing style, and the only way I know how is to practice. It’s not easy finding time to draw, but I make an conscious effort to sketch at least every few days.

Here are some random drawings from my sketchbook:

a character of mine that has magical powers

Michael the astronaut on a pink planet

random sketch

fanart of Max Caulfield from the game Life is Strange

That’s all for now. I hope you all have a great week!

Father’s Day Painting

For Father’s Day this year I painted my father and grandpa a mountain scene. I’m starting to realize that the only gift I really give my parents/other relatives is art. XD I don’t know what to say other than that it is convenient.

Here are my process pictures:

I started with an underpainting like usual.

My materials

Then I painted over the underpainting and realized that it may have been too thick because all of the paint was blending. There was no way I could get the whites white enough without mixing it with the other layers, so I had to wait for it to dry first.

After about a week, I started working on it again, starting with the clouds. Then I moved on to the mountains and trees. Sorry about the weird lighting in these pictures.

And here is the finished product!

This was so far the biggest painting I have ever done, at 24 x 36”. It definitely took longer than any other.

It was also the first time I’ve let a painting dry before finishing it. Usually I would paint wet-on-wet, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

I’m excited to try some plein air painting for the first time this weekend! Wish me luck. 😀

A Beautiful Day

Yesterday was simply gorgeous. My family and I went out in the boat and I took the opportunity to sketch some of the landscape (and my brother’s portrait) as we drifted around.

The weather was perfect. Not too hot, with a refreshing breeze blowing across the bay. We could see fish underneath the boat, but nobody could catch one.

 

Later we brought my grandfather to the beach with a bunch of chairs. There we sat, enjoying the sun and drinking pepsi. He told some stories. I sketched some more:

Some days are like little gems among the rest, and I’m learning to cherish them.

Stuff to Do Instead of Writing

Sometimes a break from writing can be helpful. Sometimes not so much.

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

Digital Painting: Underwater Exploration

This week I made a digital painting using my computer and bamboo tablet. I’ve been looking to improve lately with that medium so I thought that making some more space-art would be a fun way to do so. This time, however, the crew (Michael and GG) aren’t in space, they’re underwater!

To be more specific, they’re on a planet covered in deep oceans. Michael is scanning a species of seaweed while GG whirls around in the water.

Below are my process pictures and the steps I took to paint the scene. I used the art program Paint Tool Sai.

Step 1: Rough Sketch

First I made a really rough sketch of the general idea and shapes of the drawing.

Step 2: Linework

After the sketch I created a new layer to draw the lines. I also made the sketch transparent to make it easier to draw on top of.

Here’s the finished linework.

Step 3: Background

 

After linework I created the background using a couple of different brush textures. I imagined the environment to be a deep, expansive ocean, and a little mysterious.

Step 4: Coloring the Foreground

 

I wanted to experiment with the textures a little bit so I chose a brush that looked kind of like pastel or crayon.

 

This is what it looked like after most of the coloring. This was the most time-consuming part of the whole process XD.

I tried very hard to fit the colors to the background/environment and learned a lot, I think. For example, what is brown over a white background looks orange when over a blue background!

Why? My guess is that the way we see color is very much based on the lighting of the environment surrounding it, rather than the true color.

I just realized now that the tanks kind of look like hot dogs. Let’s move on.

Step 5: Finishing Touches

 

I made quite a few small changes to finish up the painting: I changed the color of the lineart to match the colors a bit more, colored in the bubbles, added some more rays of light, cleaned up edges, and blurred some of the plants in the background to create depth. And, of course, I put a little signature on the bottom. 🙂

Overall this was very fun to draw/paint and I hope to do more digital art in the future. Thanks for reading!

The Final Frontier

While waiting for all the snow to melt outside from the blizzard last weekend, I was keeping busy with practicing watercolors. One of my goals this year is to improve my drawing and painting, as well as to develop a unique art style, so I’ve been trying to hold fast to that goal. So far it’s been very fun.

For some reason I’ve been interested in “space” stuff lately, like galaxies, astronauts, and fantasy space-travel. I’ve always loved looking up at the night sky, feeling incredibly small, and wondering what it would be like to actually be in outer space. Becoming an astronaut in reality is not something I’m really cut out for, though, so the next best thing, I think, is creating the dream through art. 🙂

 

So I created these two characters, Michael and GG, who travel through space as explorers, landing on alien planets and discovering new galaxies.

Linework

Finished Painting

Michael A. Earnhardt is the name of the astronaut, and GG, his little robot-companion who keeps him company during the often-lonely journey through deep space. Together they have all kinds of adventures.

I think it’s the romantic nature of “exploration” in general that draws me to this particular story. I like imagining the vastness of space and the tininess of this crew, journeying across light-years in a cozy little ship. That’s what I’m trying to convey through these works, so that others can maybe experience the same feelings as I do.

I’ve been trying to experiment and improve lately in my color choices. I researched “color theory” online a bit, and I’m still not entirely sure what it means, but I’m attempting to think of color in terms of lighting- as in how a light source in affects the whole environment in the same way, changing its colors accordingly. It’s still a struggle to pick colors that go together, but I think practicing is definitely helping a bit.

I’m not really sure where this project is going at the moment. So far it’s just a few random scenes, but I’m thinking about maybe making a few comic pages or experimenting digitally with these two in the future.

New Year, New Goals

Although I’m a little late- January’s almost over- I figured I would make a list of some of the goals I hope to accomplish this year. I won’t call them “resolutions,” because something about that word makes it a little intimidating, so for now I’ll just call them “goals”.

1. Write Novel #2

This is a huge goal for me, in terms of both size and importance. I’ve been developing a new story idea slowly, for the last six months, and I’m itching to get it down on paper and into a full-blown novel. This will also be a big step in improving my writing skills and getting a little closer to my dream of one day being published.

To make it seem a little more manageable, I’ve broken it down into some smaller steps:

1. Make lots of notes
2. Create an outline and character bible
3. Start writing!
4. Keep going!

Of course, even that looks much simpler than the actual process. But the main idea for me is to just keep moving, even if it’s slowly.

One challenge is going to be balancing schoolwork, extracurriculars, and everything else with writing. I’m going to try to put aside time every day for a little bit of work and see where it goes from there.

2. Improve Art Skills

This goal is a bit vague, which makes it a little difficult to know if I’m moving towards it, so these are a few mini-goals to help me stay on track:

1. Sketch often (every day or so)
2. Experiment with new mediums and styles (watercolor, digital, etc.)
3. Develop a unique drawing style

Overall, I’m going to try to practice very often since that’s the only way I know to improve. I’d also like to produce some standalone works.

3. Blog More

Pretty self-explanatory XD

4. Learn Norwegian

This is a goal I’ve been working on for a number of months already, but I’d like to keep developing the skills. I started learning in the first place because I am half-Norwegian and visit the country every other year or so. I have a lot of family there that I’d like to be able to speak with, so the skill would come in handy. I also just think it’s fun to learn a new language anyway.

Hvis du kan snakke norsk, kanskje vi kan snakke litt sammen! 😀

If you want to learn a new language, I’d highly recommend Duolingo! It’s free and very fun and easy to use. I’m using it every day to learn Norwegian.

5. Learn Guitar

I’d like to learn how to play guitar and am planning on taking some lessons.

 

There’s a few more smaller goals and more projects will probably pop up in the future, but for now these are the major ones I’m focusing on. I’m going to try to stay sane in the meantime 🙂