The Moth Sketchbook
For your amusement I present the unabridged contents of my latest sketchbook.
For your amusement I present the unabridged contents of my latest sketchbook.
After hitting my head against the wall with gouache I jumped back to ArtRage 4 and my trusty digital oil paints. I wanted to play around with depth this time so I painted in layers that I could later be rip apart in Maya. The hope was to build a stereoscopic painting. I’ve done this before but this time I was searching for an easier way to edit the layers after they have been assembled in Maya. Couldn’t really figure that part out. I wanted to pull everything over to Zbrush but it doesn’t do transparency. And without transparency the illusion doesn’t work. I’m still looking for a good stereoscopic painting app.
This is what the painting looks like in maya.
And here is one of those 3D gif things to give you an idea of the effect.
This was my final attempt at taming a set of unruly gouache colors. It’s not often that I yell at my paints but they deserved it this time. Disappointing results. The whole thing became a big grey mess.
Second attempt with my cheep gouache set. Still couldn’t get it to hold saturation or the darks.
A watercolor and gouache painting I made a few weeks back. I hadn’t used gouache in years but I found a cheap set of colors at an art store here in Hong Kong and thought I would give it a go. I forgot how the colors fade when they dry. Maybe it’s because of the low-grade paint but it was a real shock to watch the saturation and contrast evaporate away like they did.
Having been without my Wacom Cintiq for solid two months I am relieved to be reunited with it once again. After juggling the kids all day I managed to sit down for an hour or two and get some drawing done.
I downloaded the new ArtRage 4 update yesterday so I was playing around with that as well. It has some nice new features. The highlights for me are the new Wacom integration and a workbench mode which is much more elegant than the standard layout. ArtRage 4 is a welcomed update and I would certainly recommend it but on a personal note there are still some tools I would like to see added. I’ll have to head over to the forum and put in a request for a digital rag and a pallet knife that can scrape paint off, not just spread it around.
I have been busy making a lot of iNaturalist observations. Lately I am into moths. This is a Banyan tussock moth, Perina nuda. I found it outside my apartment here in Hong Kong.
I’ve been digging thru old file folders and found this nice little ink drawing from my high school days. Circa 1996.
Got a chance to get out the other night and do a little figure drawing. Admittedly its been a while and I felt rather rusty but I had a good time and look forward to next Monday when I have a chance to go again. Here are the drawings.
It has been raining on and off for the last two weeks. I have been here in San Francisco for over a month now but have yet to find the time to go exploring. Painted this quick sketch late one night while waiting for my espresso to wear off.