I May Have Ruined It

"I may have ruined it."  This thought goes through my mind every time I'm working on a drawing or painting.  It's inevitable.  I just push the negative thought out of my mind and I see if I can fix it. Or live with it.  As an artist I've always been interested in experimenting with style and technique.  I do tend to stick to the very basics that I've learned over the years but I'm always looking to try and bend or break those rules to create an interesting piece.  This new piece was a bit of a challenge.  I was extremely happy with how the initial watercolor painting turned out in terms of capturing the subject as well as my brush strokes and use of color.  To me, it is proof that the new techniques and study of color theory are helping me advance as an artist.  So my first notion was to call it finished.  However, the painting felt unfinished the more I looked at it. It was nagging at me. So,  I wanted to see if I could push the painting further and create something NEW with it.  I've probably done thousands of figure drawings and paintings over the years.  I have maybe 30 or 40 plaid drawings and paintings from the last 12 years or so.   I wanted to see if mixing in some of my color field/ plaid ideas could create a new and interesting composition.  So I just said to myself, "so what if I wreck it?" I tried something new and hopefully will learn from it.  Without hesitation I drew some light lines over the painting to create a general grid and started playing with acrylic paint, brushes, a pallet knife and some tape.  So I might have ruined it. To some out there I probably did and that's just fine with me.   I'm still happy enough with the work to share it and the experience with the world.

Here it is, with the few photos I took from start to finish-

Watercolor painting from a black and white photo I found online

 

And finished...

Art Dump!

Here is all my recent work that I deem good enough to share with the world- Enjoy!  Any purchase inquiries please message my facebook page.

Matt

New Plaid Paintings

So... It's been awhile since I've been on here.  If you've been keeping up with me on my Instagram, Facebook or Tumblr accounts you're probably up to date with what I've been working on.  If not, I'm drawing and painting a bunch of color field or what I like to call "Plaid" paintings once again.  I've been playing with these ideas for over ten years and I got inspired to start building on those ideas once again recently.  Here is a break down of the process I'm tinkering with at the moment to create these images.  This is my most recent painting which I've yet to title.  It has my Spacegirl Molly character undressing for a shower (the next painting I'm working on) after a day out adventuring in space.  This series is going to mix more traditional figure studies painted realistically with the minimalist color fields creating breaks or what I like to call "windows" of focus in composition in hopes to help create an interesting experience for the viewer.

This isn't every step I took during the course of the painting but this gives you a good idea of how I got the end result.

the original drawing was a sketchbook drawing of about 4x6 in size.  I re drew her to fit the 16 x 22 paper.  Why 16 x 22?  no clue, it looked like a good size to me i guess.

The set up- water, spray bottle, a bunch of brushes, watercolor paint, paper towels, painters tape and Jim Ames Color Theory made Easy.  It's been my watercolor "bible" for a long, long time.

building color

I pretty much called the skin tones good for now.

This is 3 colors in to the design for the plaid and where I switch over to acrylic paints.  Watercolor and painters tape have not been working for me lately , the tape just cannot stop the water and the color bleed ruins the (mostly) crisp lines I'm trying to achieve with the plaid color fields. 

so this is another several steps in, the previous photos I uploaded refused to cooperate and would not save in order. 

.... Why wont it rotate... ???

I decided to flesh out and build on the color in her suit as well as play around with the shapes that the shadows are creating on her body and suit. I feel it brought in some additional areas of interest without losing the original feel of the watercolor.

Final image.  (there is still some taped areas on the borders that I did not crop out of this photo)