Repainted My Paint Brush

I use this brush to start almost every landscape I paint. It's called a hake brush and it's used to lay down large areas of color. It sees a lot of water and over the years that has caused the wood in the handle to expand and contract which has split the paint and caused it to flake off. I haven't soaked it in water, stored it bristles up or left the handle wet, but occasionally the handle does get wet though normal use.

I should have done this years ago, but I finally decided to repaint the part of the handle where the damage is. Hopefully this will help. It can't hurt.

Lavia Portrait - First Digital Painting

I decided to take on digital painting. I've had Photoshop and a Wacom tablet for a few years and I've dabbled in painting, but this is the first serious effort I've made at it. Here are my results.

I started with sketch that I created using the grid method. I added basic mid range colors. You can see my initial palette laying around the edges of the sketch. 

I added the highlights and shadows to the skin. You can see them clearly in the neck area. I have already started blending them in the face around the eyes. You can still see the sketch layer here. I'll turn that off when there is enough definition between the color tones.

I've pretty much completed the blending on the face here and started on the lips. The eyes are also pretty close to done at this point with the exception of some extra shadows that will be added later.

Here is the final with all the shading and blending. I left the blending on the shirt  a little rougher. I'm pretty happy with the results. I really didn't expect this to come out so well.

Thanks to the model, Livia for the reference photo.

Snowy Pines Study

16" x 20" Acrylics on canvas board. No WIP photos this time.

Autumn Bridge

Initial Drawing

First layer of background trees.

Second layer of background trees.

Underpainting for the stone wall.

Painted the hole in the wall.

First layer of stones.

Highlight on the stones.

Some of the mid range foliage.

Grassy hills and water underpainting.

Highlights on the stream, the main tree and a few little extra
features here and there.

Flowing into Autumn (Work in Progress)

I started a new painting for fall. Here is the drawing.

The underpainting. Wow. What a mess that looks like huh?

This is my third repainting of the underpainting. I'm trying to
match the hazy grey background of my reference photo. I think
this is it!

Underpainted the background leaves.

Stared adding basic trunks and branches.

Adding color.

Underpainted the foreground and started punching up
the background color (red this session).

Blended in the foreground some and added another layer of highlights
to the leaves. I'm going to have to start on the rocks and water soon.

It's time to start the stream and the area around it 
so I figured I should do some practice streams first.

Started blocking in the rocks and the waterfalls.

Highlighted the rocks. There are about five layers of
highlights on the rocks now.

Highlighted the leaves. I'm going to sleep on it, but I may
be calling this done. Of course I'll upload a better pic.

Autumn Landscape

With fall just around the corner I've started planning an autumn landscape. I’ve been going through reference photos for inspiration, colors and composition. In the past I've done a few autumn scenes, but the trees have always been bare giving the pieces a wintry feel. My goal this time is to capture the colors with the leaves still on the trees.

Nadia Bjorlin (Work In Progress)

Of course I started by locating all of the major lines, but
this is the first picture I took of the work. Here I have already
located the major dark areas.

Most of her face is done now.

Completed her lips and refined the shading of her face.

Her face is completely done. The shading of the
background is done. I've started shading the highlighted
side of her hair and some of her chest.

Started shading her dress.

I'm done shading her dress. I added some shading to her chest.
I've also done more shading in her hair. I still have a lot
of hair left to shade.