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.