Annes' Blog

Digital Painting with Bobby Chiu

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:40:00 +0000

So here's what I've been up to lately! A couple of weeks ago I started an online digital painting course with the Imaginism School of Art. They run quite a few courses there with different artists, each specialising in different areas. People like Stephen Silver and Cheeks have got courses running there.

So anyway, I've enrolled in the digital painting class with Bobby Chiu. Although I've been working in Photoshop for over 4 years now I still don't feel totally at home with it, so I'm hoping this course will help with that. It's looking good so far! We've been given a couple of really good exercises for practicing painting techniques and I've also learnt a few new things about Photoshop too, like what blend modes actually do (no they're not just totally random like we thought)!

Below is my assignment from week one. Bobby gave us one of his character drawings and we had to paint him up in grayscale. In the image below, I've used the techniques that I learnt from week two to colour him in.

Portsmouth

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Watching the boats go by...

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:27:00 +0000

London

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:09:00 +0000

Sketching

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:02:00 +0000

Went to London sketching today with Tim and Iain. After a bit of a slow start at the British Museum we moved out onto the streets to get away from all the people (half term see), and it turned out to be a really good day. Had really good fun doing the long ones over two pages! It's good to see the Chinatown one scanned in actually, because it was a bit hard to see if it was working in my sketchbook, but digital it actually looks alright! Was good fun playing with markers for the London skyline too.

Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Yesterday I went to my old art college to teach the first year students background painting for animation. Here are some of the examples I did for them in our lesson on textures.

I did this one for myself before the lessons to remind myself how to paint! I took one of Marcelo Vignali's development sketches for Lilo and Stich and just painted a small colour key of it.

I've gotten so much out of preparing and teaching these sessions, it's been really great. I'm really looking forward trying to take across some of the things I learnt, (and re-learnt!) into my digital painting. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy real painting! I can't wait to do some more!

Mini crawl

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:08:00 +0000

Did my own mini sketch crawl today round Guildford this afternoon :-) It was a bit chilly!

SketchCrawl

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:44:00 +0000

Iain and I joined the SketchCrawl this weekend. We went round a couple of museums, it being too cold to draw outside. It was really good. It's been a long time since I've sketched! I was trying to copy some sketching styles I'd seen from other peoples blog, but it didn't really work, this is pretty much just how I sketch! It's going to take some practice. Good to have made a start though.

Update

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:15:00 +0000

This is the matte painting so far. I've blocked in all the main elements and roughly colour matched stuff. Now I need to work into more detail and correct the areas where colour and lighting aren't working and try to get the scene working as a whole as well as all the individual elements. At this stage I think it could look a lot worse! So, I'm pretty happy with how it's progressing so far.

Matte Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:27:00 +0000

I've been meaning to do this for a while but I'm finally getting round to it; I'm going to do a matte painting! I'm going to keep it pretty simple to start with. I'm going to take one of my photos from Japan and comp it into a simple scene and make it snowy! Below is the colour key I've done to work out the basic composition and lighting of the scene, and beneath that is the photo I'm taking as my starting point. I'll post my progress.

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:43:00 +0000

More pastels...

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:07:00 +0000

This week we did a portrait.

Life drawing

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:08:00 +0000

Just started a life drawing course a couple of weeks ago. Here's last evening's effort. I've not used pastles for life drawing before. I really enjoyed it. A lot of it ended up over worked but I learnt a lot doing it. Hopefully I'll get anoter chance to use them in the course.

Hello!

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:17:00 +0000

Went drawing at the weekend with my funky friend Alex. Here's what we did!

A colour doodle...

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:56:00 +0000

Weekend Pastel

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:38:00 +0000

Life drawing

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:13:00 +0000

So here's my work from the life drawing course. It's not all of it, I did an oil painting on the last day but I had to leave it there to dry, so that will follow. I'm quite critical looking back at some of these, but at the same time not too worried. The main thing for me was the learning I went through throughout the week. It's done my confidence in drawing the world of good :-)

Swansea

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:54:00 +0000

Quite an arty couple of weeks! Last week I went to Swansea with the intention to do lots of plien air painting but thanks to the great British summer we're having it was cut a bit shot. I still managed to get 2 good days of painting though. The week previous to that I spent at Lavender Hill studios doing a life drawing/painting course, which was excellent. I haven't got digital images of the life drawing yet so for now I've just go the landscape stuff.

I tried a few times to use pastel. I'm still having a few issues with them but this was probably the most successful of them.

This is an old one of Guildford I thought I'd just tag on the end. I got in a fed up with it when I was doing it but now I look back at it there's something I quite like about it.

Weekend pastel

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:05:00 +0000

Here's a pastel I did in the park this weekend. I was struggling to differentiate the distant hills from the trees in the foreground. I think I need to buy myself a few more muted colour pastels to help with this. I really enjoyed doing it though!

Lavener Hill Studios

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:11:00 +0000

For the last few weeks, I've been attending an evening class at the studio where Tim is currently studying. The studio is a great place and really nice place to go and spend an evening. It feels very welcoming and they're very supportive of your development (not like the last evening class I went to where after having been attending for 4 or 5 weeks the tutor asked if I was new to the class)! I'm really enjoying it and I also think it's doing my drawing a lot of good. The main focus is on accuracy of proportion, something which I'd noticed I was getting very lasy with.

Below is the result of my 4th lesson, where I sat in on a portrait session. I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure that I've quite got the likeness but nevertheless it's a fairly solid looking head so in that respect I'm quite pleased!

More Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:50:00 +0000

A quick painting I did at the weekend. I think it works ok in thubnail size, but when you look at it closer the tones and hues are a bit samey. I over cooked it a bit at the end too, I couldn't leave it alone! I should have left it half an hour before I did. Good learning though.

Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:53:00 +0000

Guildford

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:39:00 +0000

Some colour stuff I did at the weekend. I tried using watercolour from tubes mixed with white gouache, as this is the combination Nathan Fowkes uses, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. It worked pretty well, especially for working outside. I found the combination a bit more forgiving than using just gouache, which I've never really gotten the hang of! And it obviously doesn't dry out like acrylic.

Morning..

Afternoon...

Self Portrait Continued...

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:41:00 +0000

This evening's sitting

Self Portrait

noreply@blogger.com (Annes Stevens) — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:20:00 +0000

No posts for a while due to the fact I've been lazy, but hey here we are a new burst of life. I thought I'd try a portrait in oils just for fun. I've never really painted in oils much so it's a bit of an experiment. I might keep it quite monochrome so as not to bite off too much in my first attempt. I'll see how it goes. Here are the first two stages.