Classical painting

I went to the Tate Britain the other day, which is my favourite gallery in London. All of the paintings there are absolutely amazing, but I came across one that I've never really noticed before.



Francis Danby, (1793-1861) 'The wood nymph's hymn to the rising sun'

This is so beautiful! I never thought I'd like such a dark painting but all of the elements work together so beautifully. It must be the soft glow of the rising sun; the warmth of its colour and the power it has over all of the other elements of the painting. A snap-shot of a precious moment at dawn. Definately a fave <3

Grayscale painting

I took last week's Chow as an excuse to try a new method of painting; to paint the whole thing in grayscale, and then add the colour on top with a 'colour' blend layer.

I found this method reaaallly challenging! :( I'd figured that it would be important to get the blacks and whites right, so that the colours would come out well, but it's sooo easier said than done. All the colours came out reaaally wierd and I felt like I had absolutely no control over what I was trying to do.

Maybe the grays I was painting over were completely wrong or maybe I just need to get the hang of this method a little more. Either way, I will try this method again, and I can only get better at it right?



Last week's chow was Marie Antoinette. CAKE!

Environment of the week

I've been really getting into www.conceptart.org lately and all of their community acvities, particularly Environment of the Week and Character of the week. I've actually got off my arse and competed in them!

I'm hoping that being involved with something like this, and competing as often as I can will develop and sharpen my skills. It's nice because everybody helps each other out and shares advice and the whole experience is really encouraging. S'all good!






I think one of the reasons why it's so good is because the theme of the week is always completely random which makes excellent practice for a concept artist. Above is my entry for EOW's 'Into the woods' theme, which was extremely challenging because I've never painted a woods before! Tres tricky :'(





Also here was my entry for CHOW's 'Gaia' which I went off-breif a little with ^_^' but I still kinda like it!