So I've been a bit of a bad person and slacking off. I just haven't really felt like doing art the past few days; I've been poorly and feeling very very sorry for myself.

I've finally recovered a little bit today, I don't have a voice but I don't need that to paint!

I managed to do another Narnia illustration. Something quite simple but I really liked the scene in the book:

“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you whole you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so you could reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
----
Somewhere ahead he could hear birds singing. He knew the night was over at last. He could see the mane and ears and head of his horse quite easily now. A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun.
He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. The horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it. It was from the lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful.

Although I ended up sticking with something pretty similar to the first idea I still found it valuable to look at different options.

Okay so day 4 wasn't 100% true to the challenge.. I did a couple of sketches of master paintings and then called it a day on that front; I was lacking focus and didn't really know what I needed to focus on next.

I did finish my Dinosaur painting though! I'm kinda pleased with it although obviously I can see things wrong with it after I finished it. I feel like I keep sacrificing paintings in order to learn; I need to produce something not very good in order to improve. Improvement is good but mediocre paintings ain't no fun.

2013 (left) and 2015 comparisons

 Although the best thing about re-doing old paintings is that even if you think you could have done better on the most recent at least you know you've still done better than the other one. Mini ego boost!

In terms of 'studying' today I've looked at experimenting with my style.


I keep flitting between wanting to be super realistic and wanting to have a prominent style. It's just one of those things that I'm only gonna find if I keep experimenting and painting!

 I repainted another one of my old pieces! Well, hardly repainted.. more like painted over and adjusted! I've really been enjoying re-doing my old work, its such a confidence/motivation boost to have visual proof of how much you've improved. It's also keeping me painting while I'm running a little dry on ideas.


Here's the comparison. I think one of the most important things I've been doing to my work is spending more time on it! I always had this idea in my head that if I couldn't paint fast then I'd be no use in industry, but now my focus has changed a little I'm more comfortable with spending more time on my work and its clearly paying off.

I'm also much better at hands! Such a relief.


I've promised myself to do a new original illustration next. Not quite sure what its going to be but I'm excited anyway!

First up my game of thrones illustration. I've recently tweaked the brightness and stuff on this one because some people were having trouble viewing it- considering this I might take it down once I get a better one to replace it. Maybe another with an interior theme?


Next is my only relatively successful environment/landscapes to date (watch me hate it in a month or two). This is another book illustration from the Narnia books.



Then comes my two Jadis pieces. I think at least one of these have to be temporary because they're so similar. I have another character piece in mind so that may replace one.

I think this is the first time that I've been relatively confident (and that's putting it loosely) with my work enough to put it into a portfolio and hopefully show off, so its kinda exciting... but kinda terrifying.

Let me know what you think!

Pycelle’s chambers were beneath the rookery, a spacious suite of rooms cluttered with racks of herbs and salves and potions and shelves jammed full of books and scrolls. Ser Kevan had always found them uncomfortably hot. Not tonight. Once past the chamber door, the chill was palpable. Black ash and dying embers were all that remained of the hearthfire. A few flickering candles cast pools of dim light here and there.

The rest was shrouded in shadow… except beneath the open window, where a spray of ice crystals glittered in the moonlight, swirling in the wind. On the window seat a raven loitered, pale, huge, its feathers ruffled. It was the largest raven that Kevan Lannister had ever seen. Larger than any hunting hawk at Casterly Rock, larger than the largest owl. Blowing snow danced around it, and the moon painted it silver.

Not silver. White. The bird is white.

The white ravens of the Citadel did not carry messages, as their dark cousins did. When they went forth from Oldtown, it was for one purpose only: to herald a change of seasons.

“Winter” said Ser Kevan. The word made a white mist in the air. He turned away from the window.

I finally finished it! Feels like I've been working on it for ages. I think its the longest time I've spent on a digital painting. There are definitely things I could improve if I did it again.. although I think I would have to do it all over again in order to do that. Maybe I will one day!

Until then its a step in the right direction :)

I think part of my lack of success so far is my apparent inability to follow things through in my little art world. I'm fully aware of this and unfortunately my parents- who bear the brunt of my 'wa waa I'll never be good enough' outbursts - are also aware. (Above: Mads Mikkelsen portrait)

I'm always presented with options from them eg. 'paint this, submit it here, speak to so and so, call these people'.... except I really lack the confidence in myself but also my work. So how am I going to gain that confidence? Get better duh!

So off I go planning projects for myself and something always comes up to make it fall through, either I lose interest or its too difficult/not going the way I want it.

BUT THIS TIME! I'd mentioned in my previous post about working towards a stronger illustration route. While I'm not ruling out concept art I want to try my hand at other options. With this in mind I decided it was time to create a portfolio and do stuff with it. I've never had a firm portfolio (besides the compilation of old schoolwork that I used to get into university) and that's mostly down to the lack of confidence in my work.

So, to the point of this post, I'm currently working on a game of thrones illustration! I'm hoping book readers will recognise this part and will also like my interpretation!

"Pycelle’s chambers were beneath the rookery, a spacious suite of rooms cluttered with racks of herbs and salves and potions and shelves jammed full of books and scrolls. Ser Kevan had always found them uncomfortably hot. Not tonight. Once past the chamber door, the chill was palpable. Black ash and dying embers were all that remained of the hearthfire. A few flickering candles cast pools of dim light here and there.

The rest was shrouded in shadow… except beneath the open window, where a spray of ice crystals glittered in the moonlight, swirling in the wind. On the window seat a raven loitered, pale, huge, its feathers ruffled. It was the largest raven that Kevan Lannister had ever seen. Larger than any hunting hawk at Casterly Rock, larger than the largest owl. Blowing snow danced around it, and the moon painted it silver.

Not silver. White. The bird is white.

The white ravens of the Citadel did not carry messages, as their dark cousins did. When they went forth from Oldtown, it was for one purpose only: to herald a change of seasons.

“Winter” said Ser Kevan. The word made a white mist in the air. He turned away from the window."

No spoilers there ;)


And here's what I have so far! (ignore the black banner on the top that'll be gone).

I did a few thumbnails for this looking at different angles and stuff but I kept them generally pretty straightforwards with my main focus being on the window and the white raven.

I'm really pleased with how it's going so far, I'm kinda fixing and working some things out as I go but overall- pretty chuffed. I think this is the first 'interior' piece I've ever painted and I'm learning a lot as I go, so I'm excited to see how it turns out!


Also not straying entirely from the classic Hazel pieces, I painted this Elizabeth I Mucha-esque painting after watching Elizabeth: The Golden age. Good fun!

So I had a change of heart.. about a few things! Firstly the mermaid project, I kinda got frustrated with it and had to do a lot more research than I originally planned -which was fine but I wasn't looking for that in a project right now ;)


Long story short, I'm looking a lot more seriously into freelance illustration. Concept art was something I wanted to do mostly because you could get a solid job from it, although the reality is that may not be quite true. (This is completely open by the way, feel free to comment your thoughts and experiences!)


So with that in mind, I'm hoping to build a bit more of an illustration portfolio for now since that's where my head is at and it gives me good focus on where to improve.

You may recognise this fairly recent piece I concepted and illustrated:

And I was super proud of it! For like a week....

I thought my basics were fine, the picture itself wasn't that bad (in my opinion) it just lacked something. So I started messing around with different lighting and it made quite a dramatic difference very quickly.


So here you are! The new white witch illustration!

In the next couple of weeks I hope to do a lot more/a lot different illustrations with lots of improvement so lets see what happens!

So after attempting to re-do this several times I finally did it! I'm generally really pleased with how this turned out (don't know how long that'll last though...) The entire process was actually really straightforwards and I don't think I hated it once, so I thought I'd do a breakdown of how I did it here!

After doing my Sargent studies I had decided that I wanted to paint Jadis as if I were painting her portrait in real life. I thought this would be an interesting way of capturing her personality as well as her design. I started off with some really quick sketches exploring different poses; I knew I wanted her to look powerful but still sassy as hell.

I was struggling for ideas so I turned to existing Royal portraits. I quickly noticed that the women looked reserved while the men looked a little ostentatious; "Look at me look how powerful I am!!!". While the Queens of old didn't need to do this, I felt like Jadis would act like a King, and would want to look like that in her portrait so I changed up some of my poses for her.

With the help of my trusty camera and my inner sass I took some photos of different poses which helped me visualise them a lot easier (plus I really enjoyed it but don't tell). I felt having Jadis holding some kind of weapon really helped give her a strong pose.

With the pose decided it was onto the final! I've come to realise the more I paint that I really benefit from giving myself some good lines to work from. I know some artists work better blocking in the shapes but I always find myself getting lost and frustrated without lines. This way I work out all the problems before I tackle painting.

I whack in the flat colours to give myself a good base and then go straight to the face to avoid intimidating myself (sounds silly I know, but if I try and do a bit all over I kinda get overwhelmed and give up) I noticed a lot of the royal portraits had some kind of deep red drapery or something relatively interesting in the background so I added some into the top corner.


Using my reference as I paint I usually flip my canvas quite often to check for errors.


I then work my way down the painting to block in good details and then jump around adding more where needed. I have a lot of references available, some I use more than others.


And finished! (approx 2 days on and off painting) I used a photo of a sword hilt because I was struggling with design as well as rendering to the standard I wanted as well as a texture pattern for the dress to make it look more interesting! I do feel like the Sargent studies I did helped this painting which is always a good sign!

Now that I've done the two Jadis versions to a level I'm happy with I hope to tackle more Narnia creatures and characters! What would you like to see me re-design?

 

I've been working on getting a good 9-5 routine now that I'm working at home. My mornings are usually dedicated to studies and freelance(?) art- I don't really feel that I can call it freelance cause I'm not earning any money from it yet...

But my afternoons are being dedicated to what I'm naming 'portfolio work'. Which means I'm finally trying to take doing a portfolio seriously! I think the reason I haven't put together a good portfolio yet is because I still haven't got to the stage where I feel like I'm good enough to 'show off' my work. As well as this a large body of my work that I upload is literally studies and copies of photographs, and there's no point putting those in a portfolio!

To save the pressure of starting something new and from scratch I decided to repaint my final Queen Jadis concept, since I've always really liked the design but the more I look at it the more I hate the execution.

Queen Jadis original concept

Preview of my new concept illustration.

 I decided to work the pose a lot more to give her more of a powerful presence (as she is actually a force to be reckoned with, especially when she's in her home world of Charn. I'm also working into the details way more than I usually do, partly because its 'portfolio work' and partly because I think I need to spend more time and effort on my paintings because its clearly paying off!

I also gave her a bit of a change of colour in her dress, the royal blue and red just looked to typical and boring!

What do you think? Do you prefer the first version or is repainting it a good call? Are there any other paintings of mine you'd like me to repaint? Let me know in the comments!