When do you put down the pen/pencil? (Work in progress)

What to do… what to do…

Started on a portrait but now I don’t know what the fuck to do… the reference is Colin Farrell from Crazy Heart (movie).

Either I keep on rendering until the reference pops out – so to say – or I stop now and claim to be “artistic” hahaha – that’s such bullshit – but actually I kinda like it as it is now, I’m afraid of making it stale or just to polished if I continue.

But on the other hand why not just continue for the experience if for nothing else… ugh fucking choices seriously, there are 10 things I wanna do at once atm.

 Cropped version

The bigger picture...

Also I wanna do some more body drawings and not just a face. I started on a Mickey Rourke drawing, but I’ve hit some wall with it. I don’t see how it can be harder than drawing a face, but it is… even when I just focus on drawing light and shadows it still fucks with my mind, maybe it’s a question of comfort zones.

And I wanna do a little single page story to the theme from Crazy Heart “The Weary Kind – Ryan Bingham” I got the rough sketch in my head, but in all honesty I’m a bit hesitant about starting it, it’s completely uncharted territory with so many pitfalls and I’m afraid I put my own bar way to high up for it to be realistic… yeah long story short I’m too scared to attempt ><

We are bangin' on all cylinders now!

Three updates in two days… omg what is going on?!

Forced myself to finish my Tron girl, I measured and guide lined waaay to much in my humble opinion, so I  see it as a practice painting in value really and finished it.
The Value stuff is in some areas are just scary off, I fucked myself over by keep adding light(ness) to it when I should have gone way darker, like her left eyebrow should almost blend in with the dark surroundings, but I progressed to far, to just “fix” it… though… thinking of it now, I am kinda stupid… because I could/should prolly just have adjusted the brightness/contrast or levels… for fuck sake man!
Anyway I finished it and I can take some experience from it, the shadow/light was MUCH MUCH harder than anything I’ve done previous, so that’s something – look at the bright side (no pun intended)

Another day another portrait

Wanted to add some background and stuff, but not sure what really, so for now the "?" will have to do!

Managed to finish one more portrait, this one of Laurie Holden from The Walking Dead.
I’m not super satisfied by the outcome, there are some quite big mistakes in it. I made her look quite a bit older… sorry! Her features are a bit off, mainly her eye placements and I’m not sure what happened to her chin either, it’s like I angled things a bit off and one mistake carries over to the next etc.
Also my hair “brush” didn’t work here… QQ, so yeah same old shit -.-

When I see these youtube wizards doing their speed painting they can correct these mistakes in a second, but I got no idea how the fawk to do that, the only way I know about is just simple ctrl+c/v (copy/paste) and then free transform, but when I try that I… I don’t know, it messes with my brain, if I change one little thing I have to correct 90% of the painting to match the change, that’s how it feels at least. Say I wanna move/transform the nose, then I wanna only focus on that thing and not just some big fucking square block which leaves my painting totally “scarred” – if that makes sense. I could prolly use the lasso tool instead and make some haxxing with layers, but everything I can come up with feels overly complicated at this point.

Still practice is practice, I prolly should have measured the features in a bit more, but I don’t know it feels nice to just wing things sometimes, you lose some realism, but maybe gain some uniqueness /shrug the fawk do I know :)

Oh and for those curious about how much time these things take, I actually know it with this one, it took about 3 hours - had 2 movies running in the background... :P (multitasking much?!)

Long time no see (pun intended)

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks now and fml etc. [short rant warning]

I got some shitty autoimmune disease that likes to scar my cornea from time to time, the last 12 years I’ve had a big scar on my right cornea which blurs everything on the right eye, but my left eye was okay, so it didn’t affect my vision per se (the brain works in mysterious ways I’m telling you!).
Anywho a couple of weeks ago, I got a little scar on the left eye as well, it’s not as bad as the one on my right, but enough to blur my overall sight, facial details blur together after a couple of meters and I’m squinting when reading and writing, I can still do both luckily… but to put it gently - it fucking sucks.

The 1/10-12 I’m going to see a specialist team here and they will decide on whether or not I can get a cornea transplant, but what I’ve been told by my own eye doctor the chances aren’t good.

As one might imagine this shit kinda puts a damper on things, everything not only drawing.

So naturally I’ve been playing Diablo 3 and not drawing at all.
I’ve been focusing on limitations and all the shit that could happen and bla bla bla “what use is learning to draw if you will lose your sight at some point?” etc.
The way I work is very “all or nothing” everything is on a scale, like this drawing business, while I was doing that it was the only thing I was doing - literally.

So what do you do?

You apparently talk… and after that you finish a depressed drawing.

It’s a portrait of Jens Pulver which I didn’t get to finish before this shit, but managed to put the last touches on it yesterday as the first thing I’ve worked on for weeks.

I guess you could say I got a bit angry with everything, but if for nothing else that shit can be turned into fuel at least.

I didn’t want to bother with details or doing anything slow and meticulous, I just needed to draw/paint some fucking anger and frustration.

It should be Ed Harris, but I didn’t really care I just wanted to blow off some steam, I won’t be adding details or anything, it is what it is… a fucking fist in the table, fuck the rest.

------

The process gif's

Still very uncertain about everything, but I do remember my ol' favorite quote.

- Kurgan: I got something to say! It's better to burn out than fade away!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bOKsOveYD0