JJ’s 100 Day Challenge: Digital Painting

[JJ]

DAY 20

It’s the weekend, and I’m taking it a bit easier than normal. Instead of working on the previous days post, I did a different arm (though these are both based on reference photos from NMA). Maybe I’ll tighten both arms up for tomorrow? Either way, I’ll just recharge today and start off the work week strong.

Hope everyone is staying cool out there.

[JJ]

DAY 21

A bit of a slow day, but a return to portraits. This one was off to a pretty good start, but in its current state, I’m trying to render every form when thats not totally necessary! I’ll have this finished for tomorrow. Been looking at changing some of warm up exercises and practise routines, we’ll see where it leads. Hey, 3 weeks completed!

[JJ]

DAY 22

It’s warm today. Not so unmanageable, but it does make focusing a bit more difficult – getting drowsy staring at this screen all the time. But anyways, worked a bit more a didn’t get quite as far as I would have liked. I also do want to render the hair out because I’m pretty sure I could do a good job. I’ll be working on this a bit more for tomorrow and then its back to arm or leg studies.

[JJ]

DAY 23

It was a yard work day, and it was a long day. Not much work done on the photoshop front, but the backyard is looking good.

[JJ]

DAY 24

So this is definitely one of those pieces where the drawing just wasn’t there, so this painting couldn’t go all the way. I also stretched this piece out over multiple days for partly legitimate reasons, but really I should have just started a different piece. Tomorrow, I’ll start something new.

[JJ]

DAY 25

It was challenging to put time into towards work over the last week and enough since I last posted – a lot of things happened. Feeling a bit renewed these days though, and making a point to start posting again! This piece started out alright, but that turned head proved to be very difficult. I’ll be working on it some more for the next day!

[JJ]

DAY 26

I lost a very good hour of progress on this piece (“you told me it saaaaaaaaaved!!”), which was very discouraging, especially because when I had to do it all over, I didn’t turn out as well! A very uphill fight. Having said that, I’ll go back to some portrait work to rebound from the time away.

[JJ]

DAY 27

I admit it, I’ve been inconsistent, but I swear its only because I’ve been oil painting a lot more recently. And that feels good! This is a pretty solid rebound (for the 2nd time) piece, and I feel like I’m definitely seeing my drawing mistakes more and more. Still, its takes a moment to click back into photoshop mode after its been awhile, but I genuinely feel better about my work habits these days.

[JJ]

DAY 28

I should be focusing more on my weaknesses like the complete figure or arms or legs. But I still like doing portraits, and I can still get better at them, so lets keep this train going.

This one turned out alright! The expression is pretty good, and the scratchy effect of my paint brush makes her look a bit older without doing individual wrinkle lines.

[JJ]

DAY 29

This was a pretty productive session! Its hard to get a good likeness when you mess up the eyes, but I thought i did a pretty good job here anyway. Started to get too scratchy/thin with my brush strokes. I’ll have to research and try out some other ways of blending soft edges more easily. Maybe just start doing spheres as a warm up exercise…that would be pretty good.

[JJ]

DAY 30

This is the kind of piece I would normally spend multiple sessions on, but I was interested in seeing how far I could get in one (I’d say it was about 2 1/2 – 3 hours). Things turned out alright. Gotta keep improving my drawing though. Reference included because its a statue.

[JJ]

DAY 31

I think I’m starting to see I have more of a drawing problem than a “blending things in photoshop” problem, but I do have both of those problems. I just try to paint over my mistakes with the brush, and it ends up looking kind of scribbly. Still, this piece was a bit faster than most, and it pretty well al things considered.

[elizabeth hone]

Very interesting . I don’t understand digital stuff, but looks great

[JJ]

Thanks Elizabeth!

[JJ]

DAY 32

I don’t really have to write anything in these posts, but today I feel like writing “maaaan…somedays, you just watch things fall apart the more and more you try to work on it.” Onto the next piece!

[Author]

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