Hey guys,

we will stay at my parents' house for the next 2 weeks. Hopefully I will find time to post some things.

Here is a digital plein-air painting looking out my parents' livingroom.

By the time I was done, the light was gone, so there are probably some lighting/color descrepancies. Nonetheless, it was fun to do and took roughly 1h. Mainly straight lines, so the drawing part was not too hard.

Hope you like it :)

This took longer than expected and it is far from finished, but I post it anyway to stay motivated. Can't wait to add the missing objects and attach shaders.

I did some composition sketches for my personal project, creating a keyfame for the fairytale "the fisherman and his wife".

If you don't know the story, it is about greed and how wanting more can be a dangerous thing. Also it is about a talking fish! Anyways, I like the tale because it is quite compact and has an interesting development process of both characters and environment.

So after designing a first character (the fisherman) I decided to make composition sketches for the keyframe, following Ryan Lang's tutorial on gumroad.
https://gumroad.com/ryanlangdraws#

Using perspective-lines and a golden-ratio-grid for the composition was something I picked up from the tutorial and it helped so much. Usually I went by gut-feeling, but this time, I forced myself to use my brain instead haha. So I definitely learned something.

At first I thought about putting the whole story into outer-space and I am sure it would have been worthwhile I went for the more traditional approach in the end. I then finish up the best of the sketches.

After that I did 2 color-roughs, to decided on the mood for the picture. I flipped the whole thing horizontally to help the viewer to get into the scene easier. I felt like the fisherman was blocking the picture too much, when he was still on the left side.

I decided to go with the left version, since in the beginning of the story, the sea is calm and the sky is blue and it is the friendlier mood.

Next step will be to design the props and model them in 3D to pose them. This workflow new to me and I will use Blender for it. I have some experience modelling in 3Ds Max, but not much.

Below are a design sheet for the bottle of booze and the bottle in 3D.

I am learning more about color, for my personal project. Since the keyframe, that I will illustrate is set in a similar scenario, I picked a screenshot of Disney's "Moana" from here:

https://disneyscreencaps.com/moana-2016/3

I then did a color study, not worrying too much about proportion and shape-language (although a bit), but more on color and value.

This is the part I skip the most, since it is the hardest and the least satisfying haha. I try to do it again from memory, bringing to focus what I learned and what I forgot. As usual, my colors and values get to extreme, to contrasty. Therefore my composition is way more uneasy to look at. Especially the clouds take a lot of attention. Since the most contrast is still on the character, it works, but it isn't as pleasing and subtle as in the ref.

Here is what I learned:
- in this lighting scenario (early evening?) the shadows are blue-ish or grey-ish, except on skin.
- top planes receive skylight and get colder, planes that face down receive warm bounce light from the ground. The closer to the light-source, the stronger the effect.
- brown rock also has desaturated blue shadows
- sandy beach can be brighter that the sky or the clouds
- gaussian blur filter is a quick easy way to get the foreground out of focus
- there is a gradient in the sky from green-blue to a darker blue. The green-blue is closer to the sun
- the shadow on the beach is violet-grey but has a saturated edge
- it helps to think of everything in terms of 3D geometry and not in terms of thinking of the object itself (i.e. arm, leg, tree-trunk). Easier said than done, though.

Hope it helps. :)

I tried to stay within 1 h for the whole study, but after 45 min I was done with the drawing. Shading took 30 min, so in the end I decided to let accuracy slide and go for fast strokes and quick judgement instead.

Oh and yes, I wear Birkenstock.

This was done in the Parque National Torres del Paine, I used only 2 different colors. To get grays, I mixed to two together.

Done from photo, while being on vacation in Buenos Aires, I love that city. It has so much culture and flair. If you get a chance, check it out. The best part: the museums are free of charge!

The fisherman