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A couple nights in a row just full of artistblock and bad drawing helped build anxiety for art time this week. So I took a few days off and played some games instead and jumped back in last night. I think I might skip doing a nightly update post, maybe one every few days or so - we'll see.

Going back to the Facebook thing and skipping ahead a few spots in the friends list for something that can maybe foster some imagination. My brother's goofy face dressed in his Halloween costume (star trek) while holding a can of cheap beer had me sold.

I'm really playing around with this one though, instead of a strait painting from the photo ref, I'm using the photo for his stance, his face, my sister in-law's head and turning it into a spaceman movie poster/romance novel cover of sorts. So I'm combining multiple references and also pulling from imagination for this one.

Painting update: calling this one done for now

Time to move onto a new project. Starting to get a bit of burn out with this one. The only thing I might come back to fool around with is the flooring, so I think it's a safe stopping place.

Painting update: nearly done

Fixed the veil and a few other misc. things on the figures, hung the moon and got the first background idea in. I'll probably run through a few others - not sure how I feel about it.

Thinking I'll be on to the next project this weekend.

Painting update: both figures just about done

At a good stopping point for the night. Both figures are pretty much complete. I'm sure I'll fiddle around here and there a bit, and I need to redo the veil; got a few different ideas on how to do that already.

I'll need to put some thought into the rest of the canvas.

Painting update - Hands in

Did my best at making that hand up. It's at least at a spot I'm happy with.

I concluded though, that the top half of the dress is quite off. 1 bad measurement must have thrown it. The bottom half looks right, but the more I worked on the top, the more it looked less like her dress. Last thing I want to do is screw up a bride's dress, so that will need to be scrapped and redrawn out.

I'm a little worried I might be going a bit too detailed on the dress, it might be pulling the focus too much from the gaze... We'll see once I get the top half corrected and her arm/hair/veil/face detailed. There's some perspective tricks I could use on the background/floor too, to emphasize focus back into that circle (face > face/hair > arm > hands > face.

Oh - regarding the other hands that gave me trouble, I don't recall mentioning it, but we decided that the arms are pushed out further than they appear, with her forearm close to parallel to her body. That would give just enough angle to have that top bump be her finger tips and their palms facing. It was also decided that his pinkie was too stubby. The scale looked right with where it looked to end, but being so low res, the call was made to extend it about 25%.

Cutting out now before burning out

Very high frustration levels tonight, trying to figure out what is happening with the other hand. Stopping now before I quit for good. All I've done tonight is getting scrapped - this is just bad.

Seriously though, what am I supposed to do with this: 

Think I might just end up doing a color blob and blurring everything away from the heads.

Painting Update - Trouble deciphering the hands

Been jumping around a bit tonight. I think I got the suit at a good point, and figuring out the texture of the dress is going well. Here's a detail shot of how that's coming along.

The hands though are killing me. Not because they're hands - drawing my own hands got me through many study halls and lunches - it's another case of the ref photo just being too low res.

Deciphering this is hard. At first, I started drawing that whole mass as David's hand, but the more I looked at the top hump, trying to figure out what's going on, the more it looked like those were actually Alison's finger coming out, like they would if they were holding hands - eh? The slight shadow supports that idea... but then when you put that into practice with your own arms, I can't bend that way - and I'm pretty bendy. So, back to that being part of David.

Then, just trying to figure out how the hand holding is working out has got me stumped. If you look at where David's pinkie ends, perpendicular to it, there are 2 highlight lines with a shadow line between. To me, this reads as the tendons in a wrist, which would mean Alison's palm is facing to the camera... but the shadows on the elbow are reading to me the opposite. I might have to see a recreation to understand this part.

Here's a detail of where I'm leaving the hands for now...

Panting Update - David's face

Unfortunately, the photo was pretty low res, so I've had to do a lot of guess work with getting David's face details. Think I've got it as close as I'm going to, without attempting to recreate it. If nothing else, it's great practice at making up faces.

 Think I'll take a break and maybe come back to it to work out the suit with a fresh eye.

Side note: kind of funny; most of the stuff I draw and the past couple paintings looked better the more zoomed out they are. This detail shot though looks better the more zoomed in.

David WIP2

Getting late. Just finished getting in the under painting for both figures, so good time to stop for the night.

Using a different technique this time; trying out CTRL + Paint's 'paint big, then chisel in with an eraser' method. It doesn't feel foreign, but I feel a bit less efficient; /shrug.

Start of a New Project

We cut Hell Week day 3 a bit short; just built the drawers for the bed. So I had time to start on the next facebook photo project. 

Going to do a bit less photo realism with this one - at least that's the current plan. The moon was a big bench sitting on a stage behind them, but I'm scaling it down and raised it; contemplating bringing them outside for this. Leaving the string lights... I love string lights.

Hell Week day 2

Unfortunately, I am just now calling it a night from Ikea Hell Week day 2. I vastly underestimated the time it would take me to build the bed - and it's not fully finished yet. Got the frame made and the mattress in, but tomorrow I've got to build the drawers to complete it. It's after midnight and I've got an early start at work, so I think I'll need to claim today as my first cheat day and skip drawing for the first night since 1/26 iirc.

Hopefully tomorrow leaves me with more time. Have to build the drawers; disassemble the guest room bed and our old bed; move the guest room bed into storage in the basement; reassemble our old bed in the guest room and build 2 cribs. Not necessarily all tomorrow, but the salesman at Ikea strongly emphasized calling within 48 hours of delivery if there are any missing parts or damage - so the sooner I can get the cribs built, the better; can't start them till our old bedroom is cleared out though.

I've at least got the next project lined up though. Should be a fun one.