The world of monochrome - part 1.

Found a nice video tutorial for painting. I tried to follow the instructions, more or less with success.

This is a monochrome winter picture, only 2 colors were used: white and burnt umber.

Little Blue Girl

Practising this Photoshop stuff. Grrr... After trying to paint everything by mouse, I made a decision: hurt for a digital tablet! So the finishing touches have been already done by my Wacom.

The drawing were created with pencil and later inked with artistic pen.
Scanned and transferred to PS.
Coloring, coloring, coloring, drinking, shit what happened, eraser... better to go to bed... new day, new life, coloring, coloring... something similar was the process. :)

The little blue girl is Isanami from Brave10.
The background was downloaded from the net and I applied wind effect on it to make it more blurry.

Enjoy it with some nice jazz music by Diana Krall:

Sunset scene

Found a nice palette knife technique picture, and tried to make similar - but with brush. Damn, wasn't the best idea, as the knife leaves different lines, but as I don't have it and don't know the exact technique yet, I had to work with the tool I have at home.
Made it also for a friend of mine, and I'm really happy that she liked it:

Slowly I should find out how to paint a signo on it :)

Upside down drawing

I am reading the book Drawing on the right side of the brain by Betty Edwards and doing the drawing tasks.
A very interesting example is if you turn a picture upside down, your left brain gets confused and refuses the participation. So your right brain can be the leader and finally you are in R-mode (Right brain mode), your imagination is free, you will care only about the curves, lines, angles and portions; and do not care anymore what you are drawing.

I made two drawings today. The first is the way how I draw it, the second when I turned it.
Picasso's Igor Stravinsky:

Horse from unknown artist:

African scene - oil painting

Just to show off my progress - I painted a picture for a friend of mine for Christmas. It hasn't been dried yet - this is the weird shining on the tree leaves.
She loves African stuffs, so I decided to create a savanna scene in sunset:

Once I read a quote from someone, that you are on the good path when you know, your knowledge is far from perfect :) Yeah, great to discover the faults and take care of them next time ;) There is a Japanese word, kaizen - meaning lifetime learning, developing your skills continuously  It is pretty worthy to remember of it - improves my patience as well :D

My first oil painting

I started an oil painting course some weeks ago. I loved drawing when I was  kid (Als das Kind Kind war.. :)), but sucked at ratio and aquarell.
Now bought the famous Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain instruction book by Betty Edwards and let's see how I proceed...

This is my first oil painting: an empty bottle with a candle inside, put in front of black bunting:

Ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku, shichi... shichimi?

On my last Japanese lesson we learned the numbers and by the number 7 I was thinking, that I have a spice called Shichimi, bought in Kyoto, and whether it has anything to do with the number. Yes, it does, Shichimi means Seven tastes, because it is a mixture of 7 spices.

I had chicken thighs (without skin ;)), and the recipe I found is the following:

• 1 cup flour
• 1tbs Shichimi
• 1 piece of garlic
• salt, pepper

I dipped the chicken into the flourmix, then into egg, and again into the mix. And would have fried into lots of oil, if I have had enough, thus something was hissed in the bottom of the pan - diabetic version. :) Five drops of sesame oil were added.

And to increase my creativity I painted today (it is not allowed to spit on it, I have a sensitive mood today). The original picture was found on facebook.

My childhood drawings, paintings

I was speaking with a dear Indian friend of mine about paintings and winter sceneries, and it popped out that when I was a child (Als das Kind Kind war...) I painted a lot of snowy village scenes, because my mom loved it so much. And I grabbed my portfolio. If you could know what kind of childhood treasures are hidden inside and how much memories! Now you will know them :)

The oldest pictures I found was exactly the snowy ones from my 9-11-year-old period. No, I wasn't a genius, but I liked doing it.

Nah and from now on please don't ask me where does my love towards Japan come from... because it is so old, I even can't remember :) These pictures are copies from ukiyo-e in my book "Snow, moon, cherry blossom". Ooops, now I have opened it and a draft felt out, together with a graphics bought in Paris :D The pictures are from my 14-16 yo age and done with colorpencils.
Well, yes, even such an early age I had no patience to finish things.

And now comes the adult content from 16-20 yo period maybe :)
That awkward skull made with brushpen stuck to really dark memories :(
The guys are created with pencil - the first one was coming from a Chippendale calendar that I received as a birthday present from a friend of mine. Handsome blondie with green eyes (L)
The abstracts again made with brushpen.

And finally a painting from my grandfather. Unfortunately we did not share the same blood, so i could not inherit his talent :(

And my pussy :D

I felt in love with pumpkin craving! Indeed simple to do, as an acquaintance told me and really addictive. It keeps me busy perfectly for hours. The best against stress and feels like I am in another place :)
This pumpkin however was really hard, can't really move my fingers. It's time to order a Dremel set, I was always very excited about wood-carving.

The pattern is a bit more difficult than the one yesterday (ok, not only a bit). I wanted to make something interesting, but none of them got my attention. I am not a big fan of cat, but Pussy in Boots from Shrek was always one of my favorites. He was my today task. My pussy :D

It looks nearly perfect from a distance, from a nearer view not that much :D

If somebody is interested, I've got the pattern from this site:

http://www.pumpkinglow.com/images/PDFpatterns/PussInBoots.pdf

My first pumpkin

Alright, alright, I lied, the next post is still from home :)
I am looking at the Halloween pumpkin for years, but the patterns were so uglily scary, that I had no mood to work with them. But nowadays some really cute and beautiful ones popped up, however mostly as fruit-sculpture. No worries, who said that I can make only daunting blokes for Halloween? Let's remember my last year very traditional "Easter ham", which ended up as putting Parma ham into maki sushi :D
Because next week I am going to escape to colder climate - here it started to be too warm :D, I made my first pumpkin today.

I watched some videos, this was the most useful. Had a bit difficulties with finding the right pattern: I wanted to have a rose, but it looked too advanced for first try. :( I still insisted to the flower form, the winner was discovered on a Hungarian website. Made some extra leaves around the flower. Manually drawing the patterns took most of my time!

"Drawing" the pattern with a meat needle on the pumpkin:

After sprinkling flours the pattern is visible:

Voilá: