Week 2 in Pierson-land

Hello Art friends and followers.

Today is week 2 on my weekly blog.
Not sure on how to establish my content but I will get the hang of it soon.

This week I began and completed my second Abe Lincoln Portrait as you can see I shot progression photos to understand my process a little better.  As usual I start my image upside down to remove myself from the preconceived idea of how I understand a portrait. So then I can focus on value your relationships and negative space.

After about 2-4 hours I flip the drawing right side up and begin making subtle corrections, slowly building up the value range.

Continuing the value buildup

Since I finished my Abe Lincoln early, I began my 3rd portrait of him Saturday.  Ill probably finish this piece faster or as fast as the previous one, because now I have two practice runs under my belt.

These two paintings I have been working on casually for while now, it is my goal to complete them by the end of the month. I had this silly idea to have falling Olives and Cherries in the background and foreground.  But I think Ill just paint over the majority of them and leave remnants of the idea in the final piece.  I have plans to paint one semi realistic Olive and one semi realistic Cherry in the pieces, thus fulfilling my original idea, but not having to go through the tedious effort of rendering multiple olives and cherries. That just sounds horrifying to me right now.

I apologize for these photos.  But I also began prep work for my next panels to paint on.  I am super excited  about these, because they are incredibly narrow panels and I think they will compliment my works, when I begin assembling them to my larger pieces.

I am not an expert in conservation of paintings, but for extra measure I seal all my paintings in Gamblin PVA, then I gesso them.  PVA is kind of like rabbit skin glue but doesn't absorb moisture, at least so they claim.  I also understand that it is not necessary to seal your panels with PVA, but I want to assure my buyers that I do everything to my knowledge to provide them with paintings that will have a long shelf life.  

It is not really important but I also sorted all my stretcher bars and laid them flat.  This took a while, but helped save some space in the long run.  I learned recently that you shouldn't lean your stretcher bars that you haven't put canvas on.  It has something to do with wood warping.  So this is my way of trying to preserved my stretcher bars for future use.

Final detail of my Abe Lincoln piece. Really turned out nice. 

So everything shown below is my effort to do a self portrait a day and one digital drawing a day.  I find these rather amusing because half the time I start drawing this right when I wake up and you know how you are when you just wake up and you are going through the motions rather than actually being aware of whats happening. So I feel these self-portraits are like me in a dream state.  Which might be the reason why I have beady eyes and overdraw my cranium.  All kinds of mistakes in these portraits. *Laughs*

These are my week two digital sketches I work on this week.  The current trend as of now is to select a DC or Marvel super hero and draw him or her for the week.  I have no reason for this, other than I am comfortable working with the source material and it still allows me freedom to practice.  I really need to look up how to use the software soon.  I think for this month I will just get acquitted with drawing digitally first then next month I take a more serious look at ways to utilize the software better for my advantage.  Deep down inside I am probably tapping into my inner childhood by drawing comic characters. I figure if I don't have time to read the comics (which I'd love to do) I guess I might become good at drawing them.

These sketches I particularly enjoy doing.Little info about them, if you have not noticed by the content they are all sketches derived from my muscle and fitness magazines. Might as well learn some anatomy while improving your digital drawing. AMIRIGHT??

Definite Improvements.

 

Thank you everyone for looking at my blog and finding out what I did this week in art.  Stop by weekly to check up on what I am up to next.  More to come, Next Sunday.

More work is on view at www.tmpierson.com

contact me for inquiries on my work and commission at t.matthew.pierson@gmail.com