Painting

Been in the mood to pick up and move forward on some old projects I'd thought about tackling a long while back. I had a bunch of floral references that inspired some abstract concepts for digital art. This was all inspired by my sister's paintings and also my constant quarrel with art being "marketable". It sucks that in order to survive you have to appeal to the audience, or you will have to surrender to a specific one. If you're good enough you can choose the latter, but most don't have a choice.

So anyway, some of these pieces are more abstract than others, I'm playing with different brushes and different blending qualities. It's been really therapeutic getting back into the swing. I tried a trial of Painter, but that proved way more frustrating than it was worth. All I really want are the brushes and canvas rotation from Painter with the functionality of Photoshop. Why can't I have this? :(

Anyway, The first piece is the most abstract of the two. My concentration here was sections of color and line, and the balance of color throughout picking only select color swatches from the original photo that I wanted to accent. The partitions became really appealing as the painting progressed and I found it traveling farther and farther away from the original as I focused on contour and balance.

The second piece is the most like the original having changed very little with the exception of deteriorating all the arrangement except for the defined flower in the middle. Here I was experimenting with a different brush and different flow and opacity for a desired soft painterly affect. It's almost on the verge of pastel. Of the paintings so far I do enjoy this one the most. The pallet is soft and attractive and it's not so clear that you can define the background or the type of flower.

Last but not least is the most surreal yet still identifiable contour piece. This one I wanted to travel with the color and block out solid areas while other areas were blended. Against popular demand I softened most of the edges to keep that traditional painterly look vs. a hard digital edge. I will probably test something more vector like later if at all. So far my favorite is "Yellow" which had the desired look and affect I was aiming for, just not as surreal as the original plan.

I intend to make more, but I am also leaning more towards matte painting lately. So we'll see where that takes me next month. :)