Post 100 day challenge and new art!

Hey all!!
So, I for one, failed at the 100 paintings in 100 days challenge. In spite of this, I am proud of how far I got and I am very happy to say that I learned a lot. I think I can safely say that I got out of this activity what I wanted to. I would love to share everything I learned from this exercise, but a lot of the lessons cant be written down effectively. Much of what I learned was how to observe color, how to get acrylic and gouache paint to behave in the desired manner, and how much time in a day there truly is, if its not wasted. I learned how to push that extra painting out even if you don't think you have time, and how to look for inspiration everywhere!!

So now that this stage is over, I'm looking forward to moving on to bigger and better projects. so here I'm going to post a few paintings I've been working on. The first is a wizards' camp design for a MOBA that I'm working on as a personal project. the second is a concept art.org character challenge of the week I did recently. 'll try to post her story soon.

Enjoy!!

Art challenge update

Hey all!!

So, school got busy and life as well, so I have fallen behind on the challenge. HOWEVER!! I have a few pictures for the blog!

 Ok, to two, the portrait was a portrait I did for practice, on this one I was messing around a bit with my color theory knowledge.  The landscape was a really important piece for me. I had just realized a bunch of stuff about color and light and I needed to record it, so I did this plein air piece.

 This one was inspired by artwork from the magazine High Frictose. Good stuff in there, check it out guys!

These two are concept sketches for a school assignment I have. I am concepting out a wizards camp for a MOBA video game. Its turning out pretty well so far, so I might be sharing some picures of that soon!

 This one is a fan art sketch i didnt finish. Its of Ruki from the Dungeons and Dragons Out of the Abyss Live podcast. I didnt get too far with her, but I may go back and finish her up.

 The top one is a master copy of Jesse van Dijk's concept art of a Fallen Ketch from Destiny. Really good concept art, I highly recommend you check out his art!
The other one is another master copy/sketch of Fragonard's  The Swing. I love how he did the trees and I wanted to see how that was done. I love the atmosphere he achieved. I love paintings in the Rococo period because of the atmospheric effects they achieved. Also the realism in the rendering of the figures.


Lots more coming soon, I'm just behind on photographing everything. Trust me, my sketchbook is CHALK full of paintings I cant WAIT to put up! Some I might even push farther just for you guys!

Long time! New paintings!

Hey all!!!
Wow, i haven't posted for a while. But here it is!!

This top one is my design for a Japanese centipede spirit. I looked to insects, sand worms, and caterpillars for inspiration and design elements to put it together. I also had a few images in mind for the feel, a massive creature walking out of the mist (the image I had in mind came from the cover for the book "The Fall of Gods"(http://www.thefallofgods.com/) but there were others I had sen in previous issues of Spectrum.) I did this design for an application to a game card company that was looking for an artist, but their ad was taken off the job board.

Did this one while watching Jurassic Park 3. I have been watching a LOT of underwater movies and videos lately. Something bout the eeriness of having large shadowy shapes in murky water just intrigues me. I love huge sea creatures, and the fact that what is in the ocean is a mystery drives my imagination wild. I want to draw and tell the story of whatever is down there, create it, so I know what it is. 

These next few are some fan arts. The one above isn't finished, but its a start. Its a fan art of Lux from League of Legends. I liked her costume and her bright personality. I really wanted to do a League of Legends painting, since I derive so much motivation from that game, from the art to the dedication of MLG players that have mastered it. 

These next two are fan art concepts for the video game Destiny. I love the fan theory/cannon (I really cant tell which is which now) that the Fallen once walked in the Light and were guardians, and I love the idea that they still could become guardians! that would be sooo sick for gameplay! Imagine wielding two guns, or four swords, or one gun and two swords, etc. It would be LEGIT! so I wanted to do those concepts out. It is more fan artsy, but I figure Im drawing, im excited about it, and lots of artists on Artstation are doing TONS of fan art right now, so I figure why not? Oh, and the last design, i think the Kroot from Warhammer 40K slipped in there somehow. I knew those head spikes looked familliar......

Anyhow, last up is the first WIP for  painting I hope to finish soon. Its of a villains' lair, and its based on a school class assignment I did last semester, and I wanted to go and finish it up! Here is the reference I put together in Maya for it (my own custom reference):

and here is the line art I did for the class:

its a bit light, but I photoedited it so that I could moree asily paint it in Photoshop. nd here is the image so far:

Im frustrated with it, but I feel like its coming along!

I know im behind about a week, week and a half, but Im hopefully going to ctch up soon. Im fro sure going to try not to fall any more behind, and once school is over, I can pull overtime to finish up! or I can live that dream of being caught up now! Im all about living my dreams. Oh, one thing Im going to try is listening to motivational talks while i work, to get me psyched up. Either that or become nocturnal, because I seem to work better at night. Though I think thats just me working best whn I have a deadline to meet that is firm, yet not impossible. Im going to have to start imposing those on myself....


Have fun!!! Keep working!!!

Hey all!!

Ok so I messed up, because I started this blog post for 3 paintings I did last week  and *deep creepy voice* I never finished it!!!!! I am so sorry! But luckily I caught it, and now will finish this post. Agin these three are like all the other traditional paintings that proceeded, 6"x 6" acrylic paintings. With a few digital touch ups, since the photos I took of the paintings had some flaws in them.

I think these ones are even in order this time! Yay!

See you all around!

Digital figure studies!

Hey guys!!

Yeah I know, I owe you all a TON of pictures, well, Im happy to inform you that I have another art dump for this week.

This week, I guess I went with a  theme this time, which was not intentional! I'm currently taking a figure drawing class at BYUI and I get TONS of reference photos each time, so this week, I took the photos and used them for some figure studies, and boy did they turn out better than I thought! I did mostly value studies, focusing on getting light and dark right. I did this an illustrator came and did a workshop at our school, and he said that he does paintings only in black and white all the time. I liked this exercise because it simplified painting in color in photoshop (which I personally find to be difficult).

So here they are!

I apologize they are all out of order, I believe the order they are in are as follows: #4 #3 #5 #2 #1. The last two I had some fun with because I didn't think the shadows were dark enough, so I ended up using he burn tool to darken those up. Fun practice with that tool!

Anyways, I owe all of you about 2 paintings from last weekend, but dont quote me on that, since I have yet to actually do a day count.

Cheers!

More 100 day challenge art dump!

Hey all!!

So I'm sorry I haven't posted the last couple of days, I've been playing catch-up like a mad man! But I have gotten close to catching up.

I've done a lot of portraits so far. I tried to get creative with color mixing, trying different recipes for skin tones, rather than my usual burnt sienna and white mixture. I can't remember which one it was I did this on, but I think it worked pretty well! Overall I was happy with how these turned out, except the bamboo forest picture. I have had a LOT more practice painting people and faces than plants and landscapes!

Note: this one was a master copy of either a Sargent portrait, or self portrait, or a portrait of John Singer Sargent. I can't remember.

I'm excited how this is coming along so far! I feel that I'm getting better everyday, and its getting easier to paint!

Talk to you all later!
Calvin

100 day challenge art dump

Ok guys!

So, days 2-5 are now completed!! I logged in some serious hours to get these done!

Overall Im pretty happy with it so far. I've learned that if you work with acrylics, its best to start with really thin, watercolor-like washes, moving to thicker paint. Also, as acrylic paint is worked with, its consistency slowly becomes more and more like oil paint, which I enjoy working with!

here are the images in order from oldest to newest:

100 DAY CHALLENGE!!!!

OK! I am so excited, because I am starting THE 100 DAY CHALLENGE! For the next 100 days I, Calvin Messinger, and two other artists will be doing one painting every day.

The criteria for the challenge is as follows:

• open to any size, (though the size we suggest is 5"x 5") 
• any medium is open so long if it is paint (so digital counts)
•  any subject matter can be covered
• time to do the painting should be 1-3 hours

It seems a daunting task, however the way I see it, if I cut out 1 hour on Facebook, and 1 hour on video games, I have 2 hours in which to complete a painting. That doesn't seem too crazy, right? Besides, I will be putting hours towards mastering the painting and rendering process, and its not a big deal if I miss a day or two. Even if I only finish 35% of the paintings, that's 35 paintings done!  That's 35-70 hours I just spent making paintings. (now that I think of it, I might start keeping track of how many hours I put into this project)

My main goal for this challenge is to practice rendering images in paint, and figuring out how to do so quickly! with only 1-2 hours to finish these sketches, I will be forced to work quickly. I believe this will help me in the concept art world, since rendering a design quickly is an important part of a concept artist's job. I may not always be doing designs, but I will be observing light and shadow, and their effects on forms, color and the theory behind it, and hopefully some good anatomy studies, all of which will help me in my field of choice.

So, to kick this off, I started with a simple still life of a pear sculpture. I focused on getting the color correct, especially the dark areas, and getting edges. I used a little white in the highlights, but for the most part, I avoided using black paint or white paint. to get the darker values, I combined complimentary colors to achieve a neutralized color, which was darker in value, and tinted it with the base color. I feel that I was less successful on getting edges correct, however I will continue to make this a focus for successive paintings.

I'm excited to show you all my art and I hope there is a marked improvement from this painting an the last on e I do.

Creative perspective

So here is a piece I did for my Creative perspective class last semester. The theme was "Villain's Lair" and the teacher had the following specifications:
1. had to be in two point perspective
2. had to include Romanesque architecture
3. had to be dirty and cluttered

So I looked to creating a lair made for a Dracula-like character. He was a vampire working on a large doomsday machine. Around his lab, he had remains form other experiments lying about (or scampering about) where he had either forgotten or abandoned them. I brainstormed with other artists, and that's where the idea for the steam powered skeletons came from, little pets of evil he created for no reason except to be cruel. The tentacles come from some reality-distorting, forsaken Being that he either serves, or was summoned by the fell energies being generated by his latest doomsday machine.

I decided to put the lair in a basement/crypt/dungeon setting after seeing some Romanesque altar rooms on Google.  I thought it added a nice touch, having the place feel slightly cramped and claustrophobic.

More from portrait class

Hey all!!!

Well, the semester is coming to an end. I'm going to have to put up a post that shows the work I did this semester and my progression through the semester. But not today! Today I have a portrait I did in my class. This one is important because I took time to bring it to a more complete state. I was talking with one of my professors, and he had taken a look at my portfolio and made the comment that I need to start finishing projects. He said if my  portfolio was truly the best work i had, then i had a lot of work to do, especially learning the fundamentals of art. That was hard to swallow, until i realized that my portfolio was full of mostly unfinished art. I hadn't spent all that much time on any of the art that was in there, and the art that was in there had been done a few years ago. I feel like my professor was trying to say (he is sometimes a bit cryptic) that my portfolio wasn't really showcasing my true talent, and I needed to bring more artwork to a finished state, and then put it all in my portfolio.

I was trying a different technique with this one. I did a detailed line under-drawing, then rubbed a charcoal-saturated shami over the whole image to put down a tone. Then with a kneaded eraser, and a mars eraser, I pulled out the mid-tones, and highlights. I also went in with a charcoal pencil and put the core shadows in, details in the eyes, and the hair, wiping and rubbing with the shami or my fingers to get those nice subtle blends or gradients.

I also used this technique on some other pieces:

These ones were  little light because my shami wasn't saturated enough, but the technique shines through. I enjoy the "light and subtle touch" this technique brings to the work.

So I put this image up here for contrast and comparison. I want to showcase one aspect of this technique that I almost forgot, but is VERY important. When you rub the shami value on, generally you leave that value as the value for the shadow itself. To be specific, this should be the value of the reflected light in shadows. Core shadows should be darker than this value, and mid-tones and highlights should be lighter than this value. In the above picture, I put the shadows in, and tried to use the shami values as mid-one values. it ends up with a very blocky and ragged look to the image. 

Anyways, just wanted to share what I learned!

Portrait class

Hey all!

So I'm studying illustration at BYU Idaho now, and I have been taking a Head Drawing class. I receently did some stuff that I thought was really good, and I decided that since I havent posted for a while, I wanted to put them on my blog. they are done in charcoal on either a 17" X 22" pad of paper, or a 11" X 17" piece of Canson paper. I used a combination of reductive and additive techniques for these pieces.