Colour rough

Rather than just being a showcase of finished artwork, I'm thinking my blog should also be the place to share the rough stuff - sketches, concepts, preliminary studies and so on. It'll be a good way to keep the posts more frequent and hopefully another reason for folk to stop by more regularly.

This digital rough is one I did for the commission I'm currently working on. Hopefully I'll get client approval to take it forward, but of course there may be adjustments to make, large or small. The brief was fairly loose: a female figure, red dress, wine or cigarette (or both). The scope for interpretation is fairly broad, so an initial thumbnail or two is always a good way of making sure I'm on the right track regards what the customer wants.

Even though the final painting will be done in oils, I really enjoy doing these initial colour studies in digital. I can work quickly and it's easier to make adjustments later on after the client sees them. In this case I sketched the figure in photoshop before transferring the image to Corel Painter for painting. Before starting the final oil painting, I will do a few more preliminaries just to tighten the drawing a bit and establish some more of the detail. Because I'm not painting from any photos or models, this will mean I have a helpful reference for when I do the final painting.

p.s I was getting a bit tired of the old blog template. Too much black! So here's everything brightened up a bit. Hope you like it :-)