Trains, Fish...Adventure

My painting adventures continue on as always. Half of my current life is consumed with the the thoughts of "OH MY GOD GRADUATION/PORTFOLIO/JOBS BLARGH" and the other half is filled with 'OH MY GOD IS IT SATURDAY NIGHT PATHFINDER YET?"Really? Instead of going out to bars getting slizzered, I'm playing D&D? Yes. Yes indeed. Perhaps it would be more appropriate spending Saturday nights going out to bars during D&D? After all, most adventures do begin in a tavern...

AHEM. Painting. Not too much to see here. I'm usually a pretty fast painter, but for my first "official" project I'm taking a more planned out approach to my train subject. In the case of trains, rust tends to appear to blossom from underneath the surface (I guess cause they paint over the metal), so I'm painting all of the rust first, then painting on top of it. The idea is to literrally tear, scrape, and wipe away the worn surface paint when the whole thing is close to completion.

If only I could take more detailed photos of my subject up close...prancing about the train yard and touching the trains is technically illegal...(found that out after taking my first batch of source material).

 In the anatomy department, I'm beginning to use MRIs and such from people I actually know, making the paintings much more personal. I've been making them about once a week, which needs to change soon to about one a day.

Speaking of, uh, anatomy, the local fish place let me photograph this amazing recently caught halibut. This will definitely be my next painting.

Anyway, back to Pathfinder. One of the reasons I'm so crazy about our campaign is that I've taken up the duty of illustrating all of our characters. Sitting myself down and making a whole bunch at once is incredible practice, and has given me great insight into my own thought process and how I can improve.

While I wanted to maintain a consistent style throughout all of them, each drawing became progressively less cutesy and cartoonish. Looking at all of them at the same time, I realize that I have a lot more maturing to do, gesture, color, perspective, etc. After finishing all seven characters, I might go back and make improved versions of them (just as I made a billion versions of my character's eidolon).

And yes, one of the players is playing a character based off of Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time.