Organising my Paints - and Stuff!

Continuing along with my 2012 'organising everything' resolution/'big efficiency drive' :) I decided to give my paint collection a bit of a going over last weekend...

I thought it would be a smart idea to pick out the paints I use the most - separate them from all the others and put them in a tray at hand. In addition to this I then painted all the tops of my paint white and then again with each of their individual respective colours. I then gave all the tops a quick coat of clear varnish to stop me rubbing the paint off over time as I keep popping the lids to use them. My reasoning behind this was that I would now be able to easily see at a glance what the actual colour will look like used raw when it is dry (on a White ground), making (I hope) selecting the right colour a modicum easier.



I tend to mostly use Liquitex soft body or W&N Acrylic Paints in combination with Daler FW Acrylic Inks these days. I find using the ink to enhance and support the thicker acrylics makes for more versatility as it is possible to increase the fluidity of a thicker colour without desaturating it (which can be handy at times), and I also find very tight detailing easier to manage with slightly thicker acrylic when there is a little ink mixed with the paint too (it makes the paint cover and flow REALLY well when applying tiny strokes!).

In addition to organising my Liquitex paint set in the manner described above, I also made myself a full 'At a glance' Colour Sheet of all my FW Inks too.



Hopefully making these small changes in this area will help me to choose, and use, the paint I have at hand a little more effectively.


"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
- Henry Ford (American Industrialist, 1863 – 1947)

New Painting - At the Alter of Fhatt-Malokh Demonhe of Shin Shin Garr!

My latest effort...



Title - At the Alter of Fhatt-Malokh Demonhe of Shin Shin Garr
Client - Portfolio Work
Medium - Acrylic on Illustration Board

P.S - Website just updated! - www.davidmichaelwright.com


"The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."
- Robert Cushing

The 2012 ‘Will to Organise’ Spark hits the Kindling, Custom Electric Guitars, and some nifty Airbrush Artwork!

This year I’ve decided that my main overriding resolution is going to be - To try and get MORE Organised!

By...

- Cutting my working practices down to JUST what I actually really need to do to get the kind of high quality results I’m aiming for.

- Having only the equipment that I ACTUALLY REALLY USE around me, No unnecessary Clutter, I’m putting all the tools I rarely use into some accessible storage, and clearing out any definite junk.

- Archiving all my old artwork (This has been a long time coming!) Both on my computer and off. So I can find and refer to stuff I need much easier.

- Organising all my reference files, books, and resources better.


And, well, generally just trying to spot any waste and inefficiency really, so I can sort it out and try and make things work a little better.

Genius eh :) (cue fireworks!)



Anyhow, all that tedious tidying up business aside, while rooting through my archives the other day I found a few photos of some Airbrush Art I did some years ago and thought they would be something a bit different to post up here. Included are a couple of Custom Guitars I did for a local music store, and a larger interior piece created for some of my friends at a Skatepark in Dewsbury…










P.S website updates coming soon!


"Be regular and orderly in your life that you may be violent and original in your work."
- Clive Barker

P.A.L - Pretty Autumn Leaves

Been a while! Apologies for the drop off with my regular blog posts, things have been getting pretty hectic of late.

Here's an ink piece I did for a local band's T-Shirt earlier this year.

More soon... (promise!)

New Paintin' - Pandora's Box

Title - Pandora's Box
Client - Portfolio Work
Media - Acrylic on Bristol Board
Original Artwork for Sale - Currently Unavailable

I've been playing around with a slightly more watercolouresque approach to my acrylic painting of late. I love the vibrancy, delicacy, and immediacy of watercolour painting, and would really like to assimilate some of these fine qualities into my work.
I'm pretty pleased with how this endeavour is working out so far and I definitely think I will continue to begin my future pieces in a watercolour like way - Using gradated build ups of thin washes in the wet. I'm finding that this method is not something that will be limiting or will come at the cost of losing some other capacity, as it will combine with thicker opaque uses of paint too, and I can still easily opaquely paint over any element any time I feel it necessary, the watercolour style build up just lets me sort of 'feel out' and develop the image in a steady (and surprisingly rapid) but subtle way during the early stages.

I did this particular piece by initially penciling the image in first on stretched bristol board, I then went on to block in all the key shadows (in the appropriate values) and began building up washes of colour(in the wet) over this foundation. When I was happy with the colour, I proceeded to build up detail over various areas more opaquely and subsequently went on to add any necessary glazes and tints to adjust areas of shadow and light where it seemed appropriate.



"One who fears failure limits his activities.
Failure is only the opportunity to more
intelligently begin again."
- Henry Ford, American Industrialist (1863 – 1947)

Earthdawn - Cathay: The Five Kingdoms!

I had the privilege of illustrating some interior artwork for Redbrick's recently released Earthdawn publications - Cathay the Five Kingdoms Gamesmaster's and Player's guide books last year. It was great to be involved with the Cathay project, and creating artwork for the rich and vivid Earthdawn game world is always a real joy. The books are now both available in PDF Here, or Hardback Here, and for more information about all things Earthdawn check out the Redbrick website at Link.

Here are a few of my interior B+W pieces from the books...

Barnburgh Art Club Demonstration

I was invited back to Barnburgh Art Club last week, and gave a demonstration on how I would approach going about making a reasonably accurate drawing from a photograph, and the general practice, techniques, pitfalls and benifits of using photographs as reference to aid in realising ideas. I chose Robert Redford as my demo subject (Original photograph sourced from internet). Here's how it turned out...


Media – Charcoal Pencil, Raw charcoal, White pencil, Black pencil, White paint pen, on Toned paper (parcel paper).
Time - 2 hours.


"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)