Illustration Friday: Surrender!

A recent self portrait of myself surrendering to the mighty woodless graphite pencil

Done on 19 x 24 smooth bristol with a 2b woodless graphite. Excuse the quality, it was taken with my phone. :[

Also this is my 1st IF submission, I hope this will get me back into the rhythm of updating this blog of mine :] if not, search me on Facebook as "Rod Maven", artist.

Portrait Challenge

Facebook challenge. Their in order from when I started to now. Time limit is about 30-45

Self Study

Attempting to hone my skills.

Filler Post 2

Here's the byproduct of a few days of blog neglect. There's more coming soon. Criticism/ questions please!

Wayward Souls! Preliminary Logo Sketch

Figure & Perspective pt. 2

Art Gallery Cipher! Doza, Jihad, and Rod Maven (Me)

Figure & Perspective

The piece is as the title implies. This snapshot is just a piece of the entirety but, I'll post more as I get further along.

Portrait: Starry Eyed

Decided to entitle the piece "Starry Eyed", since it was inspired from one of my favorite songs (it's a piece of a lyric.)

Mixed media. Under layers include (> = seperated by a layer of workable fixative): a graphite drawing > Some gesso and matte medium > charcoal> a few washes of ink and water > an oil mixed with turpenoid oil (Burnt Umber and Titanium White i think?) > removed oil wit ha paper towel and kneaded rubber > and theeeen added a bit of color with pink and blue conte crayons. There's more I could do but I don't really want to. I feel its finished as is.

There's alot of textures that my low-tech phone camera can't catch. I wish I could take a higher res photo and different angles.

In hindsight,from this study, I've learned that I can achieve this end result in a quicker fashion than what I performed. I also need to work on my portraits (that's no secret though), especially in the aspects of value and line work.

Portrait: Phase 3 pt. 1 - Oil Wash!

Here's the end of my oil wash application. I did several coats to achieve a variety of drip marks, under the weight of varied consistencies. It's helping to bring out the texture that was built up by the matte medium. The next step is to remove paint from areas that need highlights.