Being a student again

This past year I felt that my development as an artist has slowed down dramatically. Maybe it's the crunch at my day-job, or just my laziness, the quality and quantity of artwork I've produced has been less than satisfactory.

When Schoolism ran their Kickstarter campaign, I decided to give it a try. The first course I'm taking is "Painting with Light and Color" with Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo. It's a self-learning curriculum, where I get to sit through their lesson videos and their critique videos for other students. They do not critique my assignments.

The following are the assignments I completed for the first two weeks.

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The first week's assignment was to do simple observational studies in color. The download package included brushes that the instructors were using, so it's easy to mimic their look. I have always been rather resistant to using textured brushes in my workflow and I hope this experience will add these tools into my painting arsenal.

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Week 2 required us to do value studies. The catch here is that you are supposed to base it off objects in a live environment and not black and white imagery. I kinda cheated and used colored photos taken by other people just because I don't have much stuff lying around at home to set up interesting still life compositions.

Last two studies based on the wonderful photography of Luis Laercio.