The Young Moi

Here is the first whack at a portrait of Moi Enomenga.  By the way Moi rhymes with soy.

He is older in his photo than I remember him.  For some reason my painting has made him young again.

I am not totally satisfied with it and will be fiddling some more in the ensuing days.

There is another technique I want to learn whereby the painting is approached using layers... as near as I can understand it would be like having three or four transparencies on which you would paint various parts of the work.  Background on one, blocking out the painting on a second one, color blocking on a third and then details on the last one. When all the layers are merged you have a complete painting.

Naturally if you are receiving these emails or following this blog you cannot escape my telling you all about my adventures in that in the days to come!

But for Moi I simply saved the various stages before I continued.
So when that prissy mouth really bothered me I was able, painlessly, with the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to go in and make changes to my digital "painting". Now I am happy that the mouth is right. This really is the final one......I think.

The almost complete painting is here:

Here are the various stages I went through to get to the almost finished version above.

Background and original sketch

blocking in some preliminary color

Even out skin tone, deepen shadows

deeper shadows, war paint and moustache added

Finally add some feather details

Brown fleshy bits

Okay so it seems there were a few folks who thought that brown fleshy bit hanging down ...the one by the side of his face...was some sort of rubbery earring.  

I looked at some pictures of the other Huaorani and it seems only a few use the ontoka (a wooden disk).  I saw no one wearing them when I visited in the mid 1990’s so I wondered if they were only used on heydays and holidays.

I found a description of how the piercing is done by another author who visited with the Huaorani and holds them in high regard as do I.  I have written for permission to post it. 

Suffice it to say for now that it seems that the Huao prefer the pierced lobes to swing empty.

At any rate here is my updated version of the Warrior 

Warrior

Found this handsome profile in my picture book of the Huaorani tribe of the Yasuni National Forest in Ecuador.  You can see many posts about this fascinating tribe on my other blog  http://featofclay.blogspot.com/)

I am a little concerned about his lips.  May go back in tomorrow and masculinize them.

Here we go. I lost those luscious lips and made them more masculine. Also cropped out the extra background.

I think I have come a long way since the old gray man last week.  I am happy! But still learning.

Water element

My friend Joan sent me a wonderful power point presentation today with many undersea photos.  I loved the unusual points of view that the photographer used in many of the photos.  One of them struck me so much that I had to try and reproduce it on the tablet.

I don't have the computer savvy to cut and paste the original photo from the power point presentation but here is the link so you can enjoy the whole thing  http://www.daviddoubilet.com/

And here is my first rendering. I call it  Row

But when I was looking at the original again I saw that I had missed several important elements.  Here is Row 2
Can you see what I have added here?



  

Another day another few drawings

Real life intervened and I had some things to attend to yesterday. Fun things like having lunch with a bunch of old friends.  Plus I didn't want my obsession to fill up your inboxes.

A few of us, well more than a few of us, myself very high up on the list, are having trouble with our memories lately.

To overcome this problem in part I did a self portrait to help me recognize myself in the mirror.  In the past I have gotten quite a start when I catch a glimpse of this fat old lady in there.  Note that I have substituted hollowed out cheeks for wrinkles. Hey it's called artistic licence.

This one I did with "chalk."

YO

And this portrait of me was done by my friend Shell as she talked me through the use of the drawing tablet a couple of weeks ago. She was a lot kinder to me than I was to her.





Everything is grist for my mill. This garish number is from the Vesey's Seed Catalogue. It's called Climbing Lily

And last but certainly not least is TV personality and scourge of small claims court Judge Judy.  Her mother probably never told her that she was much prettier when she smiled.  She would have been wrong anyway. Judge Judy's occasional sharp-toothed smile sends fear into my heart.   

I also attempted some changes to the portrait of the old man I was wrestling with the other day. But now when I went to download them I don't think they got saved.  Try try again.

See you soon with more offerings. Be well.

Something to aspire to

Today I was introduced to a master.  (Thanks Nancy and Ian) He is Canmore Alberta's own Patrick LaMontagne. A professional cartoonist, he is the Gran Poobah of the drawing tablet. Well, here, read for yourself about this amazing Canadian artist on his website

www.cartoonink.com/


There you will meet up with a variety of political cartoons, caricatures of famous people and even of animals.


An innate fear of copyright lawyers won't allow me to insert his masterful i pad drawing of character actor James Whitmore but you can see it on the site under his blog entitled Monty's Muse at

http://patricklamontagne.blogspot.com/

It is an amazing piece of work that I can only dare to aspire to.  'Cause if you don't aspire why bother?

Hence today's offering by that name....Aspire  

It's a first try and I hope you will come along with me as I strive for personal betterment on this tablet thing.  Every time I post one of these I see flaws but too late to fix them for this go round.  More work needed on the eye area and I have an idea for better blending.

Stay tuned for the next effort.

Digital Art?...more ctd

I forgot this one that falls after the winter pictures and before Rosa.  I call it

Feeling Sheepish

Todays catch is an exploration of the abstract entitled

View From My Room


Yes! I love plants.

Yes!  I have a shaky hand.  Bite me!

She's Just Around the Corner depicts a new green weed poking up between the old man stubble of last year's dead corn stalks. The trees meanwhile sport a sprinkling of succulent buds.  Honest, I swear I saw some today.