You can find me as atratus on deviantART.
Here is a better photograph pf the finished painting. It's a shame that the photograph never quite does justice to the real thing. There are simply unphotographable nuances like the difference between carbon black (which is flat and dense and very, very black) and mars black (which is rich and warm and slightly glossy.) There are subtle stripes on Tessa's shirt (the girl in front with her head in her hands) that absolutely pop on the canvas, but are all but invisible here. |
I finished the painting tonight. There is some glare on Anna's hair (second from the left) in the last frame. I'll take a better picture of it tomorrow. For now, enjoy the time-lapse. |
Between being sick and working on some photography projects I haven't had as much time to work on this the last few weeks as I would have liked, but it is coming along. And for the people who are seeing this via my feed to Facebook - this is actually an animated GIF. Click "view original post" to see it. |
I've started a new painting based on a photo uploaded to Gothic BC by my fellow photographer Mykl Diekiss. All my paintings start out as a few feeble pencil lines like this to guide the composition. Most of the detail that will be most challenging isn't drawn in. There's no point to doing that since the necessary underpainting would obliterate the details that will only re-emerge as the more finished layers get added. This is probably my most ambitious painting to date, and at the moment I'm not at all certain how I am going to handle the mesh and fishnet on Rheanna (first figure from the left) or the pattern in Sara's (second figure from the right) dress. Trying to keep Sara's wickedly foreshortened hand from looking like a freakish claw is going to be a challenge, too. I imagine there will be some cussing and at least one proclamation of my complete inability to paint in the course of this (if it was too easy I wouldn't learn anything, nor would I be proud of it at the end.) |
Red Chair Painting #4 (Tristan Risk) 24" x 30" Acrylic on canvas. |
The early stages of the fourth Red Chair painting. This a very poor quality photo so a lot of the nuance of the colours is lost. |
A few bits and bobs for my next steampunk project. I'm not saying what it is yet other than it will be a product for Elaine's store, Art of Adornment. |
All done. I think the jacket came out rather well. EDIT 07/01/22: I've replaced the image with a decent photograph with the proper colours and exposure. |
Earlier today I finished off the vest. I knew I was going to have trouble with this before I even started. It's the reason I picked this image to work with. Nick wore just about the most difficult to paint clothing imaginable. The vest is shiny silk with a grey-on-grey pattern and the jacket has a very subtle black-on-black brocade pattern. I think at this point I've actually spent more time on the vest than the face and hands. |
Here's were it is as of a few minutes ago. The biggest job remaining is adding the pattern to the jacket, then it is jewelry, fingernails, and a few minor tweaks. The colour on this second image is a little closer to life than the top image. I don't spend a lot of time setting these in-progress shots up with proper light so these two images together do a good job of how much the colour can vary from image to image. |
Remember this post about how this picture reminded me of the lighting in Academic painting? A few dozen filters, layers, and assorted other Photoshop tricks later, et voilà. And here is a detail crop so you can appreciate the full effect: |
I haven't had the time to work on this anywhere near as much as I would like, so it's been progressing slowly. I didn't set up this photograph properly so there is a slight glare in the top right that is doing some bad things - there are subtleties in the face and hair that just aren't showing in the picture. I'm going to have to be careful about how I shoot this when it is done. |
I got a little bit of time in on the new Red Chair painting, getting the under-painting done for the light areas, a.k.a. the creepy blue phase. |
I've sketched in the outline for the third of the Red Chair paintings. Progress on this one will likely be fairly slow since I still have a lot of other constraints on my time over the next three or four weeks, after that a lot of things will start changing. |
I wasn't entirely happy with the painting as it was when I posted it before and did a little more work on it. A painting is never finished, |
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When I went to photograph the progress on my latest painting tonight, the face-recognition actually honed-in on the face I finished today. 
