Nude Study

Hey! Guess what I drew again tonight! Yeppers! Another nude study. These are getting to be quite fun!

I'm also working on not texturing the body so much. See if I can go for more subtle shading for the women. Gives them a softer touch.

Woman with sword

Well, lately I've been busy making new prints for shows coming up this fall and reading about ideas for self-promotion (Courtesy of a book by Jack White called "Mastery of Self-Promotion"). However, since I ran out of printing ink (have more coming in the mail), time to get back into some drawing/painting practice and hold off on some of the business tasks (at least for a couple of days).

So, back to drawing women again in pen/ink. Here's tonight's incarnation. As before, had to do this a second time. After taking a bit of a break for dinner, I went back and looked at the first drawing... the proportions were wrong, etc. So, had to take another crack at it. Like this one much better.

Latest Painting: Cycles

"Cycles" is an original 16" x 20" oil painting created on a 1" stretched, high-quality canvas. The painting is presented as unframed (Sides are painted).

All Artwork is copyrighted to Doug Hoppes Studio and is not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the permission of the artist. Sale of this item does not transfer its copyright.

Amazon

Busy day today. Dropped off some paintings for the Essex Junction Fairgrounds, dropped off some paintings for the South East Burlington Art Association's Art Hop, finished the current painting that I was working on... and, finally, finished the nude drawing that I started working on last night.

Don't settle if there are issues

Working with another nude drawing, I decided that I needed to do this drawing twice.

The first time that I did this drawing, I wasn't near as careful with the proportions as I should have been. In the end, the head was too small, the torso too long and the legs were awkward. Now, I could have left it the way that it is and I'm sure that some people would have said that it looked nice. However, after I reviewed the drawing (after taking a break to work on my latest paining), I realized that I couldn't just leave it that way. Therefore, I did the second drawing paying a lot more attention to the angles, lengths, etc. That one turned out much better.

For me, although I love the art that I produce at the end, I gain the most enjoyment from the process itself. When drawing, if the drawing is not right, I just have to continue to work to get it right.

Nude Study

Another nude study. In the photograph, I like the way that the hair falls across the face and the way that the shadows permeate throughout the body.

The profile is such a simple one, but the shoulders and head position tell a lot about the mood of the female.

Figure Drawing

Had some more time tonight and decided to work on more figure drawing study. The pictures that I'm working from are from a photographer named mjranum. Besides photographing beautiful women, the light levels of the photographs make it pretty easy to see the muscle definition.

These practices help me understand the different muscles on the body and help with my hand/eye coordination. Since figure drawing is one of my weaker areas, I need to work harder to improve in that area.

Latest Painting: Triad

"Triad" is an original 14" x 18" oil painting created on a 1" stretched, high-quality canvas. The painting is presented as unframed (Sides are painted).

All Artwork is copyrighted to Doug Hoppes Studio and is not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the permission of the artist. Sale of this item does not transfer its copyright.

Nude Study

Another Nude Study. These are actually becoming quite fun! After a dozen or so more of these studies, I'm going to need to figure out how to paint them.

Bug Lady

Okay, this started out as a normal nude sketch. Really.... it did... After I had drawn the basic body, I was thinking of adding some standard wings. Nothing special....

Then something in my mind clicked. I didn't like the way that the head was shaped. So, I wondered what she would look like with a bug head. For the head, I started out with a standard dragonfly head... then, played around with it a little bit to make it more scalar.

This is what I came up with.... it's weird.

Nude

One of the areas that I'm extremely lacking in is the figure study. This was quite apparent at this year's IMC. However, since most illustrations for book covers, magazines, etc involve the human figure, decided that I really should practice more at it.

So, here's my first effort.

Another Bug

More practicing with bugs. I'm liking how the wings are looking and the torso. I'm thinking that it would be interesting to see how the legs, wings and abdomen do on other creatures.

For right now, still need to do a lot more bugs to get the right feel of the creatures. This'll help when I start mixing them with other creatures.

Not Quite the Standard Wasp

So, now that I'm trying to draw more and indulge into my "weirder" side, I've decided that I really really like drawing bugs. Don't know why. For some reason, they rank up there with eyes. Next thing you know, I'll probably be drawing large eyes with bug legs.

Well, I also need to make sure that I maintain my drawing skills. I know that a number of people do not consider drawing skills to be important for painters, but, in my opinion, I think that they are wrong. This is even true for abstract painters. Without a solid foundation of drawing skills, you can't accurately represent anything realistically. No matter how much paint you put on the canvas or try to explain away the image has being interpretive, a poor drawing is a poor drawing. It takes away from the final painting. I think that many artist try to come up with the hokey explanation "I wanted it to be that way" to hide their poor drawing skills.

So, practice at drawing is another avenue that I have to make sure that I work at.

In this drawing, I was mixing the forearms of a person with the regular shape of a wasp. I like the sleek lines of a wasp and the coloration.

Latest Painting: Reflection

"Reflection" is an original 22" x 16" oil painting created on a 1" stretched, high-quality canvas. The painting is presented as unframed (Sides are painted).

All Artwork is copyrighted to Doug Hoppes Studio and is not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the permission of the artist. Sale of this item does not transfer its copyright.

Next painting idea

While I'm finishing up the painting of my last drawing (should have it done tonight and will post it tomorrow), decided to post the drawing for my next painting.

In this idea, I'll take a smaller plein-air painting that I did last summer and mix it with a sword guard. The landscape that you see is Webster Lake, New Hampshire. It was a grey morning with some great darkish fog just sitting on the water.

I also was rummaging through some old photographs and came across this sword guard. So, I drew three-quarters of it to accentuate the landscape.

For the painting, the sphere near the center will be the center of interest. It'll be a blue ball on fire. The sword guard will be clear blue glass and you will be able to see the square background and the landscape behind it. Also, the blue fire will highlight the edge of the glass guard.

Not sure how it'll turn out, but, as Greg Manchess mentioned at IMC... need to "Embrace your failures!"... which I do a lot!

Latest drawing for newest painting

Now that my shows are done for the summer, time to get back to painting. Here's the latest drawing that I came up with for my landscape/shape paintings.

I really like the design of this image. I have some photos and some plein air paintings of trees that would match this situation. My initial thought is that the tree will contain some orange/yellow (fall colors) and have a darkish background. For the background, I think that I'm going to try some of the classic Master's colors of umbers, dark siennas. I think that it would make the yellows of the tree pop out.