Still Life: Protector

Finished a fun still life. This toy dragon is one of my nephew's toys and I just liked the look of him.

When first doing this painting, I realized that I painted it too light. During the daytime, the colors were too flat. Instead, I used that light massings as the base color and added dark shadows using a mix of Sepia and ultramarine deep.

I'm pretty happy with the way that this painting shaped out. I like the strong contrasted colors. I also like the composition. It lets the viewer wonder what is the dragon so angry about. Using the laying down obelisk also helps the viewer focus towards the edge of the canvas.

Drawing Study: Robot

For me, drawing is a matter of just exercising my creative muscles. There are times when I like to just not draw realist stuff. Being a science-fiction fan, it's so much fun to just let your imagination run wild and draw some sort of robot or futuristic item.

In this case, I was just doodling. However, as with other forms of study, there needs to be a practice discipline to it. So, one of the major factors that I worked on was foreshortening and making sure that the planes of the robot were facing in the right direction.

It was a good study. The robot isn't the most creative, but there is definitely a form of dimensionality to it.

Drawing Study: Willow Asleep

Tonight's practice study is of my dog, Willow. She's an eight-month old Bedlington Terrier. Every night, around 7:30, her and her brother, Fizz lay down to sleep. There's nothing like drawing from a live subject. Best part is... this is the only time that they're not actually moving and I can get a quick sketch in. For the most part, I have about 15 - 20 minutes before they change positions. It's my own portrait studio.

The drawing came out okay. It's a dog. There are parts of it that definitely resemble Willow and there are parts that don't. The massing of the shadows helps, but I think that I need to draw her larger so that the shadows can be more subtle. The hardest part of this is the hair but, it does make it a bit easier that she is semi-gray. This grayness helps me judge values better.

Her fan page can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/FizznWillowBedlingtonsInAction

Finished Painting: Dichotomy

"Dichotomy" is an original 22" x 28" oil painting created on a 1" stretched, high-quality canvas. The painting is presented as unframed (Sides are painted).

The concept of this painting is to show differences between the man-made structures and the natural world. The man-made structures contain metallic, reflective surfaces with unnatural colors. The corresponding natural world contains various harmonious hues with no linear lines.

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.

Purchase Painting

Ugly Phase

When working on a new painting, the first part of it is always the "ugly phase". At this time, I'm just laying out the colors and deciding the overall feel of the painting.

With concept paintings out of my head, the shapes aren't real defined. It's just a matter of playing with the colors, deciding where the center of interest is, and deciding the overall feel of the painting. This is truly the ugliest part of the painting.

The next phase is to start defining the value structures that are more in-line with the concept sketch and tightening up the painting. That phase is where I start looking at the shadows and reflections to make some of the landscape objects more realistic.

I still have a ways to go, but I'm happy, so far, with the basic color scheme.

After studying the drawing of Sucia Island, I've decided that it would be fun to do another large abstract - landscape painting. Been spending most of my time, lately, working on realistic still life studies and need a little break from them.

So, as my usual technique, I started playing around with the landscape drawing and changing it up a bit. I added features that I thought would be interesting and removed features that did not enhance the composition. For the abstract shapes, I've decided that the primary shape (rounded sphere in the center of the painting) would be the focal area.

Today, I laid out the basic color shapes and will post a picture of the general shapes soon. I'm not sure what evokes an emotion for me about this painting, but I'm sure that I will discover it as soon as I start the detailing process.

Drawing Study: Sucia Island

Sucia Island in the San Juan Islands. Some friends and I did a week-long kayaking trip to some of the islands. It was a blast. After a fun day of taking the kayaks through large waves and getting totally soaked, we ended up in this cove. This was our campsite for the night.