Page XV

So it was a week until comic-con 2010, and I had begun piecing together my new shiny portfolio only to realize that OMD! It sucks! Not really, but it didn't have the kind of cohesion that I wanted, the pictures didn't quite flow together well enough. I had been in this kick of painting in a new way and I only had two or three paintings to showcase that style. I wanted so much to have another week maybe another month so I can paint a piece or two to make my portfolio seem more put together. Alas, I only had one week and I had to make it count. So I looked through my sketch book and decided that I was going to try and finish a painting... in a week.

Since I dabble in acrylic, this isn't really a big feat, I just had to keep the oils at a minimum to reduce drying time. And so I set off to paint this beautiful angelic goddess, with flaming hair and a flaming sword and a flaming ball. She would have beautiful jewels and pendants and she would be exotic. Unfortunately, I ended up being pressed for time and had to quit before all the beautiful details could be painted. I ended up with what you have before you :P

This lady is from a little game me and my friends play, called Pathfinder, her name is Sarenrae, the dawn flower and my characters patron goddess. I had wanted to paint an angel for some time now, and I am completely enamored by Pathfinder, so I decided that she would be a good candidate. I also needed something more "energetic' for my portfolio so I decided that painting fire would be a good practice. In the end I did like how she ended up.

She was supposed to have a golden breastplate with gold medallions swirling about her, but... Comic-con had come and gone and my desire to paint said breastplate and medallions went with it.

Page XIV

So in an attempt to try and be more realistic, I've been doing a lot of portraits of people I know or real people and hands. I heard once that painting a realistic human hand is one of the challenges a true artist has to face. So in keeping with that, I've decided that I would try and do a self portrait, more like a tronie really, since I used a picture of my face then just altered the position of the body. The initial sketch was pretty good (I wished I had scanned the sketches so I can post them up here too...) but when it came down to actually painting it, I might have lost some of the likeness. Either way, me or not me, I think it came out pretty good. The one gripe I have with the piece is the shock of color where a portion of my Mermaid painting shows. The colors really upset the balance of the piece, other than that it would've been tolerable lol!