It seems I revisited my love for old Sci-Fi book covers. I'm still trying to find new ways or methods to develop my drawing from a sketch phase to something a bit better. Although I haven't polished this one, I really like it because it turned out better than what I was expecting. This one goes for my friend Ben Ho who is always encouraging everyone he knows.

I've been trying some new ways of thinking about painting. The mountains are very sketchy but I think it's better than what I used to do. I've tried to approach it the same way I do when I'm copying photos. The soldier is one of the first tries in a method that looks more like colouring. I left the lines just to remind me that I need to have more definition in my paintings. Can't have them looking like this.

More exercises. I have to start trying some environments from my imagination just to see if these are helping.

I'm glad I started these exercises with waves. After those, doing these mountains looks much simpler. Anyway, same thing here, 20 minutes each from photos. I think I'm finally starting to have an idea of how to approach the painting. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Some more unintentional abstract art :S (Another rock is here. Harder to find than Wally). 20 minutes to copy them from photos. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A few more. They still look so abstract, but again, in 20 minutes it's the best I can do. Anyway, again it was all copied from photos of waves. (But there's a rock ok?!) ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

These I copied from photos. Took me about 20 minutes each. Have to do more. Althought some of them look almost like abstract painting, they are not :) They are all supposed to be waves (except for the rock. Yes there is a rock in one of them!).

I don't know what this is. I think it is some kind of a queer dog. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Working a bit more on anatomy. These are made from my imagination after copying anatomy for one hour from Bridgman's Anatomy book. More studies to be done for sure. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I'm trying to improve my anatomy. Specially the torso region. Still a loooong way to go. About 40 minutes each. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This one is not from a photo. I've just put something on my bed and tried to paint it. I have to do one of these per day!! I took three hours and a half to do this one. I can see some bits I could improve, but I'm really trying to stick to less than 3 hours. So what I get is what it stays. I hope I improve soon!! :S ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Back to copying from photos. There's two things that I really work on when I do these. First is my sense of values. And after that is my ability to match colours. On these two things (among others) I'm really simple. I have to keep doing these for a while. A third thing I want to get better is the attention to the details, but be honest I'm still really slow. It took me about a hour and a half for each of these.

Here's something I was trying to do that is obviously too elaborated for my level. I waste too much time when I should continue doing exercises. Particulary drawing. The only thing I'm going to try to do with colour in the next few weeks is just to observe and try to understand. So here it is. I did the values and then just put a colour layer on top. Couldn't be asked anymore because I'm trying to guess instead of trying to practice, so,... back to the exercises!

It doesn't look that great. Don't know what I was trying with this first one, but I was trying. :) The second one is just a late night sketch. Took me about an hour and a half (which for me is awesome :D) I'm just trying to catch on. After some weeks of not painting much, everything seems even more difficult :P ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A friend showed me a process he's been using to get some faces done. Of course the ones he does look much better than the ones below. I'm trying to get more familiar with the process so then I can try to apply to some of my stuff. These aren't supposed to be more than half an hour.

Here's my new way of working. From now on, when I do 2 hours of copying anatomy, I'll do right after an hour of anatomy from my own head. And I'll try to do it for other exercises too. So these are the first I came up with. I still have a lot to learn about the torso. BRING IT ON!!!