Brushwork study
07 october 2021

I woke up too early after a nightmare, and so I decided to sit at my desk and paint. It's been two weeks I'm thinking non-stop about values, brushes, and edges...

After a first set of random strokes on my canvas, I sent it to the filter "Stylize" of Gmic. I applied the style of "A rose" by John White Alexander (1900, Public domain). You'll see easily how the palette of this amazing piece contamined the base sketch I had. Then I painted over this chaos of merged shapes. My brain started to precise the scene you can see on the final artwork and, during the process, I felt happy with it. I was probably still processing the lovecraftian horror show of my bedtime, or maybe it was the listening of masterpieces by Camille Saint-Saëns in my headphones?

Now, after recovering more distance with the piece, I have clearly difficulties to accept it among my other artworks. That's why I found the compromise of calling it "a study", post it, and move on. That's what a study is all about afterall. An area to train a technique, and I needed that to keep pushing my skill anyway.

I like how easier I can setup a general mood with this technique, how I can control the values and how the brushwork is organic. Also, the process to paint a piece like that is hypnotic. Even if it is not that time-savy, at least, the benefit is that I don't feel time passing because it is not boring like filling area with flat colors, or cleaning line-art.

But the big downside of this technique: it's difficult to construct face expression, rigid objects or any constructed anatomy. That's an effect of going from soft edges to hard edges. I still often fall into a long spiral of paint-over and adjustements at the end of the painting. That's why I can't imagine handling that technique yet for a comic page; when facial expressions enters the game and where I have to keep a level of precision for the acting. I'm not even talking about problems to keep a consistency of rendering between multiple panels...

I'll need more studies and hours to train on that path for sure, but at the same time, I feel I'm not that far of crossing an important breakthrough about my painting skill once I'll found the missing step.

Oh!... Maybe this is what this artwork is all about: struggling and trying to catch something magic to solve a situation once for all.