The Art of a bro

24-year-old former frat bro experiencing a mid-mid-life crisis.

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Finished my first project with prismacolors pencils that I picked up yesterday!

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Trying to practice drawing the female body. I prefer it to drawing men, women are much softer and easy on the eyes. They also tend to wear more complex fabrics as far as textures and how many folds there are. In my opinion the female body is at the top when it comes to nature's beauty. I'm going to need a lot more practice to capture that.

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I've been working on different projects all week but this little doodle that took me 20 minutes somehow ends up being my favorite this week. Life is funny sometimes. I didn't start out with any intention I just kind of drew lines and they started to look like different things so I just went with it and next thing I knew I was drawing a desert landscape. This is on a small piece of scrap paper, probably 3"x8"

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Finally got to doing the color chart I needed to do. Now there shouldn’t be much guess work for figuring out the colors I want! Instead of guessing, I just refer to my chart and can adjust. Also doing this greatly helps with figuring out skin tones and then doing the proper shading for it. I’m excited to use it on for my next painting!

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This one is for my fellow Star Wars nerds. I finally got to seeing the new movie last night, which was AMAZING. Teared up only three times. Anyways the movie was so visually appealing, it inspired me to do some cool Star Wars art. This is my first “piece” although it was more to experiment with a new pencil set a friend had gotten me for a secret santa party. I want to do some cooler stuff with paints as well as doing a full body, not just a face. This was on the cover of the old Star Wars Episode I visual encyclopedia I had so I just did this one being too lazy to flip through all the pages and pick one.

I really like the way the textures on the crown are turning out. The fabric part looks cool, and so does the “metallic” part. When I first started out on this part I thought “Aw fuck this is going to be difficult I’m def gonna fuck this up.” Turns out only the first part was true. I really had to sit there and think about how I wanted to present the colored textures in black and white.

Hopefully I can finish the headpiece tomorrow, and then do touch-ups later. Drawing in black and white both challenges me and bores me so I have to do it in broken intervals. I’d much prefer to be doing color! But alas doing black and white will help me understand shading for color better. Anyways, enough rambling... at least until I post more pics.

[coolthingoftheday]

This gigantic crab made out of glass is located at the Baltimore Washington International Airport.

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Blue crabs are life

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Watercolor of a lighthouse my dad requested me to do. I really wanted to capture the warm color of the light bathing the lighthouse and I feel like I did a good job doing that with the color choice. I am still working on brush control, but I can see myself getting better every day and most importantly I am challenging myself.

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Star Wars Spoiler

Darth Vader is Luke’s dad

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Sloooooowly coming together, PS my lines are straight, the paper is just starting to curve. In fact, I had to put it in a book and leave it for the night so the corners could straighten back up. Does someone with more experience know a way to prevent that other than tape?

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Getting festive for the holidays

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Work in progress, part 2. Finally finished the pencil, and am going through and adding the ink lines. I have to be extra careful because I’m worried about getting a fuck-up line. We’ll see how it turns out! I’ve spent 4 hours on this piece, so definitely the most tedious one I’ve done to date. Still a few more hours of work to put in, but I’m having a ton of fun and feeling focused

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Work in progress on this architectural piece. I’ve gotten the form of the building down and tomorrow I will go in and add more details to the shape and stuff like windows, etc. I think a cool look would be to ink the lines and then experiment with some watercolor textures to bring it to life.

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Aurora Borealis I, Watercolor, 9x12″ 140lb paper

With this one I wanted to bring out the contrast between the bright northern lights and the dark sky. I like the way the purple and greens turned out but I think I probably should have used a more cyan-y blue for the lights, but alas I was limited to my palette. Actually, I should add several blues to my painting arsenal, it’s one of my favorite colors and it occurs a lot in nature and things I like to paint. Guess I’ll be going to Hobby Lobby tomorrow.

[gucluali]

November Gunpowder Falls by johnpeeler

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My state’s nickname is “Little America” because it has pretty much all of “American scenery” within a days drive: from mountains to beaches, grasslands, marshes, rolling hills, pretty much everything except for desert. This means that there are hidden gems of nature behind nearly every corner. Gunpowder Falls as well as Patapsco Park look particularly beautiful in the fall and some of best memories are fall hikes through those forests. Aaaah Maryland, you have my heart.

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This is another piece I did. I call it “Glance of a Tree”. I suck at titles. I wanted to capture the color and feel of looking at a tree, without really looking at it. What you might see in your mind after just glancing at it for a second or two. How a tree might be imagined, rather than how it is. I’m really happy with how the colors turned out and feel like I captured exactly what I was trying too. Yeah it’s simple and minimalistic, but so am I and sometimes it works out for the best.

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This one was a learning experience. This is titled “Downy Woodpecker I Fucked Up the Background Though.” When I used to take watercolor painting class as a kid, birds was something I did often. So I figured doing a bird would be a good place to challenge myself but still having a sense of familiarity with what I was doing. So I chose a fairly easy looking bird from a bird guide and started painting. I was really, really happy with how everything turned out when I had finished the bird. It wasn’t the greatest piece of work, but for having not painted a bird in at least 10 years I thought it was pretty damn good and something to be proud of. And then I decided to add a background wash. I guess I thought by adding bright, opposing colors it would bring out more subtle tones of the bird more. Unfortunately it did the opposite and made the bird look like its falling into the background rather than standing out from it. I tried to fix it by adding brown, since in the reference picture I was using the bird was grasping onto the side of a tree. This just fucked it up even more though. Oh well, ya live and ya learn.