Justin Owens » portrait

A sketchpage, digital

jay — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:35:17 +0000

I spent some time this morning doing a few warmup sketches before work.

I’m not sure what this guy is up to, but more practice in rendering form and texture is always nice.

I’m liking this guy, dubbed “The Admiral”. I want to do something else with him, but I’m not sure what. I did a quick splash of color on him and an armor tweak, but I’m not at all satisfied with where he’s at. These will work as exploratory sketches for a later painting.

Daily… Heads

jay — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:50:30 +0000

I felt totally uninspired tonight, but here are a few portraits.

Daily… A slug hat

jay — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:40:35 +0000

Daily… That’s some nose

jay — Sun, 15 May 2011 16:48:28 +0000

This is one of those images where I look back on it and can’t help but think, he has a penis for a nose. Not that I’ve had the experience of noticing penis noses on a lot of my work, but more that in retrospect, some element looks rather phallic.

Rock on penis nosed dude, rock on.

Daily… A tall portrait

jay — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:39:01 +0000

Daily… Sketching heads

jay — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:27:16 +0000

Daily… A self portrait

jay — Mon, 02 May 2011 05:57:24 +0000

Over the winter I grew a beard. I typically go back and forth between various amounts of facial hair, but this was the first time I fully let it grow out. Last week it all came off, and now my face feels naked!

I needed a bio image for the Hippogriff Cookbook, I felt it was appropriate to use bearded me.

Daily… A portrait in open acrylics

jay — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 23:54:33 +0000

I was incredibly tired so decided to use my painting from class as my daily. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to actually show something from my figure painting class. I feel like I’m making a lot of progress now that I’m painting outside of class, it really makes a difference.

This was my first time doing a portrait in class, typically I’m working full figure and also trying to suggest some sort of environment. Like a lot of artists, I find the head, hands, and feet really difficult. I liked the models face and had a nice position, so I thought I’d try and tackle a portrait. We had about 2 hours for the pose, broken up into 20 min segments. I tried to make sure that within that first 20 mins I had all my proportions and placement figured out.

My teacher is allergic to oil paint (more specifically the smell of linseed oil), so I’m using Golden (brand) open acrylics. They stay wet longer than regular acrylics, but still nowhere near the way oils do. I was getting frustrated at times as the paint was drying too quickly and becoming tacky. I really do prefer oils.

-A self critique-
Things that I feel worked:
General structure/proportion feels good.
Skin tones are working better.
Reflected light on forehead and underside of hat.
A decent likeness of model.
A sense of character.

Problem areas:
Structure of nose is “off”.
Plane change of cheekbone on screen right feels too abrupt.
Mustache/beard has no transition, thus feels more pasted on face.
Something about the neck feels off, like it’s too thin.

18″ x 24″
Oil on canvas board
Portrait of Dave

Daily… Thumbnails

jay — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:56:15 +0000

A couple thumbnails for an idea I had for a painting. At this point I’m just trying to figure out general placement and proportions, I’ll do another round of sketches better describing his expression and clothing etc. I had been thinking of going with the portrait versus landscape orientation, but seeing them all next to eachother, I’m less sure. I like the vertical arrangement, but having open space ahead of him is nice. If I stick with my plan, the final piece is going to be 16″ x 20″.

Daily… An experiment in painting skin

jay — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:08:52 +0000

I tried using a traditional painting method for skin applied to digital work. The basic idea is to lay down a color like raw umber and then paint your shadows, midtones and eventually hilites on top of that. The warm colors of the raw umber will show through in places, it has a really nice effect. I couldn’t really figure out how to do that digitally. I likely should have had appropriate reference of the general skin tone I wanted to end up at, so I’d have a road map of sorts. Oh well, still learned from the experience.

Something I keep coming back to is the idea that I need to start with an appropriate local color and then go from there. I’ll try that next time and add in the warm accents myself.