Flower Sketch

I still love just putting Pencil to paper and going with the flow. Flowers come very naturally to me, these are actually designs i am using in my new piece, i am painting a cigar box with acrylics.

Water Color Tray with imagination

I decided to paint a bit on my lunch break between classes, so i sat on a bench and just went for it. I thought of a romantic night in France, which inevitably leads me to thinking about the ocean and waves! My sketch paper is not exactly water color ready, as you can see! I recently went out and got a watercolor field pad and i am looking forward to using it in the near future! hopefully it will be full by the end of Christmas!

Conservatory

I bought a water color tray so i could travel and sketch whatever i see in a quick amount of time, instead of using water color tubes. I went to the Cincinnati Conservatory and had a blast sketching the waterfall and some different plants that caught my eye. I really liked using a tray!

Acrylic (Fall Edition)

So, I still only have the primary colors, brown and green for acrylic colors, but i really wanted to make a fall painting. This is a more abstract picture of a golden trail with fall trees all around it.




This is my second fall painting, it was at a park and i drew a few things i was looking at. I did alot of mixing in water which made a pretty unique leafy floor. I have been using watercolor paper to do my acrylic art on and i realized that this is why the sky keeps bleeding through my foreground, because i need to invest in some actual acrlic paper (it's much more plastic feeling, instead of paper)

Dragon & Gypsy

I loved painting the dragon, and I also thought the gypsy was one of my best pieces of art. So I wanted to combine them together and make a fun scene. This piece was originally going to be painted on a larger canvas as a gift, and this was a trial size. I am very proud of this piece; it was all done by my imagination and inspired by Adam, Kim and my previous art.

First paintings using acrylics

This is the results of my first time putting acrylic on paper. It actually came out pretty cool seeing as that I have never painted a wave before EVER!! I think i am going to be drawing more ocean scenes in the future. Acrylic is strange to mix with, I only have blue, red, yellow and green. No white or black. It has been truly educational re-learning the color wheel





I was painting this Koi Fish and was amazed how good it was begining to look, i decided to dedicate it to my friend Jaime for her birthday party we were going to that day and gave away my first painting. It is a big step, giving away a piece of art. It is humbling, embarrassing because you dont know if the person will want it or if they feel they have to take it. But her and Stewart seemed genuinely excited about the painting! I painted it on a Macy's box (the white slick box you put clothes in) and I really liked using that surface. The only flaw of this painting is that the ball point I used to draw the painting showed through the paint, and I thought it would be covered up. I also highlighted certain parts of the Koi with Sharpie. So it is also my first "Mixed Media" piece as well.

More Water Color Pencil. The Dragon!

I finally felt i had the ability to do this Dragon. It has been my goal since i began drawing. I am extremely excited about this picture. The shading came out great, I didn't outline the whole picture, just the parts I wanted to emphasize. I painted the background last, which i am sure is against procedure in a regular front to back water color picture.

Water Color Pencils!!

Well, I had no idea when someone hinted that i should try using water color pencils
instead of tubes that it would create this type of difference! I am so pleased with the results. I am finally starting to get the look I have been striving for. This is the same picture but with he pencils you can get more detail in without blurring up the whole image. I didn't outline the girl
the second time but as you can see, the outline really makes
the image pop!

For my next piece I really wanted to get that old school "tattoo flash image" look. I think it came out pretty cool.

Tattoo Paintings

I finally felt up to drawing some serious tattoo style painting. I felt these were some classic images. I got them from a "book of tattoos". Once again, i had a problem with the background. I did the blue first, but I tried to steer around the outlines because the color was so dark, i didn't want it to affect the color of everything else i would paint over it. I ended up messing up the picture by putting way too much blue on the blade of the sword.


I got this book called "Tattoo Bible vol. 2" and it is awesome, so many great images. I wanted to zoom in on this gypsie and just capture her head and put a flower behind her to add some depth. I also did 2 new things. One, I painted the background with old coffee which was supposed to give a cool "old" look to it, but the coffee wasn't black enough. Two, I spent alot of time layering, especially with her scarf on her head and her hair.



I tried once again to make a Koi Fish, much better attempt than my first one! I did alot of layering, no background first, I just went with light to dark. I love the colors of the water and that Japanese water came out great.


My mom always said i need to draw religious images, so this painting is dedicated to her. Our Lady of Guadalupe. I didn't put a thick outline around her, i'm not sure if that was a mistake or not, but she doesn't pop very much. The background rays came out very cool. The layering on her clothes took forever!

This painting is awesome! I poured a bunch of coffee grounds into a cup with water and heated it up. you cant see it too well in this picture, but I layered the coffee 3 times and let it dry each time. It is a great trick, you just need extreme black coffee! I think this picture really captures that old school "sailor Jerry" tattoo style, which is what i was going for.

Advanced Colored Pencil

After getting tired of water coloring i went back to colored penciling to try and learn more about lighting and shading. I was looking at a "fantasy water, land and sky creatures" book and it had pictures of these fish, so i made a scene and colored it. Someone told me outlining things with a prominent color used will pop the image more, so that's what i did. I sort of looks like all the fish are electric!

This image came to me one night when my wife was a week past her due date sleeping on our couch at like 10 at night. I just kept thinking of our little girl and wanted to draw what i saw in my mind. I had the book i mentioned above, the angel's outfit and wings came from that.


This is a picture i have always wanted to capture on paper, the end of "the end times". When St. Michael finally kills Satan! Mary is praying to the side. I used the book above to inspire St. Michael and Mary, but was still my own.



My newest drawing right now is this frog, so cool! i didn't want to paint him, i felt i could capture him better with pencil.

Let the Water Coloring begin!

I was trying to think of what wouldn't be to hard to paint, I decided on flowers. I didn't want to paint landscape, this image is actually out of a tattoo flash book! I combined the yellow flowers and vines to make the picture more interesting. I realized having a plain white background is extremely boring!! I also learned that it is ok to use water, i tried to do the cool, tattoo "spit shading" for this, but it didn't do what i hoped it would.

Attempt #2, I decided to put a background to my painting, out of the same tattoo flash book, I grabbed a few different flowers to paint, but i did my own colors. I also tried to add a Koi Fish, i don't know if it was very necessary. I used water this time for the background and most of the flower stuff. I used a little "spit-shading" on the flowers. I also was told after this painting that when you do water color, you always paint LIGHT TO DARK. that was a huge help!! Probably the best peice of advice I have heard up to this point.




Here are more flowers out of the same book. Painting the background last is not a very good idea! I tried to use the back of the brush to make a "grass-like" background, but it looks like a cat got to it. Flowers were all spit shading, so i could control the amount of water on the brush.


I did this painting much later, it was my present to my wife for our anniversary. My first painting with no previous sketch on the paper. I ended up looing up what the heck a hummingbird looks like up close online! I just went for it! I painted the background before hand and only did parts that i knew would show. Advise: paint the whole paper the same color if you are going to do a background, otherwise it has different colors in the painting where you want the same color (e.g. my hummingbird wing and top of the blue flower!). It's not the best, but it is cool because it is all out of my heart and mind, not another artists!

Fantasy Drawings

Wanted to draw a fantasy world free hand out of boredom!

I got a book on "how to draw a fantasy world and characters" I made up my own scene, just used image ideas from the book

My second attempt

My final attempt i put on water color paper and decided to go for it! I learned a lot about colors and how to layer colors. This was a big undertaking for me. It pushed me to want to really get better at water color. Also, it reminded me i need to practice drawing and just using colored pencil more as well!

Tattoo Style Drawing

My fist attempt at a rose and Japanese clouds (which are very hard to draw!)

A Skull (dedicated to the brothers of SOS)

A Rose (after much more shading practice) and ball point outline

Sparrow

I always wanted to draw a Koi Fish, also my first attempt at drawing water. This image came out of a "history of tattooing" book, this was tattooed on a old Japanese guy

I did this dragon without looking at my paper almost, i just followed my hand with my eyes as I stared at the picture because there were so many lines. I love this dragon head. My wife insisted I stop stretch my ability and make my own dragon body... not too good!

Sitting outside one day, felt colorful and copied a bird, then just decided to sketch around it. people like this one!

Nature and Animals

I had a great book on how to sketch with graphite pencils.

Then I tried to experiment with ball point pen

Wanted to try and draw reflections on the water

My personal favorite of my nature drawings, using ball point and graphite pencils

CAT

This was in a "history of tattoos" book, but it was a realistic tiger drawing

Sea Horse

I thought this martini glass came out amazing, it re-motivated me to keep going

I finally got colored pencils and tried learning at square one, how to draw a circle and apple