Sometimes, you look back at a drawing or painting and realize you don’t like it. You realize you did a terrible job on it. Sometimes it’s three years later. So you spend a few hours working on it again, late at night. And suddenly, you feel that passion for painting return, and it shows in your brush strokes. I can’t say the piece is finished now, but it is better, and it is getting close to being finished. There are some symmetry issues to be corrected, but otherwise, I’m really liking this piece now. I was going for something dark and scary, but alien when I first did the piece. I think the new version is much closer to what I wanted. I would say you be the judge, but I’m on a new kick as an artist. I don’t really care what “you” think anymore. I paint for my own pleasure now, not for approval. And when I woke up this morning and took another look at this piece on my monitor, I said to myself, “Yeah dude, that’s bad ass.” That’s all the approval I need.

Original -> Rework -> Final Rework

I made some more progress on two pieces I’ve been working on for a while now. First, I added more detail and revised details of my alien concept sculpt, and second, I added more details and began painting my Lizardman’s head.  Here are three images showing the results:

I bought a block of Chavant Non Sulferated Plasteline clay about 10 years ago, with the intentions of getting into sculpting fantasy maquettes. 10 years, and it sat on my bookshelf collecting dust! Well, last week I finally started. Better late than never eh? I built my first armature, and am looking forward to spending some time actually sculpting this weekend. The picture below is of the armature about 50% finished. I created the armature based on a method used by the Shiftlett brothers, which makes use of floral wire wrapped around the main aluminum wire to give it added strength and more surface area for the clay to adhere to.

My First Armature