Light & Magic, alternate colors

As I mentioned in the previous post, Light & Magic was one those paintings where I had a difficult time deciding on a final color scheme (in the end I decided on the blue underwater look I posted here on the site and the fiery one in the top left corner of the image above - which is available on DeviantArt).

Usually when I make a painting I work in grayscale so that I don't let colors distract or influence me into different directions. I know a lot of other artists out there are probably against working this way and would prefer to let color guide them through the artistic process, but I usually find it too time consuming and distracting.

Working in grayscale is more like painting with light, as all I really worry about is shading and highlighting. Once I am happy with the overall tone and lighting in a painting is when I will typically begin to experiment with adding in color. Most of the time I will set up a matrix like the image above and I will make dozens of color alternates before slowly narrowing my choices down to a winner. 

And I don't really even drink coffee…

Source: Bodum

Clearing off the cobwebs

Hello... Is there anyone still out there? It has certainly been a long time since my last update... So long in fact that entire portions of the last website had begun to break and fall apart... Rotting at the seams and becoming covered in webs... Sorry about that!

I have been wanting to do something new with the site now for quite some time, but hadn't really had a chance to do anything. But I've now decided that I should turn the site into a more open dialogue between myself and all of you. As part of that, I'm going to simplify the site down to the bare basics and focus on the artwork and these blog posts. In regards to the blog, I plan to post about my artwork progress, design inspirations both online and offline, and general life updates. I'm not going to make a promise to update on a daily basis... But hopefully more than a few times in a year! ;)