Wanted to continue my portrait practice but start transitioning back into paintings. I'm naturally a painter but I force myself to draw more so that I don't always lean so heavily on my stronger painting abilities. I did that for a very long time and it was certainly helpful for kickstarting my career but maybe not the most beneficial for improving my skills.
But now back to painting! These turned out a bit better than I had expected. It feels great to be seeing/feeling some notable improvements in these. They've been a struggle for me for so damn long but they're starting to get to a level that I'm happy with them. Always further to go and more stuff to try, but I think I can get there.
BTW, for the artists out there, all these were painted in Clip Studio Paint. I'm stubborn and stuck in my ways and pretty much only used Photoshop for my entire digital painting life. But when I found CSP it just clicked so so quickly. The way the brushes are able to seamlessly paint and blend is something I've never managed to replicate in Photoshop. So yeah. It's also damn cheap. I don't have an affiliate link or anything but you should try them out.
Oh and here's a fun imaginative sketch I did as well, just to get back into the sketching flow:
I'm not sure if it's an interesting enough piece to finish but I had fun doing it at least. Speaking of sketching, I'm thinking of doing #MaySketchADay this year. I need to crank out a bunch of ideas for paintings and forcing myself into a daily routine of sketching would be a good way to make that happen.
That's all for now. Thanks again for being here and for supporting me. It means so much to me. Also thanks to everyone who responds to these emails (yes you can do that, they go straight into my inbox). I love how personal and real emails like this feel. I'm not just blasting my art out into the social media void.