First fresco studies

I have began a mural painting course last year, specifically fresco painting, and this year we have started with the actual painting practice, putting the lime plaster layers and painting. Each student has a 1m2 wall on which to practice, and for now we've been focusing on copying other paintings to get the hand of the technique, which I found is surprisingly intuitive and easy to work with. These are 2 of the studies I did, one after michelangelo and the other after verrochio.

Landscape study II

Another study, this time on Art Rage. Turned out to be much harder than I thought, and the end result isn't quite what I expected. Wanted more of a loose brush work and a faster painting, but turned out pretty loaded in the end.

Landscape study

Semi-quick study of a landscape on photoshop so to not (completely) forget how to paint with the program. Will try different things with the next one, maybe on art rage for the painterly effect.

Abstract Study 1

Another study, this time (almost) monochromatic, of about 30 minutes on photoshop.

Androide Jonas 1.0 Beta

Supposed to be a study of photoshop's brushes but it reminded me of Andrew Jones' paintings halfway into it so I went on to try it out. While it's extremely fun to do, once you get things more defined it gets really hard to know where to go and what you should add and what you shouldn't. I'm posting it even though it's unfinished, but I pretend to do more of these paintings to see how it evolves. PS CS3

Woodcut # 8

For the last woodcut I decided to do something special, a technique I wanted to try since I saw it for the first time on an old engraver's book. It was a portrait by Albrecht Dürer using a technique called chiaroscuro, meaning something like light and shadow (aka reduction block print). The person I used for the portrait is also a very special person for me.

I did the study on photoshop, based of a photograph. I painted each color on a different layer, overlaying (not the layer effect) the darker colors above the lighter ones so that the silhouette would remain flawless. I then printed each color separately, black and white with a regular printer and used it as a base to carve by transfering the drawing to the wood with thinner (the solvent transfers the toner from the xerox to the surface you're transfering to). The separate colors shown up above are the ones made with photoshop. For this technique you have to print all copies of each respective color, as many as you want, at once before transfering the next layer of the drawing. You have to do this since you're using the same matrix for every color.

New ways..

Technology is amazing. A "cheap" program and a mouse. I decided to test the possibilities of digital painting these past few weeks and the results proved to be surprising. I started with the painting I originally had on gouache, scanned it and painted over it on Art Rage. It's a huge difference, although it does have similarities. But specially the ease to start and close, no cleaning, no preparing. I don't know when I'll be back to the original one but it won't be till I'm done with this one.
PS: some of the strings of hair on her face and the body of the kimono was made with my new Genius Tablet. :)

Second step

First step

That's it. ;)