Planes, Trains, and Plantains: The Story of Mark Badoy

[Mark Badoy]

Live model oil painting from today. Approx 2 hrs. FIGHTING THE URGE to tweak it. Stop it, hand, it is done.

[Mark Badoy]

Here's some ChOW stuff. And I drew myself based on BUTTERMONSTER's Disgaea experience.

12:47 PM - Buttermonster: MARK BADOY is now lady samurai class
12:48 PM - Buttermonster: mainly to learn some skills, might put it back to warrior and put shoes in every slot because you are FAT AND SLOW

[Mark Badoy]

I wish I remembered whose sketchbook I was looking at, but someone (I will find you!) swore by china markers. So I bought a couple and tried them out. They're like big boy crayons, I absolutely love them. I just have one minor complaint: I can't erase my marks. So I either need to be very careful when using them or be okay with showing my flaws, but Christ, it's worth it; china markers are fantastic. They're something to use for now as I work up to charcoals, since my body still can't handle them. For me, working with charcoal is like constantly scratching on a chalkboard. One day, I'll get over it. Until then, I literally salivate when I use charcoals, my body gets twisted, and I feel physically ill; it's agonizing.

The first sketch is from photo reference, just testing the china marker out. The other two are life drawing from earlier today.

[Mark Badoy]

A new purple painting from today because Breaking Bad.
And because I need to focus more on values so I limited my palette.
Two hour pose.

Also, I took slightly better pictures of the other two oil portraits from earlier.

[James Thomas]

Sweet traditional paintings! i like the blocky look, keeps it orignal and captures the essence of the painting itself nicely! similar to when u do thumbnails in digital, its always handy to know when to stop and when to proceed great job!

[Mark Badoy]

A Faux: Hey, thank you! The blocky look is partly because of style (I like visible brush strokes ) and partly because of time constraints. I've always wanted to paint realistically but my technique was never up to par. And now that my technique's better than it's ever been, I'm glad that things like time constraints exist. Otherwise, I'd get too obsessed with details and lose a lot of the fluidity and expression.

Here's some life drawing from the past few days. I'm struggling a lot for some reason. It might be some kind of burnout, my mind telling me to give the figure a break, or self-doubt setting in. Instead of giving in, I've been attacking my sketchbooks, drawing faster than I can think, and digging my china markers into the paper. I'm very happy with the results. Whether you notice it or not, I get way less frustrated with the latter sketches.

[Mark Badoy]

Attempted to paint in full color again (she had awesome pink hair) and I got overwhelmed. I'd like to blame it on hives or last night's two-hour sleep, but I just need to work on values before I try that again.

Also, the figure is still making me insane, so I thought I'd give the IOW and EOW a try. My composition is weak right now anyways. I think some landscape practice will knock me into place.
I've tried thumbnails before but never to this extent. I love the progress I've made with this, so I'll plan similar thumbnail page layouts for each new piece I make.

[Mark Badoy]

Some EOW #193 (Venetian Queen's Floating Palace) progress with my chosen thumbnails. My favorites were #15 and #6. And a couple of timed Albert Bierstadt studies.

I'm mainly using the studies to focus on Bierstadt's temperature, lighting, and composition. I timed myself on them so I wouldn't spend too much time obsessing over unnecessary details. To help myself "see" the images better, I used the max filter on some of the studies (example at the bottom) for five minutes, then removed the filter to finish the study.

I'm really happy with the way the thumbnails of my EOW sketches and Bierstadt studies have turned out, which means my temperature, lighting, and composition is improving. I don't know how I'm still awake. Time to crash.

[Mark Badoy]

Here's how the Venetian Queen's Floating Palace and Spaceship Wreck turned out with WIPs. I particularly love my palace but I can tell it's not quite there yet. I will tweak it if I can find the time.

[Forthekids]

I really like your water color paintings
Why do you grey scale before you add color?

[Mark Badoy]

Forthekids: Hey thanks! If you're talking about the female portraits, those were done in oils. But I'd definitely love to try out watercolor some day. Whenever I can, I start out in black and white so I can make sure my values (lights, darks, etc) are good. If a picture looks dull in black and white, then it's going to look pretty dull in color too.

Speaking of lady portraits, here's some paintings from the last two weeks. The woman with the shorter darker hair was done yesterday. Like the others, these took about two hours each. Still struggling with colors and values but I'm getting there. These last two were way less stressful than the others because I planned out the painting with a pencil sketch on canvas before slapping on oils. It's so much easier to only worry about colors and values, instead of colors, values, and form. I used to lay out a foundation in pencil when I first started painting. Don't know why I stopped. I guess to save time? Shortcuts are dangerous, kids!

[Forthekids]

I guess whenever I try digital art I'll do it in black and white first thats sounds like a good idea Thank You

And I like those 2 new ones you posted

[Mark Badoy]

I kinda got better at handling charcoal. But now they make me want to vomit when I touch them. Here's some of my last charcoal drawings.

[Mark Badoy]

Some sketches in pencil, pen, and china marker. Sometimes when I get bored with a pose, I find something interesting about it and crank out studies until the pose is over. Might as well try to understand the pose instead of struggling to render something uninteresting.

[Mark Badoy]

More sketches in pencil and china marker.
Also, cute boy's got a point. I wish Jasmina was here.

[Mark Badoy]

Sketches of Lauren, who I'll (inadvertently and unintentionally) be painting twice over the next couples of weeks. On much larger canvases than the small portraits I've been posting. It will be an interesting experience.

[Mark Badoy]

Whenever I have absolutely nothing better to do (like waiting for my computer to load, waiting for figure drawing to start, or when I'm microwaving leftovers), I whip out a sketchbook and start drawing whatever's around me. Here's a small example of that. And some drawings of ladies.

[Mark Badoy]

Finally some stuff from July's Austin Drink-n-Draw and August's Dr. Sketchy Austin.

I had more stuff but they magically vanished from my hard drive. I should probably take a break and stop bumping this thread for a while anyways. I'll post more later.

[Mark Badoy]

Sketches in china marker.

[Mark Badoy]

Some sketches of Lauren in china marker from a couple of weeks ago.

[Mark Badoy]

Graphite and china marker sketches from Tuesday.

[Mark Badoy]

Full pose in china marker and a few portraits in pencil. I really loved doing these. Getting a lot more comfortable drawing.

[Mark Badoy]

A couple of years ago, my professor gave us an assignment to draw an ideal male face and an ideal female face. The point of the assignment was to get us comfortable drawing a certain type of face/head so if we ever had to draw a head in the future then we would remember our ideal faces and recreate those. It sounded amazing in theory, but our curriculum was insane. We were given very few anatomy lessons and absolutely no life drawing sessions. Also, the assignment was to be completed in a weekend. The following Monday, we were "tested" by given a blank sheet of paper and told to draw our ideal heads without reference. Since very few of us had extensive experience drawing people in the past, most of us failed. Who can recreate a face after just a couple of minutes/hours worth of sketching?

Anyways, these were done from photo reference. I was watching a movie and found this gorgeous girl, so I just kept taking nonstop screenshots. I remembered my absurd assignment and decided to give it a long run try. I'll see how much of her face I can absorb into my "default" or "ideal" female head.

[Mark Badoy]

A couple more from last Sunday, Monday, and earlier today. I was starting to hate china markers because I'm losing control of the values. Then I realized that I can just sharpen them with a knife and it brings out a huge range of values. I'm working these things down to nubs. There's some extreme drawing going on here.

[Mark Badoy]

Portrait of Tasha. 8 x 10 in. Painted from life at AVAA. Approx 2 hrs.