Sketches and Studies by Craig Houghton - [11/16]

[entdroid]

Nice bellybuttons Craig! It's kinda curious how many different kinds of em are out there!

[Craig Houghton]

Jair - thx for coming by. navels, yup

bakatron - I appreciate it. THanks.

entroid - After button sketching for a while it hit me that 80 percent of (in shape) people all have the same upperlip w/ creases below folding under, but in that 20 percent margin, anything goes.

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a slightly caricatured no ref acrylic sketch using Bob Kato's techniques from his gnomon painting vids.




and a bunch of sketchbook crap that I wouldn't normally post, but it's been a busy week



Craig

[Craig Houghton]

Here’s a detail of the acrylic sketch. Kato’s method involves a quick and very loose underdrawing and then a series of easily digested steps. It’s a good time.


I'm about to post the drawings for an acrylic/oil portrait I'm doing, but I think the sb is about to go to another page, and I'd rather start off the next one with that since it should be a longer project.

Not counting sketchy stuff, it's been a while since I took time to do a portrait.

-Craig

[@work]

Inspiring sketchbook you got here !

[Craig Houghton]

@work - many thanks

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Here’s a shot of the relatively new (changed rooms a couple of months back) studio'ish corner. Offscreen there’s more junk to the left and right and paints and pastels in shelves and under beds, and there’s canvases tucked away trays of paper and a shelf with every sort of wood encased medium imaginable. I love supplies. I agree that you don't need tons of crap to make art, but it's fun, and the exploration is good for ya.



and, a WIP

I’m starting an oil over acrylic portrait of my girlfriend. I’ll do a step-through once it’s finished. Well, I will if it comes out half-way decent. It’s about time for a more detailed portrait.

rougher drawing on super smooth rag. i'd forgotten how forgiving it is. you can erase down the the paper like it's nothing


then, refined contour drawing right over that using lightbox — I’m not going for a drawing here, just looking for confident lines to guide the initial block in


out of curiosity, I changed the rough to blue and contour to red to see how different they really were. They weren’t, really, but there's some slight feature placement and face shape diffs.


I applied three or four sanded layers of acrylic gesso to my canvas. it’s 14×18. here’s a before and after


I then transferred my drawing exactly as is (that was the point of the contour) onto the toned canvas by printing it in five sheets (in order to enlarge), rubbing black pastel on the back, and pressing that into the canvas like I was using graphite paper. The fifth paper, with just the face, was used to transfer the facial details so that I didn’t have to worry about the overlap from the 4 papers.



Then, I sealed the drawing in with a layer of matte medium (otherwise the next step will be harder to control). It smears the charcoal a bit, but the lines are perfectly intact, and that gave it some character. In the morning I’ll sand that back to keep things smooth and then I’ll do the acrylic underpainting. After that comes more acrylic and then the oils for a smooth finish — I hope.

Thanks for looking!
Craig

[Mitchell]

wow you have a whole art store in your studio. nice.

the portrait is looking pretty good so far. Careful on the forms of the eyes, they are beginning to read a little flat. Maybe you could post the ref and I could give you a better critique.

keep it up mate.

[Craig Houghton]

Skeiff - Many thanks. I'll keep a close eye on the peepers. I may end up juist glazing them back into the skull once things dry tomorrow.

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these are all crappy photos with my in-reach old cam

acrylic underpainting


moving into the oils


color where the form turns and lighter lights


the pupils won't stay as lumps of coal, but here's where I have to leave off for the evening. I used an alkyd medium so this should be more or less dry by the time I get back to it tomorrow for round 3.


-Craig

[Craig Houghton]

If anyone happens to have the latest issue of ImagineFX, my custom brushes and samples made it to the DVD that ships with the mag. They even used one of my digi's as a background graphic for their Painter download area in the DVD's menu program. It's not the biggest deal in the world, but I'm happy to see it.

It's issue 15. http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754329...-issue-15.html

-Craig

[Craig Houghton]

moving along slowly

[entdroid]

Hey Craig, that portrait is coming along nicely. Can't wait to see it finished!

Crits: try to pump the saturation a bit, specially in the shadow to light transitions, and you're "gray-ing" it a lot in the lighter areas too. Try to add some stronger reds/pinks in the nose and cheeks as well.

[Craig Houghton]

entdroid - many thanks for the feedback. it's much appreciated

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thus far wip -- the hair is next

(grabbed my nicer camera from the car today)



-Craig

[blanquish]

whoa, paint is looking nice on the last one!
one thing i notice is the allignment of the eyes, and angle of her eye on the right side.
some construction lines might help maybe.
\besides that it looks nice, i like the hat thingy on her head

[Craig Houghton]

thx for pointing that out. I think I see it now. It's amazing that one can be blind to obvious things like that while working on the piece (even when looking at it in the mirror etc). I think I can fix the eye shape thing by edging up the lower eyelid on the lefthand side of that eye and lowering the right side a tiny bit.

Then again, she might just be a bit asymmetrical

btw, the dramatic difference between the last pic and the others is basically (outside of some refinement and the hat) all due to the change of camera. the other one left it washed out and gray. I hate not being able to scan larger paintings.

-Craig

[bunny]

Oh my god, I can't get over those freakin' bellybuttons. They're pretty awsome Any particular reason why you're focusing on that particular...um...facet of of human anatomy?

Awoms work with this here portrait: http://leversandpulleys.com/artblog/...ki_paint_6.JPG

Keep it up

[Craig Houghton]

bunny - When you get your eye right up to them they're pretty fascinating. I suppose I like em because they're a familiar landmark, but, if asked, most people couldn't describe their own or their friends without looking. many thanks

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I may never manage to get a decent picture of this. It's difficult to do so indoors, and the weather has been crappy. nonetheless





-Craig

[mrpank]

ho ho She's hot!

[Blade-14]

Thats one super well equipped studio u have there!, all i've got is my pencil, paper, scanner, knees and ps oh and a g-tablet as well but it's really too small to draw with, plus i suck at that too

i can't believe how much talent is on thi site, im reall glad joined up

[entdroid]

Really nice Craig!!!
I gotta say tho, that the color of the dark area between her lips is bothering me a bit... it's a bit too black, looks like she's been sucking ink or something
Also, maybe the cheeks and nose could be darker in value and a bit more saturated (lemme see some REDS!!!! ) in hue, IMO. And then maybe some highlights? Coz skin's a bit dull at the moment. Hat could use some color variation too...
Hope it helps a bit!

[mentler]

Fun to watch your progress.

[bunny]

Just another note on the bellybuttons - when I first saw them I was reminded of Tools "schism" music video, with the alien-guy-thing pulling out the other alien-guy-thing's ear, and the whole piece of it's head comming out like a sculpture puzzle.

Just sayin'

Yeah it's interesting them little folds and wrinkles of the body we live with and don't quite think about, ahehhe.

[designboot]

very nice progress in last painting

[destinyapocalypse]

thıs ıs reall

[Craig Houghton]

mrp - you bet

blade - thx. and, extra supplies don't help much, but they're certainly fun

entd - your suggestions are my roadmap to done-ness. many thanks. unfortunately I'm not there yet, but they're working

mentler - gracias. good to have you around.

bunny - i pull things like that out of my navel all the time...

design & destiny - many thx

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just this for now

WIP. so long as I don't leave em' I'll opaque over this tomorrow w/ color (for now he gets a pinkish ribbon because, well, it's his favorite color)





Thanks for looking!
Craig

[blanquish]

the last concept looks really cool, like the 2nd version more.
nice folds

[entdroid]

I agree with the 2nd version being better. I love the textures in that one, a fun character too!
I'm really glad you find my suggestions helpful Craig. I really think the one thing that could bring your work to a state of pure awesomeness is that you let go and jump over the edge with colors

[Craig Houghton]

blanq - gracias

entdroid - many thx. strong colors. will do!

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ok. here's something very, very different. I made an incredibly low-tech super-messy animation just to give it a try. It's done in the animators medium of choice, vine charcoal! And, I rerendered each frame to make it extra-jumpy!

Click to watch Navel (a very navel orange)

it's not for the squeamish I suppose (but, hey, it's just fruit, right?)



did I mention that Navel took me 150 individually drawn frames?

-Craig

[DARAF]

It has been very fun to look through your sketchbook. Thanks for sharing. And keep at the awesome studies.

[Craig Houghton]

DARAF - Many thanks.

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just some primitive tom-foolery from this evening, dagnabbit

[Fishspawn]

Yo. Lol, i love those pages with all of the navels.. really disturbing yet cool. Thanks for the process on the painting of the girl, was very helpful to see all the steps you do. Keep up the good work.

[entdroid]

Craig the Navel animation is just awesome!! Super cool Please tell me you'll do another one someday!
I like the bunny dood on the last sketch, he looks really creepy!
Keep 'em coming!