Skylander_02

OMG.....this guy has so much detail on him, burned me out fast, but was still fun.

Skylander_still-life paint_01

I need more practice with digital so I am painting all of my girlfriend's Skylanders. They are fun things to paint and play with. This one was done in Painter in about 1hr 45 mins. Enjoy.

Digital practice_9/15/2014

I thought I would give this lady a paint through. I liked her sketch for a new illustration I am working on. It is weird to go from sketch to finish image, I don't know why exactly but I think you iron out all of the possibilities that the sketch contains. Anyway this was done in  Corel Painter in about 2 hours. Enjoy.

Made a shade box for my tablet- 9/25/2014

I decided a few months ago that I won't be doing traditional plein air painting anymore, it is just a burden to keep the supplies fresh and clean, while avoiding the extreme heat here in the desert, especially with acrylics. ( don't leave a stay-wet palette in the hot car!) So I switched to using my Samsung tablet, but the glare was overwhelming even in the shade, so I built a portable shade box for it and the results are far better than I thought could happen.

Supplies: 1 old amazon box, I spray painted the inside a flat dark grey, black could work too
                8-  10 pound velcro strips
                1 old tripod easel

Lamp_light_02 Process

I never really show my process since I never felt too sure of one until now. So I will show you my process from Ideation to final. My workflow now is Traditional-Digital-Traditional. Mostly I do thumbnails on paper then put all of the composing, value and color roughs digitally, then I print or project up my line art,  wet mount on to a piece of drywall and paint in acrylic until I feel I have gotten what I wanted with real paint.  The last steps are scanning and edits  made digitally.  I like this process because it is so fast and versatile and most of all cheap. If anything should go wrong during a project, I can go between digital and traditional media. Most of all is that I have a real painting when I am done, and that is by far the most rewarding part of painting I feel.

Time well spent.

Hey everyone.
I guess I should say yes, I am alive and well, but a changed person indeed over these last six months of being a college graduate back home. Which I will dive deeper into in the following post, but I thought I should dump a lot of these scans off here, to clean off my plate and start refreshed. I have been attending life drawing/painting workshops, attending classes, constantly studying, always touching my sketchbook and even going so far as to figure myself out since leaving school after six years straight. Before I get all of you tired of reading, please check out my first website ( Jacob-A-Sweet.com ) I just published tonight, as well as going through this post's uploads.

Thank you for your time,
Jacob Sweet

p.s.
 Finding a fun, stress free way to paint with acrylics that gives you the results you want has been such a B!$%#!!  :D
       

Graduate Review, 2013 Chuck Pyle

Hey Chuck,

As you know I just received my Mid-Point Review a few weeks ago and have been pushing myself to work on the areas you and Julie Downing have mentioned to me. From looking at my present work and after meeting Craig Nelson last week, I am going to work my ass off this last semester to make the highest quality & most finished pieces I can at my present skill level. I spoke with teachers and professionals who recently graduated, and my plans for now are to finish this semester, graduate, return home, rest up, save money for a month or two while training myself further and developing a solid portfolio so I can then (Whenever I choose which school I want to go too) enter a school part time for my masters degree while working freelance for illustration. I found this to be the best compromise to the two sided answers I got from so many people. At this moment though...I need a rest from all the planning and training, I want to go home and watch a full season to go by, I have been in school constantly for six years straight...I need a rest.  Knowing me though, the max I could ever rest is maybe two weeks hahah. I will be attending more professional workshops with my heros as you mentioned to me, and take a class or two at Art Center at Night program to keep myself motivated and challenged while also building my online presence. I really enjoy concept art/visual development, but I decided at the moment to push myself to the higher quality work that I really lack in my portfolio, as you said in my review, "It will be a hard path, but the rewards will be great."