Portraits!

So, school has begun and I've hit the ground running. Being a fourth year painting major, I've decided to dedicate my entire fourth year studio practice to my project, The Soothsayer of Pontis--no surprise there. The surprise lies in the fact that my instructors have given me the go ahead and approval to do this! Being a digital illustrator in a fine art major in ACAD is...something of a novelty. The instructors often don't know what to do with me, but at the very least, they do seem to enjoy what I do! I'm the only artist in the big white studio space doing figurative work... At least I get kudos for being 'breaking the mold' in the fine art department. Which has a sweet sort of irony to is when everyone else seems to thing non-representational abstraction is so bold and 'avant garde'. I appreciate it, but it's hard to be refreshing with your work when everyone else is doing very similar things for very similar reasons, with very similar influences. At first, I was really unhappy being a fish out of water, and pined deeply for the VisComm majors. However, in Fine Art, I've nestled myself into a very comfortable niche which no other classmates have been able to come close to. Anyone else who's started to dabbel in similar mediums with illustrative narratives seem to be immediately compared to me and my work by instructors, and this is a very good place to be. It's good to be 'first'. But it's especially good to have such open minded, supportive instructors--especially with the existence of such strong contentious rivalries between the fine art and VC departments. The painting department has been very accommodating for me and my practice (to the point that I even have a school monitor installed in my studio space! Which is apparently a first for a painting major.)

 These first few weeks of school have set a very fabulous pace for the rest of the year, and I hope to continue running with it.

Anyways, enough banter! I've been spending all my time working on these portraits as a way to introduce the entire Pontis cast: Here's the sketches and the flats. Tomorrow, I start painting them up!

I hope everyone else is doing well! :] Cheers!

Progresso

I tried to paint something that didn't involve a character's face. That owl seriously does not count.

Some progress shots if that's what you dig:

I wished I had more WIP shot of the room being painted. But I kinda plowed through it and failed to save any jpgs of the progress as I went along :T sorry about that.