Day 12 whoops hit a nerve

Alright not only figures today. I thought that even if this is a studyblog it miiight get a little boring watching always the same, and since there are more things to study than just figures and anatomy I am going to tackle more than just this one topic from now on and try to mix it up a little more while still keeping it focused. Daaaamn those two hours are just too little tome to cover everything.

So anyways here the two figures, again two longer ones, that twisty stuff was so hard to figure out right :D

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND some color.

A little little(long) prologue to what this is all about and why I even do them.

I do have this one specific goal in my head which concerns the actual way I want to paint

I want to elmiminate lines as much as I possibly can, I want to be able to design my paintings from the ground up only using value and color. 

So yea thats the goal. plain and simple.

I've been practicing this for the last two months or so intensly, and my latest portfoliowork as well as all the speedpaintings and sketches I've been doing were created only using value and color and I have noticed that this really gives me exactly what I want wich is the possibility to design more creatively and simply come up with cooler stuff. I feel that the connection between my brain and the painting is just much more direct if I can skip the tedious lines part and am able to directly jump into shapes.

The problem I am having with this, however, is that my process is still very very choppy and uncontrolled in the beginning. I literally have no idea how to acually study to become better at it except the obligatory "do it a lot!" which will obviously help but in my head there are still these two things which seem to be key but which are also so incredibly ominous for me at the moment. 

Those things are "good" shapes and "good" brushwork 

I gotta figure those two out......somehow :D 

Now for the "good" brushwork part I can say that efficency seems to be a big part of it, basically meaning to make every brushstroke count so that you don't have to revisit and correct it. If this is also the key to good LOOKING brushwork, I don't knooooooooow. Is Jaime Jones' brushwork looking so friggin good only because it is effective or is there more to it ? I'm gonna figure this out.

OOOOOOH but the "good" shapes one is a difficult one, I just don't know what good shapes are, period.

What I mean by that is not that I am blind to them, I can see paintings of old masters and contemporary artists who are very good at designing their shapes, I actually can see them and say "damn those shapes" BUT I don't seem to be able right now to analyze them well enough to actually determine WHY they are good, thus I don't seem to be able to actually design them myself in a controlled manner, its always kind of hit or miss.

So yea this explains why the process of every new painting I do begins with unbelievably ineffective noodling trying forcefully to push stuff around but not in a creative-cool but more in this exhausting awkward tiring way It must feel like giving birth :D

After this phase is over it's all smooth sailing for the most part, I think I know how to finish a painting but I struggle incredibly setting one up and this is a problem of not having my shit together when it comes to compositional principles and to process itself.

Time to get rid of that problem and for now I have no idea how to do this except for trying to repeat the process of starting a painting as often as possible for the compositional aspects of the problem, meaning SOLID sketches, speedpainitngs and whatnots

For the brushwork problem I figured it might be a good idea to simply do quick photostudies in general, basically leaving me only with the brushwork since composition, color and vale will be already there.

Now as a start I decided to just jump into it, drilling right to the problem, exposing that motherfucker and I have to say booy did I get there quickly. 

Here are two  30 minute screencap studies from "Legend" an oh my god are they awful :D They absolutely show my problem, the total inability to make efficient and good looking brushstrokes, it's just a mess. The values and the colors are mostly there but boooooy does the brushwork suck. 

I don't know if that is actually a good exercise yet but I for sure know that it tackles one of my major problems in a direct way, so I guess this is a good sign. For now those studies are on the daily schedule then :)