Practices 24/25: Painting Hands, Landscapes and Hair

Violin: I loved the purple light on the wood, and also the distinctive shape of the instrument. The values in the object were not particularly interesting to me, besides the highlight, so I used textures to add something else to the smooth surface.

Onigiri: During my trip to Japan, I ate plenty of onigiris from convenience stores. I thought it would make sense to make a little one of these. It was simple in principle, but it made me think about how I could create the rice grains with brushes. Eventually, it was a combination of textured brushes and strokes, along with variations of tones in which the background seems darker and more saturated, and the grains on top are almost white.

Hands: Well, these definitely were a bit more complex than the previous ones, but I truly wasn't trying to make it complex. I was just listening to YouTube, and while getting distracted, I ended up adding more and more details on top of each other—playing with colours that were not precisely in the reference, yet trying to stay consistent with the values, as I found this last one key to keeping the volume of the form while also creating interesting combinations of colours.

Landscape: This particular reference brought back some nice memories from my visit to Japan—the blue, saturated sky, the simple homes made of wood, the fresh air, so clean, so in order. The way I approached this practice was by blocking everything I saw in the reference that had dark values (some walls and stones) and focusing on understanding the water in the river. In there, I saw shadows made blue as a reflection of the sky, green textured tones, and a very distinctive highlight on the right side. Of course, the process was more complex, but that was, in principle, what I managed to see.

Some artists have asked me how I approach environment design or painting. I don’t have a straightforward answer. I guess I look at a few things when constructing them—like where the horizontal line is, how this affects the perspective of the shapes in the picture, and how the values are distributed across the composition, like the example I just shared. But since landscapes don’t all follow the same structure, this approach might shift slightly across practices. Nevertheless, I’ll pay more attention so I have something valuable to share soon.

Wig: I'm assuming it's a "wig", so this was indeed challenging. I believe that in the first minutes or hours, the process of painting allows me to understand the subject—through lines, values, colours, and so on. I'm trying to guess what its constitution is through these lenses. After that's roughly done, and I feel my study looks similar enough to the reference, I begin to make changes—pushing shapes, colours, and values.

But when these subjects are too complex, I wrestle through the process just trying to understand. In this example, I tried to nail the look through the lines and silhouette shapes, but I wasn’t convinced, so I kept a few lines and decided to move forward by working with values through colour. I aim for simplicity at first, guessing where the darker tones—cast by the curls—will fall. From that point, I work into the shadows within the shadow, and then into the highlights.

Once the volume felt decent enough to me, I spent a fair amount of time adding texture and using a broad range of values to capture the complexity of the original reference. In my opinion, to get that realistic hair render, it’s important to smooth the shape silhouettes, because the structure of the hair isn't solid like an object—it’s made up of strands. It’s a bit tricky to explain, but I hope I’ve made my point. If not, feel free to ask.

Glass of Water: The subject in this one was simple, yet the reflection of the water throughout the glass was a bit difficult to understand, as I assume it was mirroring a room I couldn’t see. So I focused on keeping the shape of the values as they were presented in the picture, and afterward I just pushed them a bit with strokes.

Process Video: https://youtu.be/u90mq75klzk

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5 days left for the campaign of my book Life in Every Sketch. Yesterday, a good friend of mine backed the campaign—almost a month after I announced it. It’s not very clear to me that saying something a few times is enough to spread awareness about this special thing going on here.

So, if you’ve read pretty much all my posts over the last few days, I apologize for the insistence on my part—but I don’t think people care too much about what one does, and that’s why I don’t mind repeating myself until someone starts to consider supporting.

Is it because my art/book/product isn’t good enough? I don't know. But I’d like to think people are just too busy living their lives, giving little to no attention to anything that doesn’t solve one or two main problems in their day-to-day. I think this logic applies to one's art too, in case you feel you’re not good enough. Remember, it’s just hard to get people’s attention these days. Maybe it’s always been this hard.

Nevertheless, I’m very grateful to everyone who has decided to back this campaign, and I hope I’m worthy of their support. I strive to be useful. Thank you for being one of those people.

Signed book + exclusive print:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1906838062/the-art-of-ramonn90?secret_reward_token=5629261e

Unsigned book + exclusive print:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1906838062/the-art-of-ramonn90?secret_reward_token=89737f38