Landscapes are in oils, elephants in charcoal and the others are in graphite www.richardpratt.deviantart.com for my more "commercial" stuff, a lot more to come for that one, setting up an official website soon www.pendran.deviantart.com for my more personal stuff - but I must say that the brief amounts of "commercial" stuff have already given rise to a whole new range of ideas for my personal shit
Those are absolutely beautiful... I love the way you've done the sky in both of those colored pieces. A realistic sky is something I'd really love to be able to accomplish. Two words come to mind when I see those: beautiful and talent
Thanks a lot I love painting skies, gives me such a buzz when it falls together The way I do my skies: If you use oils, get a wall painting brush(one of the thick chunky ones) and dip it in turps, then soak your canvas in it(makes it a lot faster to apply the paint and makes the paint a lot more manoeuvrable) . I apply the darker colours first, which will leave scratchy brush marks in it. To get rid of these I add bits of white until they disappear, and then I bring out the highlights. Then I clean all the paint and turps off my brush with a towel and gently blend the colours together with the same brush by holding it just above the surface of the paint. Circular motions work best. After all is blended, add the darkest darks with a palette knife and blend the inner edges in with the same soft circular motion. Highlights work nicely with the palette knife too, if you check in the top left corner of the river scene. Keep doing the last 2 bits until you've got a nice bit of depth in the sky - but don't overwork it or it'll just be too smooth. Unless of course that's the look you're going for S'pose you can work light to dark as well, doesn't really matter with oils. I just find it more natural to go dark to light
