Painting Mars Attacks Martian With Daler Rowney Oil Paints

Painting a Mars Attacks Martian with Student grade Daler Rowney oil paints. I attempted to do a demonstration of this and it's the first time painting something out of my comfort zone and it turned out well, even though it remained unfinished at the end of the video, it still looked quite cool.

Check out the video directly on YouTube - Painting Mars Attacks Martian With Oil Paints

Here are the thumbnails that were saved for each video section I filmed on my Panasonic Lumix camera and it shows a nice progression to the near finished version right at the end of the video.

Starting off with the Martians head I used a watered down Burnt Sienna which serves as a nice base colour to sketch with. oil paintings and acrylic paintings I never sketch the drawing beforehand.

Painting in some yellow highlights as a guide for me later on, so I know what parts will have the highlights on the painting.

Green paint is added to the face taking care to try and work out where the shadows will fall on the face with a sort of mid tone green. Also lightening the eyes is needed too.

Trying to make more of the brains structure which I did struggle with because even drawing a brain is actually one of them difficult things to draw. But I was able to blag it and get some spaghetti looking shapes in there that resembled a brain with red oil paint.

Purple is added in the background and thinned out towards the middle of the painting and the eyes lightened further.

Red acrylic in the middle and yellow mixed together help great a cool background colour that is cool on the top and warm on the rest, eyes and teeth are straightened with lighter colours too as well as a grey for the collar base for the helmet.

A Blue/Green for the armour and some darker green for the face to help more with the shadows.

The glass casing for the helmet was created with some of the grey paint I mixed for the rest of the helmet collar and also thicker purple paint was added at the top of the painting.

A pink colour was finally added to the brain in between the red vein strokes and also highlights on the blue/green armour and smaller details like the 2 red lights and the air vent on the collar. Additionally I added some white strokes of paint to the outer glass helmet to attempt some reflections.

A Positive Day = A Productive Day

The power of being positive cannot be underestimated. The power of being upbeat can do wonders for your productivity in any work that you do. I've found that the brighter I look on a given situation the better the outcome and the better I think and feel about the project at hand.

Negative thoughts always plague us of course, we are Human, but it's about stopping those thoughts in their tracks. Also the healthier we are the better we are able to think and do the stuff we love. I know myself that I haven't been eating healthy at all lately and I am doing something about it by taking some vitamin supplements to get me back on track and gradually I'll replace them supplements with good healthy food that is rich with nutrients.

Ways to feel positive

Being positive isn't easy for some people, they have to get rid of the negative things in their life to begin with. For me, being positive is about doing the things I love each day which is usually drawing, painting and creating artistic ideas and then at the end of the day spending time with my kids and Wife.

Sometimes it's the simple things in life that can make us more positive about the situations we find ourselves in. Certain TV shows have had an impact on my life as they draw you away from the mundane, you are able to see other fictional characters take on the drama for an hour at a time and then relax and let your worries and stresses disappear for a bit.

Ways to be productive

Being productive is first about being positive, without that you might not really do much or go far. I don't know how many times I've thought, I know I'll do some painting now in my Shed, only to remember it's a mess and needs tidying. We've all done it I can imagine. The negative thoughts creep in and torment you into not doing anything because of an obstacle.

Instead what you should do if the Shed needs tidying up or something is in your way and preventing you from doing the thing you want to do, in the first instance you should break down that barrier and tidy up the mess otherwise it's always become a block and other excuses may follow, such as it's too cold in there or there's no TV in the shed.

1. Get rid of your distractions. Watching the TV can be great, but sometimes you'll find your watching any old shit on the box and then it becomes a thought like "why can't I find time to do more of the stuff I like?!" 
2. Have a written plan of the stuff you absolutely need to get done in a day, prioritize the important to do stuff and try and get that done first over anything else.
3. Do your emails, facebooking and all other internet distractions at the end of the day, make sure you don't even spend more than 30 minutes on this, if possible as usually it's a big waste of your time.
4. Take regular breaks when you need to, often regular breaks help you split up a daunting work day and helps you focus on resting your eyes, stretching your legs in between work to help bring you back to it after your break. Breaks however are not for you to go off and watch an entire box set of x-files.

I myself recently have struggled with depression and this has dragged me down, but like any negative emotion it can be controlled with good thoughts and ones of hope and the dreams that you want to achieve in life. So no matter how hard you are finding life and the struggles you face on a daily basis, it always good to try and be positive. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you are going to succeed in whatever it is that you want to do.

Shia Labeouf said it best Just Do It!!!

Paint A Spider Micro Painting

Painting a micro paint on a 7cm by 7cm canvas of a spider, the idea with a micro sized painting is to challenge yourself and paint something smaller rather than bigger. I've done a couple of these small acrylic painting challenges on my youtube channel. I posted here about a 31 Evil Clown Micro Painting

I used very cheap acrylic paints for this painting and they were purchased from www.theworks.co.uk which is a uk book shop that has some great budget art supplies that I always tap into.

A glaze of brown acrylic paint watered down is covered over the small canvas.

A thicker less watered down acrylic paint is used to shape the spiders body and legs, I like to keep it very loose at this stage.

A darker brown acrylic paint helps define the body of the spider and makes it more real.

A Crimson red glaze over the canvas which seems a bit heavy handed and probably was, but it helped create another acrylic layer over the top.

Thick black acrylic paint is added to really bring the spider creatures shape back and also correct parts of the legs I wasn't very happy with at all.

A nice thin glaze of yellow acrylic over the lot. And painting the eyes with a viridian green and a thick crimson red for the body of the spider. I was also thinking about some kind of texture on the body that's why there are orange watered spots on the torso.

Adding white spider webs in the background and lighter green highlights on the eyes to make them stand out more, also tried adding veins and other details on the spiders body.

Smaller yellow details behind the webbing and a little bit of under shadow on the legs and it's done.