Summer Update, Part II.

It's been quite a while now since my last post but, it's been a busy summer! I went to Beverly, Anya came to Leicester, I went home to Devon, we went to France, and then I moved back up to Leicester again. But in-between all that, I did find some time for art.

I lugged the laptop around with me and was able to get some painting done. I've been doing a lot of value studies because it's one of the fundamentals I struggle with the most. And faces because...they're just a step up from sphere's, right?

I'm quite pleased with how they turned out and what I learned. I took a couple of hours to paint the self portrait below and I feel like I'm improving. I'm still too slow though, hopefully speed will come in time.

I also had a lovely week in France visiting chateaus, family, kayaking and drinking too much wine. The first chateau we visited was the chateau de Chambord. It was absolutely breathtaking and a brilliant day out. But I mention it here because they have a new type of guide available. They call it the 'histopad' and I found it really interesting. 

It's basically an iPad mini running an app, that functions as an interactive map and an augmented reality guide. So it shows you where you are, you point it at stuff and it tells you about what you're looking at. But it also shows you a 360° recreation of the room you're standing in, so you can visualize what it looked like when it was in use during the 16th century. You can even examine some of the 3D objects in the room and get an explanation of how it would have been used. I was really impressed, it's the future man!

My nomad came with me to France and I did a bit of sketching when I had time. The chateau de Chanonceau was particularly sketchogenic so I tried to do it justice and spent a fair bit of time there. I finished the drawing at home and it turned out pretty good.

A photo posted by Jonah Holden-Maillard (@jonahsketch) on Aug 26, 2015 at 6:25am PDT

And finally, I finished that gun I was working on, the AMT Hardballer model. I took my time with it and learned something new at every stage of the process, including Substance Painter which I'm rather taken with.

I put the finishing touches on my new website - artofjonah.com, so you can have a closer gander at the AMT Hardballer there if you like. I'd love some feedback on the gun or the website!

Oh and I also finished that FMP prototype I was talking about in my last post, but that probably deserves a post on it's own. 

For now I'm out of time, I'm about to jump on a train to London. I'm off to Industry Workshops for the weekend! Maybe see some of you there :)