The Panda With a Pearl Earring Part 4: The Finished Product!

Hello Jammers, Arctic here!

I have excellent news! At last, I have completed my masterpiece that I've been working on for the last two months!

Now, if you're not familiar with what is going on- allow me to get you all caught up! For the last two months, I have been working on making a masterpiece and showing you all the progression over the weeks. This masterpiece is a parody of a famous painting called The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Vermeer!

As always: here's the original for reference:

All credit to Vermeer

And here is where we left off last week:

Now let's see what I did this week!

First, I did some significant work with some of the finer details. I softened and cleaned up the look of the ears, as well as fix the shading on the arm (which I wasn't happy with last week) to make it flow better together. I also added some shading to the collar and belt, added the important pearl earring, as well as smoothened the body a bit.

Lastly, and most noticeably, I finally got around to fixing the face! Liza's facial markings, nose, and mouth all have more shading and have been made smoother and cleaner. Finally, I fixed the eyes with an airbrush and the smudge tool to give them more depth and life. The eyes are sort of a hybrid between the AJ style and trying to replicate the feeling of the original piece.

The last thing I did was add texture and some gentle shading to the headpiece (and darkened the ears!). I found that no matter how many times I tried to get the contrast as dark as the original, I never liked how it turned out. So, I decided to leave it a bit lighter!

And here it is, in a frame in my den! I chose the stone frame because I felt like it really helped elevate the feeling of how old this painting should be.

Finally, for those interested: I made a gif image of the progression over these last few weeks so you can all see the piece change before your eyes from start to finish!

Thank you to all of you for your supportive comments and embarking on this journey with me! It was well worth the wait!

Let me know how you felt about this series in the comments! Should I do another progression series in the future? What kind of masterpiece should I make next? If you have any questions about individual steps and how I did them, don't hesitate to ask!

Anywho, that's all for now my friends! See you soon!

The Panda With a Pearl Earring: Part 3!

Hey Jammers, Arctic here!

Now if you've been keeping up with my posts over the last few weeks, you'll know that I have been working on a masterpiece parodying a famous work of art called Girl with a Pearl Earring. Each week I have worked a little bit more on the masterpiece to show you guys the progression of my art as I work toward the end result. Now that we're all caught up, let's see what we have now!

As always, here is the original for reference:

So last week we left off with a bit of rough shading and smoothing to give the piece a bit more shape and an illusion of 3D-ness, leaving us here:

Now, I was pretty happy with how it looked at this point. However, I began to realize that the colours are far lighter than the original, and was still lacking form because there wasn't any significant shadowing happening. So, this week I played around with the airbrush and the smudge tool to really create more of a dramatic contrast between light and dark, thereby creating more depth.

I still have to finish adding shadows to most of the headpiece, but I did a lot with the body and dress this week which I am happy about! Over the next week I might try and tackle some shading throughout the rest of the piece.

That's all for now, folks. Stay tuned for next week!

The Panda With a Pearl Earring: Part 2!

Hi Jammers, Arctic here!

Goodness, it has been a while hasn't it? From computer issues to getting sick to travels, this has been a hectic couple of weeks!

With my computer breaking down, I was very worried that I would lose all my files (and thereby losing the progress I made on my current masterpiece as well!). Fortunately, we were able to recover everything - and nothing was lost!

Anywho, if you've been keeping up with my most recent posts, you'll know that I am taking on a pretty ambitious summer Masterpiece project! For this project, I am making an AJ-version of a famous painting. I am parodying a painting called The Girl With a Pearl Earring and replacing the main figure with Liza!

Here is the original for reference:

And here is where we were last week:

Now, let's see what progress I made, shall we?

Now if you recall from my last post, I started out with a rough sketch and then some basic colouring. This week I started some of the more major details such as shading and highlighting!

I started out with some very rough colouring for details using the basic paint brush. I personally thought it looked pretty cool like this - sort of like an old comic book? But, graphic pop isn't the style I was going for so I softened it out after laying out some of the main colours. I also changed the mouth a little bit to better reflect the original painting.

Below we see the image after I took the smudge brush and softened everything up a bit. Now the lines are a lot less harsh and the colours blend better together, giving off a more paint-like feel (which is what I am going for!)

This masterpiece has been pretty difficult for me as it is a different method than what I am used to! Typically, I just use the airbrush for everything, but I was determined to try out a different style and stay true to the original feel of the painting. That's not to say I won't be using some airbrush later on, though!

Speaking of airbrush, I think that's probably what I'll be doing for next week - now that I have the softness I need, I want to come back in with some texture and some extra blending which will require the airbrush!

That's all for this week, folks! Stay tuned for next time!

The Panda With a Pearl Earring

*NOTICE: MY COMPUTER HAS JUST BROKEN AGAIN. THIS POST WAS WRITTEN IN ADVANCE - IT IS POSSIBLE I WONT BE ABLE TO KEEP YOU GUYS UPDATED NEXT WEEK!*

Hiya there Jammers, Arctic here!

If you've been keeping up with the last couple of posts I've done, you'll know that I'm planning a fun summer art project for myself! The plan is to make a parody masterpiece of a famous painting with an AJ twist and add a little bit each week (and post about it) and show you my process up to the end result!

Now, last week I said I was going to decide which famous painting I wanted to parody and start working on my masterpiece. And that's just what I did!

I spent the next day or so thinking about what painting I wanted to do, and I finally settled for this one:

You might recognize this painting - it's by a dutch painter named Vermeer and it's called "Girl With a Pearl Earring". It has often been called the Mona Lisa of the North because of the girl's mysterious and captivating gaze (much like the Mona Lisa!). I thought this painting would be a good place to start because it is pretty simple in that the main focus is on the figure (no significant background!) and that it would be easily recognizable, even if I parodied it!

For the AJ twist, I decided to paint the masterpiece with Liza as the girl - hence my title "The Panda with a Pearl Earring".

To begin, I started out with a rough sketch of what I generally wanted the drawing to look like.

Luckily, the painting I'm basing it off of isn't too difficult in terms of positioning (I don't have to draw the rest of the body, thank goodness!) This part was done in about half an hour-ish? Maybe less. I didn't keep such a close eye on the clock!

I was feeling quite good about this piece, so I decided to carry on and do a little bit more with it the next day. My next step was to determine the basic colours I needed to use. I wanted to keep it as close to the original as I could while also making it quite obviously Liza. To do this, I kept the original colours of the headpiece, but changed the colour of the dress to match Liza's.

At this point, the masterpiece doesn't have to be too detailed. I only need the very basic colours right now- I'll start doing some more detailed work next week!

That's all for the project so far, folks. Stay tuned for next week to see what I add!

See you around!

Painting Parodies Project!

Hiya there Jammers, Arctic here!

Now, if you were around last week you would know that I was thinking about a cool summer art project for me to work on that I could post about each week (kind of like a series) that would show the progression of my project.

In terms of masterpieces so far I have attempted landscapes, still life, fan art, and some simple pixel works. One thing I haven't tried, though, is replicas of famous paintings!

But that got me thinking. There are many talented artists on AJ who make AMAZING replicas of famous paintings (I'm talking windycityblues ). One thing I haven't seen a lot of, however, is parody masterpieces. Parodies are a really fun way to incorporate your own interests into classical works!

Here are some cool examples of parodies of paintings you might recognize:

Wouldn't it be cool to do a parody masterpiece with an Animal Jam twist? I definitely don't know how this will work- and I'm positive it would take a LONG time, but that's what I'm going for. I'd like to have a challenge while keeping things fun and interesting!

Now, all I have to decide is what painting I want to try and parody! I guess my job this week is to figure out what painting to parody and then report back to all of you.

Here's to an exciting summer project!

Returned! And I have some new plans!

Hellooooo Jammers! Remember me? It's Arctic!

*crickets*

"... who is that again?"
"is this a global warming campaign?"

Yes, yes, I know I have been gone for a super long time. School was beyond hectic- it got to the point that every other day was a quiz or assignment of some sort and I just couldn't keep up with anything other than trying to get my work done. Highschool definitely wasn't kind this year!

HOWEVER- it's over now! I'm on summer vacation at last, so I can have a great summer full of posting and staying on schedule. It's gonna be great- I'm really just happy to get back into the normal swing of AJ blogging things again.

My plan at the moment is to try and figure out a cool summer project I could work on that would be low impact in terms of time that I could do over the span of a few weeks. Maybe it could be a journey of sorts for everyone - we'll see how a masterpiece/edit changed and improved over those few weeks until we reach a finished product. I guess all we need to do now is decide whether it's an edit or a masterpiece I want to see worked on over a couple weeks- I'm leaning more toward masterpiece myself.

I'll be deciding between the two during the course of this week and get back to you next Monday! Until then, I'll be happy to take input as to which I should do!

See you soon my friends (I've missed you so much!)