CrashOctopus Blog

Happy Mastodon by Meg Lyman

5×7″ gouache on watercolor paper

$50 – email to purchase

I am really  not sure what this is or where it came from. I just wanted to try this color combination.

The Avengers by Meg Lyman

11×14″ gouache and ink on matboard

$150 – email to purchase

I can’t decide which is my favorite. I love them all. Also I love metallic gouache.

The Viking by Meg Lyman

6×6″ gouache and ink

$50 – email to purchase

After having read Color and Light by Gurney, I wanted to transfer all that new knowledge from my brain into real-life painting skills. I had a bunch of tubes of paint, both gouache and oil, and no real idea how they interacted. Knowing that it was going to be imperfect, I set out to paint Yurmby wheels for both sets of paint. Ideally, it would give me a rough wheel to work from, and a good idea what pigments I was missing.

I started at handprint.com to determine where my pigments fell in relation to each other. Is viridian bluer than phthalo green, or the other way around? Looking at the pigments on the back of the tubes and comparing them to handprint’s color charts helped with that. I laid out my tubes accordingly (chart printed from handprint.com):

gouache

oil

Next I picked the pigments I would use on the wheel. Note that there are a bunch of tubes that fall between these “primaries,” and although I won’t use them on the wheel, it’s good to identify where they would go. Then I mixed all 12 of them together with some white to create a neutral grey for the middle. You could probably do this with a black and white mixture or neutral grey tube paint as well, although tube whites and blacks tend to be on the cool side.

Then I mixed each tube color with varying amounts of the grey to get less and less saturated. Keep in mind that these do not account for variance in chroma or value in the pigments themselves. I intended to keep the value consistent while I varied the chroma, but I’m a complete novice fumbling around and there are materials-based limitations as well. For example, yellow has a much lighter value than purple, yet I’m heading to the same value of grey in the middle. I think I did better with the oil wheel, but still… Let me know if you have better luck with that. The end results:

gouache

oil

I did the gouache first, as you can probably tell. I’m pretty sure I put some things in the wrong places (PR83 gouache should probably be next to PR9), and I’m obviously missing some pigments (I have since acquired a tube of magenta gouache). But it taught me a lot, as you can see from the fact that the oil wheel looks much better.

Side note: the cerulean blue oil I was using was pretty horrible and streaky. It’s a Winton student grade tube that’s nearly 10 years old, but it’s always been like that. I went out and bought a new tube of M Graham cerulean blue and it is obviously tons better. Anyone else have that problem with Winton cerulean blue, or did I just get a bad tube?

Girctopus by Meg Lyman

Gouache on ACEO

$20 – click to purchase

A spoof on Gir from Invader Zim. I haven’t really watched the show, but someone requested him and he’s super adorable.

I created the background effects by starting with a piece of sturdy black matboard. I cut it to ACEO size, sketched the character, and then used the black matboard as the outlines. It’s fun to paint negative space!

R2D2 Squid by Meg Lyman

Gouache on ACEO

$20 – email to purchase

Cousin to the mimic octopus, this species was being threatened with extermination by the Dalek Squid. It found a good way to hide, although it is now being pursued by stormtroopers.

Sackboy Octopus by Meg Lyman

4×6″ gouache and ink on illustration board

$35 – email to purchase

Getting ready for the convention season with fan art of Little Big Planet. I’m not entirely happy with how it turned out – I’ll have to practice painting more fabric.

Dalek by Meg Lyman

5×7″ gouache and ink

$55 – email to purchase

It had to be done.

Lady Steampunk by Meg Lyman

4×5″ gouache and ink

$45 – e-mail to purchase

Fancy pants débutante companion of the gentleman.

Darth Maul Squid II by Meg Lyman

5×7″ gouache and ink

$45 – email to purchase

II, you say? In case you are wondering about Darth Maul Squid I: I sketched and inked Darth Maul Squid II years ago. Shortly afterwards I was commissioned to paint an 8×10″ Darth Maul Squid by the excellent Kevins. So I did and it is Darth Maul Squid I. Then I finally painted this one last month, so it is II. Cool story. The end.

Darth Maul Squid by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache and ink

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