Studies is a really useful thing to maintain as an artist, here I've done a study of an eye to try and gain a sense of realism and try to correctly establish details, including the iris, tear duct, lights, reflections, moisture, fluids, texture.
Anthony Jones (who you can also find listed in my 'Friends and Artists' sidebar) goes on about another way in doing studies.
This kind of came by accident whilst experimenting with portraiture painting, I guess 'Inner Beauty' could work as the there, perhaps...
These are a few illustrations been doing, some commissions and others personal work but all where fun to paint and experiment with.
Having spent so long with digital, I wanted to get back into traditional, I havn't painted with gouache paints for over a year :/
Being inspired from the weekends workshop with Nathan Fowkes I wanted to try out the method of using a 3d model as a base to design colour and light.
Here is the final painting -
Sarting with greyscale to work out the light - Then adding colour choice - Painting - Adding character and depth - Highlighting certain objects and the character - Light adjustments
Here is the final painting -
Also here is a process version -
Sarting with greyscale to work out the light - Then adding colour choice - Painting - Adding character and depth - Highlighting certain objects and the character - Light adjustments

Some of the areas such as the tower in the bottom right were slightly distorted but I knew the character would be covering the mistake. Ideally I should of fixed this but with time not on our hands I knew not to worry on what would not be seen.




















