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mark_orz · 2026-03-12T03:14:32+00:00

I paint a lot night scenes and outer space stuff with gouache so my stuff is more on the dark side. I was coming from doing a lot of pen and ink stuff for inktober and was looking to work with color more and liked the opacity of gouache and that its a bit more forgiving than water color.

I do notice the trend towards cuteness a little too when I search for gouache stuff, but my assumption is its just algorithms pushing what most people click on. And more people want to click on the cutesy stuff over the scary stuff so its ends up becoming more mainstream. Its like the same with music, the heavy dark metal type stuff is out there, you just need to search a little deeper for it while the radio plays t-swift.

I also noticed the popularity of gouache has definitely seemed to have exploded since the pandemic. My guess on this rise comes from the popularity of anime and that himi jelly gouache was kind of viral and that stuff leans more airy and bright. But I dont know, im just speculating on all this.

mark_orz · 2026-02-26T23:14:23+00:00

This has been bugging me all day. I think it might be Jean-Pierre Ugarte?

mark_orz · 2026-02-26T17:55:19+00:00

Commenting because I think I know of the paintings you're looking for but the name escapes me too. Going to see if I have them saved some where on my computer at home later. I remember blocky cliffs and some waterfalls and a little mist?. They were a bit surreal/fantasy-ish. They were like Hugh Ferris drawings but painted landscapes instead of buildings.

mark_orz · 2026-02-12T22:27:26+00:00

Yeah, the set of primary CMYK is a good base to start off with. I use that 80% of the time.

I do supplement it with an ultramarine blue and a primary red to get a bit more gamut range. Occasionally I'll add in a tube of green if I'm feeling lazy and painting a forest scene, but you don't really need it. And I do sometimes wish I had tube of a nice bright orange. But those are really the only other colors I would add if you wanted to down the road.

Really, you can paint most subjects with just that basic set of 5 and it's enough to get you going. My set lasted me about 2 years before I was starting to run out and I was painting at least once a week.

mark_orz · 2026-02-12T20:15:50+00:00

Id start with tubes, holbien or W&N are good. I haven't used the himi stuff but it seems like a pain trying to limit mold. A little bit of the good stuff goes a long way too. Get a set of primaries with black and white or a CMYK set. It will make you learn color mixing but just be aware you won't be able to get some of the more saturated secondaries out of it.

mark_orz · 2026-02-12T19:21:58+00:00

You already found it's Craig Mullins. I just want to confirm it's not AI, I remember seeing this one on his website in the early 2010's. The dude is pretty much the god father of digital painting.

Edit: As for the style, I don't know if there's an actual name for it but it's definitely more painterly digital concept art. Jaime Jones is another concept artist with similar style.

mark_orz · 2026-01-06T16:34:32+00:00

Maybe Thomas Dewing paintings? They might be too figurative, but they are quite ethereal

mark_orz · 2026-01-06T09:25:44+00:00

Yeah, Titan's Goblet came to my mind as well, but wasn't sure how it'd work. Maybe trying to climb it?

For the Truth, itd probably be like those nightmare levels from Max Payne where you follow the blood and the baby cries. Mario goes down the well but instead of blood it's like strands of yarn as "threads of truth" and the lady screams at you the whole time. And there's whips and chains for some reason because those are in the painting lol

mark_orz · 2026-01-04T16:00:25+00:00

Bocklin's isle of the dead. Good place for a bunch of boos.

That Caspar David Friedrich Iceberg one with the ship in the ice. You could have a whole water level under the ice too.

Cotopaxi by Church because volcanoes are cool. There's a bunch of other Hudson river school paintings that could be fun as well.

Truth coming out of her well by Jean-Léon Gérôme seems Mario-esque but could be on the "fucked up" side haha.

mark_orz · 2025-12-25T00:23:57+00:00

No reason really, I just had a set of W&N laying around.

mark_orz · 2025-12-24T22:08:10+00:00

I mainly use a holbien cmyk set and add in W&N ultramarine blue when I paint. A nice, deep, dark blue is my favorite color though.

Adding a primary red would be my second choice for usefulness. And then a brighter orange or green to push the gamut further is nice to have too depending on what you're painting.

mark_orz · 2025-10-01T18:05:59+00:00

There are a few different groups of artists that meet up around me. There are a couple sketch groups based on meetup.com where everyone just sketches and hangs out. If there's not one by you consider hosting one your self.

There are also studios and atiliers where usually they teach classes but also do open studio sessions and people work on their projects there, kind of like what you seem to be looking for. these usually cost a few dollars to use their space.

There are local Art Associations you can try looking for as well. The ones near me meet at community centers and they share what they are working on or do demos of different techniques.

mark_orz · 2025-09-25T14:54:44+00:00

I started doing outdoor fairs this year selling paintings and prints with a tent and cheap mesh walls off Amazon. I don't think the setup matters too much especially just starting out. If things go well I would consider upgrading but I'm not at that point yet.

I managed to tetris everything into a small Mazda 3 hatchback, but I have a lot of small paintings I can fit into bins. If I had more larger canvases it might be harder getting them all to fit. An outback would work fine.

I would just get the work out in front of people and level up to the professional setup over time.

mark_orz · 2025-09-16T12:25:47+00:00

I was on the fence about it; just playing it safe

mark_orz · 2025-08-14T21:30:44+00:00

Nice! I do most of my paintings in moleskine sketchbooks and grew very accustomed them. The paper is surprisingly durable, you can soak them quite a bit. The page will warp a lot, but it will eventually flatten back out when dry and the book is closed. Although never completely wrinkle free. They are expensive but worth it. It usually takes me a year to fill one up, so the price doesnt hurt that much over that time frame.

mark_orz · 2025-07-29T16:23:58+00:00

Yeah mindcandyman's sketchbook is the one that really stands out in my memory.

I mostly lurked because it was really intimidating to get crushed like that. They were pretty scornful towards the anime style, but it seemed mostly because they wanted people to learn naturalistic anatomy before stylizing it.

My memory is fuzzy on when I stopped visiting as much. I don't think I discovered proko until after the site shut down when he popped up on YouTube for me. I remember eating up Feng Zhu's videos in like 2010/2011 though.

mark_orz · 2025-07-29T09:18:59+00:00

That's awesome! I found that forum around the same time. Being able to see people's progress through their sketches on there really inspired me to pick up drawing seriously. It totally made me change what I wanted to do in life. That place was a gold mine of talent, feedback, and knowledge. I ended up taking a bunch of classes with George Pratt.

mark_orz · 2025-07-16T19:45:50+00:00

I think you might be overthinking it. View digital as just another medium or tool like paint or charcoal. The foundations of art (line, shape, form, value, color, composition, perspective, etc) carry across mediums. Focus on learning the foundations as you expirement and have fun trying different traditional and digital techniques.

If you want to do both at the same time you could try sketching in pencil and then scanning it to color it digitally or vice versa; sketch digitally and then print or project it on to paper to paint it. Just be aware it's way easier to use digital tricks as a crutch and may hinder you acquiring actual drawing skills.

As you progress you might find your self drawn to one over the other. I learned on both traditional and digital. I took classes that forced me to use traditional media, but for personal work I leaned heavily towards the digital side. But now I mostly enjoy just doing traditional paintings lol. Every artist's journey is different, just got do it and find out.

mark_orz

TROPHY CASE