Improvement and Progression: round one.

A few things I've learned about the use of guache: to mix paints more easily, spray your paints with water first. It'll soften them up. Start things off by laying down flat wash. mop brushes are ideal for doing washes because they can store such a large amount of pigment/water.
Also, I finally put a decent amount of effort into one of these instead of trying to do the painting equivalent of a gesture drawing.the painting of the woman took about three hours and i started it off with one large flat layer of orange using the mop brush, then layered a burnt sienna/aliz. crimson/cad red/titanium white mixture to make the darker skin tones, adding yellow ochre to some of the more yellow parts of the face, and then I had to layer thick layers of white on top of forehead/nose/cheek bones and then blend the white back into the darker layers using a fan brush. The hair is mostly a diox purple/yellow ochre mix with some raw sienna doing a gradient from dark to light with some of the orange still showing through.
As far as the self-portrait goes, I've been spending time in front of the mirror trying to figure out what makes my body type distinctive. Also, ten points for anyone who can guess the original source for the painting of the buff dude.

Where I am Right Now

half my purpose in doing this is to show a bunch of my crappy drawings and paintings that I churn out on a daily basis; the times when I take chances and fall flat on my face. I feel that maybe some other people will be able to look at what I'm doing and relate to where I am as far as my skillset goes, and possibly others will be able to see the kinds of experiments I'm trying and learn from my mistakes and successes. Here are some of my paintings that I'm doing right now.
At the moment, I feel I have zero talent as a colorist/painter, so I've been doing a bunch of quick color studies in guache. I'm planning on doing a ton of portraits with guache over the summer when I'll be in Seattle, so I'm getting in some practice head studies.

where I'm coming from

My name's Jim Perry and I'm a senior in the studio arts program at Brigham Young University, but I'm applying to be a sophomore in the animation program.. Basically I know how to draw the human figure. I have what I consider a solid and basic foundation of art skills. I know how to draw what I see with a dry medium, but I still feel inadequate in most areas that don't involve replicating what I see. I'm making this blog to record my progress as I start working on things like color, composition, style, and design.