@achronic Thank you very much for the warm welcome. 
I was working on some thumbnails on the bus this morning and really hitting a wall with it. I think I'm not spending enough time on the fundamentals or on solid foundational sketches for my work, so I'm going to work on my drawing and observation.
Studies:
Portrait value study in gouache of this photo.
Sadly didn't quite get the likeness. I'm happy with the appearance of some of the brushstrokes though. It was great fun to paint
8 days later
Christmas Gifts! 
Tried something new with each of them. Any and all critique welcome, I want to know how I can do and be better! 
First up, gouache paintings on watercolour paper, 6x10 cm. I didn't take WIP shots of the gouache paintings, which I regret now. The process for them was as follows though: Reference photo, sketch, underpainting (base colours, and for the lilies a bright blue that I wanted to show through when finished) and full painting. Here are the paintings together. The lilies were for my grandmother and the beach was for my grandfather (my greatest fans!). I've been painting a lot of small studies from life, but this was much more ambitious for me, both in size and in subject, colour, lighting, etc. I feel that I learned most from my decisions at the underpainting stage, and also when making choices over what Sorry for the wonky presentation, I took the photos while the paper was still warped from wet paint.
Ok, so this next one was for a Secret Santa Exchange - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure themed. My giftee asked for Diego, so Diego they got! Here's a walkthrough of the steps...
Thought the DIO letters looked better on the hat when I flipped the image.
Here's the reference I used for the pose.
Went for colours I wouldn't usually pick (last ones) so I could challenge myself.
"Ok... now how the hell do I colour this?" Tried to keep shadows on the cool side of the colour wheel. Generally felt like I had no idea what I was doing.
After saying I was done with the image at the stage that makes up the last image in the gif above, and posting it to twitter... I felt like it wasn't working quite how I'd wanted so I came back a day later and changed some things, like making the stripes on his jersey thicker, which you can see below. I only had a day to paint it in so given that, I'm very happy with how it came out. Buuuuuut that doesn't mean I can't see a lot of issues, with the sketchy/scrappiness of it, with colour, tangents, anatomy, value... There's a lot still to improve. Values, as always! My nemesis!
In the end, I'm trying to get away from anime stuff, but I would still like to be able to use colour in an awesome way in styalised work like 零/Rei or Kibstar. So much to practise and so little time. If you have any critique on this piece, I'd really love to hear it!
Cheers! Happy holidays to all!
Now my christmas gifts are done, I'm going to go full steam ahead into the Art War! I've made a thread for myself here if you'd like to follow along: https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/art-war-2d-unnamed-champion-georgie/2132
Also, I did some gouache colour studies of this photo. Was making it up as I went along but I think it turned out pretty good.
Thinking about stroke economy.... Ermmm... haha I really wasn't prepared for how few strokes 50 really is! So the top 3 were my first attempts and in 50 strokes I was getting nothing useful. I wasn't learning that much - maybe just that building faces needed more brushstrokes than you'd expect. I thought maybe it was a little TOO restrictive? So for the bottom 2 I said to myself, let's go halfway, what's the minimum number of brushstrokes that I can make while at the same time creating a picture that I feel communicates what I want?
So as you can see, at least double that 50 stroke limit. In future I'll give this another shot and restrict myself to 100 strokes and see how it goes.
Felt crummy today so did some reference gathering for art war and then an indulgent fanart/experiment thing...
Starting to read JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5. Took the panels on the right hand side page and animated them a little. Wondered what Aerosmith landing would look like in motion. I like how the rotors look (slowing down) and the smoke too.
I've never animated anything before really, just some old pixel icon things years ago so I'm pretty happy, but I'd like to do more in future to work on overlapping frames, secondary animation, actually different art in each frame haha.
Really nice work in here! Good variety of subject matter and materials!
Once day I'll learn gauche hehe.
Happy new year everyone! 
Started it off with gouache studies
Also working on a personal project.
Worldbuilding what I'm codenaming The Empire for now! It's a high fantasy project inspired by Islamic art and the Ottomans. These are designs for wealthier inhabitants of the main city. Expensive dyed fabrics, decoration, gold.
Originally I had painted the costumes like this... Where I basically just picked some primary colours and painted them fastidiously with a hope that they'd magically work if I just made them nicely detailed! But it really wasn't convincing me. I got frustrated and gave up and that was a few months ago:
Returned to it tonight, made some colour swatches from architecture, historical Ottoman fashion and paintings. Changed the colours to match more accurately with references. They're not as rich but they're much more convincing for the setting. Critique extra welcome on this WIP Design, colour, process. whatever!
Here's a major character for this world I painted last year: Na'im, an Imperial enslaved guard. I think he's pretty fun.
Brush stroke exercise again. Aimed for 100 strokes and uhhhhh hands are difficult. But I'm definitely thinking much more before making marks. Will do more of these.
Animation test of this page for fun. I like where it's going (save timing issues), so I've started colouring frames with local colour. No idea how I'll do the effects yet... We'll see! 
Nice updates!
I like the idea of counting the strokes!
I guess my one crit for your guard character is I'm not sure why he has the candles. I know you will probably explain it in the story, but I think someone should be able to look at the character and at least have a small idea why it's there.
@big-misch Huge thanks for the crit! It gives me a lot to think about regarding design and adding more contextual clues to the character.Although a story context is very important to give meaning to the design, there should be a basic level of information that the design communicates to the viewer, right? I believe I've missed the mark on that based on your feedback and some other "??? what does he do" reactions! 
I want to have a character that's intruiging but not utterly baffling. Will think more on his design. Thanks again!
Been working on Art War stuff but I was looking at old sketchbooks and thinking about how much I have used bandages to cover all art sins! This is a personal design crime I feel I've committed and never want to lazily commit again. Given myself some studies to do as well - learn the anatomy I was trying to hide and learn how a real bandage looks. 
Bandages........ 
Another brushstroke economy exercise, but in real paint this time.
Mixing textured hard and simple soft brushes. I was studying at the small value details that mark the muscles and bones under the skin.
Just trying to keep grinding!
1) I'm really struggling with apples and also the lack of deep darks in gouache. Gouache dries lighter in most cases and it's easy to loose contrast. I'm not sure how to solve/work around that yet. These paintings are gouache on watercolour paper, 2.5 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour. 
2) Studying shadows. Looking for saturation and colour in the shadows, seeing where they transition from hard to soft and how they suggest shapes. The mixed blue and orange terminator in the second one is really interesting to me!. 
Also updated my Art War thread: https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/art-war-2d-unnamed-champion-georgie/2132
Latest stuff I've been working on around the art war!
The tengu painting is a WIP, there are shadows that need finishing and the perspective, positioning & size of the far eye needs a re-paint! I also bought a really crap sketchbook with the plan to draw something every day, no matter how small or bad. Sometimes work gets overwhelming and it's hard to fit art in. With no quality bar I'm hoping I can at least find 5 mins to go wild and draw something everyday!
Click for larger:
