Lost in the Woods.

This is the first painting I did after years of not painting, that I'm actually happy with.
Did it for practice and as a starting point to build a portfolio of illustrations.

Not much thought went into the concept - just some warrior dude stuck in the middle of a dark forest alone with only his dog-tag  talisman to guard him from the evil and guide him through the darkness. Not that it helped his companions, whose dog-tags he is holding.

Painted digitally in Photoshop while trying to do it in the most traditional way possible i.e. using as few layers as possible, not using "undo" feature and playing with canvas textured brushes.

Started with small thumbnail sketch of a composition.

Then comes a rough drawing of the idea.

After collecting some reference material made a more detailed and clean drawing. Drew it using pencil and paper and finished in Photoshop. Used myself as a model for this one.

An underpainting, just to define the values.

And then comes the madness of painting itself.

Hope you like it.

Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) bicycle ride

So, I decided to ride on the holiest and most suited for bike riding days, the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Initial plan was to ride to Tel Aviv, that would make a 200 kilometers trip. I knew it would be hard, the distance and the Middle Eastern Sun will surely bring tons of suffering unto me. But hey, thats what atonement is all about, right?
Rode out at 3 AM, which gave me 6 hours of cool morning air and the magnificent sight of sunrise. I had to be back at my home before 17 PM, so at 9 AM I was at the interchange where I had to decide whether to go home or to ride at least to a middle point of my initial plan, the city Hadera. I decided Hadera. So, at 10 AM I saw Hadera city sign and turned back to my sweet home.
At that point the weather was getting pretty hot and I felt very tired. Not to mention my ass hurt as hell cause of the narrow bike seat.
At 12 PM I was so exhausted , that even my favorite music couldn't help with the constant thoughts of food (I decided not to eat, as we should on Yom Kippur) and shower. But I had to go on.
The thing is, even if you want to quit you can't, you still have to ride.
And as always I took too much stuff with me. Having this fear of dehydration I took 10 liters of frozen water (drzank only 4), tools to repair any bike malfunction, and my SLR camera which I used rarely cause was too exhausted. Couldn't even shoot, I mean take a photo of some arab kid throwing stones at me when I rested near his village. Not one photo I took is worth posting so just a photo of my fully loaded bicycle.
The result is I got home at 17 PM (exactly on time) totally exhausted and totally burned by sun. And basically instead of 200 km I rode only 120. 14 freaking hours in the saddle.
Was it worth it? Well, it was kind of an accomplishment for me. And I also made kind of an atonement for my sins (not that there are a lot of them, hell I can't think of even one that need atonement).