The 'Stration Station

Sneak Peak!

2011-12-13T22:27:00.000-08:00

This is likely going to be the last photo of me with my sanity intact until June. Until then I'll be doing ten paintings this size, with a central piece that's as tall, but almost three times as wide.

I don't know what I was thinking, or why I thought it was a good idea, but there you have it. I'll see you all on the other side.

Bamf. Again.

2011-11-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

I've been kind of a busy little bee over the past few weeks. I've got a grandiose project I'm working on for myself, and a book project I've had on the back burner for longer than I can remember on deck. Both projects call for a wider range of color, so I'm saying goodbye to my limited palette for a while, and getting reacquainted with my full spread - as it were.

To that end I've been doing a lot of little paintings in preparation. I think this is my favorite so far. The Amazing Nightcrawler! (I'm sure there will be more on the way.)

oil on linen. 4" x 6"

(Nightcrawler copyright owned by Marvel. Obviously.)

...What I am is a man in a mask

2011-11-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. "

Just a quick and dirty study tonight. I guess I jumped on the band wagon a little with this one. Oh well. Worse things have happened.

Oil on linen. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2"

Harlowe's Halloween Hullabaloo

2011-10-30T23:48:00.000-07:00

My friends' band performed last night, and though I hadn't thought to bring my brush pen, I did have my good ol' trusty Hi-Tec C Cavalier on me.

Yes, that's my friend dressed as Mario playing the violin. He was dressed up for Halloween, though I think he should dress like that all the time.

Pen on paper. 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" each.

I have a brush pen! I'm a real artist!

2011-08-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

Two weeks back my friends' band was playing a show at a venue called The Old Church. The space was beautiful, and the bands were amazing. As I was sitting there, feeling all inspired and stuff, I took out my sketchbook, brush pen, and started doodling. This is what I came up with. It was kind of the night of f-holes, and I couldn't help but smirk to myself as I layed the last one down.

Of the four bands to perform that night my friends were the only ones to escape undrawn. Next time. Next time.

Sauvie Island

2011-08-24T00:34:00.001-07:00

There's an island nearby, that's apparently all the rage. It's called Sauvie Island. All I've heard about it since moving to Portland is that it is the place to go pick some amazing berries. Which, reading between the lines, tells me that it's a great place to hang out in nature. Which means a great place to do some painting. I was intrigued.

Last week I received an order of casein. I aim to expand my experiments in that medium, and as it turns out, my friends were planning a berry picking excursion. I hitched along to get my paint on! All of my casein setup fits nicely in a little shoulder bag I carry (which is a nice change from lugging a french easel and a backpack full of gear), so I figured it would make for a fine recon mission - so to speak.

It was a hot, dry day, so I had to fight the paint a little (I was constantly reminded of why I love oils) to keep it from drying up too fast, but I think I was still victorious. All in all I think casein is slowly winning my heart over.

Kruger's Farm. Casein on paper. 8" x 5"

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

2011-08-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

They're a lot easier to draw that way.

I recently discovered these Rembrandt - polycolor pencils by Lyra, and they're fantastic. They're delightfully buttery and rich in color. The dark sepia pencil is my favorite so far. Thankfully I had one (and my sketchbook) within reach the other night when my dog passed out in my lap.

Painting at Goat Island

2011-08-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I set out into the world hoping to get some plein air painting done. I had intended to paint a particular field, one that I had driven past on my move up here, but I missed my exit. Instead I ended up near the Willamette River, which I figured was for the best. After all, it was an adventure, wasn't it?

Though they were entertaining and abundant, I resisted the urge to include the jet-skiers wake-boarders and focused on the humorously named Goat Island.

Goat island.
3 1/2" x 5 1/4". Oil on linen.

And when that was finished I turned 180 degrees and painted what was behind me. This painting was done with more urgency as the light was changing rapidly, and I was now racing the setting sun. But I think I pulled it out and I walked away with another delightful little study.

Northward Willamette.
3 1/2" x 5 1/4". Oil on linen.

It's the Little Things, Really

2011-08-06T02:33:00.000-07:00

While I was out running errands on Thursday I popped into a local art store to take a look around. A friend of mine discovered this place a few weeks back and told me I would absolutely love it. Once again, he was right. I was totally smitten with this place, and I thought it was simply the bee's knees.

Then I found their plaster models.

I bought a little bust and spent the rest of the evening just looking at it. It's so pretty. Tonight I set up a desk lamp and started sketching. I look forward to the journeys we shall take together. I'm so excited to finally have some plaster in my life.

It's the little things that make me happy.

Outrunning the Storm

2011-07-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

Another little study as I gear up for something a wee bit more engaging. This time it's a lone BF-109 Messerschmitt, possibly trying to get back to Berlin before the coming storm. (Or perhaps I'm reading too much into things.) Hopefully I can tackle this beast in the immediate future.

Oil on (oil-primed) cotton canvas. 12" x 4 1/2"

Redtail

2011-06-20T01:11:00.001-07:00

I've got a pretty grandiose painting on the drawing board and it includes airplanes. As I was going about the planning stages of this project I realized it's been about a decade since I've last tried to paint airplanes. I thought I would be in my best interest to see if I could even do so convincingly before committing to a large-scale endeavor. Sitting down at the easel for about an hour netted me this little painting; it's nothing to write home about, but I think it's a success. I'll have more to share with you good folks in the future.

Oil on (oil-primed) cotton canvas. 12" x 4 1/4"

Desolation Road

2011-05-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last year I read this book. I thought it was weird, especially at the beginning and at the end, but it was good. At the time I remember thinking that I wanted to take a crack at a cover image. As life tends to, things got in the way, and the project got shuffled to the back burner. Thankfully there was something about it that just stuck with me and, after a lot longer than I care to admit, I finally got around to making a painting happen.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic for me, but I think a calm period is in sight. There are some pretty big projects brewing on that horizon, and I'm filled with excitement at the thought of what's to come.

Oil on linen. 22" x 32".

Bamf!

2011-03-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I jotted out some X-men inspired thumbnails and then kind of abandoned them. (They're thumbnails, it happens.) In a lull between projects I decided to flesh one of them out and further my exploration of a new pencil. It's quick and dirty, but I like the direction it's leading me in. More to come -- I hope!

Pencil and quick digital color.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #15

2011-02-21T22:17:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie for Ugly Mug Monday! this week. There's a lot of real work that I should be focusing on, but all work and no play causes Jack Nicholson (and myself) to go insane and try to murder his family.

I feel I took it too far and over-worked it, but that's how it goes. I wish pencil were as facile as paint can be. Oh well.

Pencil on bristol. 2.5" x 3.5"

Rock Out with Your Spout Out

2011-02-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

When I was in school I took a class in the sculpture department. After the midterm he split us into two groups: the first group simply had to make the best sculpture they could, but only one piece; the second group had to make 100 lbs. worth of sculptures. Six weeks passed and the final critique was upon us. The sculptures were displayed around the room, and do you know what was immediately apparent? The work of the kids in the second group was far superior to the work of the kids in the first group, and here's why:

The kids in the first group sat around and planned, and sketched, and worried, and fretted about what would make "the best sculpture ever". They did more thinking than doing, and talk is cheap. The kids in the second group would make a sculpture, and then they'd have to make another one. And another one. And another one. And, you guessed it, another one. By doing so they learned what didn't work and transferred the knowledge to the next piece.

The message was simple: you learn to do by doing; not by thinking; not by planning; not by scheming -- by doing. That's the point behind these 10-minute paintings. If you want to learn a lot about painting (or drawing, or sculpting, or seeing), then I'd highly recommend you give this a shot. I've learned a lot so far, and I can't wait to see what I learn in the future!

Each square is about 4" x 4". Oil on illustration board.

P.S.
The story about the sculpture class didn't actually happen to me, it happened to a friend of mine, but it's just easier to tell in the first person. Besides, the moral doesn't change.

Reunited, and it feels SO good!

2011-02-19T00:36:00.000-08:00

Is there anything in this world more pure than drawing from a live model? Figure drawing is a long drink of cool water as you come in from the tilling the fields in the hot August sun. It's therapeutic. It's cathartic. It's awesome. It's what keeps you sharp and helps you discard the clutter in order to focus on the fundamentals. People should do it as much as humanly possible. (And then do it some more!)

From last night's figure drawing session:

2-minute poses

20-minute poses

40-minute pose

Ugly Mug Mondays! #14

2011-02-14T22:19:00.000-08:00

I am King Cheez-It. I am not amused.

I was digging through files on my computer and I came across a handful from my last trip to New York. I became overly addicted to Cheez-Its and, well, you've got to do something with the empty boxes, don't you? And sometimes you've just got to wear a box on your head.

Casein on canvas paper. 2.5" x 3.5"

Ten-Minute Challenge

2011-02-14T01:01:00.000-08:00

I recently came across an interesting little call to arms -- so to speak. The idea is simple enough, as all great ideas are; pick a subject and paint it. Over and over and over again. But there's a catch: you only get ten minutes for each painting.

This was my first crack at it. All in all I think they turned out well. I got kind of tired after the fourth one; painting at a sprint kind of wears you down. I'm going to work this into my daily painting routine; at least for the foreseeable future. Now all I'll have to do is figure out a better place to set up. (I was almost quite literally painting in the dark this afternoon.)

Each square is about 4" x 4". Oil on illustration board.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #13

2011-01-25T02:31:00.000-08:00

Ugly Mug Mondays! are going to be making a return in a big way! This one is a littledifferent from the last ten ugly mug posts I've offered, but I've learned a lot since then, so I don't think anyone will hold it against me. I like the little casein paintings I was doing and I plan on getting back to those, but I have plans for this particular drawing. Stay tuned!

11 x 14. Pencil on layout bond.

Back to the drawing board!

2011-01-22T01:16:00.001-08:00

I've never understood why people despair over that phrase. You mean I get to spend more time drawing? Cool! I've always enjoyed drawing; so much so that I'm never without a sketchbook so I can sit and sketch wherever I am. Unfortunately I don't spend as much time doing more serious drawings as I'd like. Now that I have all of this extra time on my hands I plan on changing that! I'm going to be spending a lot more time at the drawing board!

Charcoal and conte.

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-25T02:25:00.000-08:00

Another year is drawing to a close and that means it's time for Christmas; which left me in a pickle as to what I should do for presents. I realized it's been a long while since I had drawn Princess Diana of Themyscira (normal folks may be more acquainted with her as Wonder Woman) for my mother, so I figured there was no time like the present!

Oil on canvas. 24" x 36".

Blagards to the bone!

2010-11-21T03:33:00.000-08:00

"We're seven drunken pirates, we're the seven deadly sins!"

Ever since I read the Divine Comedy in high school I've wanted to illustrate the seven deadly sins. Truth be told they're always so grim and bleak; they can be real downers! So I wanted to do something different and have fun with them, and thanks to a little inspiration from Flogging Molly, I think fun is what I got.

Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride; can you find them all?

Oil on linen. 42 1/2" x 23 3/4"

Coming soon!

2010-11-13T00:55:00.001-08:00

Sail away where no ball and chain

Can keep us from the roarin' waves
Together undivided but forever we'll be free.

Muad'Dib has a Posse

2010-09-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

Warm up for the day. Recently finished reading Dune so it was kind of on my mind.

Oil on canvas paper. ~ 11 x 14

Monterey!

2010-09-18T12:18:00.001-07:00

I took a little vacation down to Monterey, and the only thing I really cared about packing to take with me were my painting supplies. I didn't know if I was going to have time enough to set up and paint, but I knew I was going to try to find the time. As luck would have it, I found the time. So, I climbed out onto the rocks in Pacific Grove and set up my kit.

Painted in Pacific Grove looking out over Monterey Bay towards Seaside.

Oil on panel. 11" x 14"

Homo Geomyidae

2010-08-11T01:39:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine recently graduated from the local "digital arts" college with aspirations of being a modeler (for video games and movies and the like). Among the tools that he was constantly blabbing about was a program called ZBrush. What made it stick out in my mind was him telling me one day, in a very matter-of-fact way, that I'd probably love said program. Well, for whatever reason I dismissed it entirely; probably not wanting to dedicate any more time learning the in's and out's of a newfangled computer program. He did mention that it was a lot like sculpting with clay, so I probably dismissed it because I'd rather sit down with an actual clump of clay to make something happen.

With that being said however, something came over me the other night and I actually looked into
what this program could do. Admittedly I was blown away. So I got my hands on a trial version of the program and started playing around. After about half an hour of hacking away at the preloaded sphere, this is what I came up with - Gopher Boy. I'm pretty sure I'll be experimenting a lot with this program in the coming days, weeks, and months; I'm equally sure that I'll be sharing some of the more precious gems here, with you. Until then, happy painting. Or drawing. Or sculpting with digital clay.

Art as a Science: Part 2

2010-08-09T00:20:00.001-07:00

Continuing the exploration of medium versus surface - this time around the medium changed. Last time galkyd was my medium, this time around it's a concoction that I read about that supposedly what J.C. Leyendecker used. Again, all four paintings are oil on linen canvas with the same variation in surface treatments applied. Like the last round, I think the third and fourth panels were the best surfaces to work on, with the second taking a close second. In last place would be panel number one, which is just way too rough (almost like painting on rough sandpaper) for my tastes.

I introduced another condition to these tests this time around; I didn't work on any single one for more than an hour. It forced me to make snap decisions and not get too precious with the results - plus it just lets me get more done (and information collected) in a shorter amount of time. To that end I really limited my palette for this go; titanium white, ivory black, yellow ochre, and cadmium red. The interesting thing I glimpsed was how versatile that limited palette is.

Now that my samples on linen are complete, I plan on trying out the same set up on four different surfaces; heavy weight cotton canvas, light weight cotton canvas, canvas paper, and illustration board. Based on what I know, I think heavy weight cotton duck will be a similar surface to the linen, but I'm curious as to how it differs exactly. Hopefully I'll be getting those done in the next couple of weeks.

See you next time, I've got sketches to finish.

All paintings: Oil on linen. 5" x 5".

Banskine!

2010-08-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine decided to learn how to make his very own little Moleskine journals, and was gracious enough to ask if I wanted one and if I had any special requests for it. Well, it was just too good to pass up to have a custom little Moleskine; my only request was that it have a medium-dark grey paper. A few weeks after having made the request (and having forgotten about it entirely) it arrived in the mail and it was everything I could have hoped for and more. As I was in love with doing casein studies at the time I decided to start painting in the book right away. The paper that he found performed marvelously! It's heavy enough not to want to warp as I slathered water and paint over it, and toothy enough to just grab the paint right odd the brush. I've only done three little paintings in it so far (I've been distracted by other things, mainly Star Craft II), but it's such a joy to work in - especially for warm-ups before settling in for more serious work.

Each of them is casein on paper and done with a larger-than-necessary brush so that I could ignore pesky little details; though that didn't stop me from trying... There are passages in each of the little paintings that I rather enjoy, and leaving as much of the paper showing through as possible has been a fun challenge. At any rate, enjoy. And as always, thanks for reading!

Casein on paper. Roughly 4" x 5".

Art as a Science: Part 1

2010-08-04T02:59:00.000-07:00

In my last post I stated that I had done some follow ups to my experimentation on linen canvas. This represents the first batch. I couldn't decide if it was the canvas, the medium, or the gesso that made working on that stretched linen canvas so pleasurable, so as any good O.C.D. patient would, I set about to systematically test each of the different variables.

For all four paintings are on linen canvas and I used galkyd as my medium. The only factor that was changed from painting to painting was the way that each sample was sealed: the first sample was sealed with clear gesso that was brushed on; the second was sealed with clear gesso that was scraped on; the third was sealed with two layers of white gesso and one layer of clear, all scraped on; and the last was sealed with three layers of white gesso, again scraped on. (I should probably go over what I mean when I say scraping on gesso in a later post.)

For my money, I think the third and fourth samples have the best surface, with the second coming in at a pretty close second. The first sample, with it's brushed on gesso, was a surface that proved to be far too rough and far to difficult to manage. It would probably be best when used with either thicker paint (perhaps an impasto) or a palette knife, as any level of detail is difficult to obtain.

Even though they're all small and quick studies that were used primarily as a tools test, I'm pretty satisfied with the results. I don't recommend using polaroids as reference, however. I'll post round two in the coming days.

All paintings: Oil on linen. 5" x 5".

Union Jackie

2010-07-28T03:20:00.001-07:00

This painting is really a three part experiment, which is probably the least effective way to conduct an experiment.

The first part was the support - the canvas. When I was in school a professor told me that painting on linen was a heavenly experience. It's pricey stuff and I've never been able to afford it. I came across some reasonably priced stretched canvas in my favorite art store and couldn't resist the impulse. It was sealed with clear gesso, so I was thinking it'd be super toothy.

The second was the medium. Normally I use galkyd as my medium, but I rummaged out a bottle of oil that I mixed up near five years ago. I lovingly refer to it as Leyendecker Juice, as it's the closest approximation I've been able to find to the mystery medium J.C. Leyendecker used.

The last part was the color palette. I've been experimenting with a very limited palette (yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, titanium white, and ivory black) but sometimes you just need to paint something blue. So I introduced Payne's Gray to bias some things towards blue and the cooler side of the spectrum.

I consider this experiment a win; though later I realized that I couldn't tell if it was the clear gesso, linen canvas, or painting medium that I was responding to. I did some follow experiments which I'll be posting shortly.

Oil on linen. 11" x 14".

More from the sketchbook

2010-07-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

The thing I like most about working in the sketchbook? It's the best way to procrastinate and still be productive. It's such a happy distraction.

Another venture in distracting myself from what I should probably be working on.

Taking My Brain For a Walk

2010-07-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

I've got an ambitious project on my board and truth be told I'm kind of scared of it. So, whenever I hit a roadblock in the process I would pull out my sketchbook and just do some random drawings to get my head right again. I think Brad Holland put it best when he referred to making art as taking his brain for a walk. So that's what I did, I took an inward vacation and drew for the sheer joy of drawing.

No pressure. No deadlines. No expectations.
Just me, my pencil, the page, and music blaring in my ears from an 86 GB well.

On the left is a sort of warm-up doodle, which is followed by a warm up sketch. I guess the point was to take me away from the problem I was working on while keeping my brain in the "art zone". Thus allowing me to get the distance and perspective I needed. Whatever the reason, it worked. I was able to get back to my project and slide right past the roadblocks. (Unfortunately there are always more waiting on the other side!)

At any rate, I have a few more things to post in the coming days - and I hope by the time I run dry I'll have finished side-stepping roadblocks and can share it with all of you.

A Room With A View... For Type

2010-06-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

When designing paintings (or whatever your medium of choice may be) it's always a good idea to leave space for the eye to rest. This is especially true when designing covers for books, magazines, motivational pamphlets, and anything else that an illustration will have to share real estate with type. As an illustrator the last thing you'd want is for a designer to place type over some tasty bit of the image you worked hard to create. (And I hear the designers are none too happy when they aren't left room to work either...) To that end it's always a good idea to not only leave room for bleed (a topic I'll tackle in a later post) but to design for type as well. If for no other reason it'll show that you're capable of doing such and could lead to work in the future.

To that end, whenever I'm designing specifically for a cover I like to drop in type when I'm done to get a sense of what my image will look like all packaged up and sitting on a shelf. Since the book I recently re-imagined already exists I was able to use the copy that's already there. The design was just a really rough, really quick lay in. I'm sure a proper designer would do a much better job - I just had to know if the addition of type, and logos, and titles, and names would detract from my illustration.

Aaaaand, since I went through the bother of painting the image as a spread, I dropped in type and such on what would be the back cover as well. Again, using the basic design that's already in place, I just dropped in the information to make sure my image isn't ruined or too distracting for the type. Overall I'd say things worked out well. Even though it's a rough treatment for the type, I feel everything works together pretty harmoniously .

Star Wars: Betrayal

2010-06-16T04:42:00.002-07:00

It may be no secret that I'm a huge nerd. I literally wear this fact as a brand on my arm (and jacket, and car) for the world to see. However, it's been about five years since I've done a painting that's based in the Star Wars universe. I'm kind of ashamed. (Bad nerd! Bad!)

The Legacy of the Force is one of the most recent story arcs in the Star Wars universe of books (to which I'm a little more than addicted). It takes place about 40 years after A New Hope and follows the exploits of the Solo kids and Skywalker boy, blah blah blah. At any rate, I've decided to re-envision the covers for all nine books in the series as a self-promotional ploy. This is the first installment in the series; Betrayal.

This is the painting as it appears on the easel. I've dropped in a quick type treatment to give myself an idea of how it would look on the book shelves, and I'll post that tomorrow. Next in the series would be Bloodlines, but I may skip around a bit and work on something else for awhile.

Oil on canvas. 34" x 20 3/4"

Ugly Mug Mondays! #10 and #12

2010-06-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

My lady has been on vacation for the past couple of days, which has made getting artwork done a lot more difficult than I had imagined. All of a sudden there are three furballs brawling it out for my undivided attention. Needless to say my concentration has been shot. Between that and struggling with my recent painting (which I'll post in a day or so) I've been off track on painting my ugly mug. I did this one earlier in the week, from life. The last few I've done have all been black and white over the white of the page, but I thought this time around I'd try it over a red ground. It's interesting, I think. We'll see where it leads.

Casein on canvas paper. 2.5" x 3.5"

This week's offering I kind of phoned in. I've been sketching a bit more again, so I wasn't really feeling sitting down with paints; and then there was the fuzzy coalition protesting in my apartment - one of whom is a really inquisitive cat that likes to get into everything. On more than one occasion he's jumped onto where my palette is kept and I have no desire to clean up a painted kitty. So I deferred to a quick pencil sketch.

Pencil on bristol. 2.5" x 3.5"

Ugly Mug Mondays! #9 and #10

2010-06-02T02:11:00.000-07:00

I kind of skipped last week's Ugly Mug Monday!. It was completely accidental, I swear. I was up late duking it out with the final drawing for my latest full scale illustration and by the time it occurred to me it was something like eight in the morning. Then I spent the past week wrestling said drawing into submission and before I knew it - POW! - it was time for a new week. So I did two portraits for this week, as a way to play catch up. This time 'round I tried working from photo reference instead of sitting in front of a mirror. I kind of felt it was cheating, as I usually (read: always) work from photos, but I stumbled across my senior portrait and couldn't resist.

Once upon a time I had an afro. I thought it was cool. What can I say? Also I have a gap in my teeth. It isn't nearly this bad, but i thought it was hilarious and just couldn't help but leave it. It was originally the center-line in the face and wound up being one of those happy accidents that end up making a picture just that much more whimsical and quirky.

I realized that with the exception of my first week's offering, all of the self-portraits in the Ugly Mug series have been in black and white. There are two reasons for this;

1. I look at things in terms of tone. The simplest way to do this is in black and white.

2. I only have three tubes of casein paint. Black. White. And red. As it would happen I've fallen in love with casein and I sort of naturally reach for them whenever it's time to paint my ugly mug.

That being said, someone once told me I was afraid of color. She was basing this on the fact that everything in my sketchbook was in black and white. Either pencil or pen and ink. I was taught fairly early on that "if it doesn't work in black and white, it isn't going to work in color" and "you choose a color for it's value". These are the two things I hear in the back of my mind whenever I'm painting. So a lot of the time yes, I do work in black and white, but I think it's ridiculous to say that I'm afraid of color. To prove it, I put some red in this one. Hope you like it.

As an aside I really like these two paintings. I think the economic use of brush strokes is pretty cool, and I'm quite fond of the purely implied expression - especially in the second one. I'm liking the direction these are heading in, I hope you good folks do too.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #8

2010-05-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

"Schedule time to utterly fail."
-Craig Mullins

"You have to do 1,000 bad drawings before you can do any good ones."
-I can't remember who said this.

This is quite obviously one of the bad ones. It is however a good example of the "Rule of Two". (Hey, if it's good enough for the Sith, it's good enough for us.)

The "Rule of Two", simply put, states that if something is important to your process, you should always have at least two of it. Spares are invaluable. You wouldn't want to be pulling an all nighter and have an important part of your process die on you, now would you? This ranges for everything from technology (projectors, airbrush pump, Wacom tablets, etc) to things that seem so incidental like tubes of paint. There are a few colors I just have to have on the palette when I'm working and if I were to run out of one at 3 am, well, there isn't anything I could do about it. It's to that end that I always have two tubes of my "go to" colors.

Now, that being said, I didn't heed the "Rule of Two" when it came to this week's Ugly Mug Monday! I started this drawing with my trusty Pentel brush pen and quickly realized that it was starting to run dry. As a result I tried to rush through it before the pen died and, well, I failed. Oh well, this is why experiments must be ran.

Ink and brush on bristol.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #7

2010-05-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying the casein studies that I've been doing so much that I decided to shake things up a bit. There are a lot of things digital "paintings" can do well and I think my favorite are the blacks. You can get them instantly without any fuss and they don't have the tendency of deadening a picture. Rich blacks are fantastic.

At any rate, this week's offering for Ugly Mug Mondays! is a digital one. I've been tooling with the ol' Wacom less and less often these days (other than value studies for paintings) which I'm surprised to say surprises me - I'm really starting to have fun pushing the pixels around.

I've got two paintings in the pipe right now. I hope to get those up here within a fortnight.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #5 and #6

2010-05-04T02:47:00.001-07:00

Last week I didn't post a painting for Ugly Mug Monday because the moment I finished painting it I was all set up and loose enough to start work on the Steampunk Mailman. By the time I stopped painting that evening (and really it was 8 in the morning) I was too tired to take a picture and write up a blog posting. So, here it is.

It's oil on watercolor paper. It's something I've played with once before and didn't much care for it then either. I got some nice loose effects that I'm fond of, so I think it's something that I'm going to continue experimenting with. This time around I tried applying linseed oil quite liberally, but the paper still soaked that up almost instantly. Next time I think I'll actually soak the paper in linseed oil and see what happens.

This week's offering is back to casein on canvas paper. I'm really liking how that combination handles. I just start blocking in darks with a flat brush and correct as I go. I set up my black mirror to keep my values low and better controlled, since I've noticed my tendency to go more towards high key in my value structures. At any rate, it isn't bad for a 20 minute study.

I wonder what I'll come up with next week! The 12 week challenge is keeping me pretty busy, but it's all very exciting.

Creative Quarterly 20

2010-05-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

April 30th was Creative Quarterly's deadline for their next round of judging. I've entered four pieces for consideration this time around, and I have a pretty good feeling about it. The four pieces are:

"Run, Fat Girl, Run"

"Bath Time"

"Vertigo"

"Priority Mail"

Winners will be notified in 6 - 8 weeks, so if I hear anything I'll be sure to let you know.

Steampunk Mailman: The Process

2010-05-02T00:38:00.000-07:00

Howdy fellow illustration folk! Since everyone wanted to see the final for my Steampunk Mailman painting I figured I would do ya' one better and post my process (with helpful captions as to what on earth I was thinking) from start to finish.

Typically I do all of my thinking on paper. So once I get an idea I sit down with a sketchbook and start working out concepts (composition comes later) and just generally letting things germinate and come to the surface. I usually make lists of props that I may want to be involved or just things that may be associated with the image in general. I'm basically looking for "the hook", or the thing about an image that really gets me interested and drives me crazy. Once I find that I'll move on.

I did things a little out of order this time around. Early on I realized that if I wanted to have my figure dangling from a rope ladder I was going to have one heck of a time getting the reference for it. In the interest of costs I built a maquette so that I would have a good idea of what a rope ladder would do under weight and the like. Years and years ago I bought a bunch of Stikfas figures and they make decent stand ins when I'm just kicking ideas around. I fashioned a rope ladder out of twine and toothpicks; but the twine was too stiff and didn't really have any give in it. So I took another stab at it, this time using sewing thread and toothpicks and things worked out much better. I moved on with the sketches having a much better idea that this was going to work out.

Now that I know what I'd like my concept to be I sit down to try to figure out what I want the composition to be. At this stage I'm looking to see how it may look on the page. Really I'm still working with thumbnail-sized drawings so that I don't get caught up in the little fiddly bits. "You wouldn't build a house by starting with the lace doilies, would you?" Also I tend to draw in tone and value patterns, which helps me tremendously. If something else comes to me at this point I'll jot it down - I wouldn't want to lose something that I may want to use later on, now would I?

For this project I decided that not only did I want to have the figure as the center of attention and the clouds as a dominant element, but that I really wanted to have a cool airship in there somewhere. (Of course! Why not?!) So I was looking to see if I could have the three as dominant elements, but not compete with one another - even now I don't really know what I was thinking. Having my little maquettes was invaluable for this though. As I got stuck in the sketching I was able to move around them and see how things would be more dramatic or more compelling from various angles. I decided to go with the composition on the second page at the top.

Now that I have a direction I knuckle down and refine the sketch a little bit more, just to make sure that everything works out and that the eye will go where I want it to. This is the sketch that I approved and from here it was on to the referencing stage.

The maquettes I made were good for figuring some things out at the planning stage, but they weren't going to be adequate substitutes for drapery, and lighting, and accidents, and small insignificant things that we never think to plan but always make things seem so much more real. So, naturally, I was going to have to build a rope ladder. (See past posts here and here.) So that's exactly what I did. I had to do whatever it took to get the reference I needed.

This is where the fun begins. Illustration is not photography - so I take the reference I've collected and do a final drawing. All the time I'm making decisions about what's important and what isn't and doing a kind of editing as I work. I'm still drawing mostly with tone, looking at value patterns and boiling things down to what's in the light and what's in the shadow. I decided the bottom half was still kind of boring, so I added the canada geese to fill space and create movement and interest.

Now, to be honest this part I kind of just phoned-in this time. I had a deadline to keep and I didn't really have the time to devote to this step - but I feel it's important to point out that I thought they were important enough to do anyway. Once I know what my drawing is going to look like I do a black and white value study (usually in Photoshop). Generally speaking I have a sense of where my lightest lights and darkest darks are going to be, but I want to know about all of that information between those two points. One of the main ways I direct the eye is with value (part of why I don't draw in pen anymore and tend to draw with the side of a pencil). For instance I knew I wanted the space between the flaps on his jacket to be a lot lighter in tone than the jacket itself, and therefore creating contrast, interest, and a focal point. I don't really leave anything to chance; it's all very deliberate. Then the color rough helps me make sure that my palette and color choices are harmonious, interesting, and vibrant. I managed to get away with such a simple color rough because, well, blue and orange work well together. Something about opposites attracting and the like. Really I just wanted to make sure that the over-abundance of orange wouldn't be overwhelming and kill the painting. I like painting when I'm at the easel, not making a lot of decisions. If I know what my colors are going to be before hand I don't have to sit there hemming-and-hawing about what color I should paint his bag, or the ship, or his boots.

And really, from here it's clear sailing. I've done all the preliminary work and I've made all my decisions and choices so all that's left to do is paint. And usually this goes by pretty quick. I'll just post some in progress shots of it as I went through.

And the final!

I left out all of the fussy bits about surface preparation and how I get from the drawing to the canvas, but if anyone wants to know about that process I'd be happy to write something up for it. At any rate, there you have it.

Steampunk Mailman

2010-04-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

If anyone has been paying attention, I missed this week's "Ugly Mug Monday", but I feel I have a good excuse - I finished my Steampunk Mailman painting. (Yay!) Which, is a self-portrait of sorts, so I feel it breaks even.

I had a lot of fun working on this piece and I pulled out literally every trick I've got to get it done. It was a new challenge and I'm really pleased with the outcome. I'm thinking of doing a blog post detailing the process - so that may be in the works.

Oil on canvas. 20 3/4" x 34"

Ugly Mug Mondays! #4

2010-04-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

It isn't much of a likeness this time around. I just didn't have it in me, I guess. I've discovered that I'm enjoying the casein but I don't know. My head was elsewhere. I'll make it up to you next week.

Casein on watercolor paper.

Rope Ladder

2010-04-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I said I'd be back with evidence of my rope ladder, and I like to think I'm a man of my word. Originally I was thinking I'd hang the ladder from the lower branch that's visible in the picture, but... well, I got a little over zealous when I was making the rope ladder. I wound up making it considerably longer than initially anticipated. Oh well, these things happen. I scampered up the tree and affixed my ladder to a branch about twelve feet off the ground and prepared to dangle from it like a goober. And dangle I did.

Honestly I'm impressed with the construction of the ladder. When I was making my maquettes I had issues keeping the rope an even length as I worked my way down - as a result the length of the rope isn't equal between the rungs so things are a little unsteady. But I didn't have that problem when I turned to work on the full scale, I managed to keep everything straight and. I think what surprised me most is how quick the work went. For a ladder that's a little over eleven feet long it only amounted to about an hour's worth of work.

There you have it. The ladder that I was sure was going to kill me was a success. I hope to have it's corresponding painting done soon. I'm sure I'll let you know when that wraps up.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #3

2010-04-13T04:22:00.000-07:00

It's that time of week again! I found some casein while cleaning up some stuff in my studio so I thought I'd play with it a little. I tried to keep it loose and quick, so I used a single #4 flat brush, just so that I wouldn't get caught up in any of the detail. There are some pretty tasty passages that I really enjoy and some things I wish I spent more time on - but that's how the cookie crumbles.

Casein on canvas paper. 30 minutes.

Ugly Mug Mondays! #2

2010-04-06T02:57:00.001-07:00

Originally when I set out to do this thing, this... Ugly Mug Mondays, I had intended them to all be paintings. Well, I had a couple of false starts tonight and the clock kept tick-tocking away and before I knew it, it was pretty darn late. So, I trashed what I had done so far and sat down to just do a pretty little pencil drawing. All was not lost! I learned a couple of things.

I apparently can't sit down and produce a "realistic" self-portrait. I always have to exaggerate something. But you know, I feel it always looks like me. Maybe it's because I'm so used to seeing myself that I have to play with my appearance to get through the drawing. Kind of like a kid sticking his baby carrots into his mashed potatoes to make a blob monster that's reminiscent of something from Calvin and Hobbes.

I also tend to make the same squinty one-eyebrow-cocked kind of face when I plan on doing a self portrait. (I wonder what the hell that's about.) So I made my eyebrows really big - especially the one I was cocking. What's more is I tend to make dumb faces in general. Oh well. It is what it is.

Pencil on bristol. 30 minutes.

P.S.
My ears don't really stick out that far. Just felt the need to let you know that.

Found My Lost Shaker of Salt

2010-04-03T01:23:00.001-07:00

I did this little painting last Tuesday as a means to experiment. The sad reality is that I only took one painting class when I was in school and I never did too much painting from life, or in this case, salt. Early on I realized I needed photo reference and I got in the habit of just printing off pictures that I needed before painting. So I set up a little still life of salt and drapery and got busy painting.

A year ago or so I picked up a trick from an "old pro" and had just kind of filed it away with the other nonsensical information in my brain. What this old salt (pun intended) shared was that after he does his drawing on his board he'll touch it up with gouache before spray fixing it. So, I tried it. I did a little underpainting in gouache (mostly to identify the shadow shapes and patterns) then I spray fixed it and let it dry. Then I came back on top of that with oils.

I think the most impressive thing I learned was how thin I've been painting these days. Effectively I ended up just glazing over the gouache for some rich and luminous effects. I'll have to keep it up, I really enjoyed painting from life and having a loose and free underpainting to work with.

5x7. Oil on masonite. 1 hour.

Handicrafts!

2010-04-02T00:47:00.000-07:00

The current painting I'm setting up calls for the central figure to be climbing down a rope ladder. Actually, it's more like he's hanging off of a rope ladder than climbing down it. I got all excited and dove into the sketch phase and after a short time I came to an idea that I rather enjoyed. Then the excitement wore off and I found myself staring a problem in the eye. How was I going to get the reference I needed? My first brilliant idea was to pose little toys on rope ladders made from twine and toothpicks. And truth be told it worked a little - they gave me a better idea of what the weight distribution should be like. But I would still need to get a figure in costume in the proper pose for actual weight distribution, and drapery, and lighting, and those great little accidental moments you get, and and and... I was going to need to get a rope ladder.

I could have bought one, sure, but as is often the case none of the ones on the market were quite what I was looking for or even in my budget. I was going to have to get crafty. Facing facts I took a trip to the local giant hardware store with my DIY research in tow and did some shopping. I think what I got is what I'm going to need. Everything purchased was with safety in mind (after all I don't want to end up injured or the recipient of a Darwin Award) and far exceeds the qualifications to support my weight. Sure, I wouldn't take any of it mountain climbing, but it should be more than enough to support me for a photo shoot.

I sat down this evening and fashioned what I need, and tomorrow I think I'll try to set up the camera and take pictures - weather permitting. I'll be back to let you know how it all turned out. If you don't hear from me in a couple of days, well, it means my deathtrap lived up it it's title.

Happy painting!

Ugly Mug Mondays!

2010-03-30T02:12:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time I thought I would start doing self-portraits once a week. As with most things I had the thought and let it slip past me. Well I came back around to that notion just the other day, but this time I gave it a name. I don't know what possessed me to do such a thing, but I have named it:

Ugly Mug Mondays!

The plan is to post drawings or paintings that are of the self-portrait variety. Of my ugly mug. It isn't that I'm vain and that I love staring at myself in the mirror - or even that I'm that great of a model - but hey, I'm always available. Cheap and available. If nothing else, I always know where I am.

For the first venture, I broke out the gouache set again. I started with a quick and loose drawing on bristol then I spray-fixed it. Once that was all setup and ready to rock and roll I made a mess on top of it with the gouache. Messes are fun. Weird things happen when you make a mess and have the daunting task of cleaning them up, and in that weird space you learn. I can't wait to see what happens next week!

Playing Make-Believe

2010-03-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I used to play dress-up all the time. Of course all of the standards were present; cowboy, police man, army man, Superman (with the ever present clothes-pinned bath towel for a cape), and ninja. I think most people grew out of this phase, and I think my mom really hoped I would. 'Cause after all, I scavenged what I could from around the house to aid in my make-believe adventures. Here I am, "all grown up" and I'm still dressing up in my free time and traipsing around the living room.

Anywho, I've been working out a drawing for a new painting and I wanted to make sure the costuming was convincing. There are a few more kinks to work out, namely how to photograph the action I need, but I thought I'd share this picture with you good folks as a sort of teaser.

Also, you'll note the sleeping dog on the pillow on screen left. He's such a lazy little thing.

Vertigo

2010-03-19T02:35:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me to do a couple of paintings for her, the first of which being based on, inspired if you will, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. For those of you that have seen that movie (and really, how many people that are left haven't?), this isn't supposed to be a movie poster for the film. I was trying to create an image that was more towards the sense of vertigo, I suppose. So that would be why the figure doesn't look a thing like Mr. Stewart. I just wanted to get that out of the way before someone poked at me and gave me a hard time about it.

I threw just about everything I had at this painting. It took me a considerable amount of time to come up with a sketch that I liked enough to move forward with. Then I spent a few days snapping reference until I got enough that I felt would be acceptable. Next up I sat down and chiseled out a value study to work out some of the preliminary hitches. As of late I've been scanning my sketches or other preliminary drawings and using Photoshop to scrape together a value study. I'm really beginning to enjoy this stage of the process. If my picture doesn't work in black and white, it won't work in color, so I have to make sure at this stage of the game that I have everything I need for balance, composition, and what have you. If anything with scale needs to be worked out from my original drawing it's a simple matter of stretching or squashing and then working on top of it in a different layer if I need to.

It was about this time that I became obsessed with finding solid color schemes, so I sat down and painted up a little 5 x 7 color study. I could have done this part on the computer as well, quite easily as a matter of fact, but I wanted to limit the tubes of paint that I had out for use . So I found the main three tubes I wanted to use and hashed out my little color comp. Once I thought I had everything I needed, I enlarged my value study and transferred it to the canvas. All that remained to do was paint it.

Admittedly I got through most of the painting with no real problems. But eventually I ran into a snag. I realized I wanted a somewhat dramatically lit face for my figure, but the drawing I had originally done with my value study just wasn't cutting it. As near as I could tell I had two options;

1. Try to light my own mug again and set up the lights to get the results I wanted.
2. Find some willing model so I could do the same.

Unfortunately neither option was particularly attractive at 3 in the morning. All of a sudden I realized I needed (and/or desperately wanted) a planes of the head model . In lieu of shelling out $98 though, I realized I have Poser 6 installed and could get the next best thing. So I fired it up and got the reference I needed. Then I redrew the face and viola! Things came into place. I did the same for the hand. Using Poser as a tool to work through difficult and tricky lighting only, and not as a model for form.

I think it all came together for something pretty neat. I'll be delivering the painting to my friend this weekend, I hope she likes it.

Oil on canvas. 24 x 30.

Killing time. And art.

2010-03-08T02:26:00.000-08:00

Last night I was waiting for a failing experiment to fail (erm... I mean dry) so I sat down in front of my computer. Lucky for me I found a pack of 5 x 8 index cards in the studio while I was cleaning the night before. I picked up my trusty old Pentel brush pen and started making a mess. Before too long I added a few white highlights and called it quits. I've got a huge stack of these cards, so I may have to play with this some more.

Ink on paper. 30 minutes

Overpainting.

2010-02-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

Painted over my underpainting from the other night. One thing I can say for certain is the painting went a lot faster with the aid of an underpainting. However I feel it's almost overworked. I over-painted. (Rim shot.) There was a freshness in the underpainting that I think has disappeared in the final. Next time I'll slow down some and start with thinner glazes to preserve my preliminary work.

Oh well. What's done is done, and it's time to move on to the next one.

Oil on canvas board. About an hour.

Graci

2010-02-21T23:38:00.000-08:00

I had read that Norman Rockwell often did under paintings in mars violet, so I picked me up a tube of the stuff and thought I'd try it out. Used the wipe out method for the highlights. I'm trying to introduce more randomness and texture to my work. So far I'm liking the feel.

Oil on canvas board. 2 hours.

2010-02-19T01:11:00.000-08:00

The last two projects I tackled with Painter were kind of cutesy - and there's nothing wrong with that - but I thought I'd try something a little more realistic this time around. I was still playing with the mixing palette function, but this time I restricted myself to the two colors (Painter's approximation of yellow ochre and alizarin's crimson) plus black and white. I have mixed feelings about it overall.

I know that only a poor craftsman blames his tools, but up until recently I was running two monitors on my computer. It was nice. I could have Photoshop or Painter open on the right and have whatever reference I was using on the left. True, I could have both open on the same monitor, but then the two things I want to look at are fighting for priority on the already limited real estate. I've been spoiled by dual monitors for about 8 years now. I just can't make the transition back in a manner of weeks. Sigh.

So, my problem with this was constantly having to switch back and forth. It's so inconvenient. It would be like having to turn around to look at a model then back again to look at your drawing. I feel it's a bit more on the choppy side because of the disconnect in my chain of information. Outside of that I think the colors are kind of drab, but at least they all work well together - though I would hope so since they're all related thanks to the limiting of the palette. I think it could stand to be a little more towards the high-key range of things, but I'll live. I love the hands though. I was worried they'd lose some of their charm when I tried to "paint" them, but I think I pulled it off well. And I think they're my favorite part of the image. Also I'm realy liking the pastel tools I've been playing with. I've always wanted to play with pastels (since it's more akin to drawing with a painting flair) but I've never been able to bring myself to actually sit down with some and try.

Anywho. It is what it is and for what it is I'd say it's done. Next time I think something with a little bit more color is in order.

Painter XI. 2 hours.

Experiment No. 2593

2010-02-08T02:34:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine did a doodle of a kid in a bath and sent it to me. There was something wonderfully naive about it that inspired me to branch out a little. I did this sketch in my faithful moleskine and kind of went about my business. Though, after I did Run, Fat Girl, Run (for which this picture served as a stylistic inspiration) I figured I would scan it and continue my exploration of Painter.

This time I set out to play more with the color mixing feature. I've been experimenting with a limited palette of yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, mars black, and white (more on that next time) and I wanted to know if Painter was smart enough to effectively mimic the results. Not quite, as it turns out. For the colors used in the rendering of the flesh things were pretty consistent, but the weird green I've been getting from yellow ochre and mars black was no where to be seen. All things considered I'm pleased with it's versatility. I had to give in when it came to the tub and the water though. There's just no way to get a blue from yellow, red, black, and white. Obviously.

Other than that, I think I lost some of the whimsical character from the sketch after scanning it into Painter. Originally she looked more like a kid in a bath, which was the point, but now that I'm talking about it that seems weird. But I digress, I think it's pretty solid. Things are coming along fairly well I think. I'm definitely willing to explore this direction for a while. Until next time! Thanks for looking.

Doodle Doodle Doodle...

2010-01-31T01:47:00.001-08:00

I made you out of pixels. Ok, so my talents don't lie in parodying holiday songs. I'm sorry.

Loose 20 minute warm up and experiment rolled into one. I've noticed normally when I work in photoshop I keep the transparency set at about 80% or so. I may get crazy and drop it down to about 40% for an electronic "glaze". (But only if I really want to live life on the edge.) This time around, after I had most of the shapes where I wanted them I started playing around with a really low opacity. I hoped to soften edges and drop in some tone where things should be shifted towards light or dark.

Photoshop CS3. 20 minutes.

Pip Pip?

2010-01-27T01:30:00.000-08:00

It's a new year.

Well... it has been for about three weeks now. Obviously I'm a little behind the times. But this dashing chap is always in style. Stylishly late, if you will. (And I hope you will!)

At any rate, I hope everyone's new year is treating them well so far. Cheers!

P.S.
Should he have a monocle? I kind of feel like he should have a monocle.

Photoshop CS3. 30 minutes.

Bad Painting

2009-12-13T12:54:00.001-08:00

When trying to help someone learn something I've found it's helpful to have good examples of bad examples. That's why I did this painting. There was one issue I wanted to tackle in particular, but got a second one as a bonus. Oh frabjous day!

I think I'll start with the bonus issue that sprang up. When I was in school a professor or two warned against drawing with lead pencil for underdrawings for paintings. Generally speaking they felt it was best to either block in your drawing with paint (diluted, of course) and a brush or use something like a colored pencil or pastel. The logic being you could bias the underdrawing towards warm or cool depending on your intention with the final painting. Also, whatever you put down as a drawing had that pesky tendency to mix with the paint you put on top. So, if you use a lead pencil for a drawing, well, then you're going to grey down all of the colors you put over it. And that's exactly what happened here. The painting just feels dead, for want of a better word. At least as far as the colors are concerned. Thankfully, there are ways around this.

Primarily I do my underdrawing in pencil (or graphite transfer, which amounts to the same thing) then I spray fix the drawing - and I spray fix to keep the drawing from running away when I apply a color wash later. When the drawing stops smudging I apply a coat of acrylic paint to tone the canvas and bias it towards warm or cool. I use workable fixatif for the spraying stage in the interest of speed. I've found that the acrylic wash tends to bead up and not stick to the surface if I use crystal clear for the sealing stage. I could use an oil wash on top of crystal clear, but I don't want to wait for it to dry. The acrylic wash also serves as a final sealant on the surface. If I have a false start in the painting stage I can scrub everything back down to the drawing and acrylic wash without much in the way of trouble and start over.

Now, to take a step backwards, before you seal a drawing and start painting, you've gotta do the drawing. The important thing here is to make sure you get the drawing right. I cannot stress this enough. If you aren't happy with the preliminary lay-in, don't start painting. No matter how well you render your subject over a bad drawing, it will still look wrong. I remember listening to people say they'll "just fix it when [they] go to paint", but it seemed to be more effort than it was worth. Why create extra hurdles for yourself to jump over when you're painting? As one of my professors would say, "if the frame of your house isn't stable, why would you start furnishing your bedroom?" Or something like that.

So I did a bad drawing. The anatomy is so very wrong and the composition is crap. I feel the rendering is fair (could be better, of course) but it just looks wrong. Nothing short of shifting the entire painting to one side or starting over entirely would have been able to save this. And that's the point. If it isn't right, start over. Another one of my professors used to tell us all the time, "You've got to slow down in order to go fast." I find as long as everything is in place before I sit down at the easel I can get through a painting much more quickly. Which is preferable over trying to fix everything that's wrong from the start as I go along.

That's a very long-winded way to state two simple guidlines:
1. Make sure the drawing is solid.
2. Seal the drawing so you don't contaminate your paints.

Happy painting!

Digital Desires

2009-11-10T05:15:00.000-08:00

What else would I do at 4 am other than fire up Photoshop and make an image? Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, who sleeps at 4 am?

So, I'm continuing down my path of creating work that's completely digital. I still have some misgivings about it, and I still really enjoy the tactile quality of painting at the easel, but this digital thing is starting to make a lot of sense. It does help that the benefits are a many and they whisper in my ear while I sleep. Thus far I've limited myself to only black and white, and I've been pleased with the results so far. This image is still a little jumpy in certain areas, but on the whole I think it's coming together. At least a huge step in the right direction.

There will probably be a lot more of these on the way. I'm doing them just to be doing them. I don't know what direction I want to take them, but it's all helping. It's all building towards something. (Other than french fries.)

So here it is.

Approx. 3 hours. Photoshop CS3.

Smooth Criminal

2009-10-31T04:40:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I idolized Michael Jackson. But let's face it, who didn't? I remember watching the Moonwalker video EVERYDAY and dancing along with the choreography. (As well as a five year-old can, at any rate.) There was only one bit I couldn't pull off to my satisfaction - the Smooth Criminal lean. I figured it must be possible. I mean, Michael Jackson was doing it! And, while he was admittedly better at dancing than I was, I figured if he could do it then I should be able to do it too. Only logical, I feel.

It wasn't until later in life I discovered they were using wire harnesses (and specially designed shoes for the live performances)
to pull off his gravity defying feat.

So, Michael, this one's for you.

oil on canvas. 21" x 35"

Deeper into the Digital Rabbit Hole I Go!

2009-10-24T05:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I can't sleep I like to play dress up and play with some of the myriad of props I've collected. Trouble is, I often never have a project in mind for them, so they end up collecting whatever the digital equivalent of dust would be.

Unable to let things go, I've been tinkering with brushes in Photoshop. (Who? Me? Stubborn? No!) I forgot that you could customize them and make them do your bidding as you bend them to your will. Silly me. So tonight I thought I'd pull one of the aforementioned silly pictures out of mothballs and try to make something happen.

I think this is a lot closer to what I'd want to be doing if I were to create illustrations with a Wacom tablet. It doesn't feel as sterile and flat as other things I've done in the past, and I didn't even have to impose a texture on this one! Originally I planned on coloring this image (and I may very well still do that) but I got really into just playing with black and white - then I realized what time it was. So, I'm off to bed before my lady wakes up and kills me. Or looks at me with severe disappointment. I can't tell which would be worse. You'll have to wait until next time for any kind of update on this cowpoke.

What's he looking at, I wonder?

About an hour and a half. Photoshop Cs3. Intuos 3 tablet.

P.S. I have some ACTUAL paintings coming down the pipe. I miss oils.

Day Job

2009-10-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the day job spills over into my art. Once upon a time I was sitting down with my boss and playing with her iPhone. I went to play with the camera (I don't know why, it just kind of happened, okay?) and she pulled a silly face. As she's been known to do. Like the sneaky little sneak that I am I emailed it to myself. I swore one day that I'd do something with it. So, viola!

Continuing my exploration of the digital realm. I think part of my trouble is I think square. When I'm painting in the real world (as if I enter some alternate dimension to paint with pixels...) I use flats and brights for about 92% of what I do. I really only pull out a round for a few details and to sign my paintings. To that end, while there are some nice flat brushes in the software I use, it has the disadvantage of not being able to be turned in space. If the brush has a natural 45° slant to it, it will always have that slant. I can't rotate it and get a wider stroke or turn it on it's edge and get a fine line.

This time around I kept the image in Photoshop (as opposed to getting frustrated and moving it over to Painter, as I've been known to do) and simply used the default brush. I'm pleased with the results, but it doesn't really feel like me. Yesterday's painting has more the feel I want to be getting from my tablet, but wasn't as tight as I'd like it. I don't know, something like 10% tighter would be better I think. Next time mayhap I'll try the square brushes in Photoshop, but so far Painter still has my heart.

However, thanks to my buddy Brian the color-choosing process went a little easier this time. He sent me this link that really simplifies it to an almost "no-brainer' level. I've know (and have been rather intimate with) the HSB sliders for the last few years, but I overlooked the swatches entirely. I'm sorry, swatches. Can you ever forgive me?

P.S. My boss doesn't always look like this. Only half the time (maybe a little more). I swear.

2 hours. Photoshop CS3.

A Digital Caip-er!

2009-10-02T03:45:00.000-07:00

A long overdue character study, for a long overdue piece for a friend of mine. She's got a whole bunch of story written up that I want to get my hands on and maybe start drawin' some of it up. If any of that starts to happen, I'll be sure to let you know. In the mean time, however you can enjoy this preview of Caip.

Ok, I'm beginning to concede. I think I'm getting a better handle on this digital thing. I'm still kind of frustrated because I can't seem to find the colors I see in my head in the sliders and color wheel. There's something kind of sweet in just having a few tubes of paint to limit your palette to simplify things. When I've got every veritable color at my finger tips it's hard to reel myself back in and take it easy. I'll see if I can work through it, though. I may just have to do more stuff like this.

About 2 1/2 hours. Painter IX.

Sketchbook Dump

2009-09-09T04:36:00.000-07:00

I've been... well, let's face it, I've been in a weird mood as of late. As a result, I've kind of taken it hiding in my sketchbook in the wee hours of the night scribbling my tiny little heart out. Here are a few choice pages that I quite enjoy.

Anywho, I feel I'm on to something. As such I've started experimenting in this general direction and will have posts to that end shortly.

What a difference...

2009-08-02T04:12:00.000-07:00

304 days makes. What a difference indeed.

This is another redo of something I had in the wings. I first created this image back in November of last year. I was just beginning to figure out what I needed in order to make the images that I wanted, but I wasn't quite there yet. I've picked up a trick or two here or there, and I thought I'd take another crack at it. I figure if Phil Hale can redo the illustrations he did for a book, then I could redo illustrations I did for myself.

The first time around I was poking fun at both of these Republican "mavericks", but this time I centered more on Palin. All of her props are "toys", whereas McCain's are more authentic. Her vest has the little frilly bits like you'd see in some cheesy backwater Arizona mall. And it's hard to see in this image, but she has a logo on her hat that's vaguely reminiscent of everyone's favorite Southern California rodent. (But no! it's Maxfield!)

All in all I'm pleased with this one. I think these things are starting to make sense. Again, attached below is the original painting.

Oil on canvas. 27" x 37"

Quick Practice

2009-07-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

I'm toying with the idea of starting a digital sketchbook. To that end, I may be doing more quick portraits

30 minutes. Painter IX.

Vikings. In space.

2009-06-21T04:04:00.000-07:00

There was recently a "challenge" posted on a art forum I've been known to haunt and the prompt was simply to draw a viking. Unfortunately due to various circumstances beyond my control I missed the deadline, but I knew I was going to want to finish it at my earliest convenience. My plans all fell through on Friday, so I spent a few hours in my studio banging this number out. I didn't have any prep work on hand past a small thumbnail, which made painting feel a little like flying blind, but I think that made the experience a bit more reactionary and... fun.

I don't know what's been with me and my space kick lately, but I just had to have a viking in space. As the vikings of myth did, this viking would have a helmet (though to fend off asphyxiation more so than hostile projectiles) complete with horns. And naturally, as an explorer of outer space, they'd be fighting tentacled creatures instead of the Britons or other more "civilized" men.

Vikings were Nordic and by no means German, but I figured our hero here would be sporting dachshunds on his shield. I think they might have approved of these Germanic little badger hounds. I can think of one or two dachschunds that would have been helpful in an all out monster fight.

Oil on canvas. 12" x 24".

When experiments fail

2009-06-14T03:45:00.000-07:00

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my lady has given me a bunch of panels that she found left over from a past life. So, in continuing my head studies, here's another one of Katharine.

Originally I had set out to paint something else on the board but quickly realized that the 8x10 surface was no where near suitable for what I had set out to accomplish. So I turned the board one quarter turn clockwise and just started painting. I had to abandon it after about an hour because the darn thing was WAY to absorbent.

I learned that it's important not to trust panels given to someone that are then given to you. As near as I can tell the woman they came from used absorbent ground instead of gesso to prime this batch, so everything I put down immediately seeped into the board. It was kind of like painting with the stuff glue sticks are made out of. I have since re-gessoed all of the remaining panels.

That being said, I'm pleased with the likeness and the overall handling of the paint (before I got too frustrated with the hair and summarily trashed it). I'd mark it as a stalemate. I've been told she looks intimidating, like she's going to try to eat your arm.

Oil on canvas board. 8x10

Zombie Nazis from Space!

2009-06-03T14:40:00.001-07:00

Or is it Nazi Zombies? Either way, this is what I get for talking to my friend. I don't remember what we were talking about or how the words "Nazi zombie from space" could possibly have fallen out of my mouth, but they did.

And I just couldn't let it go.

So I came home and did a little drawing, which turned into a little painting.

Oil on board. 5 x 7

Self-Portrait

2009-06-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, back in the days of art school, a teacher tasked us with drawing 50 self portraits over the weekend. I suspect he wanted to force us to loosen up and not be so... academic in our approach to drawing. So, I sat down in front of a mirror and set about my task. Needless to say a lot of the drawings wound up as kindling (or would have if I had a fireplace) but there were a few I liked or was talked into keeping. This would have to be my favorite from that exercise, and as such I've had it pinned to my studio wall.

Recently I decided to pull it down and use it as a base for a painting. Sitting down in front of my trusty mirror again I set to the task of painting it out. Paying attention to the relationships between shapes was more important than getting the shapes accurate. I miss the fact that it looks like I'm on an oxygen tank in the initial pencil drawing. And I don't know why, but I like the look of the receding hairline in the drawing as well. Oh well, maybe next time.

There's a first time for everything...

2009-05-11T04:41:00.000-07:00

I was digging through some of my old stuff the other day and I came across yet another assignment I wanted to rehash. Once upon a time a teacher gave the assignment to illustrate the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelly with current events in mind. Well, at the time, Katrina was very current, so that's the tilt most of the assignments took. In earnest, my piece made no sense. Well, it made sense to ME at the time, but now... even I can't remember what it's supposed to be about. That's a bad thing. I aimed to refocus my attention to see if I came up with something that was more readily accessible to the public at large.

This painting is a first for me as I somehow managed to make it through four years of art school (through the bulk of the Bush administration) without painting Dubya once. At the time I very much tried to avoid political commentary, and I just think I got lucky that none of my teachers assigned something that was strictly "politician-geared". The research for this guy was a lot of fun. That's a Brown Pelican sitting on his head - the state bird of Louisiana. The view of the city is looking east, so aside from the river (which is on the other side of the buildings) the nearest body of water is Lake Pontchatrain - 4 miles to the north. And the last thing that I'll mention is the shadows on the buildings are accurate for about 10:00 am on a Louisiana morning.

Attatched below is a version of the painting sans the type, and for grins and chuckles the original painting I turned in.

Oil on canvas. 21 1/2" x 17 1/2"

Sexting

2009-04-18T23:48:00.001-07:00

This is something I've known has been going on but hadn't known it was given a name until very recently. In a nut shell sexting is the act of sending nude (or semi-nude) pictures via text message, and - big shocker - it's particularly popular amongst high school students. The big-ticket item surrounding this issue is - how close to child pornography is it?

There are kids in schools all across the country who are formally being charged with child pornography. Generally speaking the photos are intended solely for the boyfriend or girlfriend, but the problem arises when the photos are shared between classmates and children from other schools. In some cases there have been reports of the pictures winding up on the internet. Once it hits the internet and Myspace or Facebook (or really whatever your social networking site of choice may be) it spreads like wildfire - and that's the kind of thing you just can't get back.

Then again, kids are notorious for not thinking that far ahead. It all seems well and good when they're together and feel like it'll be that way forever, but if there's a messy break-up there's no telling what someone may do out of anger. (And honestly I'm willing to bet a good percentage of the time a messy break-up isn't required for someone to share and brag with their buddies.) Anywho... I'm not here to try to argue one point over the other, and there are plenty of more eloquently written articles on the matter out there, so yeah...

I wanted my image to be kind of flirty without being to sexy or over the top, and I felt I had to get the idea across that it was a text (picture) message but that the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. Hence the emoticon winking face ;) My friend likes it, but says it's kind of creepy, (I suppose it's too soon after she saw Coraline) but I think that speaks to the issue at large. That kids as young as 8th graders (14 years old on average) and willingly exposing themselves in such a way. Oh well, I guess I'm just an old fuddy-duddy at heart.

Oil on canvas. 10 x 14

Swimmin' with the Sharks

2009-04-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

About two months ago I posted a Laker's Girl pin-up I had done as a gift for a friend. As stated towards the end of that post, a coworker said he wanted one for his favorite team - which happens to be the San Jose Sharks. So I set about to do my thing.

The drawing stage gave me the most grief of the entire process. Though once I was happy with it and had it transferred to the canvas, the whole thing went by extremely quickly. All in all I spent four hours at the easel painting. This was the first time I had a 1:1 scale final drawing taped to my easel as I painted, and that helped inform a lot of my decisions more than my reference did. Pretty soon I was checking the reference mostly for color matching and letting the drawing I've already done guide my hand.

When all was said and done I was able to present the painting to my coworker and it was warmly received. So much so that another coworker remarked that he wants one for his favorite hockey team. I think he may have to wait a while, however. I compiled a list of the projects I want to undertake and it was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. There's nothing like seeing something in black and white to get the blood moving and the creative energy flowing.

Oil on canvas. 12" x 16"

Snap. Crackle. Paint.

2009-04-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

A while back I drew this image and I've even tried to paint it a couple of times, but it never quite came out the way I was hoping it would. Though recently as I've been fine-tuning an approach, I thought I'd give it another shot. The greatest challenge of this piece was working on the crackle-pasted substrate. It behaves nothing like canvas and in fact is a little more absorbent than my beloved canvas.

All of that aside, I think it did well. The goal was to learn how to paint on crackle paste, and I'm well on my way to figuring that out. Initially I painted too thin, and while I didn't run into many adhesion problems, I did run into blending issues. Then I thickened up the mix a bit and instead started covering over the crackle. All in all I like to consider it a victory.

Oil on board. 10 x 12

Hanh

2009-04-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

I was down to my last 4x6 panel a few months ago and I wanted to make it special somehow. I have the tendency to get overly precious about the last of anything I have, even if getting more is a simple matter of picking them up the next time I'm at work. The point is, I wanted it to be good and from the heart. I can be such a sap like that sometimes.

Naturally I spent a great deal of time agonizing over who I was going to paint for the last portrait in this round of 4x6 paintings. Then some friends of mine lost someone to a drunk driver in an accident. They were all devastated, and while I didn't truly know the fellow, it reopened a lot of wounds from when I lost my friend Hanh. I spent the next little bit of time looking for a picture I could have sworn I had. All I could come up with was her volleyball picture and though the face in that picture is less than half an inch high, I couldn't abandon my pursuit.

I've always wanted to do a portrait of Hanh, but never felt capable of the challenge. And though I fought this painting every step of the way and it didn't turn out anywhere near where I hoped it would, I still love it. In many respects it was just like my relationship with Hanh, and it brings a smile to my face.

So this is for you, Hanh. You're never too far from my thoughts and somehow still manage to be a source of constant inspiration. I miss you.

Where it all began... kind of.

2009-04-03T01:57:00.000-07:00

I upgraded my light kit today. After spending some time trying to engineer a way to hold my polarizing filters in place I was all set up and ready to shoot artwork. And shoot I did.

In my digging around for things I wanted to shoot or re-shoot I pulled this bad boy off the wall. This is the very first oil painting I've ever done (circa 2000). I had NO idea what I was doing and if I remember correctly I only had two cheap brushes and a plastic palette knife. I had put a sheet of cardboard or something down so I wouldn't get paint on my bed, but it didn't really matter because I was using the paint straight from the tube in all it's thick and creamy glory. The thought of diluting it with medium was a thought that wouldn't occur to me for another six years or so. But then again, I had NO idea what I was doing. You should have seen me gingerly carry this around for the six months it took just to dry to the touch. The rest of my ineptitude aside, I'm still really pleased with how the lightning bolt on the right came out.

The assignment was a response to music and I decided to paint waves that look suspiciously like mountains, now that I think about it. Either way, I keep it hanging in my studio so that I'll have a sense of where it is that I came from, for whatever that might be worth.

Oil on canvas. 11" x 8"

Before too long I'll be posting other things that I shot in my delirium this evening.

I'm all pixelated.

2009-03-26T05:55:00.000-07:00

In about an hour I'll be taking my friend to the airport, so I whittled away my time (not sleeping) watching the Terminator trilogy and scribbling in Photoshop. I'm becoming more and more comfortable making images in Photoshop, and one of these days I'm going to actually finish a piece with it.

I'm still having a fair amount of trouble when it comes to choosing colors. On this one I cheated a little by creating a bunch of swatches from the original reference. (But, I suppose it isn't really cheating since "no one cares how you got there".) With about a half-dozen colors plucked from the reference I laid in blocks of color and then tweaked the opacity to come up with "new" colors to fill out my range. It's the closest I can come to mixing so far.

Sigh. It's getting there, but I miss painting. Painting started making sense - or at least it became less mysterious. My friend pointed something out to me the other day that hadn't fully occurred to me about working digitally. The arm is missing. Since I usually draw/paint at about 16x20 or larger, I tend to work more with my arm than my wrist. I find it's more comfortable and that's why I don't keep a sketchbook as much these days. But, I can't work that way with digital. There's no holding the tool to work with it's side, and that's taking some getting reacquainted with.

Photoshop has sort of become my working sketchbook in an attempt to get used to it again. Since I started painting I started thinking more in terms of blocks of value and color. Pencils became inadequate for getting at what I was thinking, but now I can knock out full value roughs with the same kind of marks I'd make on canvas. (Kind of like working with a sketch canvas like Leyendecker used to, so he'd know where all of his brushstrokes were on the final painting.) So that's neat. I'm thinking more and more I'll just use it for preparatory work for illustration, but who knows...

J.C. Leyendecker

2009-03-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Today is Joseph Christian (J.C.) Leyendecker's birthday. Or, well, it would be if he were still alive. He was born this day in 1874 and is American's unsung illustrator. Though, I'm happy to say, in recent years he's been experiencing a much needed resurgence.

He was one of the greatest influences on Norman Rockwell, though he is rarely credited as such due to a falling out, of sorts. in fact, Norman used to hang around the train station when he was a lad to catch a glimpse of Joe coming home from the big city.

J.C. lived a very secretive life, so there isn't much in the way of readily available information, but there are two books on him now, one by Michael Shau (1970) and the new one by Cutler and Cutler (2008). It was the secretive lifestyle that served as the wedge driving him and Rockwell apart. Joe's "handler", Charles Beech (model, manager, and lover) always managed to keep the two apart, or to limit their interactions. I suppose Beech didn't appreciate the adoration Rockwell showed Leyendecker. Rockwell took it personally and went on record to say that Leyendecker "couldn't paint a woman with any sense of compassion." It was an attack that suggested Leyendecker was homosexual, without affirmitavely outting him. Despite how he may have been hurt by Joe however, Rockwell purposely stopped one short of Leyendecker's impressive 321 Saturday Evening Post covers in silent reverence.

I've had the great fortune to see many of his originals in person, and he continues to be one of greatest inspirations. I'm slowly collecting his post covers when I can find them, and one of my loftiest ambitions is to own an original painting before I die. I was planning on writing something up on his art, but I think I'll let it speak for itself:

I forgot to sleep.

2009-03-21T07:16:00.001-07:00

I often joke about forgetting to eat, but it's actually the sad truth. When I sit down and start to throw myself at something everything else around me just gets blocked out. It isn't a good thing when you stop to think about it. In fact it's dangerously close to self-destruction on more than one level, but it is what it is. Like tonight. I was looking for something to serve as a distraction temporarily before going to bed and I had finished the book I was reading, so I thought I'd play with my new tablet some more. I couldn't think of anything immediately so I went to my tried and true stand by - I redid something I've already done. (Well technically I'm in the process of redoing it, but you know what I mean.)

Some people do master studies, others do... ok, so I don't know what others do. But I typically will take another stab at something I've done that I thought had some merit to see if I've actually been learning. The original of this piece was a cover for an environmental magazine two years ago, and amusingly - at least to me anyway - enough it was the last digital piece I did for an assignment. I've wanted to recreate it as a painting as I gained confidence in that arena and that's still the plan. When the redraw is done I think I may just render it as a grisaille, print it, enlarge it, and then transfer it to canvas and paint it. (I can't shake this desire to have a tangible original in my grubby little hands.)

Whatever I do, I want to do it fairly quick. I've got another project quite literally on the board that I've put on the back burner to play on the computer.

Photoshop CS3 and Intuos 3 tablet.

Dreaming in Digital

2009-03-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

I have digital fleas. I can't see them, but they keep biting me and I just have to sit with my tablet and draw draw draw. After the other night all I want to do is sit in front of my computer and push pixels around.

So I present a quick portrait study of my friend Graciela.

576 x 864 pixels. Photoshop CS3. 9 x 12 Intuos 2 tablet.

Back to digital?

2009-03-15T05:13:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing that digital is the wave of the future. Actually, if you recall my meeting with Donato he went as far as to say that painting for illustration was dead. Well, I still don't agree with that but something compelled me to see where my digital chops were these days.

I aimed to kill two birds with one stone with this piece. I've noticed I have a tendency to want really dramatic light patterns on the model when I'm working with the figure. I think it's something I've picked up watching a lot of beautifully lit movies and television shows (Lost, in particular). After all, "light is the great designer". But I'm slowly working towards having more well-lit models and not just "TA-DA!". So the first challenge was to use a picture that wasn't so dynamic with the light composition. Something natural. (Though I should have used a photo that wasn't lit in the luminous nightmare that was my school, where the light was anything but natural.)

Second I wanted to create the entire image digitally. I'm still undecided when it comes to digital illustration, which is funny because it wasn't that long ago that I considered myself a digital illustrator. I think there's definitely a place for it, and there are people who are doing fantastic work with pixels, but there's too much out there that looks the same. To paraphrase a teacher of mine, you can walk into any high school in America and find dozens, if not hundreds, of kids who can do it. I personally would like to create something that my client's niece or nephew couldn't cobble together.

That being said, this digital painting was created on two (count 'em, two) layers. I have been infected with the traditional approach to a painting! The next time I give it a crack I'll be sure to use multiple layers, and masks, and blending options and, and, and... The most difficult part for me was I could think of my palette and know what colors to mix in what amount for the color I wanted, but with Photoshop I wasn't afforded that luxury. (Another reason I love painter...) Sure, I could have imported the photo I was working from and just use the eyedropper to get the exact color I wanted, but I didn't want to do that. Somehow it felt like cheating. All in all I'm pleased with the results. I may go back in to darken some bits up here and there, but I like it. I think my bias for square brushes shines through. I was frustrated I couldn't just twist the tool in my hand to get the shape I wanted. I know I could fork out a few hundred bucks to get the newer tablets, but I think I'll play with it some more and then decide...

It just all still feels too clean to me.

4 x 6 inches (288 x 743 pixels). Photoshop CS3. 9 x 12 Intuos 2 tablet. 1 1/2 hour.

Black Mirror

2009-03-10T01:00:00.000-07:00

In a recent post I mentioned that I made use of a black mirror. I hadn't heard of a black mirror up until a few years ago when I was at the studio of one of my professors. He was milling about his studio picking things up and telling us what we ought to invest in if we were to make it in the field. Good ol' Vince was a bit of a dreamer, but he never stopped producing good ideas. He pulled out a black mirror and said it was definitely something we should get. Promptly I made a note of it in my sketchbook and tucked the knowledge away. Basically what it is is a reflective surface with a black backing, instead of the normal silver mirror backing. What it does though, is knock all of the values in the reflections down a couple of notches. It's particularly handy for deepening shadows.

The result of looking into a black mirror isn't too far off from this set of images. On the left we have what might be considered a normal reflection, where the one on the right has been doctored to resemble the decrease in value you can expect. Of course one could squint to condense the value patterns even further, which is what I tend to do out of habit.

I haven't really been able to find any information on the internet about where to purchase such a device, and the few glass/mirror shops I've called were equally helpful, but the premise is simple enough I figured I could approximate it effectively. I picked up the deepest black piece of matboard I could find and stuck it into an 11 x 14 frame with the really cheap and reflective glass. And that's it.

The bugger was nefariously difficult to photograph well, but you get the idea. The matboard I used is actually a "suede" board, chosen because it's a deep deep black, but the draw back is it has a bit of a mottled texture. As soon as it bothers me I'll end up just painting something black to replace it with, but it works extremely well. You can see how the darker values of my face sort of become one shape with few reflected highlights.

At any rate, this little guy cost me about $15 at my local frame shop and took all of two minutes to assemble. Yet again listening to Papa Vince has paid off.

Rembrandt

2009-03-07T15:28:00.001-08:00

A few years back a buddy of mine told me, "the difference between you and Rembrandt is that Rembrandt would do it again." Now, to this day I'm still not sure if he was aiming this comment at me directly or kind of lobbing it into the open as a something-to-think-about grenade, as he's been prone to do. Either way, it's something that struck a chord in me and I just can't forget it.

Well, Rembrandt, I've done it again. Truth be told, this is the third time I've done this painting. (And it probably won't be the last.) I mentioned the other day that I was working on something to enter into the Communication Arts annual, and this is one of the pieces I brought to the game. Not wanting what I thought was a solid image to go to waste, I tackled it one more time, only with a different arsenal of knowledge, namely a black mirror (more on that tomorrow).

So here you have it. The "real work" I was setting out to do the other night. For truth I like the portrait I did a little better, so I'll have to explore that some more, but this is a step up for me from the last time I tried this painting six months ago.

~20 x 20. Oil on canvas.

Vacation's Over.

2009-03-05T01:36:00.001-08:00

I'm back to finishing off my 4x6 portrait series. I know it's been a month since I've posted something, but I plan on returning with a vengeance. I was sitting down last night to work on a submission for the Communication Arts annual and I decided to knock out a portrait as a warm-up before I sat down to what I thought of as my real work.

If nothing else I'm pleased with how natural this one came out. I worked on it for about twenty minutes and decided I liked it just the way it was and just stopped painting out of fear of ruining it - as I've been known to do.

Aside from that I've spent two weeks delving into the work of Ashley Wood ( here and here ) and I think it shows. I've been wanting to loosen up and be more... expressive (Mark Eanes would be proud, I think) in my paintings, and I think Mr. Wood helped me do that whether he knows it or not.

I've got one more 4x6 canvas in my arsenal at the moment, so I may be calling it quits on that in the near future. But fear not! My lady gave me a stack of painting surfaces she happened across, so I'm sure I'll be experimenting on those as well.

Oh! Also, before I forget; my buddy Rusty showed me some love on his blog, so I'm going to point you over to his blog in hopes that you'll give him some love too. Here.

Laker's Girl

2009-02-08T04:40:00.000-08:00

This piece requires a small amount of back story.

A good friend of mine has a painting I did back in high school, and much to my surprise he loves the bloody thing. He loves it so much he's kept it up in his house and apparently it's the topic of conversation when people come over, all of which I discovered when I showed up to visit him one New Year's Eve. He was so proud of a painting I had done what seemed to me to be a lifetime before hand. Needless to say I could not stand idly by and have people believe that to be an accurate representation of my work. I just couldn't do it. So, as a result I vowed to do a new painting for him. He could keep the older one up, just as long as people didn't think I was still as bad as I thought I was in high school.

This is not that painting, but a different friend of mine saw it and wanted something similar. As with most personal pieces I dragged my feet putting it together. First I had to find a willing model. Then I had to find the appropriate accessories. Of course the project as a whole gets pushed around as I take on other assignments. And lastly I have to find the motivation when the model has the free time; assuming she's still willing. (Thank goodness she was!) So I shoot the reference and I'm excited to work on it, but then something else entirely comes up. To cut to the chase, this painting has been seven months in the making.

Of course, this is the problem with having friends that are sports fans. No sooner had I finished this piece that a coworker of mine says he wants one for his favorite team - and the cycle begins again.

Personally, I'm really happy with this piece, (even it is partially responsible for ruining my sleep patterns) to the point where I threatened to not deliver it to it's intended owner. I think my recent experimentation and exploration has paid off as I can see a certain amount of confidence that I haven't seen in my recent work. I put down a brush stroke and I left the sodding thing where it was without much fussing over it. The only area that I slowed down on was the face, but really that was the most important passage to get right. Speaking of which, I tweaked her features a little so that it was more an approximation of my model rather than an accurate portrait - I don't know, I figured she'd appreciate it.

Oil on canvas. 20x30

Back to the 4x6

2009-02-05T10:09:00.001-08:00

My freshman year in high school I had an English teacher. (Most of us did...) This just happens to be my freshman year English teacher.

Kind of. I started rooting through old photographs the other night during a particularly vicious bout of insomnia and decided to give this one a shot.

Up until now I've been limiting myself to about an hour on each of these 4x6 portraits. Firstly, I cut that time in half. Then I tried to work with a bad piece of reference (there was no real shadow structure to speak of) and I cut the time in half. While I was in school the mantra "you're only as good as your reference" was drilled into my head. This compelled me to learn to take good reference photography. However, sometimes the client provides you with the reference - and when that happens there's often something to be desired.

All in all I think it turned out decently. My wife could tell who it was from twelve feet away, so that's something. Next time I'll keep one of my limitations; good reference and half an hour -or- poor reference and an hour time limit. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Carbon pencils.

2009-02-02T06:25:00.001-08:00

Years ago a buddy of mine told me about Wolff's carbon pencils. I'm pretty sure I gave him a I'm-very-satisfied-with-my-drawing-implement-thank-you-very-much raise of my eyebrow at the time, but I logged the information away. And, as it tends to, the information got buried. Oh, over the years as I was shuffling around in my head it would come back to the surface, but all too often I would just promptly drop something else right on top of it.

Until the other day.

I was in the vicinity of one of the art stores I frequent the other day and Wolff's carbon pencils just happened to be on my mind. I popped in and quickly found what I was looking for - though the decision on whether or not to get the four pack or a few individual pencils took me longer than I care to admit. New supply decisions always do. When the internal quarrelling quietted down I left with the four pack (it's like getting four toys in one!) and headed home eager to test them out. Instead I fell asleep on the couch, but it didn't take me long to crack those babies open and get to doodling.

I've only braved using the B pencil so far, but as of yet they totally live up to the expectations I had built up in my head. There's a blurb on the back of the package that claims these pencils have the best qualities of graphite and charcoal with none of the flaws and so far I'm inclined to agree. The application is smooth and velvety and the lines are nice and rich black - not the shiny silvery quality graphite pencils tend to have. I'm in love.

I'm really happy I've decided to pick these up. Lately I've been more satisfied with the opaque application that you get with paint, and when I do draw I've been drawing on the larger scale so that I use more of my arm and less of my wrist/fingers, but I've been carrying my small sketchbook with me to work more frequently . In the drawing above you'll find a quick portrait of my old friend Graciela and drawings I've done at work - a coworker slacking off on the computer and a cheese shaker. Man... I'm in love with drawing those shakers. They've quickly become my guilty pleasure. Maybe I'll post more drawings of them in the future.

Lord Kelvin's Machine

2009-01-22T16:36:00.001-08:00

Written by James P. Blaylock Lord Kelvin's Machine is a delightful piece of fiction steeped in steampunk goodness. At it's core it's a decisive commentary on how man's dependency on technology can have irrevocable affects on the earth and that sometimes, using your brain (and a gun) is the best way to save the world.

No. Really. That's what happens.

Tomorrow is the deadline for the Spectrum annual and this is what I came up with for Lord Kelvin's Machine. You've seen some of the sketches up to this point, now you get to see how they all fit together.

I'd like to thank my wife for her patience with me while I was driving myself crazy during this project and her well-placed critiques.

Oil on canvas. 31 x 19

More sketches

2009-01-20T04:20:00.000-08:00

Two more character sketches for the painting I'm working on. On the left is the unkempt hunchback Hargreaves which would make the gentleman on the right Sir Langdon St. Ives. Naturally.

I always enjoy the referencing portion of a project. It gives me the perfect excuse to do things like go out to buy a bowler hat and shove clothes down the back of my shirt and bound around the living room like a man possessed.

I had a teacher in school who impressed upon us the importance of finding people capable of acting to use as models. Because of that I use myself as a model a lot, as I think I've mentioned before. I have a hard time directing people to get the performance I want out of them, so I find it's simpler to just play dress up myself and snap a lot of pictures. Insisting to someone that they should look like they're having fun, or that they don't look angry enough, or crazy enough, or coy enough gets tedious after a while.

Thank goodness my wife can see into my head and can extract what it is I'm after through my awkwardly given direction. Since I don't know many people comfortable enough in front of a camera to not look stiff, I usually use myself as a male model and my wife for the ladies. It's worked pretty well so far, but I think people are starting to catch on...

Character Sketch

2009-01-18T04:42:00.000-08:00

As I'm working through sketches for the next illustration that's on my board a friend of mine commented that I needed to update my blog. I've decided to share at least this sketch because I like the way it came out. Our dear Dr. Narbondo seems to be perturbed by something off in the distance - or maybe he's just deep in diabolic contemplation.

I modeled for myself in my living room and as I have the tendency to do, I tore the living room apart. Now is the time I put it back together before my wife wakes up and kills me. I plan on having this painting done midweek, as it needs to be off by about the week's end.

Christmas is finally over!

2009-01-09T13:14:00.001-08:00

With the completion of this painting I think I can finally say goodbye the holiday season.

A few years back I had done a painting for Madam Butterfly for a class assignment. That painting is hanging in my mother's house and I surmise it had been admired by a friend of hers. That friend wanted me to do something similar for her. Actually, that's all the art direction I got. Something with a geisha theme.

After a flurry of sketches and a few false starts I was primed to finish it by Christmas; but another project popped up and this got shuffled to the sideboard. But, it's done now. Though since it'll be near a month or so since it's delivered, I may take another stab at it.

I just can't leave well enough alone.
Oil on canvas. 18x24

Octopuses

2009-01-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

Octopuses! Now, before I get an avalanche of angry letters, octopuses is the correct pluralization for octopus. I know too many people who have taken too many marine biology classes to make the common octopii mistake. I've witnessed said bio-nerds lecturing people on their pluralization faux pas and I don't want to be on the receiving end of that wrath.

With that being said, I got a random request from someone to post more octopuses - and as random as that request may have been, I randomly had a painting of an octopus laying around. This was done as a birthday present for an acquaintance not too long ago. I'm surprised I still have it, honestly. I suppose the temptation for art isn't as strong for everyone as it is for me.

Oil on board. 8x10

Harumph.

2008-12-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

This is Katharine.

I think I overworked Katharine, this painting doesn't have any of the freshness I had been working towards. My friend thinks it's probably the best so far in terms of likeness, and I agree (though I still really like the last one I did of her and the self portrait) but it feels... I don't know... stiff. I like it, I just think I should have held back a little is all.

The image is a little dark because the painting is a little dark. I've always felt my paintings were too technicolor and high key. I blame my enduring love affair with cartoons, but the colors were always super bright with darks mixed in here and there. Mayhap the brights are used a little too sparingly in this painting, but I think I'm on the right track.

Oh, and I'm figuring out how to paint hair.

Keep your comrade warm...

2008-11-26T03:01:00.000-08:00

Sigh. This one's a little different. I'm still along the vein I want to be on, I've just taken a slight detour is all. This isn't as "chunky" as I want to be working at the moment, I've softened the edges too much I feel. (Though maybe that's a good thing in the difference between handling a man and a woman...) The drawing was poorly established, and it shows, but it isn't terrible. The likeness is in the ball park just not spot on. I think I'll have to give it another go, but that goes without saying.

I think I'm getting better at accurately seeing and evaluating the effects of light. These paintings have become less monochromatic "flesh" colored studies, and have evolved into honest portraits in the flesh, so to speak. Even looking back a mere two weeks or so ago... progress is being made. Like they say, "you learn to paint by painting."

The disappointing factor in choosing what to paint these days has been my reference. The pictures are all well and good, just... not very interesting. The self portrait a few posts back I kind of lucked into as far as interesting lighting, but I've been practicing a lot with shooting reference and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Next up: warm light and cool shadow; along with temperature and value changes as the planes change. I think it'll help me avoid the over all... red... feel like this. I tried to cool it down with a purple-ish background, but that actually only made things worse. Sometimes contrast isn't your friend.

Moving on... it would seem that the Graphic Artists Guild is suing the Illustrator's Partnership of America . The idea sickens me. BUT... I'm reposting a link I've stolen from Irene Gallo's blog that any visual artist (or anyone that cares about visual artist's rights) should look into and considering signing the petition to stop the lawsuit:

http://stopsuitpetition.blogspot.com/

I'm kind of sick of the Guild. I wish they'd stop acting like they're speaking for ALL artists - because they quite obviously don't. Though apparently they feel they can sue anyone who speaks out against them. Ah... litigation.

Oh. Before I go, it would seem that there were over 5,000 entries into the Societies 51st annual, and only 449 pieces were accepted, which is a scant 8 percent or so. I only stood a 1 in 1,000 chance of getting something in, assuming everyone else who entered submitted 5 pieces. Really I think it was more of 1 in 5,000. So I really don't feel so bad.

I really want to end this post on a happy note, but I've got nothing. So, smile. Just because I said so and because they're infectious. Smile enough and you can't help but feel happy. I promise.

"No one makes their first jump..."

2008-11-25T00:48:00.000-08:00

Well, first thing's first, I suppose. The results for the Society's 51st annual were posted late in the day on Friday, and I didn't get anything accepted. I wouldn't really say I was disappointed though. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have gotten something in the book, but I didn't have high hopes; and it's hard to feel let down if you don't get your hopes up. A few days after I entered I convinced myself this would be the inevitable outcome. I know there are people out there that subscribe to the notion that positive thinking can change anything - but I'm not one of them. I don't think any amount of "happy thoughts" would have swayed the jury into choosing my work. The truth of the matter is I've still got some ways to go, despite how far I may have come.

I didn't make my first jump. It doesn't mean anything.

That being said, I think may have started a project that's going to drive me insane before it's through. It will serve as an illustration codex if I'm able to stick with it. The plan so far has been to go through all of my notes from all of my classes (though mostly illustration classes) and condense them into one easy to manage book. I'm not very far into the project at all at this point, but it's slow going and tedious. There's nothing quite like transcribing notes you've already taken for your own benefit. I think I stand to relearn a lot that I already know, which is good, but I'm curious how well I'll be able to add to it in the future. Most of what I'm learning at these days is about handling paint and color mixing. I suppose I can make notation on that kind of thing, but I don't know. I don't know how well any of it will transcribe. I can take it to lectures and make notes on feedback I receive, but that almost feels like a flimsy excuse.

Wow. I just realized it sounds like I'm trying to talk myself out of it. I guess I don't know what I plan to do with it past revisiting all of my old notes with a definite sense of purpose. Maybe I'm getting bored and too comfortable in my day to day and needed one more thing to put off doing. As it is I have three outstanding personal projects and a deadline in January for the next contest to prepare for. PLUS whatever else I think of between now and then. Ah... I've got to get cracking!

Insomnia has its uses.

2008-11-18T03:18:00.000-08:00

Well, my beloved insomnia strikes again, so I thought I'd take advantage of it and post the mini-painting I did this afternoon in the hour before I had to leave for work. I think I'm on to something. The only problem with being on to something is I want to go back and fix old paintings (or redo them entirely) so that they all "fit". There aren't enough hours in the day...

This pretty much marks the first self portrait I've painted since high school. I did one in gouache in my sketchbook about a year ago, but I don't know... I have trouble calling things in my sketchbooks paintings, even when I'm using paint to make the marks. Ok, fine, how about this; this is the first self portrait I've ever done in oil. I think. I can't remember any others, so therefore they must not exist, right? Right.

I learned a few things working on this little guy. Primarily I pretty much have a dark caucasian tone to my skin. Since I basically got away with using the "formula" I normally use for painting people (and I tend to paint a lot of caucasian people) with more of the slighty darker tone serving as a midtone. Ok, I think that's actually the only thing I learned about my features doing this painting. The nose came out redder than it is in the painting - but I did make my nose redder than it is in actuality. Why? Artistic license - that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Aside from that I learned that I need to learn to mix better greens and that painting a dude is just as easy (or difficult) as painting a dudette. (I was recently asked me if I planned on painting a man any time soon. I guess this is as close as I could come.) I do remember thinking in the early stages of the painting that "painting black people is hard!" but like I said, I'm just a dark white person, so it worked out. I intend to work on that and maybe do Matt Crane proud and finally start painting culturally... (Whatever that means.)

Last but not least I learned I need to find a better way to photograph stuff like this. I know how, actually, I'm just lazy at 3 in the morning and don't feel like setting up a tripod to get a better picture. If I get enough in the way of protest I'll see what I can do. I just look at it as incentive to invest in proper light set up. Well, it's either that or figure out how to create an overcast day on command. Now, there'd be a neat trick.

And the beat goes on...

2008-11-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

I know. I know. I've been kind of slacking off with this blog lately. But I haven't really had much I wanted to put up. That is, obviously, until today! I've been hitting the easel fairly regularly these days - not doing anything of much import, but practicing, which is deathly important. Deathly. God's truth. Anyway, I've burned through four more mini canvases doing mini portraits and I'm here to share the results.

Clockwise from the upper left we have; Kari, Gretchen, Bonnie, and Danielle. The fun has been in trying a different approach each time. With Kari I was still drawing with a brush with asphaltum , but I changed my approach to handling of the eyes, which I like. Both with Gretchen and Danielle I did an under painting in terre verte but where I was going for darker shadows with Gretchen (and leaving the picture-plane left eye all in shadow) I tried a higher key handling of Danielle. Also I tried mixing different combinations than my tired go-to flesh formula, and I think it turned out ok. It's hard to see in the picture, but I like the handling of the area around the mouth. Bonnie was kind of a mixed bag of approaches. I did an actual charcoal drawing for the structure (since I'm more confident with a pencil than with a brush) and took my go-to flesh formula and complemented it with mixtures that I learned painting Danielle. The overall handling of paint in this one is more of what I'm after. More chunks. Less blend. We'll have to wait to see where I go from here.

And the beat goes on.

Society of Illustrators: Annual 51

2008-11-07T02:04:00.000-08:00

The Society's call for entries poster by John Cuneo

Today was the submission deadline for the Society of Illustrators fifty-first annual. I point this out because I entered five pieces for judging. This will mark my first venture into the competition sphere of illustration, and I'm more nervous than I think I've ever been. Actually, that's not true, nerves aren't really a key factor in what I'm feeling. It wasn't that hard, all I had to do was upload some pictures and send an electronic payment. I think it's going to be the waiting that does me in. I'm anxious. I want to think I stand a chance, but of course I don't want to get my hopes up. I'll find out on November 21 if anything made it in. Wouldn't that be a hoot? I think so.

In other news, thanks to some rabid bidding on eBay, I managed to get a hold on a couple of books from the Famous Artists Course. The school still operates, but the books I got were from its inception period, back when Rockwell, Parker, Stahl, Fawcett, Peak, Fuchs, and others were attached to the school. I've only just begun to flip through these books, but the wealth of knowledge they contain is overwhelming. I think I stand to learn a lot through these books. So I'm excited and all geared up. There may be hope for me yet.

Smallish portraits

2008-10-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

I have a small stack of 4x6 canvas boards and until recently, I was at a loss of what to do with them. Since I usually paint on a fairly large scale, I only have two uses for 4x6 surfaces;

1. Small preparatory studies - for color, value, composition and the like.
2. Practicing random approaches and experimentation.

The great thing about it of course, I don't have to prep any surface. So I get to unwrap the board and let loose. I'm trying to limit the studies to about an hour to help with strong decision making skills. I submit to you, the two that exist so far.