Bamf. Again.

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.)

Painting at Goat Island

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.

Outrunning the Storm

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

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

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".

Rock Out with Your Spout Out

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.

Ten-Minute Challenge

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.

Happy Christmas!

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!

"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"

Monterey!

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"

Art as a Science: Part 2

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".

Art as a Science: Part 1

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

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".

Star Wars: Betrayal

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"

Steampunk Mailman

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"

Vertigo

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.