Ugly Mug Mondays! #13

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.

Digital Desires

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.

I'm all pixelated.

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...

Back to digital?

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.

Carbon pencils.

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.

More sketches

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

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.