Tracing paper

A very good trick for getting an accurate drawing before you spend hours on an oil painting only to realize your initial drawing was way off: Do the drawing on tracing paper, then pull out that page and put it under the next page. Trace the lines that are correct then remove the page and do the drawing again. Repeat this process over and over, maybe 5 times or more if needed. Each time you should be able to tighten the drawing and get much closer to the correct proportions. This is the 3rd try at this drawing, the first was not nearly as close but I like this one. Actually the second and third were very similar, its a great exercise and you will get better as you do it.

I plan to paint this soon(I hope).

fridays sketch

A good interesting angle for this weeks sketch. These angles are extremely tricky to get correct proportions but it is a very useful exercise that prevents you from relying on what you know, instead you have to measure and analyze.
This is close, I will not point out the problems though.

Here is Sam's angle. And Adam's.

Bump - Cover

-Updated-
I wanted to give some extra publicity to the Author Bruce Newbold. For anyone interested in a Harry Potter type good read with a nicer cover, the book has just been released and can be found here: The Baseball Box Prophecy

A just completed book cover commission I am unveiling for the first time. The book is titled "The Baseball Box Prophecies" and is still in the late production process so it's not yet available but it was a fun project that turned out better then expected.
I used Adam Ford's layered painting method for this which turned out to be a fantastic process for a complicated lighting setup. It took more time to fully plan it out and resulted in huge files with many layers but again I am happy with the effect. I have tried it since with simpler paintings and it hasn't turned out so it may be just for specific uses.

Bell

In a desperate attempt to drive traffic I have sunk to the level of painting Disney princesses in hopes of snatching a few unassuming Google searchers.

Actually it is a Avalanche blog topic which was prompted by these to nice princess paintings done by Sam Neilson(since childhood Disney princess coloring book pages seem to be a specialty of Sam's) and Ryan Wood.
Kind of enjoyable to not have to worry about the drawing, just go to town with colors. The color scheme was taken from one of my favorite paintings evah, Jean-Francois Millet's Louise-Antoinette Feuardent(I think the colors on the link are not that good) which you can see at the fantastic J. Paul Getty museum in LA.

fig. 38

Another figure drawing form friday. About 90 minutes 9"x12" with a mechanical pencil in my sketchbook.

figure #37

A recent drawing 18"x24" Nupastel on paper. With about 90 minutes I didn't have the time to detail out the lower half.

Le Corbusier

I don't know about the buildings but I certainly approve of the glasses.

a little busy

I wanted to get something up. Just a drawing with the intent to paint, we shall see.

Baby

I've decided this baby is very hard to capture because by the time I'm done she looks older. This is our baby she is a doll. Her new word is "baby" and suddenly everything in the world is a "baby".
I'm undecided on the colors, I also thought I would go somewhere with that pose but just left it in the end when no ideas came to me(holding a flag?).

Copy #2

Another drawing done after a russian student drawing from the below mentioned figure drawing book.

figure #36 *Updated*

Update-I found this picture taken with my phone of an early stage of the drawing. It will give you an idea of the method. This is about 15 minutes into the 90 minutes drawing. I try to block in and get the gesture right before moving onto any detail.

A slightly different arrangement of the lighting made this drawing a 100% more interesting. I was very happy with most of the results.

Figure drawing #37

unsatisfactory

A landscape that I was putting some time into but didn't turn out how I had hoped.

Painting

A recent illustration for the Weekly Standard. The background was very fun to work on.

Copy

I was talking to a young artist recently who told me she never copied, suggesting that it is an incorrect method. I couldn't disagree more, copy everything that you like (don't take credit for it as your own though), the best thing in the world is to learn from the best. Copying forces you to observe closely enough that you actually learn what the artist was doing.

This is a copy of a Russian figure drawing artist from a very good book I recently purchased, done with my .3 mechanical pencil in my sketchbook.

Painting the classics

At last, here is the process painting done by starting with this drawing and resulting in this painting. It is extremely jumpy because this is a 3 hour painting reduced down to 2 minutes. I also constantly rotate the painting about 60 degrees to judge it(as you can see in the preview), instead of stepping back.

Here's a quick list of the steps:

• 0:05 - initial drawing lifted to its own layer base color put behind it and then paint some flat colors into the areas.
  
• 0:10 - shadows added on a multiply layer.
  
• 0:20 - lighting added in screen layer.
  
• 0:25 - general coloring done with soft light layer.
  
• 0:30 - direct painting on a normal layer.
  
• 0:43 - multiplied green layer added, all the layers were flattened then I blurred the whole thing. This is a new trick I am a big fan of currently.
  
• 0:45 - back to more direct painting to reestablish my edges and refine all on the flattened painting.
  
• 1:45 - At this point the rendering is basically done so I go through a long process of finish work experimenting with different gradients, glowing, overlays, lighting, etc. until it feels about right (note: it never feels totally right).
  

Painted in Corel Painter, mostly using the 2b pencil tool, a little digital felt tip pen. Hopefully it helps, let me know if you have questions and I'll do my best to help.

Color

The color version of the below post. You'll notice the shapes have changed a bit. A new trick I like to use is distorting the drawing in Photoshop before I get into the painting. Often I feel like my drawings are pretty static, the distortion can push it and make the shapes more interesting. While I was painting I thought of a superb little economics lesson by Milton Friedman about a pencil, so I decided to focus his eyes on that.

I plan to get that video up this week. I'll probably say a couple more things about my process in the next post.

More trading

A new sketch to be traded away.

This has led to a color version and even a process video to be posted soon.

sketchbook #41

Just wanted to get something up for the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I hate this guy

For the Avalanche blog (not by choice, I assure you).

I had a rough version of this that I thought was probably finished but then some extra time led me to push it more. I'm glad. A little trick you may want to try with your next digital painting. run the blur filter when you think it is getting close to finished, then sharpen the selected areas that need it. This is similar to the method that I use with figure drawing. Build it up, then mash it all down, then build again, repeat as needed.

just one more

And now for something completely different.

Can you just see those little eyes just begging for another Cheerio.
This is our baby and the reason for my lack of good oil paintings/drawings these days but really how do you put down something like this to paint, I haven't figured it out yet. She's is totally delightful, we're glad we went ahead and got her with all the upgrades.

Shadowy

I found this guy hiding out in my closet, so I painted him. He seemed annoyed but didn't speak much.

Note: This story is not true

colors of the wind

In a recent post I mentioned some frustration with my own choice of coloring. Here is a new painting of my wife, after the drawing stage I flipped through my piles of reference and found this classical painting done by John Alexander White as my reference for the colors. I went a lot warmer but you get the idea, and it was a good way to use a color palette that turned out a lot more interesting then what I would have chosen otherwise.
I am also satisfied with the limited finish work that left the crosshatch work on certain areas like the jacket.

Color Sharpie™

I was so happy with the drawing I did a color version, This painting was a huge file because of the layers and layers I was using to build up the work.

Sharpie™

I had a request from workmate Casey Nelson for a Halloween poster of a monster family member. This is my contribution done with pencil and a Sharpie pen on a big poster board, I really used to love Sharpies for artwork in high school but these days I rarely get the opportunity to use one.

On the Halloween note check out Kevin Keele's ridiculously cool pumpkin and timely warning about trunk or treating.


Stay tuned for some coloring.

fig. 38

We got a little more imaginative with our pose this week. It was more interesting but it comes across as a little awkward which is about right when you hold that kind of pose for 20 minutes. But I was happy with the anatomy and the line work.

Halloween

I think I started this mad scientist painting 3 times. The colors were not working. So I went to my reference folder and found some art I liked that used colors more effectively and in a more original/interesting way then I am able to come up with. I found this Analogous combo and I like the results.
Stay tuned, more realism is on its way...

please go away

And in this weeks "I hate politicians" running series...

I think I got the likeness. Maybe not. I can never tell. I did some initial sketching for this and had a really rough piece. I thought to myself "That is fantastic! It's simple and right on." I looked at it the next day and it was, in reality, truly awful. Thank goodness I didn't show anyone else. I feel better with this but who knows how long that will last. I often feel like everything I do is tired and unoriginal, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's all coming out of my head and I already know all of my own tricks. Maybe all artists deal with the same thing?
My dad actually likes Jimmy Carter, I know, I don't want to talk about it.

shadow

A little painting done just to stay sharp I guess. I am pretty surprised the body worked out because it is almost entirely made up from scratch. The face had some reference but was also heavily altered.

bartering

Some areas of my work have reverted to the barter system lately at least as far as art. Instigated primarily by Virginia Critchfield, a wonderfully talented (and borderline insanely obsessive with her sketchbook, which I endorse) artist. We've been friends for a long while until she very recently abandoned our company. These were the pieces we traded. She has a nice collection on her blog of some of the intracompany bartering.