Exterminator

There you go. Very moody, I am thinking of naming it "Death of a Bug Exterminator". Usually I insist on some amount of reference to work from. This has none. I am satisfied with the atmosphere which has been something I have been working to improve for a while now.
Done for a Avalanche blog topic on Bug Wars.

prep work

All ready to paint(digitally)

collaboration

Here we have the first collaboration between myself and my 1 year old daughter. She was great to work with.
We're actually pleasantly surprised she seems interested in drawing already, her specialty seems to be bird nests and stars. I anticipate more of these in the future.

sketchbook #22

This was done before the previous 2 and for that its not quite right with all the proportions. I hadn't found the time to draw for a long while so I guess this is the break-in sketch. I find it takes a drawing or two to get back into my grove, thank goodness it sticks with me.

sketchbook #21

I will always believe the mouth is the most difficult part to draw. People always say its the eyes, no it is the mouth.

vultures

I wanted more for the background and finish work, but I am over it now. The likeness is fine but I kept losing it and giving up then it would drift back in, so it may or may look like the subject. I'll just let you guess.

reunion

Sometimes I go for too long without finding the time to draw. I'm being distracted by a busy body 1-year old and a recent trip among other things.
Anyway I am back spending time with my old friend, the sketchbook. Its always easiest to find an old magazine or catalog, search out an interesting face or pose and draw it. This is this weekends result. I thought this was an interesting choice for a model but she looks like a Bouguereau painting IMO. Hair is always fun, my drawings get pretty abstract very quickly when I get to the hair.

simple hands

Sometimes I really feel good about some quick sketch. I really like these hands, especially the one on the right. Just the right combination of stylization and realism and appropriately simple.


Of course these are always done on the very margins of the page. More drawings to come soon.

done

I never really knew were I was going with this, but whatever. Here it is. I hope I don't loath it in a couple hours.

in process

oh pioneer

Based on a cool old time sepia photo I came across. I apologize if this is your great grand aunt. The finish work on this ended up taking forevah, but I think I am pleased with it. Sometimes you work and work forever on especially finish work, then I can't really say whether it is necessarily worse or better. It gets very subjective. Whatever, it's up and I can wash my hands of it, then move on to another old time photo.

in process

I often start with a blue pencil, then just go right on finishing with a blue pencil. I think it looks nice. This one is in process.

doodle

For no good reason.

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.