Wizard

My try at the world of fantasy. I thought I might need a pointy hat to sell him as a wizard. Does feel a bit biblical without but I prefer the composition without so I gave him a sword an pipe to compensate.

Younger boy and the jungle

While my older son is out at sea, the younger is in the deep jungle. Sure it’s dangerous but he’s 2 years old and knows how to handle himself.

Young boy and the sea

My boy, out hunting giant squid.

Edge of the woods

Here's a new one. I focus down on faces and characters so much I wanted to concentrate and develop a fuller environment. Kind of a test to see if I could. Surprisingly, I think it turned out pretty well. There was a time when I couldn't do trees and those types of things because I would try to approach it too literally. The key is painting the idea of the foliage not specific leaves etc.

Dr. Funke

Here's the finished painting. I'm trying to develop my style to something polished but still retaining some of the loose crosshatching of my drawings. This worked out here, if you look close you can see a lot of sketching lines.

Cover

Got the kids to model for a recent cover for the Friend magazine.

Listening in

I was looking at some beautiful digital paintings and got a hankering to really see how far I could push the rendering. This is the result. I had to include a closeup on the face because I spent so long working in up it would be sad to not be seen.

sketchbook

Sketch 79

Dinner

Just finished this painting. I'm very pleased with it, probably heavily because of the subject. My favorite kids. This is nice and big and will probably hang in our dinning room.

24"x 36" Oil on Board

Sketch #78

Mr. Ben Folds

Saw a Ben Folds concert recently. He puts on a great show. I thought I would do a digital painting of him. A little different technique here put I was pretty happy with the look. A soft painting with some hatching work over top.

Collaboration

So you've probably seen the pictures where the artist has kids do a drawing then he renders then out. After I finished this one up my 3 year old decided to do the opposite and finish up one of my drawings. I think it's great.

and Color

I've got plans to post a video of the color process I used for this.

Tone painting video

A tone painting of a drawing of mine. This is about a half hour compressed down to a couple minutes. I've been trying to post a couple videos of things people want like the finish shading on a drawing and current color method for digital painting but they're still not working out so maybe this will be of interest while you continue to wait. Sorry.

I put the drawing on it's own layer set to multiply, on the base layer I use the paint bucket to apply this greenish brown tone. Then on a layer in between those two I do my painting.
Always follow the general to specific rule. I start out with broad brush strokes defining the overall values then work down to more specifics. First adding darks and when those are getting close I add some lights. Most of the painting is done with the base tone, a 70% dark value then a 30% light value. Only toward the end I will start to use the colors within this range. And at the very end, real bright and darks values to pop specific limited spots.

Hope that helps.

Dad

A little something I did for The New Era magazine.

Finally, a process video

At long last, after many requests I've finally found the initiative to post a process video. Its rough but here it is. 

This shows about 12 minutes of drawing compressed down to 90 seconds. Done in Photoshop but the principle is no different then working in my sketchbook.

The most important rule is to start out as general as possible. I start with a really rough circle just to lay out a starting shape/size. The circle becomes obsolete in no time but it served it's purpose. Then it's the big shapes, in this case the face and the hair. Next a quick center line and a nose, mouth and eye line. From there building it in with short geometric lines always following the general to specific rule. I do all this work with lighter lines and a softer touch so they are easy to remove as more solid lines are placed (particularly when working on paper).

People like my crosshatching finish work but this is the most important step to the drawing, getting the structure correct. Feeling confident with your foundation allows you to be bold with your polish work.
Hope that helps. Feel free to ask any questions and look out for more steps soon.

Sketch #76

Drawing in the sketchbook again. My current mechanical pencil lead is a bit hard so I got out a regular pencil to push the darks.

sketch #75

Dinner- paint 5

After finishing up some other projects I'm back to this painting of the kids. It's coming along. Compare this second pass at the baby to the first pass here.
The real tricky part is getting the paint styles to match up, I am seeing a problem with each kid is painted slightly different because of their being painted on different days. I figure I'll have to just keep going at them but that could also be a problem as I want to keep the style loose with shadows that are transparent. We'll see I guess.

sketch #74

sketch #73

Yellow

Dinner- paint 4

My boy in the center is rendered out just like I want. My little girl is still kind of flat but I like the colors as of now. And the baby looks nice and innocent but he's still early too.

Oil on board 24" x 36"

framed drawing

Dinner- paint3

The third figure it coming along.

Dinner- paint2

About 10 hours in.

Dinner- paint1

I'm starting into a new piece I am pretty excited about. I feel like I'm hitting a stride with oil painting lately. Looser, a little more impressionistic with the strokes and the colors. This is day 1 about 5 hours in. The face is washed out some. I think this one might be hard determining when to leave things alone and when to continue to develop. Wish me luck.

This is related to the drawing posted below.

#71

sketchbook 71