Face Sketching

A bit of face sketching in Photoshop. Not perfect, but it didn't need to be. The only goal here was to enjoy drawing.

Recycling

It's been a while since I've posted anything...not because I haven't been doing art (I have) but because what I've been doing I'm not allowed to post! My job for the past year consists of designing products for the video game industry...often for games not yet released and, of course, nothing that I actually own.

But I recently started working on this piece again and decided to go a different direction with it. This is a Work In Progress, so don't judge it too harshly!

Click to enlarge

Mostly it's been a job of blocking in colors and playing around with the layout of the butterflies (yes, there will be more than one). It's done in Photoshop CS6 with my trusty Intuos4. I've jumped from CS to CS6 and the difference in pen pressure sensitivity is unbelievable. I knew Photoshop CS only registered half of what my tablet was capable of, but you never quite believe that until you've done a straight comparison.

It's worth noting here that Adobe is offering Photoshop 7 for around 10 bucks a month. For a program this powerful, that's a steal.

As for brushes, I only use two: the #17 square chalk and the soft round (both are default with Photoshop). All the elements are on layers with the bottom layer being the sepia image. I've learned through hard experience that layering your jobs makes it much easier to revise it later. As for working method, I go dark to light mostly and I don't use ctrl+z  to undo my mistakes. I let the mistakes happen and work around them. I learn more that way and it gives the digital image a less than perfect look that is ironically more pleasing to the eye. Remember, perfection is boring.

Digital Sketching

Lots to write about, but no time to do it... so I'm posting a digital sketch I'm doing (with progression) and I'll add some explanations later. Click to enlarge.

Digital Tracing Paper

My dad taught me the usefulness of tracing paper in composition at an early age. Draw each of your elements on a pieces of paper and move them around until a pleasing composition happens. Painter X can do this stage perfectly and with greater freedom. The above image has the girl on one layer, the hawk on another, and the rough sketch of a castle on the bottom layer. I could have left them all as rough sketches but I was tempted to render them and combine the layout stage and the charcoal value stage. I think it works well. All I have to do now is print it out and pin it beside my easel. I can even print multiples of this so I can work up a few color studies by painting right on top of it (mount the paper to foam-core and hit it with a layer of workable fixatif first, tho). If you look at the hawks legs, you can see they are all wrong. Changing those would be frustrating with tissue paper but I can now select the legs and rotate/distort them into a correct position... something tracing paper just can't do!

Another benefit of using Painter X at the layout stage is the Divine Proportion and Layout Grid tools. (menu: Window>Show Divine Proportion and Show Layout Grid.)

I situate the divine proportion on my canvas and it helps me imagine a layout (click to enlarge image below):

Sketch using the Divine Proportion overlay tool in Painter X

I also use the Layout Grid to help divide my canvas into thirds (rule of thirds):

Sketch divided into thirds.

All of this is incredibly freeing. I hope everyone who can will try this out. (Note that the divine proportion grid and the rule of thirds grid can be done without the computer's help)

Riverside Metropolitan Museum

North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) watercolor pencils on paper

A trip to the museum is always a fun time for a sketcher. A bone-lover like me can find lots of good sketching fodder as almost every display has a bone or two. Skeletons have such grand and sweeping lines and some have a wonderful patina that it's just a joy to let loose and draw them.

Thanks to James Gurney, I've begun sketching with watercolor pencils... and after a small learning curve, I love them. They're no mess, easy to pack around and are museum-friendly. I sketch lightly with the umber then use a brush pen filled with water to blend it all (a cheap little brush with a water reservoir..you just squeeze it for a wet brush and you're off to the races). A bit of ochre and blue and you've got all you need for some great studies. Finishing contrast was done with a smidgen of black (but beware..a little goes a long way and you're probably better off just leaving it as pencil and not hitting it with water).

I'm doing this beaver skull and I notice someone beside me watching. It's one of the museum curators and we start talking about art and how all good fantasy art has it's roots in the natural sciences. We're having a good time geeking out on the museum displays and she mentions a John Muir event the museum will be holding and asks if I'd like to be a part of it. No brainer...I said yes. I'm not sure in what capacity she'd like me to participate, but for a John Muir event, I'll sweep the floor and be happy.

The curator's name is Teresa Woodard and she's the curator of education at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. It's a small museum with an incredible diversity of quality displays from old spirit jars, to a good natural history section to a great Civil War, WW1 and WW2 section. They also have a wonderful exhibit of native indian artifacts and lifestyle information. Teresa also introduced me to the museum's curator of natural history, James Bryant. Both of them were wonderful, friendly and seemed excited about their museum. I enjoyed my time there immensely. One great perk came from James, who offered me access to his natural history collection that he has in the back. Lots of great skeletons, wings and other odd assortment of specimens that are a treasure-trove for artists. This goes to show you: be friendly with your local museum!

Here are some other sketches I did while there. All of these sketches are just that; sketches. Color and shape studies and just plain drawing for the fun of it.

Desert Iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis) watercolor pencils on paper

Kit Fox (Vulpes macrotis) watercolor pencils on paper

I have to wonder at the taxidermy on the kit fox. The eyes were a bright orange and I'm not so sure that's realistic, but it was an interesting look nonetheless.

Bullock's Oriole ? (Icterus Bullockii) watercolor pencils on paper

I don't remember if this was, in fact, a Bullock's Oriole. After a quick consult with Dr. Google, I think this is correct. If not, don't shoot me; I just wanted to sketch it for the color!

Trains and more trains

Trains, trains trains!!

2011 was not fun. Mid December I found out I needed a somewhat major surgery to my skull and sinuses and that pretty much took up all my time. January rolled around and I had the surgery. All went well except the swelling prevented my eyes from focusing on detail-work. That meant no artwork.

Fast-forward to March and my eyes have healed enough to allow me to paint again. Here's a long-overdue update on the train painting. I'll post all the process shots so far. Right now it's done but for the highlights and some details. And the type. Did I mention the type? I have a quote to paint under the train. Hand-painted lettering. Fun. Reminds me of the stuff I did back in the 80s, but that's another post for another time.

Process shots are below:

Pencil sketch with rough value placement

Underpainting with warm colors to help establish my focus.
The cooler blues will recede.

Background is done and train is started.

Almost done. Strangely, all that needs doing here is to
eliminate some details.

Keep in mind that the last one hasn't been sprayed with anything yet, so the areas that were painted with more linseed oil on the brush are darker than the rest. Also, the different mixtures of black affect the gloss. After I hit it with a final coat of varnish, it will even out.

Instinct vs. Desire

After a long couple months dealing with my mother's death, I've started to put paint on canvas again. I decided to jump right in on a head study. I didn't take any process shots but this is about half finished and should show you how I go about painting. You can see the pencil sketch and the initial layers of paint. My goal was to force myself to be more loose and free with my painting, so I jumped right in without any tonal planning, correcting myself as I went along. It's the wrong way to paint, but it *did* force me to think and plan my brushstrokes.

I've always had a very slick style, tickling and stroking the paint until everything was blended and my brushstrokes were next to invisible. I would shoot colors into what was already on the canvas and blend it all out smooth. Lately I've been hating this style. I've been wanting my paintings to look like Repin, Manchess, Meseldzija, Duveneck, Loomis and countless others I'm forgetting. All of them apply paint in a controlled, loose way. Very thick and luscious. Your eye dances over their paintings and you forget to breathe. I'll never achieve their level of mastery, but that is my target.

I missed.

I intended this painting to look 'painterly'. Instead, I found myself reverting to my slick, blended 'style'. Every artist struggles to find their style, never thinking that it is always there waiting to come out when you aren't thinking about it. Style finds you when you're so engrossed in drawing that you forget to paint in a 'style'. Style is your instinct.

But what if your instinct isn't what you like? That's where I am. My instinctual style is blended. I desire it to be painterly. Should I force my style into what I want or should I relax and let it be what it is?