The Bumpy Road Behind Me, and Ahead

Today's post is about a turning point in my education in dealing with color.  It's wordy, possibly incomprehensible and contains several links, I won't blame you if you just scroll down to the monster.  I will say, however, that if you happen to be a fledgling artist like myself and you are struggling with painting, there just may be something hidden in my own adventure that might help you in yours. 

I started writing this as a straightforward explanation of the changes I went through, artistically, to come to my current level of understanding when I think about color.  As I started piecing together the sequence of events, I realised that it has been an absolutely roundabout journey (mostly because I learned things out of order) and that I have had several teachers along the way.

Until just recently (within the last six months) I've had a sad, sad understanding of how color works.  For some reason during college and for a long time after I left school, the words; hue, saturation, and value, never really clicked in my head. They were just artist jargon.  When I finally did understand the technical definition of the words, I still failed to grasp the importance of them when it comes to making a painting.  It was frustrating simply because my paintings showed an obvious lack of understanding and, clearly, understanding is something a professional artist is going to need   At one point, I even resolved to stick to simply making images in pencil and/or ink.  I believe one or two of my previous posts actually illustrate that decision.  I was ready to give up on color all together, but then something happened.

I consider my first teacher in the realm of color to be James Gurney (of Dinotopia fame, among other things.) He has shared his method for working with a given color scheme in a painting a couple of times on his blog.  I won't explain it here, he does it better (this is part one of a three part post.)  In an awkward way I came to understand hue and how it could be used, and yet I couldn't put it into practice.... there was still something that I was missing.  I think this is the point where an art-egg was planted in my brain...

My second teacher would be Dan dos Santos.  A long while back, he put up a post on Muddy Colors (check it out) about duotone illustrations.  Duotone illustrations were done with  black, white, and one color.  I was blown away with what the artists had accomplished with only one freakin' color.  Nothing immediately clicked in my head, I was just so impressed with the artists' skill that I had no room for cognitive thought.  I realise now that this is where my understanding of what saturation could be used for came from and the overall idea of what they had done stuck with me.  Unfortunately, I still didn't have all the pieces.  On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this is what fertilized the egg James Gurney had planted.  Suddenly, I had an art-baby gestating in my brain...

Now we get to the guy that delivered that art-baby.  I had the awesome opportunity to attend Illuxcon last November.  While there I met my third teacher, E. M. Gist.  Not only was he a really great guy to get to talk to and a great artist, he is also a teacher at the Watts Atelier in California.  I mention this because after returning home I decided to see if he had a blog.  While clicking through his past posts I came across this particular gem.  In the post he describes the Reilly method of painting that he teaches in one of his classes.  Somehow, seeing this method briefly described blew my mind.  Here was a way to control value in color that actually worked for me.  This was the missing piece... the piece that brought everything else together!  Seriously, this was like finding gold for me.

...Now I have a full on art-infant kicking and screaming in my head.  

Since I get to choose how I raise my art-child, I have since bastardised all of the information that these guys have so awesomely given to me (yes, they write their blogs just for me, and no one else) but things seem to be going well enough right now.  I know I still have a long way to go, but it's nice to have a solid starting point.

Bhunin T'hoven

In keeping with the procreation theme of this post, today's image is a portrait of Bhunin T'hoven.  Bhunin is a soon to be proud parent.  I say parent because Bhunin's race reproduces asexually, and so I'm not really sure if Bhunin would be considered a mother or a father.  I do know that Bhunin has a considerable collection of very fuzzy sweaters.

The portrait itself is my attempt at doing a completely monochromatic painting.  In the spirit of the duotone illustrations, I wanted to see just how far I could push yellow.  Now that I'm looking at it, I think I could have pushed a little farther... oh well, I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Thanks for reading, even if you didn't quite make it through the whole post.

Story Time

Today's post comes with a picture AND a story.  Lucky you.  I would apologize, but hey, that's what you get when you read blogs.

Squatch Found a Beret

Squatch was walking through his woods one day.  At one point, as he stepped over a log, his foot brushed something unfamiliar.  Startled, he looked down to see that it was a blue beret nestled amongst some mushrooms and moss.

A lot of humans had dropped a lot of things in Squatch's woods, but this was something new.

Squatch lifted the blue beret, sniffed it, and sneezed. The blue beret smelled of cigarette smoke and coffee.  He put the beret on his head and instantly felt both melancholy and sophisticated.  

Now that Squatch had a beret, he had nothing to do all day.

Not that it was much of a change.

Hands OFF the Cookies

Short post today...

Despite my intention of working solely in ink for a while, I just could not resist the siren call of color. I have an actual painting planned for the future. Lately, however, I have been doing "quick" digital mug shot studies in color.

The purpose of the mug shot studies is to get used to working in flesh tones.  I've read that color doesn't matter as much as value/contrast, but it sure is interesting trying to match all the minute color shifts in skin.

Half-naked Chicks

Drew some chicks recently.  Half-naked chicks....  Had fun doing it too.

I've been working on some pen technique lately, with the goal of developing my texture rendering skills using lots and lots of lines, dots and squiggles.  I can say, my decision to narrow my focus a little bit (at least in medium) feels like a pretty good one.  I'm less anxious about what I'm doing and I've been able to concentrate on just trying to make an interesting image.  While ink is more or less a comfortable medium for me to work in, I still believe that the edge of my comfort zone needs to be poked and prodded.  I have plans for this prodding, and for me right now.... those plans are pretty intimidating.

Challenges have recently been resumed on the ArtOrder, and I'm thinking of participating.  There are a lot of different art challenges out there, going all the time.  Conceptart, CGHub, Crimson Daggers, among others, all have challenges going.  While those are great things to participate in, ArtOrder has a step up on them for me.  The challenges for ArtOrder are judged not by peers, but by professionals.  Art directors, and professional artists will be judging the entries in a technically non-professional capacity, but hey..... they're still seeing them.

 ArtOrder's current challenge is to do a version of a nymph.  As you can see, there are a lot of types to choose from.  My plan is to enter a dryad (tree nymph) done in ink, as a possible interior illustration for a book.  There isn't a whole lot to say about the work right now, except it's big (easily the biggest thing I've done in ink to date,) and it's going to have more than it's share of tree bark.  Due to size differences between the piece and my scanner, I'm going to put off showing the work until it's done and scanned on a larger scanner.  In the meantime, enjoy the chicks.

Steppe Eagle Chicks

Return to the blog....again

I've been a horrible blogger for the last few months.  I have been busy, however, with a great many things.  In November I attended Illuxcon, which was a fantastic opportunity to meet some of the best (traditional) artists in the illustration industry as well as see their work in person.  The convention also offered some lectures that were invaluable to someone looking to work their way into the business.  I could go on and on about what I learned there, but I think I should just stick to the main thing that is on my mind right now.

On my second day at Illuxcon I went to a lecture featuring Jon Schindehette of The ArtOrder and Wizards of the Coast fame, and Christopher Burdett of, well, Christopher Burdett fame.  During this lecture, Jon mentioned a few things to think about when building a professional portfolio.  One of the things that really stuck for me (probably because I heard it many more times that weekend) was that you build a portfolio with work that you want to do in the future.  By that, Jon meant that if you want to do spot illustrations, fill your portfolio with spot illustrations, if you want to paint monsters, then fill your portfolio with monsters, if you want to do book covers, fill your portfolio with book cover styled work.  So I got to thinking.  What is it that I'm best at right now?  If I were to be working professionally right now, what would I be able to offer clients?  Currently, not paintings, digital or traditional.   While I believe that I have most of the basics down, I don't think I have the ability to produce consistent work which is very high on a priority list for art directors anywhere (I would hope.)  So for me that rules out book covers, game cards and just about anything else that would use painted art.

....Well, now what?   Recently my wife mentioned that while my paintings were nice, my preliminary drawings were much better.  She should know...she has a BFA after all.  So, after some thought, I decided that my highly educated (and beautiful.....and talented....etc.) wife was right.  Plus, for me personally the drawings were much more rewarding to create than the paintings were.  That's not to say that I haven't gotten anything from doing said paintings, I have in fact learned a lot from them over the last few months.

And so we come to where I am now.  What can I do with black and white drawings in the current world of illustration?  Well, I have a pretty good idea, but I'm not 100% sure, then again who starts out completely sure about anything?  The best that I can do is produce the best work I can, show it to prospective clients, and hope someone happens to have a project that it fits into.

I apologise for my feature length post, but putting these thoughts into writing has actually narrowed my focus... funny how that worked.  I'll have to keep that in mind.

At the risk of making this post so very much longer, I have to stick to the promise I made to myself that I would keep this blog "illustrated."  I recently came up with a drawing exercise for myself that involves faces, props (a term I use loosely) and technique. The rules of this exercise were as follows;  Draw 8 faces, 2 start to finish directly from reference with no alterations, 2 start to finish from reference, but with props added, partially from reference, 2 with props added, started with reference and finished without, and 2 without reference whatsoever.  The original medium that I was to work in was paint, as this was before the big epiphany, but has since shifted to pencil and ink.

Looking back at these drawings, I see a definite shift in style (?) if that is the right word, as I let go of the reference.  That will have to be worked on I think.

I hope this long winded post is worth it in the end for you.  I know it was for me (at least writing it out was.)  If you've made it this far, thank you for sticking around, and I promise I'll try to keep the word / art ratio tilted a little more toward the art in the future.

Digi Sketches

I definitely need to step it up on my posting here. I look at the last post and think about how it seems like ancient history already.

Like always, I've been spending my time doing sketches, playing with different media and pretty much working willy dilly on whatever comes across my brain.  Now that I think about it, I should really look at starting back up with working on serious, finished projects seeing as how I still have none to share.

I do, however, have some more sketches to show. I've been toying with my wacom tablet lately, using some brush settings inspired by Daarken (whom I'm sure a lot of people know from Magic: The Gathering.) It surprised me how just a couple changes to how I was approaching my digital work improved the end product immensly.

An Odd Group

The zombie was my first attempt at actually sketching with the tablet.  Up to this point I'd been scanning sketches from paper and painting over those.  The succubus is my first attempt at (mis)using reference while sketching on the tablet.  The cyclops is me working out some flesh colors for another project that I'm working on.  I'll have to do a post on that project later.  Finally, the alien....well...he's...he is what he is.

More coming soon.

Been A While

     Well, it has definitely been a while since my last post.  Between the full-time job that sometimes spills into way-more-than-full-time and other regular happenings around the house I haven't had a whole lot of time to put together anything I deem postable.  That's not to say I haven't been doing anything, it's just that the majority is unworthy of public viewing.  Luckily none of the failures have been disheartening, like always, I see them as examples of what not to do next time.  Things like sticking closer to my small color studies and making sure I can carry a composition all the way from thumbnail to full size without losing what makes it work are surprisingly difficult for me.  I've also noticed that I need to work on controlling values in black a white and even more so in color.

     Most recently I have been bouncing between an oil painting for an ArtOrder challenge and ink/watercolour stuff for my own fun.  I'll have to explain the painting and ArtOrder another time, as those are almost whole posts in and of themselves.  The ink work I've been playing with is my latest way of working on value control.  I lay down a pencil sketch, ink the lines, do several layers of light ink washes to establish the value structure and then add watercolour.  It is definitely an enjoyable process for quick little drawings and it seems like a viable way to work on a lot of things without wasting a whole bunch of paint on bigger projects.

Yes....he's here to eat your brain.

     Mr. Mindflayer here is a product of my new artworkout routine attempt, he's pencil, ink and watercolour on illustration board.  One thing I know for sure is that  I need a bigger brush if I'm going to continue to do large background washes, otherwise, I'm happy with my first attempt.

I'll be back...with more...in less than a month.