work in progress

Warm and cool... reds

2010-04-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

I talked a little before about turning forms with value versus turning form with temperature. Well, you need a little of both to successfully work with red. I added a little bit of violet to the reds on the right side of Misty’s core shadow and a little bit of orange to be reds on the left. I ended up going back and cooling the reds on the right side down even more as the painting progressed.

Get Misty love

2010-04-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

If you're working with a character dressed in red, the first thing you must sacrifice is subtlety. Red is an unforgiving color. Its value range starts with a medium dark, and only goes darker from there. You can create beautiful value shifts within that range on your original, but less than a quarter of them will reproduce in print. Luckily I'm not working here for reproduction, but I still want to take a dynamic approach. I want to go very dark in my shadows to compensate for the value vampire at is red.

Old-school is the new cool

2010-04-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

I have a love-hate relationship with hand lettering. The first art job I got when I moved to Atlanta for school was assisting a sign painter, and he taught me most of what I know about type and lettering. This guy was like a redneck Mr. Miyagi, and he taught that hand lettering was the true path to enlightenment. If that's true then Adobe illustrator must be the express lane. But, I have to say I agree with him on original paintings. There's something nice about the slight imperfections of hand-painted lettering on a hand-painted image. I always thought it's was cool to see hand-painted lettering on thoes old Rockwell illustrations, and it seems to me that there is a little something lost since most comic book original art no longer has word balloons. And it's always felt like you got a piece of the story as well as the art when the lettering is there.

Movie album

2010-04-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

The look I’m going for here is somewhere between a movie teaser poster and a jazz album cover from the late 60s and 70s. I decided to go with an opaque paint to get that rich silk screened look. Holbein makes a product called acrya gouache that's perfect for this application. It's very opaque and the colors dry to a nice matte finish, and it has a pretty impressive color range. It's a bit like animation cell paint, but it's a little easier to get your hands on. I thinned the colors down to a milky consistency to give it a slight bit of texture. Going to flat and opaque here would make things look a little too artificial and cut out, but that texture will tie the background and foreground together.

So where was I?

2010-04-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

This is the line art setup stage. Lately I've been handling this stage with pigmented brush markers. They are permanent, easy to control, and come in a good variety of colors. At this phase I look for hard edges created by cast shadows or form against negative space. I also use this period to set up some target darks. This keeps me from going to light and dreamy with my technique. It's also quite a comfort to have a solid drawing you can rely on.

I tried to go too light with lines that identify structures within the form. Like flesh toned lines within the face and the reds on Misty’s costume. These lines generally get blown out with the first or second wash of color, but they help identify landmarks.

Colored girls

2009-12-17T11:49:00.000-08:00

It's always a good idea to preserve continuity with color comps. If you're going to paint in watercolors, you should always do your comps in watercolors. This makes it much easier to match your colors on the finished painting. It's even better to write down color formulas or combinations used to achieve specific colors. The reflective and translucent quality of different mediums can wreck havoc with colors and perception, and this goes double for the computer. You throw in the differences between reflected and projected colors and you're begging for a headache.

So, I did this comp on the computer with a sweet Japanese ink and paint program called SAI Paint Tool. It was fast and so convenient, and it's a great program for tablet PCs. The only real drawback was trying to match colors on the finished piece, and that was a real headache. I wonder why?

The colors needed to be bright but just south of psychedelic. I always thought the 60s made it okay to use bright colors, but when we got to the 80s it had spun out of control. The 70s got it just right, and that was the feeling I wanted. Laura "Colorista” Martin works across the hall from me here at the studio, so I called her in for a second opinion, and after a bit of tweaking you could actually hear the colors sing.

Choose your weapons

2009-12-17T10:13:00.000-08:00

Illustrations often key on different aspects of picture making, and I think it's important to recognize those keys as early as possible. It's like setting up a plot line or genre before starting the serious work of writing. In a sense, it's what the painting technique is about.
Your dominant keys are technique, design, color, and storytelling. I want every painting to have some bits of all these elements, but I want to dominate the piece with one or two then downplay the others. If I do a painting about storytelling then I may want to de-emphasize the colors or rendering. This way the storytelling takes center stage and the painting doesn't feel heavy or exhausting to the viewer.

My design here is simple, and there isn't much storytelling beyond the character’s bad ass attitudes, so this is all about color and technique. With a special accent on color.

Here's my color range for this piece. I'm not cheating in extra colors here but I'm more splitting my tertiary colors. So I'm using… septiary colors? Not sure if I'm not making that up, but don't try it at home. All my yellows will lean slightly towards green (lemon yellow) and my oranges will push slightly red.
This color range is my Bible for this painting and I will religiously adhere to it.

Editors note: I consider myself an agnostic leaning towards atheism, so I reserve the right to bail at a moments notice.

Daughters

2009-12-16T20:52:00.000-08:00

You know what really puts me into the holiday spirit? Yeah that’s right, Daughters of the Dragon.

This image has been knocking around in my head for a while now. I always like to keep several commissions going at once. This is because of the random way ideas form. It’s another thing that separates commercial work from commissions. Commercial work will have exacting requirements for size, theme, and especially time. I always do battle with that last one. Ideas have to be created, edited, and produced on tap. Sometimes this can be like squeezing water from a stone, but it can often lead to spontaneous shotgun creativity. Commercial work is the active pursuit of images, but commissions are passive. I allow the paintings to come to me. Every so often it’s all in a rush or dream, but often it’s like following a trail of breadcrumbs. This was defiantly breadcrumbs. One day I would get the attitude of a pose, and then a week later I’d get a sense of colors, and a month later Misty’s face would pop into my head clear as day.

This sketch was the last piece of the puzzle, and with it I was off to the races.

Elizabeth Dismount

2009-08-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is after going back in and taking care of that last 20% of work on the face. It’s really about defining edges and checking my value schemes. Most of this work is done by placing the image across the room, or under a heavy squint.

Portraits and likenesses are always a tricky prospect. I find that most failures come from trying too hard to reproduce one's reference. A photo can only portray how something looks, and that is hardly the measure of a person. Looking back, I find that I didn't really understand portraiture until I spent some time doing caricatures. It was a real eye-opener to understand it was possible to capture a person’s “likeness” without accurately rendering their features. Now I'm more concerned with the fidelity, or the truth of a thing.

This piece felt good all the way through. The way spending a day with Elizabeth Montgomery should be. The thing I'm most pleased with is not that it looks like her, I had lots of good reference so that wasn't very difficult, but it feels like her.

Ease in

2009-08-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

You'll also notice I more or less stayed away from the figure up to this point. This is because I’m thinking of it as part of the composition rather than part of the illustration. It is a design element I'm using to push the eyes rather than capturing them.

Wet for dry

2009-08-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

I didn't have time to take shots along the way as I had to work very wet and quickly on the hair. This was a very traditional watercolor approach. Starting with yellow then progressing on to occur, quinacridone, and finally a burnt sienna.

I also find it odd that I work very wet when illustrating dry hair but very dry when illustrating wet hair.

Cool it down

2009-08-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

I've decided to solve the conundrum of hair color by splitting the difference and going for a slight strawberry blonde. Of course, the combination of this and her warm flesh tones is just way too much red and orange. The natural choice for the background was to head to the other side of the color wheel and go for a deep blue-green. This contrast would be a little too much left on its own, so I decided to add just a hint of violet to neutralize the turquoise. I'm still working on a wet background, so I can keep my edges soft.

But wait, there's more

2009-08-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm finishing my last few pages of Wednesday Comics, and that takes precedence over everything. But, now that I have that under control, how about we finish up with Sam?

With watercolors I generally tend to work from background to foreground and light to dark, but I like to mix things up on portraits. I want to balance the intensity of the background against the face, so I'll lay in about 80 to 90% of the work on the portrait itself, then I switch to the background. Backgrounds on portraits are traditionally very neutral, and this avoids all possible conflicts. But, I like color… a lot, so I try to balance things rather than avoid them altogether.

I start by sheeting the background with water. Then I use paynes gray to darken the edges of the image and create a texture. I'm trying to produce a halo of light and color around the subject. The texture is also part of the balance act. Creating texture in the background will make the subject seem softer by comparison.

Diamond Cutting

2009-07-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

Progressing along to smaller tiles. Ultimately this process should go from light to dark, but I often go back and add medium values to some of the lights. I'm often a bit conservative about darkening things too quickly. With watercolors you can always go darker but you cannot go lighter.

I also find that as my tiles get smaller I tend to make them more visible, or give them harder edges. I'm thinking of edges turning at different angles like facets on a diamond, and I tried to change the color and value of those facets depending on their relationship to the light source.

Paint, Don't Tickle

2009-07-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

My approach to watercolors is to trust my drawing, then lay down progressively smaller blocks or blushes of color. I try not to blend colors, but rather give them the opportunity to blend themselves. I'll work quickly and wet in wet if I want soft edges, or sometimes I'll veil an area in a thin sheet of water before applying paint. In contrast, I'll work very dry or with a heavy pigment load in the brush if I want harder edges. Watercolor is all about controlling the appearance of edges with varying degrees of water, pigment and evaporation.

I believe this tiled approach to paint application allows for much greater expression and spontaneity. It also creates much more color richness and depth. As each color tile stands on its own and never completely blends with the color beneath it. I can lay down a tile of violet and later cover that with a tile of yellow, and both colors remain visible. But, a mixture of the two is just muddy. I also believe this method creates more of a collaboration with the viewer. You're asking them to participate in the completion of a painting, and allow them to inject a little of their own personality into the work.

It always kills me when I see watercolor artists handling a brush as if they are sweeping the floor. That mindless rendering is the death of both color and creativity.

Witchhunt

2009-07-31T08:02:00.000-07:00

I agonized over the choice of colors on this piece more than anything I've done over the last year. It was a choice made more difficult by factors that had nothing to do with the painting itself. First of all, Elizabeth spent most of her life as beautiful, and that's a large span of time and styles. She was glamorous, she was a beatnik, and she could manage 70s kitsch. All of the school for different palettes. Plus, there's the fact that she was at her hottest during the black-and-white episodes of Bewitched. My first thought was softly rendered black-and-white, but that soon gave way to thoughts of a limited color or a monochrome palette with hints of pure color perhaps on the eyes or lips.

In the end it was story that won out over style. I thought I could do a much better job of capturing the complexity of her emotions if I had a more natural palette on her face. Although it did cause me pain to walk away from the monochrome blue color composition. I'm going to have to revisit that at some point.

Sam’s smile

2009-07-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here's where the drawing ended up. This part is always fun for me. It allows me to set up my color patterns and give everything a foundation. I think watercolors should always have a bit of the feel of a colored drawing. You can see I've already laid a tint of lavender and pink over the whites of the eyes. This really allows the irises to pop with color later when they're not competing with the whites.

I'm really happy with her smile at this stage. It has the subtlety I was hoping for. I'm giving her eyebrows just a bit of frown to suggest she's been caught in the nude, but the smile belies her indignation.

The good witch

2009-07-30T18:04:00.000-07:00

So I’m asked if I would do a portrait of Elizabeth Montgomery. First, you have to understand I love all those TV Land shows, and I’m a particular fan of the ones featuring mystical girls. Surprisingly, there were a lot of them. Bewitched was an important part of this addiction. They switched Darren's and I don't think I even noticed because I was way too busy staring at Sam. That woman was gorgeous.

I went on a search for reference and manage to collect a pretty decent cash of shots. When I do a painting of a classic Hollywood figure, I don't want to just reproduce a stock shot. On most occasions I just do quick sketches from the available reference and just let things flow and see what happens. Elizabeth strikes me as someone who is modest but accidentally sexy. The bare shouldered sketch seem to strike the right balance, but I thought I'd have her turned a little more away from the viewer.

Fiona Burns

2009-07-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

Still watching, still enjoying, and man she is dangerously hot.

Arts and Kraft

2009-07-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct, but before these days of high-speed Internets and broadbanded ftp access, illustrators would physically ship original paintings to companies. I believe that paleontologists refer to this time as the Slowassic period, and I assure you… it was horrifying.

Back in those days, if I finished an illustration before pickup time, I would often take my still wet paints and do a quick study on the outside of the shipping box. I thought the shipping guys would take special care with the package if they saw an original piece of art on it. Well, it seemed better than writing fragile anyway. Most of them made it to the editors, but I have gotten a thank you from a couple of guys who worked in the mail room. I will not mention any names.

I always enjoyed working on that Kraft cardboard surface. It's a perfect color for rendering flesh tones, and that gritty paper structure was always brush friendly. For old times sake, I thought I'd pick up a pad of Kraft paper and see if it would get along with pastels as well. Borden and Riley makes a really nice one, 18 x 24 #840 Kraft pad. I found Nupastels didn't get really good adhesion and opacity in the lighter values, so I complemented them with Gallery semi hard pastels and select colors of Schmincke soft pastels. The combination of these three really allowed me to pile the pigment up on the paper. Especially the Schmincke, that stuff is like drawing with a stick of baby powder.

Way too long

2009-03-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

At the end of last night’s drawing session, Pat told me that it’s been way too long since my last blog. This was accompanied by an exaggerated rolling of the eyes. Which was very impressive for an Asian guy. So, after a good laugh and mourning the season end of Burn Notice, I told him that I would write a post this morning just for him.

I like it when I get a good female back, and Irene packs good back. Faces are all about details, and that is a battle fought one inch at a time. The front is a symphony of contrasts, and one must try to conduct that beautiful noise into music. The side is a UFC caged fight between the poet and the mathematician, and they both will make arguments of whom is best at handling a particular curve or angle. Each of these areas call on a different artistic discipline and approach. But then you have the back, and it requires all of those disciplines at once. This is not to say that it is more or less difficult, but that it needs a holistic mind to drive your hand.

I think of placing shapes in space when I'm drawing every other part of the figure, and those shapes go from simple to progressively more complex. When I'm drawing a back it's the opposite. I think of removing shapes from the given space, and it's more like uncovering than it is like building.

Burn Notice

2009-01-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

The wait is finally over.

Second gear

2008-12-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

These drawings are from five minute poses. My approach on these is almost the same for the first two minutes, but I make my marks with a much lighter hand. I also try to take advantage of this stopping point and check and correct my proportions. At this stage the marks are so light that I can just ignore them if they are wrong. The last two to three minutes is all about draping and stabbing in my total values until I run out of time.

The need for speed

2008-12-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

I think most of the learning happens in the first few minutes of a figure drawing. These drawings are all from two minute poses. I just observe and make mental notes for the first 10 seconds or so. Then I try to link an emotional description to the pose with a single word. Sometimes it can be as simple as angry, funny, or powerful, but sometimes it can be complex like patriotic, evasive, or inertia. This little exercise converts the act of drawing into storytelling, and this is at the base of everything I try to do.

After that, I attack it with reckless abandon. Sometimes I go more linear and just use the tip of the drawing tool, but other times I'll lay the tool down and try to get every mark the tool will surrender. I never correct myself on the two-minute drawings. This is not about getting it right, but more about discovering what I have a tendency to get wrong.

Angelus dismount

2008-12-11T18:01:00.000-08:00

I quite enjoyed this process. It's refreshing to both explore new tools and dust off the old ones as well. Photoshop is capable of such perfect gradients that I often believe there is no longer a place for the airbrush, but that's not exactly true. There is a certain quality to the imperfection of airbrushing that brings life to a piece of art.

We live in an analog world, so I guess those analog tools will always have something over the digital dominion.

Coming in for a landing

2008-12-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

At this stage I'm finished with all the airbrush work and I'm starting to push those last details. I did all my airbrush work with acrylic paint, so it's no problem to go back into things with light washes to polish out details. I'm approaching 90% of the highlights with white gesso. It's not very opaque and it has a translucent quality that heightens the color beneath it. Plus it has a great chalky yet buttery texture that is both easy to work with and gives great results.

I didn't put any color on the girls in the background until the sky was fully in place. I wanted to have a little atmosphere between those figures and the subject.

Catching some air

2008-12-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

The first image shows how far I took things before I pulled out the airbrush. That's right, I said airbrush. And when I say "pulled out" I actually mean spending an hour or so looking for the damn thing, and another two hours cleaning it. It's been a few years.

I used the airbrush to blush in that soft red on the wings, and to soften the cloudy sky.

Here's a neat trick from my commercial illustration days. Instead of using frisket, I made xerox copies of the wings on 11 x 17 paper. I then cut the wings out of the xeroxes and placed the paper over the painting as a mask. This goes much faster than cutting frisket, and there's less chances of cutting too deep. It also gives a softer and less artificial edge than frisket.

Acrylics for watercolors

2008-12-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

My approach here is identical to what I do with watercolors although I'm using fluid acrylics. Everything here is building from light to dark in thin transparent layers.

Golden girl

2008-12-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

This is a mixed media piece and I plan to finish things off with opaque highlights, so I thought I'd give the main figure a base tone of bright amber. This is an easy way of unifying the colors, and it forces me to go a little richer in color and value. There's going to be a considerable amount of work on top of this veil, so I'm starting this base with Goldens fluid acrylics.

Color of Angels

2008-12-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

This was fun. I scanned and cleaned up my drawing in Photoshop and used my trusty Epson inkjet printer to transfer it to the board. This is much better than I can do by hand and hope. After the transfer I used Faber Castell Pitt pens to set things up for color.

First in flight

2008-12-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

Things seem to be going well, so I decided to paint this one. I did the drawing separately because the costumes of the characters were so intricate. This way I could beat things up with the eraser and not concern myself with the integrity of the paper.

I'm starting things here with Col-Erase 20044 blue pencil, and after developing a solid drawing I'm moving things along with the Copic Multiliner SP pen. I'm working on a pad of Strathmore drawing paper. It's just enough tooth for the pencil, but also enough smooth for the pen.

Angelus sketch

2008-12-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

Rob from Top Cow asked me to do a one-shot of Angelus. It's part of this whole Broken Trinity thing they're doing. I have never worked with Top Cow before, but they seem to be cool guys, and my buddy Ron Marz was writing the script.

Rob visited the studio and hung out with us for an entire day. Totally cool guy, and he said his company emphasized artistic freedom. That's always music to the ears.

I turned in this sketch, and it was approved without a hitch.

Painting without a net

2008-11-26T08:28:00.000-08:00

I'm just about finished with my current project, so I thought I'd pop in for a quick blog.

There is a technique that bodybuilders use when they feel they've hit a plateau and wish to break through to the next level. It's called shocking the muscles, and it involves completely changing their workout routine and forcing the muscles to adapt to new conditions. I believe this same technique holds true for artists as well. So, from time to time I like to throw myself a new medium and see what it does.

I'd heard about a charcoal wash technique for years, but I've not been able to find anything explaining the procedure. So naturally I thought I'd give it a go. After acquiring some sandpaper, a set of compressed charcoal, and a black lung, I made a tin of powdered charcoal. Note: if you wish to try this technique I suggest buying powdered charcoal instead of making it… cough, hack, cough. I thought I'd go for it during one of the 20 minute poses for our Tuesday night classes.

Denise was our model that night, and she was weightless and dynamic as usual. She collaborated with the lighting and struck a pose that yielded a great balance of hard and soft shadows.
I felt the lack of a comfort zone on my first brushstroke. This was literally making up a technique as I painted. I used a 1 1/2 inch flat brush for the entire piece, and a disposable paper plate for my palate. I eventually settled into a method of blocking in light masses, and building towards a darker linear form. It was a fairly unforgiving procedure, and subtlety was the first sacrifice.
As what happens all too often, I really thought I had things figured out right when we ran out of time.

This is definitely something I will revisit, and it felt good spending most of my time learning rather than doing.

There is also a technique involving powdered graphite and denatured alcohol, but I think the smell of that concoction would get me chased out of the session.

The eyes have it

2008-10-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

A few people have asked for a larger scan of Lucy so they can see more of the details. I try to save Hi rez images for the yearly sketchbook, but here is a detailed section. At this level you can see that colors are more layered rather than blended.

Having a Ball

2008-10-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

Don't you just hate it when work, obligations, and life get in the way of a good blog? I've just gone through a crushing few months as a result of a scheduling perfect storm. Things are starting to calm down now and I'm reacquainting myself with long neglected things like this blog, and um sleep.

Pat, a friend of mine from our figure drawing sessions, has given me a weekly reminder of my lack of an updates. Okay Patman, so now that I've finally listened to you, how about a quid pro quo and give me a two-minute stop and check during the next session?

Yesterday was the first of a three-part watercolor workshop I'm hosting here at the studio. It was a solid and friendly group with a nice flow of questions. This first session was primarily a lecture and demonstration, but everyone got to do a few exercises. The next two sessions will be a little more hands on, and I'll get a chance to look over other people's shoulders. It was originally scheduled as a free hour workshop, but I refused to stop painting and the students refused to leave. I think we snuck in an extra hour and a half or so before hunger ushered us out of the studio.

Lucille here was the painting I worked on during the demonstration. She was a great subject and offered countless opportunities to explain a variety of picture making techniques.

The fabric of time

2008-08-21T18:15:00.001-07:00

Here is an offering from this past Tuesday's life drawing session. I always enjoy drawing this model because she demands long sweeping lines, and she moves like a ballet dancer even when she's standing still.

I picked up some new paper and thought I'd give it a beating. It's from Fabriano and it has a delicate sharkskin tooth which promised to be hungry for pigment. It took on everything I threw its way, so I decided to challenge it on the last drawing of the night. I quickly established my placements to give myself maximum time to render. Then I decided to find out just how much of a pigment load this paper could take. To my surprise, the paper was still begging for more when I ran out of time.

We're going to start up a Thursday session at the studio as well. The plan is for these sessions to have a longer poses.
This paper is not off the hook just yet.

Movement and light

2008-08-19T10:49:00.001-07:00

I just made a trip to the art supply store to pick up a few things for the figure drawing session today, and I realized I haven't posted any new figure drawings for a while.

Drawing Denise starts with making a difficult choice. It's not like making a choice with a gun to your head, and coincidently she did have a gun during this session, but it's more a choice of two paths. Do you want to chase the movement, or do you want to chase the light. This piece is what I found along a path of light, and it kept me busy for more time than the pose allowed.

Nickel and dimeing Penny

2008-08-13T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sam, it's all about getting the proportions right. The graphics dominate the composition on both the pink Penny sketch and the initial pencil sketch, but they are both background elements. I wanted the primary impact to be all about Penny, and then the viewer would experience the background elements in succession. This is also why I didn't go dark on the Captain Hammer symbol. She holds both the darkest darks as well as the lightest lights. This is staging, and surprisingly it's something I learned from working in architecture. You don't want someone to experience a building as a whole but rather the experience should slowly unfold one stage at a time.
I did a Storm illustration years back, and I staged it by concentrating on her eyes. The fact that she has caramel skin and piercing aqua blue eyes made the job easy. This guy fell in love with the piece and immediately bought the original. It was about a day or so later when he mentioned he had just noticed that she was topless. I'm rarely that successful, but that is staging.

The mathematics of art and composition is a wonderful place to visit from time to time, but I wouldn't recommend you try to live there for any extended periods. When I was in high school I was fascinated by the connections between art and mathematics. Ms. Helga, my art teacher, taught me a great trick to subdivide the head into its proper proportions. She called it the rule of halves. You start with a sketch of the head, or better just the outline of a great A egg. If you divide that shape in half this gives you the placement of the eyes. If you then divide the remaining lower part in half, this gives you the placement of the nose. Finally, having what remains gives you the placement of the mouth. This was like a nuke of knowledge going off in my head.

That started a serious quest to find any other principles of mathematics which could be applied to art, and that search took me from the Fibonacci series all the way to divine proportions. Quite frankly most of the stuff was fascinating but very confusing and difficult to apply to picture making. I eventually came across the J. Hambridge book Elements of a Dynamic Symmetry and that opened a world of knowledge.

For a while I became obsessive about ensuring my compositions worked within those principles. That obsession faded to a casual pursuit got me accustomed to the divine proportion grid, and now I naturally incorporate it into my work. It's much like color theory, or riding a bike. At first you have to be carefully vigilant and it seems more about thinking than doing, but after awhile all that thinking becomes background music. I still sometimes use it formally to solve problems or to just ignite a tired brain.

I've placed the divine proportions grid over the Penny portrait to more gracefully illustrate this meandering discourse.

Penny for your thoughts

2008-08-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

If you go by the Cartman standardized scale of redheads, I'd have to say I mostly lean towards painting DayWalkers. Having that larger range of values and chroma just makes things easier. Paintings a true Gingerkind portrait requires intense scrutiny and subtlety. Here is the conundrum; Red hair has a greater value and chroma range than than both blondes and brunettes, but redheads tend to have less. With flesh tones you can normally get away with literally all the colors, and this includes blues and greens as well if you can keep them fairly neutral. With redheads you have a very shallow analogous pool to play in, from about a warm lavender to a pale orange. This tosses a lot of tricks to create depth out of the window, and you're left with old-school observation and representation. You do still have Pyle's rule of intensity before shadow, and I multiply that by 10 when it comes to redheads or pale flesh tone. I also tried to take it a step further by surrounding any dark area, like the eyebrows, with intense color. This creates a sense of inner glow. Otherwise you approach things as if you're doing a Patrick Nagel print.

One red cent

2008-08-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

So I get an e-mail with a link to this thing called Dr. Horrible’s sing along blog. This thing is pure viral and pure entertaining. One of the characters is this redheaded love interest named Penny. She is beautiful in a way that's difficult to explain but effortless to observe, and her skin seems to radiate from an internal light source.

When someone suggested that I paint her, this became viral as well.

I didn't get a chance to do a lot of steps on this one, as it went from sketch to a finished piece in only a few hours. I was just getting ready to sign it when I first thought of the camera.

I started with the sketch on the lower half of the page but I felt this was losing the portrait quality. The color in the other sketch is not really something I planned out. I got a phone call while I was developing the sketch and just sort of started doodling around. The basic composition of the sketch seemed to work, but the fact that both characters were more or less facing right it seemed to force the viewer's eye right off the image. I flipped the doctors figure to create more of a visual loop and push the viewer back into the composition.

Black Dragon dismount

2008-08-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

It almost caused me pain to go so bold on some of those lines while in process, but now it seems the right decision. The best thing about the classic inking styles is that you have to rush your way through them. If you are too slow and careful you lose the slash and burn spontaneity which are the hallmarks of the period.

I'll post some of the hand colored prints when I get them finished.

One of the things I admire most about those guys is their strict adherence to story. Every line and brushstroke was meant to embody character, attitude, or drama. For those guys art was the byproduct

Dragon Lady blues

2008-08-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

I usually don't put this much pencil on the board beforehand unless I am working in unfamiliar territory, and this is definitely unfamiliar.

Working on both this piece and the DC pulp heroes image really made me realize how rare negative space and spotting blacks are in comics these days. I also have to admit to some culpability myself, but these last pieces have made me want to venture back into the dark.

Enter the Dragon

2008-08-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

Seeing that I'm in the swing of the classics. This months babe is the Dragon Lady from Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. Robert and I made the decision to go with her, but I had no idea what to do. She has a great look and I just assumed something would come to me. Then Benno, a good friend of mine, paid a visit to the studio. He had a Milt Caniff hand colored print in his portfolio, and that clinched it. I decided to follow Milt's lead and to keep the image simple and direct.

You simply can't draw a Milt Caniff girl without thinking of Joan Crawford, and I can't have pictures of Joan Crawford on my desk without drawing her.

By the way, rent Mildred Pierce and enjoy the Crawford goodness when you get the chance.

Acid wash

2008-08-01T06:29:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy coloring in that slightly soured pulp style. It's a funny thing really. Pulp comics were very seldom in color, but when they were the color was extraordinarily bright. Lead based inks have a richness that even today's color inks can't match. Sure, they're toxic, but isn't a beautiful print worth a few dead bodies? The quality of the inks was actually quite good back then, but the quality of the paper was atrocious. The irony is that the acids used to bleach the pulp to a pristine white also managed to burn the paper to a mustard yellow or reddish brown as it aged. So most of the pulps we see today are actually bright colors but these colors get filtered by the chroma and value of the paper they are printed on. The good thing is that this subdues as well as harmonizes the colors. So, that pulp look is actually an accident of printing.

It's about like when they restored the Sistine Chapel. For decades everyone admired Michelangelo's delicate use of color and value, but after they removed the patina of smoke and pollution it revealed that he sort of color like a cartoonist. Still good, but more of a shout instead of a whisper.

Time does have a way of improving things.

Ink and pulp

2008-08-01T06:19:00.001-07:00

Both Mark and I agreed that the image should be a pastiche of the classics. Mark was thinking along the lines of Darwin Cooke or Bruce Tim, but I wanted to go farther back. I pulled out some Will Eisner along with Wally Wood and Alex Toth for seasoning. I tried to understand the “why” behind their work and see if I could apply it to my own.

This was an all tools on deck exercise. Some of those oily Eisner style lines absolutely required a brush, but I found it was easier to capture that drawing with ink flavor using the Namiki instead. There was a ton of back-and-forth.

That's the Spirit

2008-08-01T06:14:00.000-07:00

Mark Chi called up last week and asked what I was working on. I got about three words out before he started insulting both me and the work. He said I should immediately put that work away and work on his project instead. He told me it was cooler than anything I could possibly be working on. Then he just said Doc Savage, The Spirit, Black Hawk, and Rima the jungle girl. Dammit… he was right.

He wanted the composition to illustrate DC's current pulp heroes versus their newly acquired ones. Not necessarily fighting, but more of a us versus them thing.

The sketch finished itself in my head before I hung up the phone.

Inky dismount

2008-07-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

I wish that someday I will be able to use a brush as well as Karl Story, but until that day comes I will continue to slice pages up with the razor tip of my Namiki. Holbein 354 black flows quite nicely through the pen and lays down a serious black. I tried running Holbein special black through an older Osmiroid fountain pen once and I believe it's still stuck in that pen. That stuff is dangerously black.

It's always fun to play with this hard cut style. It's really all a balancing act between small cut graphics and long sweeping shapes. I want to create spaces that trap the eyes like a maze and combine those with giant expanses of positive and negative space. I feel that one helps to amplify the other.

I liked how the pieces turned out individually, but as a triptych they really flow well. Perhaps the three brothers should meet every decade or so and bring the pieces together. If they do, they should take care not to say their names backwards when the pieces unite. It could awaken something… terrible.

Pencils... sort of

2008-07-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

After another long wait for a break in my schedule, and constant friendly reminders from Scott, it was pencil time.

About 10 years ago both Cully and I gradually switched over to using Col-erase blue pencils on pages. Sanford col-erase 20044 Blue to be exact. It's actually more a product of moving into the digital world. The color is almost a rich navy blue, but it erases to a bright non-photo blue, and this color is virtually invisible to a grayscale scan. The reflective quality of graphite worked well for shooting pages on a stat camera, but today's scanners are far more sensitive.

I took these pencils to a far more finished state than I normally do. This was so Scott could get a good look at where I wanted to go. When I'm tackling a convention sketch I like doing most of the drawing with ink. It keeps things spontaneous, and I like figuring it out as I go. These pieces were more akin to doing covers, and I really got the opportunity to chisel the graphics in stone.

If you're feeling good, print one of these out and take a shot at the inks.

Three bats for three brothers

2008-07-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

My buddy Scott wanted to do something nice for his three brothers. He thought it would be cool to get each of them an original Batman pen and ink illustration. He asked me if I would do it and I naturally agreed, but then the waiting began. Early one morning before heading into the studio it hit me. Since these images are for three brothers, it would be really cool to somehow graphically tie them together. Yeah, there is the fact that each piece would go to a separate brother and hang on different walls possibly in different states, but they would always be tied together. I thought this formed a satisfying allegory to the bond between brothers.

Normally I'd tackle something like this on a scratch pad or sketchbook, but I was home at the time and too lazy to go on a search, so I fired up a pen tablet PC.

Tuesday night lights

2008-07-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

Here is another offering from last night's figure drawing session. This is the same model in the "all new" post from last month. She is colorfully pale, and reflects colors with equal intensity as she projects them. She is a perfect model for studying color temperature.
I'm using NuPastels, but I wanted to play with a different paper. I found some Roma paper on clearance at the art supply store and bought their remaining supply. The paper has a nice soft sandpaper tooth but I was a little concerned about the pattern embedded in the grain, and the obnoxious watermark. But how can you lose at a dollar a sheet? It was love at first line. Colors blush on to this paper like a soft breeze, and it keeps them in plain sight even after tooling and rubbing. It drinks up the pigment and begs for more more. This is great paper, and I curse my limited supply.

The edge of bright

2008-07-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

In his notes on painting, Howard Pyle talks about a quality of color and light that one should try to carefully observe. His theory states that the richest chroma of a color happens on the edge that joins light to shadows. He explains that true color can not happen in the shadows because of the absence of light, and true color is not available in light as well because it is obscured by the quality and color of the light itself. Therefore your purest color should knit your lights and shadows together.
I often find this technique difficult to adhere to, but it is a must when dealing with flesh tones. It adds a translucency to the skin and makes it feel like flesh rather than a painted mannequin.

Since figure drawing is the research and development for illustration, I use it to explore this and many other picture making theories.

Flash #245 dismount

2008-07-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

As always I wanted to keep the colors clean and simple. I try to use colors as a way to magnify composition and storytelling. It's all too easy to get caught in the trap of using color to polish forms. I think that can ultimately be detrimental to overall composition.

Most of the oily smoke in the background was done in Painter using distortion brushes. Those are a personal favorite, and they add energy to an otherwise flat background.

I'm having a ball on these covers, and I think I'll try to push things even more.

Starting lines

2008-07-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

I ink with just about anything I can get my hands on. Different methods and different tools create different looks, and I believe too much rigid loyalty on a specific technique can create stagnation. The Flash covers seem to call for a hard and fast tool, and quill seem to be the way to go. I'm using a fountain pen because it can take more of a heavy-handed beating than most of the dip quills I've used. I get pretty nutty about antique fountain pens, as they are the best due to their craftsmanship and flexibility, but you just don't find those every day. Newer quill pens are just made to mimic ballpoint pens, and the quality generally doesn't hold up. After an extensive search I came across the Namiki Falcon. It's a Japanese pen made in the classic style. It weighs in at about $130, and that's ridiculously expensive compared to the $2.00+- cost of dip nibs. But once you start laying down lines with this thing you completely understand the cost. You can get brush like lines, and it feels more like drawing rather then inking. It is a joy to be holding.

Ask me if you can take it for a spin next time you catch me at a convention.

Moving still

2008-07-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on a series of Flash covers, and I'm quite enjoying the assignment. My initial thought was to try to make every cover a study in motion and distortion, but my favorite design for this current cover required static figures. My thoughts on this sketch was to try to shift the movement from the figure to the composition. In this sketch I deliberately turned Flash’s head away in an effort to keep the reader's eyes moving along the looping lightning bolts, but the editor asked me to change his head position so that he would engage the reader. I was reluctant to make this change at first, but in the end I have to admit it lead to a stronger image.

A twist of sublime

2008-06-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

Denise is one of my favorites. She's an artist as well as a model and that is a very informative duality. She doesn't just strike a pose she becomes the pose, and she enunciates it all the way out to her toes and fingertips. She poses with an elegance and a defiance of physics that makes you feel as though she exists in a liquid environment. She will also throw these twisting helixes of foreshortened form that challenge the mind as well as one's confidence.

Mike under construction

2008-06-18T08:49:00.001-07:00

We had Michael in for our Saturday costumed figure drawing session. For his 20 minute poses he decided to go with a full construction worker setup. He mentioned that he was thinking of working his way through the entire cast of the Village People.