Archive for the ‘Illustration’ Category

There is nothing I hate more than being bored. Holiday traveling always means an excruciating amount of waiting in line, in terminals, in planes, utterly uninspired, to say the least. I’d way rather be painting in my studio, listening to Florence and the Machine. But you know, there is a way not to have to stare at the blank faces of dazed travelers and white walls of sanitarium terminals.

It’s true! it just takes a smidge amount of forethought and some key supply purchases. Check my set up on the tiny plane I took over the hills and through the woods to Grandma’s house…

I got my Florence and Snow Patrol fix with my beloved ipod, (for instant MOOD  just add Cherry Anger play list). The compact watercolor set by Windsor and Newton. My small lil cup o water disguised as a Noxzema 3.0 travel jar, and the best and largest brushes I can afford. Personally, I mostly paint with my Squirrel mop brush and a 12, 10, and 8 round as well as a 1″ flat. A rigger is good detail fun and tons of  paper towels by Viva fo sho.

See, since terminals rarely offer inspirational brain food I tend to keep boxes of swipes and tear sheets under my bed and stuffed in my sketchbook. A fist full of random images accompany me on most trips. I pull a lot from fashion magazines and photos I take around the city. It’s up to you to build your reference library. “Build it and they will come”… ideas I mean. What’s important is to keep the flow.

A very wise professor at SCAD once said “If you’re bored, you’re boring”. So true Cap’n, so true.

In case you didn’t know, fashion illustration rocks my freaking world. I tend to choose consumer products based on artwork. Illustration communicates a mood the product is selling and I’m a sucker for it. I love illustrating products and clothing in watercolor it’s so moody and versatile. Which is why when I got the chance to watch Bil Donovan paint at the Society of Illustrators I damn near lost my cookies.

Bil Donovan has been illustrating forever, When I was designing at Magaschoni his art work graced the walls of the entry way which always elicited a moment of silence as I passed by. Seriously, his watercolors are so dreamy. The 3 hour demo was awesome, intimate and thrillingly inspirational. Bil answered questions as he sketched and talked about how he began (an exclusive contract with Dior, geezus) he even did a sketch of me, Swoon!

Bil started with warm up sketches while observing a model. Sketching with the brush, he shows how “easy” it is…

…to work the watercolor in a lucid wash fusing passages with expressive blooms and lost edges.

(please forgive the blurry photos I was just too damn excited and couldn’t hold the camera still)

The model as “muse” is no joke, these models were amazing and inspiring, I wanted to draw from them myself.

Donovan is such an energetic painter, you can see while he works how much he loves doing this. He interacts with his models and captures the spirit of the pose.

Using mostly flat brushes he nails the gesture and suggests the features of the face so perfectly. I tend to use all rounds myself, but I will be sure to try some of the techniques he showed us.

It was awesome to meet and watch one of my all time favorite illustrators at work. Thank you Bil!

(thank you Damian at SCIsquared for the above photo)

People ask about my acrylic painting process, I guess you could call it “Glazing“. Kathrine Sandoz, one of my professors at  SCAD, taught me and I kind of ran away with it. So here is a demo or at least a visual process. The application falls loosely somewhere between Durer or Titan. An excellent book of reference on the subject is “How To Paint Like the Old Masters” by Joseph Sheppard.

I mostly documented this process for myself, since I seem to suffer amnesia immediately after completing a painting of this kind. Starting a new one, I cannot remember how I did the last. I’ve completed 5 of the series and I am almost finished with the 6th. It’s really like the movie Memento every time I start. Let me share the confusion with you and spread the love

This painting is titled “The Feast” you can view the entire series here.

I start with a very detailed drawing, somewhat with rendered values, especially where the focus is. The more I do these however, the less I am concerned with too much perfect drawing.

I then lay down a mid tone wash, usually of  burnt orange and begin establishing a monochromatic under painting. I first establish my values by layering white and “black”. I will eventually be glazing color over top of the established values. For my “black” I am mixing burnt umber, prussian blue, and sap green with a little matte medium.

(the general rule waiting to be broken is that the wash should be a compliment to, and opposite in temperature of what your finished overall color sceme will be. For example, here I plan for this to finish in a seedy, cool green. So I washed in a warm red. This under painting will pop the glazes of green to follow.)

I continue to pull whites and fill in the darks. Here it’s a chalky light green I’ve made with gesso, sap green and burnt umber. I use gesso as my initial white because I will need the added tooth it provides for the million glazes I am about to lay down. Acrylic can get smooth and no longer accept layers. If this happens, but you don’t want the chalky whites in transparent shadows, you can add matte medium which is transparent and will give you a little more tooth to keep going.

With much of the under painting in place I can start glazing in the local color. I will continue to manipulate the values, as they change with the addition of color, and will require adjusting. Keep in mind the colors are still very thin, I add matte medium to them and alternate color with thin white and “black” to establish form. It’s a slow process but luminous depth will be the result.

At this point there is  a lot of blending. Dry brushing lights over shadows (as seen in the lower left porcelain horse) glazing in a little reflected light (lower left corner on the tea cup), adding stronger highlights and blending ( lower right corner on the silver tea pot). I then keep building the darks and glazing over with green.

The values are pretty well established it’s time for that constant push and pull of glazing in warm and cool to make the lights luminous and turn shadows on forms. This process can take forever, and often I undo a really brilliant wash and have to go back over and over with more warm glazes and white.

I’ll glaze in a few more green, over-all washes using either sap green or quinacridone gold. This will set my mid tones and dark shadows. For my bright, glowy lights, I generally mix a thin glaze of cadmium yellow, burnt orange and maybe a little alizarin crimson . I glaze this over the brightest highlight points, then go back over it with thick white and then glaze again and back and forth until I am happy with it.

It can take a long time and lots of thin layers of paint but you get a rich bright painting. I am always happy when I finish one but starting one is very daunting.

The 6th is almost complete after which, I think I will toss this technique for a more direct painting approach. Something more along the lines of this and this oooo and this.

Other fine resources on this subject are:

http://smartflix.com/ you can rent DVD’s on just about anything you want to learn here

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/audiovideo/ you can buy small video clips to help with specific topics here

http://www.conceptart.org/ you can look at great work and ask the forum here

Did you find this demo helpful? Feel free to leave a comment or question.

“That’s how dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked pretty well so far”

*See Wolverine in this style here

Itching to paint, I thought I’d try some studies in watercolor and gouache from some of the photos I took in Spain. The point of these studies is not to copy, but to loosen the strokes, express the subject instead of depicting it and to explore some color theory. Here are 4 studies along with the Sorolla studies I was looking at for reference.

(for more of my sketches from Spain peek this)

When I learned to laugh and cry at the same time it was because I was reading Kurt Vonnegut. One of my favorite contemporary satirists of all time; his dark humor and absurd disposition tickles my brain. Getting an assignment to illustrate the man was perfect. So here is an editorial illustration spot executed with the most lovingly agitated hand I could muster. Thank you Kurt, for the dark hours of my teenage angst, R.I.P..

I started with sketches of various Kurt expressions because I knew I wanted to communicate the Bipolar, hideous delight of what was said and the bitterness of it’s truth. So here are a few face sketches to warm me up.

Next was the daunting execution of the 1st comp: being expressive and fidgety without being sloppy and hesitant.

The art director wanted more depth, “more grit”, to remove the second set of hands, and to indicate more of an appropriate environment (i.e. a diner or coffee shop). So I went about a second comp, again, trying to fidget with the quill, brush and wash. The first one is a bit over worked in places and stiff but it’s uneasy and “off” in enough ways that I liked it.

The approved final is a bit darker, more “gritty” but higher contrast. The addition of chalk gives it a smokey diner quality. Laughing Kurt is more amused than the 1st comp, though maybe he should be hysterical, but mild amusement has it’s own bitter irony. It’s still agitated in application and just a little “off” so I dig it.

Aaaaand in keeping with “unsettling” and “off” here are a few quotes I have scrawled in sketchbooks strewn across my life. Enjoy and try just to laugh…

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

“Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.” 

“To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.”

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before… He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”- Cats Cradle

“How nice–to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.” -Slaughterhouse-Five

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

For those who just don’t have much to say….

I was recently commissioned to design an art label for a new beer flavor “Nixie” by Mr. Penguin Brewery. The mood of this enticing beer:

“Nixie”. Definition: The German Nix and Nixe (and Nixie) are type of river  mermaid who may lure men to drown, like the Scandinavian type,  and similar to the Greek Siren.

My assignment was to illustrate in watercolor, a dark seductress emerging from the murky waters of desire. Our lusty lady could be pouring water from a vase or something. “Yeah, I got a few ideas”, I went to work sketching thumbnails and proposed these 4 compositions.

Comp 1

Comp 2

Comp 3

Comp 4

Mr. Penguin loved them all but eventually settled on Comp # 2 so I went about a more refined sketch for final approval before painting.

I blew it up to 20″ x 14″ so I could free up the brush strokes a bit. I use Arches Cold Press, 140lb watercolor blocks. I love that they are  glued down and the texture and absorbency is ideal.

I’ve also acquired this amazing color  Daniel Smith Undersea Green it’s absolutely lovely and only Dan Smith makes it. I used this color quite heavily in this painting, it’s moody, it’s transparent and mixes well with everything and I love how red blends into it. Well, I love whatever red does. So here is the final in living color.

I can’t wait to get my case in the mail and see my lady on the bottle. Until then, it would be a shame to leave her sisters in pencil so I decided to paint them as well, but using a slightly different technique. I cut small 8″ x 10″-4 ply plate bristol, (uncertain of how this technique would turn out, I figured small disasters are better than big ones) coated the bristol with zinc white designer’s gouache and proceeded to paint the same way I usually do. Except now I have the power of erasing, because of the gouache I can wipe out and paint in again.

The gouache reactivates with the pigments and makes an ethereal haze quality that is fun to work with. I like the way these turned out on their own. For the label however, I think the original makes the most impact.

Mr. Penguin: Brewing progressive beer with the finest ingredients, in other words “Good Beer for Bad People”.

I’ll drink to that! (as soon as it gets here)

Playin’ in the sand box, this time with Trent Reznor.

I am still playing with this gouache wipe out technique. Oh, what a glutton for punishment I am.  So here is Wolverine. Why Wolverine you say? How can I resist that face?! “Grrrrr”