Portraits

A couple of my better pieces from class this term so far. Both 3 hour paintings.

Portrait painted from life.

Oil on canvas board, 8 x 10 in.

Wolf portrait painted from photo. Didn't even paint the ears on, it looks cool just with the under-painting showing through.

Oil on canvas board, 5 x 7 in.

Hand of Irori

A study from Hogarth's 'Drawing Dynamic Hands'. I imagine Irori moving his hand so fast he appears to have 13 fingers, kept me thinking of the symbol of Irori and got to drawing it as a statue.

This first image was still heavily based off the photo. Often photos don't translate well directly into drawings or paintings and this was no exception.You can see dark tone running from the base of the index finger towards the bottom middle of the palm. Even though it looked like this in the photo(a combination of odd lighting and differing skin tones) it doesn't look good in the drawing. It appears ambiguous and doesn't help describe the form of the hand. The main bulk of the thumb also appears more flat than it should. At this point the photo was no longer helpful.

Figure Drawing from Life

Drawing the Figure from life has been the most significant factor in my overall improvement over the past two years. It is one of the best ways to gauge accuracy as a draughtsman because it doesn't take an expert to see if a human figure looks funky. We're all born with an innate ability to recognize the human face and discern idiosyncrasies of the human body. So while many people may not recognize whether a giraffe was drawn with an incorrect arch to its back or has an elongated snout, anybody will notice a crooked back or distorted face on a person. It becomes more difficult to get away with inaccuracy when more people are familiar with the subject. And since the human figure is generally a more demanding subject the skills gained in studying it apply to many more subjects in art.

On top of studying the human figure and portrait it is important to also draw from life. The camera flattens 3D space into a 2D image automatically, making many decisions for the artist compared to drawing from life, where the artist must translate the whole scene onto paper themselves. Photographs can be very helpful in many situations, but it's important not to rely too heavily on them.

I think there's proof in the progression of anybody learning this way. Here's a six hour and three hour drawing, respectively, from my last term at Watts Atelier. More on this new page.

And an embarrassing two hour drawing from almost two years ago when I started. Tiny t-rex hands and shins the length of her torso... It's funny to think that at the time I was drawing this I didn't notice these problems. Not until I stepped back to look at the whole thing.

Update on Lovecraft

A small bit of progress starting to figure out the color scheme. I should've done some thumbnails first... I'm thinking an overall purple and green, especially deep purple shadows that I always imagine in the city R'lyeh, the under-painting was changed accordingly. Proportion and composition of the characters has been changed. All layers have been flattened and coloring begins! You can see side by side differences from the last post.

Some beginning details on Ezren, the perspective on his upper body was changed since last post. I'm not sure how large people usually work in digital, this is 100% zoom which seems more than enough to me...

A roadtrip of inspiration

A good thing about living within driving distance of LA is the tremendous amount of galleries and art museums in the region. There are currently three shows of interest running near LA; the yearly 'Masters of the American West' at the Autry, the traveling exhibition 'Syd Mead Progressions' at the Forest Lawn Museum, and a 19th-century Academic Realism collection being shown at The Weisman.

Some friends from the school and I hit up all three in one long day (sat in tons of LA traffic and saw plenty of accidents on the highways...) not enough time to absorb everything. There's a great deal of artists at the Autry Western show every year, I found out about the very loose yet accurate sculptures of TD Kelsey. Works spanning fifty years at the Syd Mead show, as well as a massive Bouguereau painting(Song of the Angels) in the museum's permanent collection. Greats like Alma Tadema, Rudolf Ernst, and again Bouguereau at the Weisman. However amongst this flood of creative inspiration I found an unexpected source from an impromptu visit to the Hennessey and Ingalls bookstore on the way back.

Browsing the Chinese art section I found a book of Chinese Brush Paintings by Ning Yeh. It was specifically the horse paintings within that caused me to buy it. Not only is it hard to find many Chinese brush paintings of horses, these ones were really well done, each brush stroke is simple, accurate, and portrays a lot of information. On top of that, I hadn't realized at the time, Ning Yeh is the owner of the Oriental Art Supply store I had visited a few months previous, and whom I'd planned to take a workshop with about a year ago. I didn't get to do the workshop unfortunately. Anyway, the paintings in the book are from over twenty years ago and he's only gotten better, I really need to check out his workshop this time around.

Oil Paint, steampunk, birds

Some recent paintings from the past few weeks.

Oil on canvas board, 16 x 12 in.

Steampunk is quite a fickle genre but it has its roots. And with all the crazy and convoluted steampunk ideas I've been kickin around it helps to step back to the basics. This is a Regency Era costume, just ahead of the Victorian Era of typical Steampunk but the influence is obvious. I painted this in Meadow Gist's Costume Painting Class for a total of nine hours plus four more in the studio.

Meadow made the costume herself. Check out her blog for more awesome paintings, costume design and tailoring.

Oil on cardboard, 7 x 5 in.

Birds have always been a favorite of mine to draw(Tengu are easily my favorite race) and it only gets better in paint. The sharp beak and claws, soft feathers, and variety of colors all coalesce into an eclectic variety of patters and shapes that just isn't often found in most other creatures and objects.

As I was doing some yard work this little guy(island scrub jay) flew down and perched on the wheelbarrow next to me. The work gloves I wore were the same white on one side and blue on the other, maybe he mistook them for friends of his. A few more were also flying around long enough to get some decent pictures. Couldn't wait, painted this the next day.








Still inspired a few days later I went scrounging through the thousands of zoo photos I've accumulated over the past couple years and found this gem. I forget what type of bird it is, but it's all gray and white and despite that has vivid colors reflecting back from the environment. The harsh morning sunlight hits almost horizontally creating hard shadows on the right side that are lit up by the intense red yellow food pellets below and the blue sky above.

Oil on cardboard, 5 x 7 in.

A Lovecraftian battle WIP

There's a problem with translating some of Lovecraft's words into images; where they're used less to describe something and more to suggest the inability for humans to comprehend it. If a color is impossible to describe then how can you possibly convey it in an image using known and possible methods? What does a structure of non-Euclidean stone look like when drawn onto a flat Euclidean surface? The best you can do is bend the rules without breaking the illustration.

I didn't do much in the way of bending rules in this one though. The view is almost sideways and very wide angle, enough that perspective is very distorted in the corners. So I covered two corners with amoebic mass to make the distortion less apparent(the bottom left already had the monster thing).

It was tempting to give all the iconics equal real estate but it makes for a boring composition if all the characters are the same size. Plus hiding Merisiel out of the focus and further away just makes so much more sense. I didn't notice when I first drew her in like that but shes actually running down the underside of the tentacle, what with the tilted perspective. This needs more dwarves, it could use a couple Harsks. I still want to cram more iconics in there...

Coloring in digital is something I've found I don't care much for, though I know that's in large part because I haven't done enough to get used to it. I may just paint it in oil, there's still much left to do before that happens.