GNEW YEARS GNOME 2013

Every year for the past several years I have been doing a little gnome painting, generally in watercolours, the tradition started out as a seasonal image to put in a frame that hung in our entry room. For the Gnew Year I would do a Gnome, Valentines day would get a little cupid or cheruby thing, St Pats would get a leprechaun and so on.

I still do the Leprechauns, but they are for a charity auction for the local St patty' Party, that started about 10 years ago, but will blog on that come closer to March 17th.......

Back to the Gnew Years Gnome...... usually the image is sparked by something that has gone on in the past year and I will some how incorporate it into the them of the image. This year was honestly no different. 

A friend of mine, Heidi, had made a comment about her pre-lit tree only being half lit, and with that it sparked the memory of my dad ( he passed 3 years ago in December,very close to the date she posted )   and Christmas. When we would be putting the lights on the tree, it was his job, and mine as helper, to string them, we would stretch themout along the living room floor and he would go thru bulb by bulb and check the connections making sure there were no shorts or bad wires. Some younger folks might not realize that the wiring on older lights was not as efficient as it is now.....

Anyway, Heidi, thank you for the friendship over the past few years and the memory.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!!

 

SCROOGED

MERRY CHRISTMAS

In the days before the cell phone there was the polaroid, and this is where the inspiration for this image came from.

A SAWMILLS HOPE, kickstarter book project

This is the project I have been mentioning lately, and a good one it is. When the author David List, contacted me about doing the illustrations for this, and asked if I would be interested reading the book to see what we could do, I was totally floored and amazed that I started sketching off the first page, that usually doesn't happen. It is normally several pages into the story before I honestly get an image, last time it happened, I believe I was reading Michael Moorcocks first Elric novel.

Well we talked and came to an agreement, so with the help of everyone out there.......we can get this book, this WORLD that David has created  off the ground. There are lots of goodies with this kickstarter  project, so please stop by, give a look and join in.

these are just a few of the roughs and pencils for this book, it will be fully illustrated with 23 inked images, and I will post a few of those shortly.

SANTA 2013, the COOKIE SANTA

here is this years Santa, 2013

prints available 8 X 10, $10.00 a piece, just email me at

tracyflynnart@gmail.com

DARKE HUNTS

Here is a little bin of fun in a video format of me starting on the pencils for one of the illustrations to the new book project, as you will see it is in real time so what you see is what actually came out and how long it took to get that far.

On a sad note, if I post any more videos, there will be no sound. This really sort of sux since I like loud music when I work, but I keep getting flagged for the music when I upload it to youtube, and as an artist I don't want to be in a copyright violation, even tho I do post and acknowledge who I am listening to. In this clip you will hear a bit of Dan Baird, from his album Buffalo Nickel  and now rockin the hell out of us with great tunes in HOMEMADE SIN!!

After about 40 seconds the sound goes off .......... ya'll missed out on a great song

NEW PROJECT.............

O.K.,......

been a bit since I have posted anything, but am happy to announce at this point I will be working on a new project. It is a new book coming out soon with 23 illustrations from yours truly as well as a kickstarter thing with lots of cool stuff to be had from roughs to originals from the book..........but more on all that as the time nears.

But here is a few peaks at some of the roughs and the first of the finished pieces.......

I will be back very shortly with more info as well as a link to the authors blog.

DOODLE BOOK COVERS

I had seen a post a while back from James Gurney over on his blog the GURNEY JOURNEY about his sketch books and that he was doing little lettering and painting things on the covers, the post was about lettering or sign painting, I am going to post a link as soon as I can find it..........but after seeing the post, I thought " WOW!! what a great idea " and said to myself " Tracy, you should do something on the fronts of your doodlebooks so that you can sort of tell one black book from another "

Well some time went by, and with that still in the back of my mind, I bought a little acrylic paint set, and sat down with my latest book and since I am in a Barsoomian mood and have been doing a lot of Mars concept pieces, I decided to paint a Banth on the cover. 

The set I bought came in a little plastic case, and I can use the inside cover of the lid as a palette, and the colours are pretty much the same as more core group that I use daily in my oils, so all was a go. 

I have to say that just sitting there in the living room watching the tele and leisurely putting the paint down on this was a total joy, no pressures, no deadline just sort of painting to be painting. 

CTHULHU

Finally sat down a gave a title inking a try for the first time since my hand surgery. A fun little guy and am thinking he might make a nice little painting as well.

CTHULHU

brush and ink on parchment

14 X 17

OGRE DUDE

Ogre Dude, is a working title since I personally need a name to distinguish which image I am working on at a particular time, especially since I tend to work on several different things at once as drying time and such come into play.

Anyways, as I sat down today and started to work on  getting my tonal under painting on, and things in order for the paint, I was reminded of a little thing I do in the rough stage of things. I will take my  my rough and scan it into photoshop and then print out a sheet with multiple versions of the image. I will then take that, print it out and do different versions of my colour comp on this sheet, and use that as my colour scheme for the final painting. 

the rough....

the sheet.....

the colour comps....

the start of the under paint

PENCIL FUN

It is pretty much well known that I love the pencil, it is the King Daddy of  all the media for me, and sadly, I rarely use it except to do roughs, and doodles, but every once in a while I have the opportunity to just sit down and play........here is one of those moments from this past weekend.

LIZARD QUEEN

14 X 17 

pencil on Bristol

$50.00

PALETTE CLEANSE

Not too far back I said that sometimes my favourite part of painting is cleaning off the palette............

Well here is a small example of what I mean:

I did this yesterday morning mainly in one sitting, just playing. Now you may ask yourself what does this have to do with cleaning off your palette, well he was done from paint left over from a couple of days of paint on my palette from another painting that I am working on..........as some of the paint was still viable and wet, I just sketched the face out onto a boar and then started to paint him in with that paint before I scraped down and started back into the other image.   A cleansing of the palette as it were, and not wasting of paint.

Could I go back in and tighten things up more and turn it into a "finished piece, sure I can tighten him up, but for me he is finished, served his purpose and was a good exercise, and to be totally honest, I like him as is.

So the next time you have to scrape down, maybe see if you can lay some more paint down and just play a bit..........it is fun, and sometimes you get something out of it as well besides a clean palette.

D'ARGON

As you can probably see, I have updated the look and layout of the ol' blog here and in doing so, have added a new header and things, and since "DRAGONS DO EXIST IN MY WORLD" I sort of thought it fitting that there should be one of the old boys at the top.

This not a new painting, I originally did him in 2007, but have done a few minor adjustments for fun and now he is ready for the world at this point.

So here he is in full, D'ARGON......

THE CAVERN OF DOOM

Well after a long haul, painting left handed, painting right handed, surgery, recovery a few set backs and such, it is finally finished, THE CAVERN OF DOOM.

A few little details, the paintings is 14 X 18, oils on Tracy-nite and available for purchase if you like, there will also be prints available from my Etsy site as well:

http://www.etsy.com/people/tracyeflynn?ref=si_pr

Dwarves and the Cavern of Doom continues.....

Just a quick little update, I have had to slow down a bit and take things a little easier than I had originally planned to, at this point I had hoped to have had this one done as well as another and on my 3rd painting or so at this time in my recovery. Well, we can all plan but regardless of that these things are not on a time schedule and I had to ease off and let the hand come back at its own pace.

The Beholder and the Dwarves have all been painted with my right hand, while all the background had been done with the left. As I continue to paint and heal the hand is getting stronger and things will be progressing along faster and soon will all be back to a new state of normal..

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DWARVES PAINTING.....

In the previous post, Dwarves in the cavern of doom, I posted the work in progress up to a point, at this time I am going to back track a wee bit and give a little insight into how I actually sort of came up with the image in the first place.

A few years back I did an image of a BEHOLDER..........

... a fun little pencil piece that I liked, and thought it would be fun to go ahead and do a painting of this little fella at some point, but I really needed a setting for him to hang out in, and being a creature of the the UNDERDARK.............I had a place for him to hang out, just needed a scenario for him to be there.

He sort of hung out in my head and sketchbook for quite a bit of time, until one day I started to draw some dwarfs......

Once I had these fellows on my mind, it sort of dawned on me...they kind of like caves, and mining and that sort of thing, the next thing I know is I am getting an image of the Beholder and these guys sort of in the same area........

...the first sketch, hated it...........

....so I sort of liked this better but still thought it sucked...

...then I sort of remembered the sketch of the little guy standing at the edge of a precipice ....and I did the little doodle in the upper left hand corner ( 3 ) but didn't like the Beholder being visible to them and below, sow I moved him up and to the right ( 4 ) and sort of combined the two sketches and we ended  up with the painting as we saw in the previous post.

Ok............now that I have brought you up to speed on where we were, I am going to post a few redundant pictures to get you to where we are.................

the piece in the underpainting stage on the Tracy-nite.......

...establishing the background and some of the foreground elements as well......

this is the point where I hate the background,  and really not sure why, so I put it down for roughly 12 hours or so until I figured out what I was not liking about it...........well it turned out it to be a bit of a value and tonal issue for me..... it was creating a weird spacial thing going on in which the column in the back was in front of the one in the mid ground........I am not M.C. Escher  and it really didn't work for me, so I repainted it.....

... well here is the repaint.............

and here is a side by side of the two............i was listening to the Beatles so I ended up labeling it yesterday and Today, plus it was a days difference.

...and this is where the painting stands at this point.... all the drawings were done way prior to my surgery and so are all right ( normal or strong hand ) all the paint is still lefty..........

There will be more images to follow as I continue to work on this and finish it out, so please stay tuned and comment if you wish.

DWARVES IN THE CAVERNS OF DOOM.......WIP

Here is a quick little step by step process of the painting I am currently working on at the moment. This is one of the pieces that I had drawn out and prepped prior to my surgery..........didn't work out as I had hoped since at this point I am still not supposed to be using my right hand, but I am managing and painting SLOWLY with my left. Hopefully by the time I get to painting the figures I will be allowed to use my right hand and get back to business as usual.

Here we go with the under painting....

...laying in the background tones and colours....

...and tightening up a bit of the background as well as laying in the darks for the mid and foreground.

In the next post I will go ahead and scan and post the roughs and prelims for this painting, that is pretty much it for now.

Been too long ...........so here is an update .....

Hi, no I did not fall off the planet, but have been not quite healthy so I am here now to update everyone who my not know what has been going on for the past year.........well 2 years, and most like longer just because I tend to ignore things and press on.

3 weeks ago I underwent surgery to replace to discs in my neck that were compressing a nerve making my drawing hand and arm go numb and placing me also in a lot of pain. At the same time I underwent carpel tunnel surgery in y drawing hand as well.

Although I did continue to draw and work thru all this, I will honestly admit my stuff was not up to what I am capable of, I sort of continued to draw because I had to, it kept me sane and really could not help myself.... I have to draw and paint........if not I really get tense and cranky. You really cannot separate the man from the artist.........we are one in the same.

 This is how my hand looked about a week ago.........although the stitches are out at this point I am still not released by my Doctor to use the hand to draw..........this has not stopped me, I am slowly plodding about doing it left handed.

Before we go there here are a few things I have started and or finished before surgery and the hand got too bad to use

a little pencil of a woman and a dragon......kind of fun and was enjoyable to be doing just a pencil for the fun of doing a pencil

a simple little dragon hunter piece, that I will be back on to shortly...

these are two of 8 pieces that I started to lay out and prepare before I went into surgery...........

this is the last piece I finished before surgery, it is Web, and the cover for another Timothy Ray Jones book

here is Thuvia in the Garden, the last ink I was able to do before I really could not control the brush

here are two versions of Dejah Thoris and Woola, that I have for now stopped until I am able to ink again...

here is the underpainting for the project I have started, the whole of the paint application so far has be left haned..

... a little bit of work left handed as I do the under painting for  my next project....


Well that is pretty much what I have been up too, I will be keeping a little better track and updating more as I heal and do more...