THE PERFECT PASSAGE

Sometimes when you read, there is a passage that sticks with you, just resonates and sort of speak to you......you get it, and in my case I sort of see it, it is there visually for me. 

For me, when I read, I take visual notes of things to possibly draw,  as I a rereading The HOBBIT again, I came to this part of the book:

" he saw all round him a sea of dark green, ruffled here and there by the breeze; and there were everywhere hundreds of butterflies. "

When I read this again, I immediately sketched out this image:

That very brief passage was for me the perfect amount of description to let my mind go to work. It had all the information needed to move from rough sketch to a more detailed image.

So from the initial rough, I went on to a colour image. The following pictures show the progress to the final piece.........

From here, I will in all honesty move on to doing a full on oil of this image.

This piece is done in Gouache on a piece 9 X 12 Strathmore 400 Series toned paper.

STILL HERE AND LOTS GOING ON.......on the easel that is

Just a brief bit today, have lots going on with the paint and some new projects happening down the pike, so those will be mentioned again as more progresses with them, but here is a brief look at what is happening in the studio for now.

.... and as always, please feel free to leave comments and just say ehy

ENDLESS TERROR

this sort of just in, I will be doing a piece for Blade Runner Press. It is for an RPG called Endless Terror

Here is a little preview:

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

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.

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...

Dragons

In my world, dragons still exist,...................

Those 6 words are at the top of this page............I was looking at this the other day and realized, except for ol' D'Argon ( that fine beastie of a yellow dragon at the top of the page under the words ), I really don't do many dragons, well that is changing and I am going to be revealing more of those fellows to you as the time goes by, and here is a quick look at  Gadron, a red dragon who lives in a sulfur cave. I hope ya'll enjoy and I'll post more on him later as I get time.....and if not I WILL definitely post the finished piece.

 

REVELATION .... EOWYN AND THE NAZGUL, part II

In the previous post of  REVELATION .... EOWYN AND THE NAZGUL I had touched on the concepts of the piece and how I arrived at the composition of the painting. Here in this post I will go over a bit of the painting process........if you have been here before, you will have probably seen the 2 part  step-by of how I painted the Zombie Moon painting, if not here are the links Z 1 and Z 2.

Here in this photo is the image drawn/transfered onto the Tracy-nite. At this point I was still playing with the Nazguls arm position. You will also see that the Fell Beast has some really thick hair-like things drooping about its neck, as well as a poorly drawn hand in the foreground. The neck is also leading out of the picture.

After conferring with a good friend and asking for a bit of advice on it, he had said to loose the hand and turn the neck back in to the painting..........which I ended up doing.

In the image to the right you can see I had resolved my arm issue and turned the beasites neck inward helping to keep your attention more focoused towards the center of the painting where the action is. The hand has been painted over in the under painting....although still visible, it is green and reminds me grass goes here.

I have started to paint in the sky as well, but after sending the image on to another friend of mine, he reminded me that there had been a gloom sort of cast over the area making it foggy and what not, so I had to rethink my sky. ............. I personally love doing calm clear skies for battles just as a contrast, all this nastiness going on and its a beautiful day sort of thing.

Here we have the sky taken care of with a bit of gloomy clouds and sort of mimicking the V of the beasts wings as well. The really bright  area in the top of the painting is glare from either the light of my easel or the flash of the camera........not sure anymore which, but not paint.

I have also started to define the grassy area in the foreground, and put in some bits of battle in the distance. The hand at this point is for the most part gone and forgotten. Eowyns pants are starting to emerge as well as more definition of the beast and the lighting of the wing.

Now we have the beast emerging as well as the colours of Eowyns garments. A spear has been added on the ground....there is a battle going on..........you can see young Merry's shield laying about a little better, the wing is getting a wee bit of glow to it and the hairy things on the beasts neck are blocked in.

Eowyns hair is basically in, her shield and sword is blocked in as well, along with the other wing of the beast getting set in and back.

Now the Nagul is being worked on more, the cape has been established along with a lay in of his body, some detail work on the Fell Beast's right ( our left ) wing. A helmet has been added to the mix, some detail to Miss Eowyn, the saddle and some more work on the other wing.

I was COMPLETELY  unhappy with the hairy things on the neck of the beast and decided to paint them out!!! So, here we have the revised neck and the start of the Nazguls mace, but alas the shaft was too short and I wiped it out after this picture was taken.

There has also been a few shadows and highlights added about the piece as I was waiting for paint to dry enough for me to continue on with things.

 Now we have a mace with a longer shaft for better swinging and balance, as well as a more effective reach.

I have added a little black horse like thing to Merry's shield, a sword scabbard to Eowyn, more detaily bits and piece about the place...........more shadows and highlights  popping up here and there, pushing stuff back bringing others out ............

Lots more work to the Nazgul has been done now. I have painted the eyes in and out a couple of times trying to get them to look right for me, a harness like thing is now about the neck of the beast, lots of detaily bits and pieces have gone on in the beasts neck and wing............the arms are now thicker than in the original drawing, some reigns are lying around in the grass, Merry has been worked on as well, his sword is now in the picture, lights and darks have been added again and again, to push and pull things forewards and back.

.......and here we have the final image...........


a little detail brass plate has been added to the collar
of  the beast, the saddle is now complete.........as I looked at the shape of the thing, having horns and all I thought hey, that looks like it can hold the "eye" and decided to put it in there, and a bit of reflection on the neck. As I came up with this, the design was repeated on the brass plate, and the hasp holding his cloak shut as well.

A ring was placed on the hand of the Nazgul......Ring Wraith, .........Lord of the Rings.......etc, Eowyns hair has been finally done, mainly some highlights about the edges, I am sure I have done a few more things to it, but I really can't remember at this point.



Well there you have it the porgression and thoughts behind the image of Eowyn VS the Nazgul.

The painting wass done on 16" X 20" Tracy-nite.