JUST FOR FUN, I'M NOT LION....

As artists, we spend a lot of time working on our craft, we draw we paint, we sketch we doodle, we work..........but our passion, our love is our work, and at times the fun goes out of it because it is our job. And as it is our job..........we at times loose site of the fact that it should be fun.

So, every once in a while, I will take a day and just draw or paint and enjoy what I do. No worries, no pressures, just doing it because I can. I will do this when we are on vacation or at times in the evening as we wind down for bed, but my favourite place is on our front porch.

Today was just such a day, and today I went out of my comfort zone and painted much much differently than I normally do............I painted Alla Prima.....all in one. 

Normally I work on a painting over several days, underpainting, working on one area while another dries, glazing in areas, painting over things and such....but today I sat down and did the whole thing in one sitting, painting wet on wet.

Here is my board with the drawing on it, it is a little 8 X 10 piece that I had lying about, I couldn't use it for a commercial piece as it had a weird unknown substance on its surface, and I could not risk using it for a client and having the blob of stuff affect the image.

At this point I have reached the ugly stage of painting.......lots of mud and just not looking good at this point. Basically I have blocked in large areas of colour. Normally I would have stopped at this point and let it dry, but since I was going for the all in one sitting thing I kept on going to remove the uglies.

Here we have pushed thru to get a little more work on the piece. He is starting to take on some semblance of a lion and coming out of the ugly stage. He is still a bit muddy but coming out of it. 

Here he is all done and in a little over 3 and a half hours. He is not perfect, a little out of perspective, still a bit muddy, a little cockeyed, but I like him.

It was a blast, I learned a bit that I can apply to my normal studio work, and I will be doing this again. 

My set up for my palette, which is my con palette that I talked a bit about in the last post. I used very few colours on this, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt umber, cad yellow light, titanium white, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, dioxazine purple and cad red deep. 

And here was my company for the afternoon so I didn't get lonely while I painted.........it was sort of like being in the studio as well since he hangs out with me there too.

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.

DEALING WITH THE CRAP

There are some folks out there that think we just sit down and EVERYTHING  we do is gold........not the case! Drawing/painting,  "art" is not as easy as perceived, there is work to it, and not everything we do comes out perfect every time. In each of the images, at various states of being done, there is something off in each of them........they just didn't work.....so they will be put to more useful things like Snail Girl Paper or as starter for our fire pit outside.

At some point you just have to be honest with yourself and say this is not worth the effort of trying to save..and honestly if you have to try and save it.......it needs to be redone. So here are a few examples of those things that need to be redone:

.... these will all be redone at some point soon, I like the concepts, the ideas, but just not the execution of the work....so they have been executed, and will be reborn at some point in the near future.......

We all mess up, make mistakes, that is life, the only true mistake is not learning from them and not trying again........

FEMALE CENTAUR WITH BOW ON PARCHMENT

This is just in off the drawing table.Just thought I would share a bit, she is ink wash on parchment paper 11 X 14 and can be yours fro $75.00

Just E-mail me at tracyflynnart@gmail.com

MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU

I am working on a painting of Sampson knocking over the pillars, and in doing so, I had to paint some columns, and for me wanted to do marble. I painted these boys 2 times, and on the third had a wonderful idea.........I had seen something Todd Lockwood had posted about how he did some dragon wings, and thought to myself...THAT IS GREAT ..... I'll use it some day.

Well the day came and as I was painting these columns, I really wanted an organic random pattern in the marbling so I used what I had seen Todd do. Once I had my column painted and while the paint was still wet, I then laid the painting on a flat surface. Next I took one of my fan brushes and dipped it into my turps cup. I then went over to the painting, and too the brush and ran my thumb across the bristles and sprayed the areas of the painting with the turps. After doing that what I felt was enough times to get the effect I wanted, I then walked away and let it dry...............having faith that the combination of paint and turps would work for me in a beneficial way.

The theory behind this is that the turps will eat away at the wet paint leaving you random patterns to mimic the marble.

In my opinion it worked...........

.......so I guess the essence of this post is to let the materials work for you. I got a wonderful pattern that I was looking for and all I really had to do was splatter some solvent onto my paint.............and make it work for me. I do realize that this can backfire on you, but it is paint, so you can just paint over it if you don't get the results that you want.

Original NEAL ADAMS Captain America Cover! Auction for Gary Friedrich Zoom Enlarge Sell one like this Original NEAL ADAMS Captain America Cover! Auction for Gary Friedrich

Here's a chance to own an original cover by comic legend NEAL ADAMS and help out a creator in need. This is the alternate cover for the most recent Captain America #1. Penciled and inked by Neal the cover measures 11x17 on board.

 auction listed here

 

About Gary Friedrich : As many of you may have heard, the creator of Ghost Rider has been counter-sued by Marvel. Click HERE to read more about that. They are now saying Gary can no longer claim to be the creator, cutting off his livelihood, but have also slapped him with $17,000 bill for damages to the corporate giant.

 

Gary's says he is going to appeal but in the meantime, he and his lovely wife are broke and in need of our help. I've seen the comics community come together and it's a beautiful thing when it happens. Let's do it again.

Thank you to Neal Adams and his son Josh Adams for reaching out and onating this incredible art for Gary!

 

You can also make donations to help Gary at this link as well:

DONATIONS TO HELP GARY

Thank you,

Steve

Gary Friedrich

O.k...... there might be one or two of you who are unaware of what is happening or happened to this comic art legend...........Gary is one of the creators Ghost Rider and now been sued by Marvel to pay $17,000.00 for drawing and selling images of the character at Cons.

This link gives you better info and MORE links on the whole subject than I can:  LINK IS HERE

here is also a link to another site where donations can be made to help this man out.

HELP GARY FRIEDRICH HERE

What has happened to Gary........could happen to any of us in the field.