RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU ALL THE TIME

Early on in the last week or so, I came to a passage in my rereading of The Hobbit, it is where Bilbo is up on a limb saving the Dwarves from the giant spiders of Mirkwood. As I was reading I was drawing images in my head and composing a piece to be painted. When I got the chance I picked up my doodlebook and drew out this little rough:

 After drawing out the scene, I kept looking at the piece and thinking there was something oddly familiar about it.  I let it sit a while as I had other things going on at the time, but it was still in the back of my mind as I was for lack of a better word, bothered by the image.

Eventually I got back to it, and sat down with a bit of ink and watercolours and completed my little rough so I could move on to the next phase and get it to the board as soon as I could.

With that done, I still kept thinking "what is it about this drawing that is bothering me?" 

Now, skip forwards a few days and it is the weekend, weather is warmer and time to set up the front porch for another season of porchsettin, so we spend the day getting the porch cleaned and the cushions all aired out, the blinds and the curtains up........it is a nice relaxing porch for settin, talkin, socializin, and doodlin.

After all the work is done it is time to set a spell and as soon as I plop down in my chair ........... I look at the oak tree I have looked at for the past 14 years and my light bulb goes off.............THAT IS MY LIMB!!! I just start laughing as I realized why the image was familiar and bothering me. 

I drew the limb from a tree that has been right in front of me the whole time and just didn't realize it until I sat down on the porch. I walk past this limb daily as I go out our front door, but never looked up or at the tree. It wasn't til I sat down and looked out that everything was in the right order, the angle the perspective and the whole 9 yard that it hit me.

Now, granted I did not draw the limb exactly as it looks in real life, but it is there, it is the influence for my rough. It has been filtered and stored in the back of my brain to finally come out here as the shot needed for the drawing. 

So, the point of this whole long story, is basically to be observant, watch and study everything, you will retain the information somewhere and it will pop out when you least expect it. Reference is EVERYWHERE, everyday things can be turned into the images you need for your fantasy works.

We are all influenced by the world around us visually and  we do store all this information in our heads and are influenced by it subconsciously. There are many, many tools available to us as artists and illustrators that we can glom on to for reference, the internet has become a valuable tool, but we cannot forget about the world right in front of us. Observation is an amazing gift if we just look at the things right in front of us. Sometimes we see it and just don't realize it.

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:

A LITTLE ROUGH

well it has been a little rough the last few months, a few issues on the personal level, but also working on David List's book illustrations as well.

I do have to say this book was an incredibly fun read and made me want more. I personally cannot wait to see the finished product in print and hopefully see David write the next phase of his world.

Now for a little fun and a sneak peek at what we have coming up for this project.........

a few roughs...

....this is just a taste of what will come, the book will contain 23 images, basically one for each chapter, and the narrowing down of choices will be difficult ....... there are 56 roughs to choose from, so i do not envy the author this task.

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.

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.

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.