YES FOLKS......... IT IS WORK

In the not too distant past ( yesterday ) I had someone come up to me and say, " man I wish I could do what you do, just sit down and have a drawing or painting......what you do is so easy "

BULLSHIT!!! 

  ...... sorry for the explicative, but  guess what, it ain't all sit down and have yourself a drawing!!!

There is a little bit of work that goes into what we do, yes sometimes we do just sit down and have a piece come to us:

 

...with this pencil piece, I was sitting on my front porch  enjoying the morning and drinking my coffee, and I KNEW I wanted to d a Tarzan like image with an ape....that was all I had in mind when I did this,  I started to let my pencil move randomly, and started working on the ape..... on the back of this are the first attempts of the ape, he changed position on this side and the drawing came to me.

These are the things that never really get seen, the prelims and roughs. ALL the little hoohahs that go into the final piece that everyone sees.......the final piece is work but it is not all the work, even as we or at least I am working on the final image, I am still editing and trying to improve the piece. 

Below are some examples of  the roughs and the finished piece......

With all art, the piece starts with an idea or concept.........it is not perfect, it comes out, and then gets worked on. There are a lot of behind the scenes and extra features that go into the making of an image. If one piece was feature movie, and you got the bonus disc with the "making of" features, you would see that like making a movie, the making of a drawing. or painting....has a lot more into it than just "draw" or "paint".

When you look at a finished painting for example, you are seeing HOURS of work just in the painting.....and that does not include the hours spent in the beginning of the piece.

And to let you in on a little secret.............most of my favourite art to look at are the roughs and prelims......the raw energy and unrefined idea, the thought process of what will go into the piece and what will be left out..........for me those are the cool things.

O.k., that is the end of my rant, but there is work behind everything, and even a drawing and painting, and nothing is ever as easy as it looks.............

QUICK TIP......

I am working on a drawing and had to match a curve ............. 
I HAVE NO BENDING CURVE MATCHING THING...............


BUT I do have a piece of tracing paper, a knife and a piece of paper...the paper is actually my scratch ink wiping blotter paper thing next to me while I ink.. so with these three things I trace the line, cut the page and match the curve!!

WATERCOLOURS ...... part two

A young female human wizard with black hair who always wears white trimmed in gold.

The above sentence is the description that was given over on ArtOrder for the latest challenge that has been given. It is an extremely open description and leaves everyone plenty of room to play. the sort of description I really kind of like, and when I read it an image immediately popped into my brain and I quickly jotted it down  in the ol' sketchbook.

After I got the pencil down in the book, I went over it with my brush pen establishing some basic darks and such, then with my cheapo watercolour set, hit it up with some colour and with that all done I played with the figure and head a bit before I went on to the real paper and laid it all out.


The next step was the pencil....

.... here in the pencil of the piece you can see where I added a sword coming out from behind her back held in her right hand. After getting it all down in the lead I went in with a sepia toned ink to sort of out line certain areas. I use the sepia instead of a black ink because it is a softer line and does not leave you with the colouring book image...........this is something I learned from looking at Frank Frazetta's watercolours and cartoons. It truly was a brilliant idea and yes I did borrow it from him.

Now that I have all that down I wanted to get started with the colour, but first I needed to do her hair. As the above description said BLACK HAIR, and with that in mind I proceeded to lay in the hair with a black ink. I chose to use ink for her hair because I ultimately want to go back into it with the watercolours and add the glow of the fireball thing in her hand. 


With the ink, I can retain a black as well as dilute it and get some greys out of it. Personally I do not believe in ever using ink straight out of the well, not even on with my dip pen. I will almost always go into my water glass first on either one. I can always make the greys darker by going over them again with the ink, but I cannot make the blacks greyer after putting them on the paper.


Here is a real time video of the hair process being done.

.... and here is a look at the hair after it has been inked

I do know and realize that all this is pretty basic stuff, but it IS the fundamentals that we all seem to fall away from, and basic drawing skills are the true foundation of what we all do. Whether it be in a traditional medium or digital...........you have to have the basics.


Up next will be the colour .......... see y'all then.

WATERCOLOURS ...... part one

First off..........this is going to be a series on the way I handle watercolours. I have a couple of different "styles" of painting with them, and I will be going over all of these from the very beginning to completed piece for all of them. 

I use this incredibly versatile medium for various things from roughs to cartooning to some "painting". If you are truly interested in the way watercolours really should be used, then AFTER reading all my  posts on this subject you should really check out these Fellas:

ERIC FORTUNE

Here  is a bit on MUDDY COLORS from Eric with a video clip as well.

PAUL BONNER

Paul has also graciously posted a sort of how to, over on the MUDDY COLORS  blog, so there is also a link to it as well.

All kidding aside about reading my stuff first and going to check out these two..............you REALLY should pay very close attention to what they do, for in my book these two guys ARE where it is at with this medium in the illustration field. What I do is sort of dabbling compared to them.

My use of the watercolours is more of an adult colouring book sort of way of painting. as will be revealed as we go on, so lets go ahead and jump in the pool and get wet with watercolours!!!

I have honestly been using the same plastic palette for the past 25 years or so, and since I had been really doing the whole Watercolour thing before I ever really started to paint in oils, my colour palette was adapted from this medium to the oils. 

 

O.k. as you can see, I have all my colours lain out and ready to go, these are tube colours that I just squirted onto the palette,and keep wetting as I use them. There are areas for each individual colour, a sort of mixing ground for them and their family, areas for the secondary sort of colours, greens, oranges, and purples, all pretty much mixed from my primaries .

I have these "mixing" colours in separate areas so I can keep my original or primary colours "pure". I am using the term primary colour here not as Red Yellow and Blue per-say, but as my base colours.........which actually are Red, Yellow, and Blue, with some earthy tones in there as well.

The "FREE SWIM" areas are a basic mixing area where I will clean my brush off or wipe a bit of paint off to get less on the brush and occasionally just grab whatever colour is in there and throw it in the painting.  

                                         

This is the water glass that I have been using ever since I can remember.  If I am not mistaken, my mom gave it to me, and she got it sometime way before that in a box of Tide or something........it is pretty old.      

 

  

These ol' boys are my pens and brushes for both the watercolours and my inks. the ones on the left are the watercolour tools, the dip pen on the far left is the one I use with my sepia toned inks. On the right are my ink brushes and dip pen as well as my ruling pen. ( in which I have spoken  of in a previous blog post.)

As far as paper goes..........I use Strathmore  300 Series Bristol with a smooth surface, the  yellow pads. This paper is extremely durable and versatile. It is what I do everything on from pencils to inks to watercolours..... this stuff is the work horse of my studio.

This is as good a stopping place for the first installment on the watercolours as any, and since we have gotten down to the paper, the next phase will be the drawing and beginnings of the paintings.

IN PRAISE OF THE MIGHTY PENCIL

I  personally cannot say enough about this amazing tool. It is the King Daddy of all the media in my book and I shamefully do not use it enough. I love what can be done with it...........whether it be a simple sketch or doodle.

the beginnings of something else like an ink, watercolour or painting.....

or the full on in your face drawing....................here is the ol' boy at work, and yes he is a work horse, do not deny the might of a pencil or what can be done with one. It is where every great work of art starts, and in a lot of cases ends. Drawing is the foundation of all the arts.

Hooray for the mighty pencil.
...........................................................................

( I also just found out my camera has a video option, so look out.......this is the first of more to come )

IN PRAISE OF THE MIGHTY BRUSH PEN

It is well known in my circle of friends and family that I am a sketch-a-holic, and cannot and will not go anywhere without something to draw with or on, and when I don't I will draw on anything I can find when I start  twitching and jonesing for a quick doodle. The other day my wife and I were out and about running errands and taking care of some business things together, and honestly in some cases I would prefer to wait in the hall or waiting areas rather than go in, she would do likewise, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

I have a really cool bag of stuff  that I carry for extended trips and a commando kit for other times, and most  always something or other.

As I stated above...........I come prepared for these moments of solitude and waiting by bringing things with me to occupy my time........I.E. .... a sketchbook, and a few choice tools of the trade.

In the above picture is an HB pencil, a mechanical pencil ( also HB ) an erasure pen thing and on the left is the Mighty Brush pen!!.

This wonderful but awkward looking thing is a brush pen, the bulbous part on the back is a big 'ol reservoir and can hold any liquid you want. I have mine filled with black ink ... although I did water mine down a little so I can have some greys .... and get black if I go over the areas again. The tip is a really cool fiber that retains a sharp tip for fine lines and will spread out just like a brush to get broad strokes as you need.

This little fellow has become a major part of my sketching and doodling arsenal. He is honestly at this point invaluable, for as I sketch out things I will go back and use him to darken and delineate various sketches that might actually develop into something more  as you will see below.

These little guys were done on the outing with my wife while I waited around at one point, and will eventually be an ink drawing that has to come out soon. As you see some have been highlighted with the brush pen, mainly to define the lights and darks. Spotting my blacks this way ultimately helps me to find the form and basic shapes I am looking for. The rest will follow as I refine the image, but doing things in this way will give ;me a very quick idea of where I really want to go.

With my brush pen, I can do it on the go, and not wait until I get back into the studio and get out my ink and brushes, a very handy tool. if you don't have one, I would strongly suggest you look into getting one.

I usually buy mine at CheapJoes.