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...

HEADLESS.........an obsession

Outside of my wife and art.......I do seem to have an obsession with a certain character or image, THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN, I really cannot say where or when I became fascinated with this image, but I have completed the 4th image of this guy, and it is the 3rd in oils that I have done. There is also a watercolour sitting on my drawing table that is the 5th, as well as  6 and 7 in my brain..the 7th I came up with last night while watching tv with the family.....I also did the ol'boy  one year when we carved our pumpkins for Halloween, but anyway with out further ado I give you HEADLESS IV

 

Prints will be available of this one so if you are interested please contact me via e-mail :

tracyflynnart@gmail.com 

FOR SALE:: ZOMBIE HEAD

This little fellow is one oils on sturdy Tracy-nite looking for a good home. He is 5 " X 7" and only $50.00 

Please e-mail me  at

tracyflynnart@gmail.com

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.............

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........