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........

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.

STORY BOARDS ...HATMAN 3

Just recently a friend of mine got in touch with me about a project he was working on and asked me if I could lend a bit of a hand...the answer of course was yes.


He was working on a film project of his own production HATMAN and on the 3rd installment and wanted to know if I could story board it to help with shots and angles and such.storyboarding.... so we sat down one day in Studio B ( the porch ) and discussed the project and as we talked I doodled out the scenes he had scripted out.

After getting the initial pages down, over the next few days I sat down and redrew the panels with a little more finish to them as well as change the format from vertical..which is what I am used to doing mostly illustration.... to horizontal  fro more of a film look so that he could plan his shots a bit better and have it closer to the screen image.

 

Story boards are fun and quite similar to comic work. They can be as simple as you would like or s complex and complete..........I guess it all really depends on who you are working with and what they want in all honesty. Black and White or colour  as well.

I personally cannot wait to see the finished production  and had so much fun doing these, I hope it goes on and I get to do more!!! Here is part 2 of Hatman for you to see...........