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Every year at the Heroes comic book convention I wait in the weeds like a tiger stalking his prey for that one small moment when Superstar artist Brian Stelfreeze is alone.  Or at least a time when I can fight my way through the deluge of comic nerds, er, fans.  The man is the single best purveyor of wisdom in comic artdom.  This year I was on my way out Sunday, after the convention was over, when I spotted Brian packing up.  Ha ha!  Gotcha!

I ended up picking his brain for a good 20 minutes.  The bits of knowledge I squeezed from him would probably cost you about a semester’s worth of dough at your local art college.  Sometimes, Brian just really points home something I already knew but didn’t really take to heart and sometimes he blows me out of the water with something that 6 years of art college and 9 years as a freelancer has failed to instill in me.

My big thing this year and for the last few months as been edges.  To paraphrase Brian said edges are anywhere a value shape ends or begins.  That can be the side of an arm, the edge where a dark shadow becomes light, where the red blotch of a cheek turns to a more peachy tone.  If you can see the edge clearly, it’s a sharp edge.  If you can’t see it at all it’s a lost edge.  Intermediate edges are just regular edges.  Soft edges are just that, soft.  Paintings are really just a puzzle of these value shapes and how they interact is your edges.

There are two ways to soften an edge.  Sweep your brush through the two adjacent colors or (and this is what really stuck out for me), put a transition color between the two.  For instance in that example I mention with the red cheek and the peach skin.  To soften that transition without blending you could put a plug of reddish peach in between the two.  Awesome!

The other big thing Brian put to me is the skinny on color temperature.  I know the warm light = cool shadows and cool light = warm shadows.  It’s one of the closest things to gospel in painting.  But I still tend to confuse myself.  What about reflected light, secondary light sources, or just keeping which one I’m doing straight.  Forget all that, Brian says you can’t stray from the chick you brought to the party cause the party won’t end well.  (That’s my analogy, not Brian’s)  A useful way to keep your commitment is to lay all your shadows in at the beginning in that cool or warm color.  That way when your brain turns into mush, better know as rendering mode, you won’t be able to just blindly put down the wrong color temperature!

Brian also said I was awesome and DC should give me some Batman covers.

I did mention I was paraphrasing?  Didn’t I?