I’ve recently been giving my work a lot of thought in regards to what I want my art medium to be.  To that end I’ve decided that I’m going to focus more intently from here on out on my oil painting.  This extends, hopefully, to my commissions.  I’ve never painted this fast before and I hope it’ll turn out well.  Whereas I normally do an oil piece in 2 to 3 weeks this time around I’m going for 2-3 days.  Last night I did some thumbnails and figured out an image I thought would be fun to paint.  Then I took some quick reference.  If I had any guts I share that too but this is the Internet and since I used myself as reference, that’s not going to happen.  Yes, I know Domino is a hot babe and I’m a slightly above average manimal but you’d be surprised how the artist mind wields reference shots and imagination.  My wife got a good laugh out of it asking me why in the world was I standing like that.  Here are the pencils before the paint.

And just for FYI, I’ve finished the oil paints on the black queen image I’d been working on.  I just have to wait for a few of the white parts to dry some I can put some retouch varnish over it to bring back the colors.

Yes, throughout my years as an artist I’ve found a valuable secret that is 85% of being a successful artist or as part of your quest to becoming an artist, period.  It’s not hard.  In fact, it’s one of the easiest and most simple things you can do but I find that many professional artist have this very problem.  It’s the number one thing you can do to get your work done.

JUST SHOW UP!

Yes, Mr. Monkeyman, you too have a great chance to be a great artist if you just plant your monkey butt at your drawing desk or easel.  All you have to do is show up at your drawing board.  I’ve got a hundred and one reasons why I can’t work on an oil painting tonight.  The garbage needs to go out, Mario can’t save the princess all by himself, the children need to eat, there’s a party at Fred’s house.  I’ve heard and used most of em’ but you can’t let them stop you from consistently working on your art.

Ok, I did stop to feed the kids.  Who can work with all that whining and “Daddy, we’re hungry” going on in the other room.  The older ones can fend for themselves but you have to at least throw a few packs of fruit snacks at the smaller ones.  (In the course of full disclosure I have only one one child and the wife makes sure he’s fed but I have thrown fruit snacks at him)

The point is that you have to make your art a priority.  Every day or as close to that as you can get.  I’ve found that if you “just show up” everything else will fall into place or it will at least have the opportunity to do so.  The hardest part really is just picking up the brush to start.  After that my art monster takes over and before I know it it’s 2:00 in the morning, I’ve got some cad red on my forehead, and I’ve still got to get up at 7 the next morning.  Yeah, you pay a price but look what you just created and if you’re anything like me, it’s all worth it.

Oh yea.  If you do throw fruit snacks at your young ones make sure to open them first.  They don’t have enough  coordination yet to open them and a toddler with a sealed pack of fruit snacks is much worse than one who is just hungry.

Finally finished.  I’m happy with the result but as always the picture in my head was 10 times better.  That’s progress as I can remember a time not so long ago with the pictures in my head were easily 1,000 times better when what my hands produced.

After the inks were dry I broke out my acrylics and threw down some washes of color.  I like a messy, let the color do it’s thing, kind of painting when water is involved.  You can get some great color intensities and effects.  After I laid in my initial washes I started to actually paint opaquely in spots careful not to over paint the inks.  They still had to show through.  In fact, I considered this finished when I approached the point where I could no longer keep going unless I started to paint over the blacks and if I did that this would quickly turn from a commissioned sketch to a full painting.  There wasn’t the time (or the budget) for that.

When I was finish a piece I alwasy let it sit a day or two because after some time away from a painting I alwasy see glaring things that I missed.  In this case it was some cool colors in the shadows.  I had such a warm intense yellow light hitting all that green that I really needed to cool my shadows.  Remember what Richard Schmid says in his wonderful book, “Everything I know about painting“.

If there is one rule about color it’s that “warm light produces cool shadows and cool light produces warm shadows.“

I didn’t want to paint over the blacks so I put strokes of blue and purple in lower light areas and areas of my halftone where the dark meets the light.  I think this really helps the color harmony and add a lot more visual interest to the piece.

The most important part is that the client loved it and has already commission a second piece.

Next on the project list was to ink Hela.  I use to use a brush a lot in my work but found over time that I really like a “dead” line and for that I’ve found inking with a brush to difficult.  I use Sakura Pigma Micron Pens for the line work and an old brush and black magic (or whatever is handy) ink to fill in the large parts.  The fact that I don’t do a ton of ink work probably reflects my lack of a favorite ink.

I don’t like to use a lot of halftone as I really like large areas of black and white.  Plus, I’m leaving something for the color to do beside just fill in white areas.

I won’t talk a ton about it as I’m working on an upcoming post about the subject of reference but I will mention that I do use it.  I combine photos from the Internet, magazines, and many that I produce myself as I’m also a novice  photographer.  This image is a combination of 3 or 4 photos that I put together in photoshop where I can digitally paint over top of them to create special effects or retool the lighting so that it all matches.  I’ve found through hard trial and error that the more time I take with preliminary things to prepare for a drawing or painting the better (and easier) they come out.

After I’ve got the photoshopped reference printed out I transfer it to my 14×17 bristol board.  I do this with a classic grid method.  Be careful if you use this method as if you don’t already know how to draw it can become a significant crutch.  I use it to make sure my proportions and angles are correct.  I bounce back and forth between drawing from reference to straight out of my head because while I want a correct looking drawing, I want it to be my drawing and not just a reproduction of the photos.  This can be a very fine line and the line is different for different artists.  (This topic sounds like a post in it’s own right)

Now that the ink work is done it’s on to the colors which I’ve already finished but I’ll give you a few days to absorb the ink before I post the color.

I got a commission the other day and thought I’d run down how I work with clients and show a little bit of the process as I got along.

The first email from my potential client, Alex, stated that she’d discovered my blog, liked my work and wondered if I did commissions and what the price range might be.  First I’ll let you in on a big dark secret most artist don’t like to share about what they charge.  If an artist has any business sense at all he charges as much as the client is willing to pay.  Yes, that’s right.  I expect a large company like Marvel or Wizards of the Coast to have a much larger budget for a project than a fan wanting a piece of artwork.  Many times when an artist gets really good (not that I’m there yet) you’re paying for the knowledge and ability that artist has learned over his lifetime, not the number of hours it takes him to actually paint or draw a picture.  But I digress, that’s a whole other post.

I emailed her we discussed what she wanted (Hela, Goddess of Death from the Thor comic)  and agreed on a price.  She sent me half of the payment through paypal to begin the work.  As most artists will attest getting paid full or partially up front is always a good idea because I’m sorry to say that there are people out there who won’t hesitate to stiff a hardworking artist or take months and months to pay up, sometimes never.  You only have to get burned once before you get some cash up front.  I then started a few thumbnails to figure out some kind of composition I liked.  All of this happened within 24 hrs.  I love clients who know what they want and are as eager for me to draw something for them as I am to draw it.

Throughout the week I worked on other projects I already have ongoing but took some breaks to work on the commission.  Work for established companies always comes first.  I love doing commissions for people but if I get lucky enough to land a few illustration for Magic: The Gathering you will have to wait on your commission.  Most people are very understanding of this and I always make sure people understand how long I’ll take to finish their picture.  With this one I know a holiday weekend was coming up and I’d be able to finish the whole thing in one to two weeks.

I finished the pencils last Friday and am about 75% finished inking the picture.  I’ll throw some color on it tomorrow.  I emailed Alex to let her sneak a peek at the pencils and ask her if it was OK if I shared the piece as I worked on her here on my blog.  She agreed so you have her to thank for this post.  In part two I’ll talk more about my technical process and what goes though my mind when I approach a new drawing or painting.

Color Intensity!

I used to watch a fantastic artist named Brian Stelfreeze every year at the Heroes comic convention doing a painting for the annual Heroes auction.  Many times I’d notice how he would create a hot spot of the most vibrant, intense color that would just leaped off of his painting.  How does he get that color to sing I’d ask myself?  Years later through study and painting daily myself it became apparent.

Let’s define a few things first.  The full intensity or color saturation is the purest the color can be.  It isn’t muted in any way by the addition or white or black.  Think of it as a color to it’s most extreme degree.

An artist can use it to draw the viewer eye to a certain area of the page or make that color literally look like it’s glowing.  Below I’ve sketched the face of a girl with red hair where in I’ve placed a yellow highlight.  I really wanted that highlight to look like it’s glowing.  When a pure bright color is placed or surrounded by a greyed color or colors it increases the intensity of the pure color.  You’re looking for a high contrast of value or intensity.  You can see how the highlight on the hair of the girl on the left really shines but the one on the right is too similar in value and does not have enough contrast to make the highlight stand out.  So watch out for using values or saturation/intensities that are too similar.

For an even greater effect use complementary colors because, as we know, these colors opposite each other on the color wheel have a natural ability to affect each other in ways that intensify the other.

There are numerous artist who are masters of this technique.  The best I’ve ever seen is the painter Joseph Turner.   A more contemporary example would of course be Brian Stelfreeze.

Thanks for reading and make sure to try this in your next painting.  The best way to learn is to do.