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If only I were 1% as good as my influences.

Here’s the rundown starting in the top left hand corner.  You can scroll down to the previous post to see the images.

1.  Shawn Barber – Fantastic oil painting who does a lot of paintings of tattoo artists. He’s a self made guy and has a great philosophy about painting and drawing.  Highly recommend his website but it’s NSFW.

2. Marko Djurdjevic – Concept charter and Marvel cover artist.   I absolutely love the way he drawings.  Good digital painter but what really makes him shine is his line work and dynamic figures.  He’s just got the stroke.  (aka, just a really cool style)

3. Rudy Obrero – Castle Grayskull Box Art – He along with Earl Norem and William George did most of the original He-man packageing artwork.  I love He-man and that those old school paintings were a heavy influence on me.  Castle Grayskull was the best Christmas present I ever got.

4. Jeremy Geddes – Heat Death – Jeremy is a fine oil painter who is super realistic but totally blows photographic realism out of the water.  He’s done some comic cover work too.

5.  Scott Burdick – Figure artist and oil painter.  He paints so wonderfully thick.  I drool over the raw depth of images.

6.  Lucas Graciano – He’s a teacher at the Watt’s school (more on them later) and he a great oil painter.  He’s done work for tons of collectible card games.  He’s won some nice awards lately for some of his work.

7.  Jeffery Jones – If you don’t know who this is I can’t help you.  I’ll get killed for this but I think he’s better than Frazetta.

8.  Phil Hale – Cover to Flinch #1.  Hale is right there for me with Jon Foster and Rick Berry.  Foster and Hale studied with Berry.  All have done this really cool wipe techique when oil painting where you wipe out a lot of the paint to create your lights and transitions and then paint back into it to add detail and definition.  Hale is my favorite but that might be because he’s done some Swamp Thing cover and I love me some Swamp Thing.  Hey, get you mind out of the gutter.

9.  Brian Stelfreeze – The best mind in comics.  The best teacher in comics.  Turns comics from entertainment into a craft of fine art.

10. Gregory Manchess – This guy is old school oil painting genius.  He’s done tons of covers for fantasy novels and National Geographic.  I love how he paints with virtually no blending.  It’s all overlap.  To learn how to really paint study this guy.

11.  B. Fowler – This one is weird and two fold.  One, it’s a sketch portrait of my wife who is my best critic and supporter.  She is brutally honest sometimes to my dismay.  Second, it’s my own work.  I do influence myself because there certain ways I make a mark that I love that although are somewhat influenced by other artist are really mine.  It’s the end result of the distillation process.

12.  Dan Dos Santos – Book cover illustrator and oil painter.  He’s just flat out good.

13.  Hope Railey – She’s an awesome portraits and figure artist who works most in charcoal.  She’s my pick for a type of figure drawing that I love.  It’s a southern California thing that comes from a few schools there that kept teaching realistic figure drawings when the world went all eye of the artist Basquiat crazy.  It focuses a lot on methods credited to Frank Reilly.  The Watts school with teachers like E.M. Gist and Lucas Graciano and Jeff Watts himself. Then there is  Fred Fixler.  Glen Orbik.  To much to go into here but if anybody wants to chat about it, email me.  I love the stuff.

These things have been making the rounds all over the online artist communities and I am being fashionably late.  These are just the ones freshest in my mind as I am definetely forgetting at least 100-200 of my other biggest influences.  It’s odd what influences me. Sometimes it’s only one painting an artist does that really strikes a chord in me.  I’ll go search out the artist only to find I don’t really care for anything else they’ve done.  The biggest things that draw my attention are brushstrokes, emotional impact, and color harmonies.  Really good foundational drawing always perks me up too.  There are a lot of guys and gals I like that I wish would never finish a piece because the beginning has so much more interest.

Anybody who can name all the squares will receive either 500 dollars (in monopoly money) or a free sketch, my choice.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

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?

This past weekend was the Heroes comic book here in Charlotte, NC.  I had a fantastic time as this show is one of the best in the country.  It’s virtually the last big show that still focuses extensively on comic books and comic book artists.  Half of the entire convention floor is devoted to artists and creators.  The other half is guys and gals selling comics and comic related merchandise.  There was tons of fun, hanging out with old friends and meeting a few new ones.

I appreciate all those who came out and said Hi or bought anything from me.  Even that one really weird guy.  Yea, I’m talking about you.

Can’t wait until next year.

June 4-6.

The Heroes Con is this weekend!!!  I know, it always seems to take forever to get here and then, BAM, here is it is.  You’ve probably putting the finishing touches on your Spider-man or Ghost Busters costume.  You may be like a friend of mind who at one Heroes convention where Jim Lee was a guest brought every single comic book Mr. Lee had every done.  Not to get signed, just to prove to Mr. Lee what a fan he was.

In all this excitement don’t forget to come by my booth now firmly located at SP-22.  I’ll have tons of prints, mini-books of my work and more.  There is always “and more!”  I’ll be doing sketches, paintings, sketchcards and whatever else I can think of.

Here’s a few maps to help you along the way.  Heroes con isn’t middle earth but it can still get pretty confusing when you’re trying to find your way around.  Just think of me as Mount Doom and you’re bringing the precious!

<—Click there for a full map of the convention floor.

June 4-6 I’ll be at the Heroes Comic Convention here in Charlotte.  I’m not sure what space I’ll be in as the great folks at Heroes haven’t quite got all that worked out yet.  I’ll be sure and update my fan as soon as the information become available.  It’s a great convention and I love going every year.  Stop by my table and say Hi, you’ll be glad you did.