Figure Drawing, pt. 12

(Above) 6x8" brush pen, 10 minutes each

Back to the brush pen on this week. And a male model! One with good muscle definition, even. From the first week I took a brush pen to use, I've enjoyed getting to know the medium. The first uses of it back in Asheville were mainly in short poses, and in blocking in large shadow shapes. When I tried using it later for longer poses, the results just didn't work very well with my usual mode of drawing. Over time, I basically learned to work more quickly with it. As a result, I think the drawings this week were much improved over the last time I worked with it.

(L) 5.5 x 3" Brush pen, 10 minutes

At left, we have a drawing done primarily with one of the brush pens as it was dying. I figured I'd try using it to tone a drawing with the gray shades it was only providing. It took considerable pressure to get even a middle tone out, but it was a nice look.

The models, in retrospect, had a hands-on-head theme going on, with almost a third of the poses (including the short warm-ups) having one or both hands on one or both models on their heads. Very strange--it's not the most comfortable pose to hold to begin with.

7" x 10" Brush pen, 20 min. each

Museum Stroll: the Frick Collection

Once you've taken in the Met, or, if you find you simply don't have the time to attempt it but want an art fix anyway, walk a few short blocks south and you'll arrive at the Frick Collection. Home to a (comparatively) modest selection of classic artworks, the Frick is a worthwhile visit on its own.

The museum houses a who's-who collection, primarily of portraiture. You get your Rembrandts, your Velasquez, a couple of decent Gainsboroughs, and so on. You also get Vermeer, which was a very nice surprise. The Frick houses 3 out of the ~35 or so known works by him. That's a pretty high percentage for any artist in one museum not named after them. It was also a nice warm-up for my next art book read, which is a thin collection of his complete works that I picked up for a song at Barnes and Nobles recently, on the clearance rack.

The highlight of the collection, for me, was Hans Holbein the Younger's stunning portrait of Sir Thomas Moore (left). A staple of art history overviews, and possibly his masterpiece, it was nicely displayed, with impeccable technique--utterly realistic but beyond photography. Looking at his strong visage, you'd never guess the guy wore a cilice every day and ended up beheaded at the Tower of London, his head on a pike on London Bridge. Though Titian was on the wall opposite, poor Titian--no slouch--was easily overshadowed by his Northern contemporary. Equally stunning, for different reasons, was the other Holbein portrait further down the same wall--an example of the artist's "B" game. Or "C" game, perhaps. I frankly hate that terminology, but it definitely gets the point across.

There were a number of fine pieces by artists I was not familiar with, but the one that really caught my attention was Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of Julia, Lady Peel. It's a fairly straightforward portrait, whose reproduction here does it no justice. In person the piece is much more vibrant, and the brush work both refined as well as smart.

There's lots to recommend a visit. I mean, I'm skipping over an Ingres masterpiece here for the sake of brevity. There's also an unfortunate amount of Rococo. A whole room of large Fragonard installed paintings, and too many Boucher paintings for my own tastes. They have their charms, in small amounts. Like Skittles. Downsides: no photography allowed, and a somewhat pricey entrance fee. If you decide to visit, check out the "Pay What You Want" hours on their website--I couldn't make it during that period.

Tips & Techniques: Oils drying too soon?

Over at Terese Nielsen's blog, about a year ago (which tells you when the bulk of this post was written, which has been waiting for a busy week like this one to bring out), she started talking about the other end of the oil painter's complaint-spectrum: how to stop your oils from drying, specifically, drying on your palette. Usually, artists are concerned with getting their painted oils to dry as fast as possible, and I've addressed how I go about doing that in other posts.

But, while you want your oil paint to dry as soon as possible once you're ready for it to dry, you typically want the paint on your palette to stay wet basically forever. In fact, small oil mixtures on your palette can start to become unusable within hours, depending on how little you mixed and what pigments you used. If you're like me, not mixing large batches of each color, but mixing or altering many things on the fly just using your brush to rub colors together on your palette, then you'll find that these little bits of mixed colors dry very quickly. A day after you squeeze out your colors, the fastest-drying ones develop a skin you have to peel off to get to the wet stuff beneath, which is also already less wet.

Currently I just don't squeeze out a ton of paint at a time, and mix Walnut Oil into the fast-drying colors. Walnut Oil is slow-drying, but not crazy-slow. It stops skinning on slow-drying colors for about 2 days. When you use this paint it does dry a little slower on the board too, but if you're using a drying medium while you paint, the Walnut Oil doesn't get in its way very much and the paint still dries pretty fast. Plus, there's my whole oven-thing, and its addendum.

Terese mentions storing your palette in the freezer when not in use. I'll have to try that, although having painted out-of-doors in freezing temperatures, it seems that paint gets a little gummy when it starts to freeze--I suppose she means that it reverts to proper viscosity after thawing. There's also submerging your palette in water, which a painting instructor swore by, but I use disposable paper palette, so that's out of the question.

I've found that paint's visceral properties change as they start to dry on the palette--a slow drying color might take 4-5 days to form a skin, and the wet stuff will still be beneath that. But it's been slowly drying the whole time, from the moment it's squeezed out. Oil dries by the molecules slowly binding after the release of oxygen. Even a day later, oil paint is already stringier, thicker, more rubbery. It doesn't pull as well or blend as well as stuff that's just a few hours or even a workday old. Even paint with Walnut Oil added in is still drying 2 days later, and when I finally finish a blob of paint after 3 days and squeeze out some more, that new batch feels so much better.

So, in the end, I'd recommend just squeezing out less and adding more as you go--or just using up whatever you put out quickly. Some Walnut Oil can preserve the wet feel of paint another day or two, but use it up ASAP. Just know that you'll fall under Rockwell's curse. He once visited another illustrator and described his experience doing a little demo-painting for him. He noticed that that painter had only squeezed out small amounts of paint, and this annoyed Rockwell, who would squeeze out very generous amounts and probably dumped a lot of it. He was annoyed at this apparent frugality and stated that he firmly believed this was a key insight as to why the illustrator was not very successful. Yow!

Go China

A few months back, China's Fantasy Art Magazine had a feature article on yours truly, highlighting a cross-section of works of mine. Hot on its heels--in fact, as the earlier issue was hitting the stands, I was contacted again by them. They wanted to do a follow-up article on me focusing specifically on my work for the World of Warcraft TCG, for which I've done a few illustrations the past few years. After getting the ok from the license-holders, we went forward, and this appeared in Vol.34. As it's in Chinese, most of you won't be able to do much with it. I had the rare foresight to save the email with the interview questions. Perhaps they didn't use them all, but below is what was written.

They were quite taken by "Slay or Stay," apparently.

1. How did you begin to work for WOW TCG?
I was contacted in late 2005 when the project began, to create art for the WOW TCG. I produced many images, but only one image was printed in the first set--others were printed in later sets, and one or two have not been printed yet. Since then I have contributed artwork to further expansions of the game.

2. What is different from Magic?
Because Upper Deck produces the TCG and Blizzard produces the videogame, there are two sets of Art Directors. This means that all your artwork has to pass two tests to be approved. Blizzard are very demanding with their game--they want the quality of the videogame to be very high, and they demand that the artwork sticks to their standards for how World of Warcraft should look. So, it can be more work to please everyone.

3. Do you like WOW? Do you play it?
I love WOW the videogame--I have a level 70 character (Night Elf Hunter) and some other characters I don't play as much. I am also waiting for the 2nd videogame expansion to continue playing. I have not played the TCG, however. (note: I haven't yet picked up the second expansion, so haven't played for quite awhile)

4. What are the most important things when you do work for WOW TCG?
Blizzard has a very particular style with the artwork they produce and the style of the videogame characters--giant weapons, armor, and everything is just very super-large. For a painter who is used to realism, this can be difficult to do because these types of equipment are very unrealistic. So, the first thing to do is to throw the rules out the window and accept the WOW style. Also, it was very important for me to play the videogame so I had a good understanding of the world's style.

5. I find your WOW TCG is not too bright-colored like in many other artist's work, why?
Most people find my artwork to be very colorful, but not super-bright like candy-colored. This is my usual style. I think also because I paint in oils, this helps keep my artwork from looking super colorful. Many artists now use digital, and it is easy to choose colors that are all very, very vivid (and then to use tools like "Saturation" to make them more bright). This is not a style I prefer, because it makes the artwork "look" digital, look plastic like a toy. Also, I think the videogame is very colorful but is not crazy-bright like some WOW artworks I see.

Thanks to Lizzy and Fantasy Art Magazine for supporting my work. Larger scans and original art for these and other WOW images can be found here.