Happy Spring Equinox!

Yes, I know it's the Winter Solstice, but don't you really want it to be Spring right about now? Well, allow me to fulfill your wish for a moment.

I've posted plein-air paintings here from time to time. But it has been a long time, and that is simply because I haven't gotten out to do much the past 2 years. In fact, I haven't really done any, period. I did go out last Spring, though. It was cherry blossom viewing time, and we headed out for a picnic in Central Park. I brought my paints, my wife brought the sandwiches.

Sheep's Meadow was packed. As I sat down, I thought to myself, "No way, too many people." I thought about trekking out to a quieter forested part of the park, with buildings peeking up behind. But I figured that's precisely the sort of thing I shouldn't do--run away from something. 3 or so hours is usually a tough squeeze for any scene, much less when there is an ocean of people around you, constantly moving and changing. Whatever, I figured I didn't need to finish. So I sat down to paint.

You'll notice I'm sitting in the shade. Last thing I needed was to have a shifting bright light over the canvas, and to get all hot and uncomfortable.

Naturally, I didn't finish before the light got irreconcilably different from when I started. I snapped photos and subsequently left the painting sitting around for a few months...neglected...sad.... Mainly, I needed to paint more little teeny people. I pulled it out once and got back to work for a bit but didn't manage to finish it until recently, just in time for the first major snow of the year. It was a challenge to maintain the loose handling of painting outdoors while at home, when I'm tempted to tighten up with all the time and controlled lighting available.

And with this, I leave you for the balance of 2009. You have more fun and interesting things to do between now and Jan.1--so go do those things. Eat lots, give lots of hugs, and be safe. See you in 2010!

9x12" Oils on canvas

Copycat: Updated!

Recently, I mentioned how growing up I sorta taught myself the ropes by copying other art I liked. I still highly commend this practice, particularly in the absence of formal instruction, which I lacked completely until college. I copied tons of stuff, but most of it is in storage in CA. A few years ago, back when I started this blog, I did photograph one piece before sticking it into storage before moving. I guess I intended to blog about it years ago now. Oops. Well, here is a copy of a Larry Elmore illustration I did my senior year of high school, when I was 16. 16, ok? So be nice.

Ahh, the carefree days of 1991

There are couple of things worth noting here. The painting was done I think maybe 16x20" on canvas board. I used oils, which were still pretty new to me at the time. I recall using nothing but odorless thinner the whole time, and a set of maybe 8 or 10 Grumbacher paints. Also, as mentioned in that recent article, I worked flat on my desk at the time. At that size, working flat produces some problems of perspective that I wasn't really aware of at the time yet. Basically if you look at the picture, you'll notice that the rider is gigantor, and the horse must've been hurting. Particularly, the guy's head is mammoth. There are other cues, like the lady adventurer's head is skewed and elongated. Some of this can certainly be chalked up to inept drawing on my part. But, by way of example, let us suppose we are drawing a wicked-cool picture of a warrior fantasy dude, on a largish piece of paper, flat on a table, unaware of the issues. We would begin to compensate for the angle at which the paper is at, and draw it so it looks good from our particular angle. However, when you tilted it up, you would notice that towards the top of the page, you drew things unnaturally large by accident, because that part of the paper was further from you, and appeared smaller when you drew it at the original angle.

L: What it looked like as you drew it. R: What it actually looked like, viewed straight-on.

So, this tall, buffed warrior you thought you drew was actually a bobble-headed squat guy. This was done by drawing the image in Photoshop and then pulling the rectangle back to more or less straight.

So, let's revisit this Elmore copy.

Yep, as suspected, by tweaking it to approximate the angle the image was viewed at while working on it, you see that the head shrinks considerably, and the whole thing generally looks a little better. You can see that the dragon at the bottom looks longer and larger in comparison. It can actually fit the rider's head in his mouth now. That doesn't help out the poor drawing in general, but makes the point that when at all possible, you should draw or paint so the image plane is perpendicular to your line of sight.

Update 1/28:  After posting the initial blogpost, I shot an email off to Larry Elmore with a link, explaining what he was about to see. I've had the pleasure of meeting Elmore a couple of times and chatting face-to-face and over email. He responded back appreciative, and commenting that he'd completely forgotten about the painting this was based on until he saw it here. I guess that'll happen after some 25 years or so! In any case, a couple weeks later I saw that the image had been reprinted on an Italian magazine, and asked Larry's permission to post it here, which he was happy to grant. So here's the actual image, though cropped on bottom and right from the full image, and less colorful than I recall the other print I had being:

The real deal.

Realms of Fantasy Issue Feb.'10

Discussed earlier, it is my understanding that The 2/2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy is now on bookstore racks everywhere, featuring cover by yours truly. The image also appears full-page without text over it, accompanying the story it illustrates.

No doubt because of the sexy cover, or maybe (actually) because the words "Harlan Ellison" are prominent, this issue has been pushed extra-hard by the publisher. Every Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, and Chapters store in the country is supposed to be stocking it, and in prominent (read: paid) locations. That means you should have no problem finding it. So go find it!

The original artwork and its sketch is available here.

World of Warcraft: Scourgewar

The Scourgewar expansion of the World of Warcraft trading card game released recently. I discovered that I have one illustration in this set, for the card "Oracle Talisman of Ablution." I say discovered, because this piece has an interesting history. It is now 12/09, and the painting for it was created...about 4 years ago now, I think. It was commissioned as part of the first World of Warcraft set, and was painted back when I was still living in England. The card was cut, the art held onto, and a use finally found for it.

It's a little unusual having artwork disappear for years and then suddenly appear. When I did them, right around this time of year end of '05, it was the same time as I began running. So in the time since I painted it, I have gone from running one very painful first mile, to a marathon and two half-marathons. That's how long it's been. In any case, I'll try to get the artwork up on the site soon. Unless you happen to play the game, finding a single card sold online is your best way to snag one of these.

Oil Over Water, Pt. 2

Continued from part 1, found here.

In art school you mainly paint in Oils. I didn't take many painting classes, and the ones I did take normally didn't have instructors who could actually paint, or at least teach one to use paint. Correction, they couldn't paint in any style relevant to what I was trying to do. So my tendency was to get looser, brushier, and thicker with Oil paint, and not in a good way. Somehow my Acrylic work which I did at home between assignments was still tight, mostly.

By the time I left art school I had all but destroyed any ability to work finely in Oils. I didn't work well loosely with them, either. But my Acrylic technique had been honed from the work I did at home--more disciplined than the Oils I was throwing around in the 2-3 painting classes I took (I was a drawing major because of the poor painting education available). So when illustration work began I just moved right into it with Acrylic. Here and there I'd use Oils, for no particular reason from what I remember, but they rarely helped matters. Usually, back then, they hurt.

My Acrylic technique was a combination of airbrush and layers. I used Golden Soft Gel Medium a LOT. I'd mix a color, usually 3/4 dark for the area I was working on. I'd paint the area, then I'd adjust the color slightly lighter, and slightly more affected by the lightsource. I'd add the Gel Medium to it to make it slightly more transluscent, then I'd paint the same area again. I'd repeat this process, and as the color got lighter, I'd have to paint less of the section each time, because that lightened color was found on just slightly less area than the prior one, until I reached the highlights, which would be touches here and there. In this way I managed to get pretty smooth gradations of color with a nice luminescence due to the layering. It also took forever--longer than it took to describe, even. I'd then airbrush the last 1/4 of the shadow value for most areas, so the shadows were softer than the highlights, which is generally true in nature. Who taught me this tortured process? No one. It sounds a little like the Hildebrandts describe in their book, which I got later, but they laid out their gradations at once and then grabbed color on the fly. They also didn't take great pains to blend out the edges between each value step. Nor did they airbrush the shadows.

Somewhere along the way I realized that I was killing myself trying to make my Acrylics look like Oils. I realized that I should probably just switch to Oils. But every time I tried, my undisciplined bad habits took over and the paint would get thicker, and less refined. Some of it turned out alright, but often it wasn't working. So I'd run back to my Acrylics.

I got married in 1998. Before I left for my wedding I did a Star Wars-related portfolio piece (below, left), primarily in Acrylic, with a little Oil thrown in. When I returned from my honeymoon I did a second one, in Oils this time for no reason except that finishing the prior one in Oils was fun, and helped.. For the first time, I really felt that the Oils had gelled, and I produced a piece that had the discipline I'd always wanted. There was no turning back--it was a huge improvement on what I'd been doing, and I sought after it full-bore.

Over 11 years ago now? Really?

I don't believe I did another fully-Acrylic painting again after that point.

All was not easy with Oils after that. The Sandpeople showed me it was possible, but I still had to fight Oils to get them to do what I wanted. There were many successes and failures, but overall, I think my work made its first real turn at that point. I scaled my first artistic plateau, one that had me leaving behind a raft of bad habits I'd developed on my own in Acrylic. Reinventing the wheel in Acrylic, in a sense, taught me lots of stuff that helped when I moved to Oils.

In 2000 I sort of retreated from illustration work for a time. During this period I did some stuff for myself, and learned a lot. I always learn a lot from self-initiated work, mainly because I have the time and the space to take risks. It probably wasn't until during this time that I really felt I was able to tame the Oil beast. Having tamed it, I've spent the last years learning to ride it better.