A Simple Bridge

Sometimes a bit of stylization will go further than realism, but both are based on reality. 

 Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

 Just a simple bridge scene I painted to try and get better at eyeballing perspective.  I think it was reasonably successful.  As a general rule of thumb the more time you spend on the lineart getting it correct the less time you spend flailing around with paint trying to 'make it work'.  You can't just build a house on the uneven mushy ground, you need a solid level foundation to build upon.  The sketch/lineart is that foundation, and your investment in it will pay dividends. 

Do you take lemon? - Finishing

The printing and finishing process for this piece deserves it’s own post in my opinion.

I’ll start by saying that I use a low quality old LCD monitor on my painting rig.  Despite having a Spyder to calibrate this monitor it never really looks right concerning the value ranges.  Sometimes I have all these lovely shadowed details that print as a black splotch, and other times I get blown out highlights.  So I’ve taken to having multiple small scale prints done before hand where I adjust the mid high and low to a few preset versions that I’ve found correct for this horrible horrible screen.  Once I get them back I select the one that most accurately looks like I want and maybe adjust it a little bit more, and then save that adjustment layer for the final print file.  It’s a bit of guess work, and I have to pay for the small prints form the company I use, but small prints are cheap , so it’s not that big of a deal.

Normally that’d be it, I’d be finished.  I’d send off the corrected file to my printer and wait for my lovely prints in the mail, but not this time.  I knew I was going to print this big, so I had to make sure all the details were right, and that I didn’t have any stray brushstrokes long forgotten in the background.  What I didn’t want was to hang this thing up and have someone be looking at it and say ‘What’s this?’ and find that there was some weird splotch, or a base layer peaking through or some other anomaly.  So I set a grid over the image and methodically scoured each square for anything I didn’t want there.  After I made any corrections I marked off that square and moved to the next.  It was a slow but important step. 

When I was finally satisfied I sent the file off for printing.  The final image is 20 inches by 30 inches (including the little white boarder).  And I love it!  The people form iprintfromhome.com have once again done a terrific job, and I really can’t imagine using another company for my prints. 

Do you take lemon? - Process

Because I didn't do a tight sketch of the whole image ahead of time, nor did I do any real color keys to define the mood and direction of the piece it was really a very organic and mushy process.  While this can be fun at times it also had a propensity for making things take much longer than they really should. 

I spent a lot of time noodling away at odd little details that I really wasn't sure how they would interact with the rest of the image.  And I’d frequently zoom out from one of these areas only to find that it did not integrate well and felt very separate.  There was a constant battle between making the details look good up close, but also having it not interfere with the overall look and feel when backed out.  This is something that could have been much less painful had I really planned out the image beforehand.

There are a lot of fun little details in the image that I know don’t show very well at web resolution, but I knew I would be printing this one so I was comfortable spending time on them. 

Overall I found this to be quite the enjoyable image to paint and am pleased with the result. 

Next:  Printing

Do you take lemon? - Concept

While I certainly enjoy my work in traditional mediums, digital painting is my primary arena.  It’d been a while since I had a new digital piece that I can publicly display, so I decided that I needed to make time for a personal project that I could use in my portfolio. 

I didn’t really know what the image was going to be of, but I had a vague feeling that I wanted to paint something misty or foggy, so a swamp seemed to be a good setting.  I spend a little bit of time brainstorming some scenarios and stories of things that might work in a swamp setting.  Most of them were grim or serious but the last one was a bit of a joke.  It read, ‘A witch in a boat being pulled by a large wading golem or troll’. 

I was being indecisive so I posed the question to a few friends and almost every single person came back liking the sound of the boat idea…  It was a little odd for me as I really was expecting one of the other more ‘serious’ ideas to get the nod as the boat idea was really just me being silly.  Soon enough though I got over that and started treating it like I would an assignment from a client. 

I did a fair amount of sketches, and the idea started evolving.  And the next thing I knew I was working on a picture of a red witch having high tea in a row boat that was being pulled though the swamp by a Bavarian troll servant (Yes, the trolls are indeed wearing lederhosen in the final image).

Next:   Do you take lemon? - Process

Knowing When to Say When

There is very little difference between unfinished, finished and overworked pieces, but that very little difference makes all the difference. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

 When I work digitally I can experiment much more freely.  If I mess up I just hit undo, or go back in the history, or if all else fails, close without saving and reload from wherever I saved last.  That's not as easily the case with traditional mediums.  Traditional mediums aren't as unforgiving as you might imagine, but still, the level of effort to undo something in acrylic or watercolor is significantly higher, and there are some mistakes that there is no coming back from.

That makes knowing when a piece is 'finished' all the more difficult.  If it's too rough it looks unfinished.  A few strokes later the magic is gone and it now looks overworked.  The trick is finding the sweet spot where it looks just right to you as an artist.  My natural inclination seems to be to cover the whole canvas or page.  But there are timed when leaving the under-sketch showing, or a transition unblended actually enhance a piece.  It can give it a liveliness that is missing in overworked pieces.  

I wish I could share a tip or trick on knowing when to march forward and when to stop before it's too late, but I can't even begin to articulate it.  I think it's just one of those things you learn and understand on an unspoken level as you progress on your own journey.  So I guess the tip is to practice more, screw up some pieces and make sure you learn from them. 

Window

Just so you know I didn't abandon watercolor or anything, I just got a little lazy...

 Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

This was done just as a little pick me up after the hand paintings.  I really just wanted to do something simple that I could execute well to kind of show myself that it was the subject matter that was the issue before, and not the medium.  I enjoyed painting this overall, but there are certainly things I'd change.  I got a little too comfortable at parts and stopped observing.  And when I stop observing things tend to go awry...But nothing terribly noticeable, and I'm not going to point it out if you don't already see it...

BTW, there's a lesson for other artists...  Unless you plan on fixing it, don't point out the flaws you've noticed to other people.  Odds are they didn't notice it because they  didn't put it under the same critical microscope you did as the artist.

Drawing Hands

There's no way around it, I must go through it...

Colored pencil on toned paper, 5.5 x 8.5 inches each.

Yes I know they are in black and white, not really color, but it is colored pencil...  I chose to use these because I am familiar with them and the level of control I can achieve with them.  I can't really erase them, and I can't really blend them on the paper without getting a garish silver all over the toned tan paper, but since learning and studying hands seems to be an exercise in discipline, I found colored pencils unforgiving nature helpful in reminding me to make every stroke measured and  purposeful.

This was really my first time using toned paper and I must say it was eye opening.  Up to this point I mostly only ever drawn on white paper.  When you start white you can only go darker.  But when you start in the mid range you can push darker and lighter.

I honestly feel like I've only been drawing half of any given form for years, and as such, only really understand half as much as I should.  I'm going to do some more experiments and studies, but I think the toned paper really helps me get a better grasp of the three dimensional form I'm trying to represent on the paper.

So not only am I getting over my hand issues by learning more about their form and anatomy, but I've discovered how much I enjoy working on toned paper.  If you've never tried toned paper I strongly suggest you do, as it really does open you up and make you feel like your subject is coming off the page at you.  These were done on Strathmore's new 400 series toned sketch paper, which is available in Tan and Gray.

Thanks to the lovely people at Strathmore for the free samples! 

Second Attempt...

I'm almost too ashamed to post this...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I think the phrase is '...from bad to worse...'.  That's how I felt about this.  I completely spun out of control on this one.  I wanted so badly to redeem myself that I started jst doing stupid things to try and make it look better.  I almost completely stopped trying to observe my hand and was almost trying to paint it purly from my head (despite the fact that my hand was RIGHT THERE to look at).

This was really the one that made me want to stop for a bit.  Hands are hard, really hard.  And that was actually the problem.  I am VERY new to watercolors and am very much still in the beginning phase of learning the medium.  Unfortunately I am slso very much at the beginning of learning proper hand anatomy.  That was my problem.  If I were more familiar with the medium, or the subject I think I'd of been okay, but the combination is what killed it for me.  I need to focus on one problem at a time, at least in this case.    

The thumb in the corner shows a little bit of promise though... Coming soon I'll show you some pieces where I tackle hands head on in an arena I'm more comfortable with - colored pencil.