Round 2

The city can be a jungle. Infact, if you look at the poster on the right carefully, you'll see that the zoo is missing an escaped lion.

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For starters, here's the finished piece next to the drawing. I don't draw on white paper. Hurts my eyes ..or whatever. I draw on magic paper. It's a kind of special ordered printmaking paper that, if the company ever quits making, more than likely I'll hang up my hat.


I'll warm the drawing over with a nice layer of soft light.


Then, after coloring the face, I'll go over with some more soft light and work with the lines til I get something I think will work.


Coloring the clothes and hat. Here's a weird thing I do that when people around here ask and I try and explain it just doesn't work. I color a layer of multiply and then copy that layer. I'll take the copy and change the layer setting to soft light and then Hue/Saturation change it to a little darker and (usually) a little redder. At that point most people slowly say, "Ok. ...Why?" To me, it colors the shape and the line and I think it looks better, and warmer (or cooler in some cases) and all around good.


Shirt shirt... see SEE? Color the shirt blue. Copy the layer, turn it to soft light and make it a little redder (you get purple) and then the lines change color and it looks richer. I'm not nuts.


Brick work color, involves the same principles.


Here's the ticket. Screen. Screen is magic. Use a dark color though, it goes atomic pretty fast otherwise. While you were looking away I added a lot of shadows. Don't panic. And some more screen.


More screen...


Ok, in this one not much is changed but look at the shadows at the sections of the sidewalk. Helps to sell that there's light coming from the left.


Lighten up a few areas with more screen...


Bricks...


By now I've added some more shadow and a blue light on the back of the boy.


Here's a trick. At this point I'm thinking the face lines have got too washed out so I just copy them over from the orginal drawing to strengthen them up some.


And there you go.



My Thoughts: I like this one. It wasn't super complicated and I think I did it around an hour and half to two hours, painting time. I like the light and the feel. I don't think it's as bold as it could be, or maybe it needed to be a better pose or drawing, I don't know, I just like the light. It feels smoky to me and that's what I was after so, chalk this one up as OK.

What's going on here

Well, this is a side blog, to light night rains, my main blog. With this, what I hope to do is to demonstrate how I work and how I arrive at my finished artwork.

Comments are super welcome, as well as questions.

All in the family...

It all starts with a thumbnail. A foolish little doodle.


Then progresses to a finished drawing, like so. To do this you need to listen to good music and put the pencil down on the paper. This is the hardest part and the easiest part, unless you are listening to Pärt, Arvo Pärt, in which case after fifteen mintues you'll seize a chair, heave toward the nearest window, dive out after it, and plummet to your doom.


Then usually I'll goof off.

Having a set of fantastic customized brushes never hurt a fly.


Now, here's the roast beef of this one.


A little coloring of the lines, just like how when I do a watercolor, I'll be sure to not use a regular pencil. I'll use a colerase brown, or Derwent Chocolate 66, to keep things from looking grim. And by grim I mean dead.


Using a normal airbrush set on multiply, I'll lay in my values. Generally in a brown.


And I'll also, multiply in some color.


Kind of an over view of things...


Now, here's the magic starting. See how that hair is red? Dig this:


You


use


Screen. Notice the old man (Isaac) and his hair from here...


...To here. Fantasic.


We're needing some light, so we need screen.


KA-BLAM-- and there was light.


The color of the background was beginning to be just a little to similar. So, with a layer of color, there you go.


Tame that saturation. That's to my liking, maybe not for everyone though.


Ready for the fridge.


MY THOUGHTS: Very quick and dirty. All in all, I painted this in about 2 hours with minimal distraction if I remember right. This isn't meant to be the greatest piece ever, just a tutorial. There's still probably another good solid hour or so in there. It's not super polished but it gets across what it needs to.

An example of a much more finished drawing, and the finished painting is much more polished.


Done and done.