Mars

This is a painting of Mars I just finished. It was a commission, and it's just the first of all 8 (or 9) planets.

Apparently on Mars, the sky can have a slight blue coloring during sunset and it can also have clouds that are similar to cirrus clouds on earth, so I made sure to include those in the painting. I really, really want to go to Mars.

Mars

Also check out my Mars Cornhole Board

Christmas Still Life

Still Lifes always seem a little like homework at first so you have to force yourself to do them. Then, when you get a little ways into it them they get really frustrating and you question why you even do art at all and you kind of just hate everything. After awhile it's a lot of fun, and once it's over you wish you did them more often.

Here's one I did the other night in gouache

Other Worlds, A Sea Creature

I keep thinking about other worlds. One's where maybe things could have evolved slightly differently, or in some super alien way.  It makes me a little sad that I'll never get to see any distant worlds with strange animals. And I'll be long gone before they ever find out about any other life-hosting worlds.  So that's kind of sad. 

But I've found that writing about, drawing, and painting them is really the next best thing I can do to actually seeing them in person.  In some ways it feels a lot like exploring. 

So here's a little oil painting I did of a sea creature I imagine is out there swimming around somewhere, in the deep, ancient waters of some strange alien planet. 

Mars Sketching

Here's a little gif of a concept sketch of Mars I did the other day. It's part of a series of paintings I'll be doing for commission.

Walker

I imagine a few of these guys walking the perimeter of a controversial construction site, taking care of anyone trying to interfere with the construction (or destruction).

Hands

Just working my way through the Famous Artist Course. Today I had to draw some hands. So here are some sketchy homework hands.

Sketchbook

Tonight I brought my sketchbook with me and tried drawing whatever I could. A guy at the bar, some half empty beer glasses, and a crooked lamp with some random clutter around it. 

3d print Model

I've been working on the second cornhole board painting for awhile. Here's a 3d print my brother made for me of the New Horizons probe. I was checking it against the drawing to make sure I got it pretty close (I think I changed it a little after this picture) and later I used it to help with lighting.

3d print of the New Horizons probe next to the underdrawing

Still Life

I took a break from a larger painting to do a still life the other night. I had my wife set it up and we both spent a few hours on a painting. It's strange how much enjoyment and knowledge you can get out of just painting a few random objects.

I tried to set a rough time limit and didn't bother with too many details or get caught up in making a pretty picture. I just got to a point where I was semi-happy with it and then had to get back to other things.

Still Life

The painting and the set up.

Become an Artist

It's Been a Year

Last year in August I decided I wanted to post at least 52 times by next August (this August) and I have. I think this is number 58 since then. So, that's cool. I'm sure its been educational to me somehow over the past year. I try to post about once a week. I think I'll try to keep it up for another year; If anything, just to look back.

Here are some recent Famous Artist Course drawings I did this week.

a boot

a backpack

Lamp

The other night I was sitting in the living room and it was really dark except for the lamp across the room. So i tried to draw it with some markers and I couldn't see what I was doing at all. That's all, End of story.

Brush and Ink

Some of the homework I have in the Famous Artist Course is to do a bunch of "fashion drawings" from magazines. I've been doing some in pencil, gouache, wash, ink etc. This is the first time i tried brush and ink, and I really liked it. Something about using a brush to draw with is satisfying. 

So here's a brush and ink drawing of Nina Dobrev. I know who she is because my wife used to watch Vampire Diaries... 

I may or may not have also seen a few episodes as well.

Gas Pump in Gouache

I entered a contest on James Gurney's blog a few days ago, basically you have to paint a gas station or gas pump or something to do with a gas station. It had to be painted on location and it had to be in black and white gouache. 

I procrastinated until almost the last day (so I kind of deserved it) but It was about 95 degrees outside, raining, extremely humid, and my car A/C decided to break that day too. I pulled into an abandoned little gas station that I found (I was very worried the cops would show up and kick me out) and painted the whole thing in the driver's seat. I kept rolling my windows up and down whenever it started or stopped raining. I also flipped on my wipers frequently when the windshield would get too covered in raindrops to see through. Halfway through the painting a huge swarm of flies got trapped in my car.  In was an uncomfortable experience but it was pretty fun anyways.

halfway through

Here's a very short video of the trip. The tripod i was using stopped holding the phone correctly halfway through the painting so all the later footage is just of the steering wheel and dashboard.

Payless in Gouache

After watching Gouache in the Wild I was really excited to try out some gouache. I've mostly only mixed a little gouache with watercolor and never really done an entire painting in it. So this was my very small black and white attempt at that (it's like 3 x 5 in.). 

   I did this while waiting for my wife to get off work a few weeks ago, but she got out when I was about halfway through so I never finished it. That unfinished page in my sketchbook was getting really annoying so I went back last night and finished it.

And If you want to learn more about gouache...

Dumpster Monster

Another watercolor from a short break at work... 

I ended up parking behind the mall and sketching a dumpster. An old lady looked into the dumpster  and then kept walking. There was a guy on a bike with a striped shirt who kept staring at me, and a few middle aged women who were really angry at someone, but I couldn't figure out why. It started thundering and lightning and pouring down rain so I went back to work.

a Dumpster Monster behind the mall

A Bored Guy and a Squirrel and a Bus Stop

I painted this at the bus stop on a 15 minute break from work a few months ago. The only person there was a bored guy on his phone who had no clue about the squirrel that was slowly inching closer and closer to him. 

He got up and took the bus, the squirrel ran away, and I went back to work... I don't think the three of us will ever meet again.

Gas Station Watercolor

I had a short break from work so I parked at a gas station and did a little watercolor about the size of a normal iphone. Cars kept parking in the way and I kept running out of time. I gave up when a Uhaul parked right in front of me and the driver started reading a book. 

Gas Station Pump

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 4: The Painting

The Painting...

My studio becomes a mess whenever I paint.

    After I sealed the drawing with acrylic matte medium, I put down a few thin layers of acrylic paint. On top of that I pretty much just painted background to foreground. Mostly using thin paint at first and then thicker paints later, using my color comp and tonal as guides and changing whatever I think could be better as I go.

you can see the oil paints in the background, and the acrylic in the foreground.

I think it took me about a month of painting after I finished the drawing. I mostly used Liquin and Gamsol to mix with the paints. Sometimes when i need to paint on top of something that isn't super  dry and I'm afraid will pick up, I put down some retouch varnish and that seems to protect whatever's underneath. I did that a lot on this painting. Hopefully it won't burst into flames someday from all the weird chemicals and rushed drying times. I guess at the end of the day this is just a cornhole board, so I can't be too worried about the ill effects of sloppy oil paint procedures.  

slowly getting covered in oil paint.

Here's the finished oil painting. The whole project took me about 3 months. There was a lot of time spent learning technical things, hopefully the next one will go by a bit quicker. I have one more to make the set. Here are some close ups of the finished painting, shot with my iPhone... I should probably get a better camera.

 The whole project took me about 3 months. There was a lot of time spent learning technical things, hopefully the next one will go by a bit quicker. I have one more to make the set.

The finished cornhole board.

The theme of the next board is New Horizons, the current mission set to fly by Pluto in July and take pictures. I'm anxiously waiting to see those close ups. Both because I think they will be awesome and so I can start designing the board.

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 3: Finished Drawing

The Final Drawing... This is where I did the research: built models, watched documentaries, read articles, studied reference pictures, asked lots of questions and tried to get everything pretty accurate. Although in the end I kind of just had to make some decisions and simplify a few things.

An Atlas rocket model, a painted soapbox for the tower, a mars/ rocks model I built from Sculpey and aluminum foil, and a cut out of the rover's back panel on a stylus.

After completing the tonal and color comp, I took the thumbnail drawing to Staples (before I painted over it) and had them print it out the size of the cornhole board on some cheap paper. I covered the back in pencil and transferred this to the board.

I cut around the rover and rocket because I had to redraw everything else like the rocks and smoke. And of course I had to add all the details on the rover and rocket/ launch pad, so I just drew all of that on top of the printed drawing with ellipse guides, rulers, french curves, a T-square and a whole lot of coffee.

The finished drawing on the cornhole board.

But even after you transfer it down, you kind of have to redraw it again to darken it a little more. Otherwise it's too light.

This part took me awhile. It can get pretty monotonous, but it's also kind of fun because you finally start seeing some details.

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 2: Color and Tonal

After deciding on the overall layout and finishing a semi-detailed drawing of it, I painted a few color sketches, the biggest one being done directly on top of that drawing. I kind of used this as my working color guide while I painted the final version.

 I knew I wanted to try and stay within a certain color gamut (which is something I had never done before) so I didn't experiment too much with what colors I used for the whole. But I did experiment  on each individual part, like the smoke. I must have repainted it like 7 times. So this one painting (the bigger one) represents about 10 little experimental paintings. 

I also chose to paint this large to get a little more practice with oil paint. I wanted to try out a few things before going to the giant 2 by 4 ft. cornhole board. After a certain point though, I didn't bother too much with it. I got what I wanted, so there was no point in adding details or fixing small mistakes.

At the same time I was working on the color guide, I was working on the tonal guide too. I did it digitally because I knew I'd be changing it a lot.

In the end I didn't follow either one of these exactly for the finished painting. They were incredibly helpful though.

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 1: Thumbnails

I was commissioned to design a cornhole board with the theme centered around the mission that sent the Opportunity rover to mars. In the beginning we weren't entirely sure what that should include. It was initially just going to be the Delta rocket and Mars in the background. It later changed to include Opportunity as well. 

I started off with a lot of little pen and marker sketches. I also did a lot of planet studies in oil, just playing around with different textures and mediums and brushes etc. 

Mostly pen and sharpie sketches. Some oil studies too.

After a few dozen of those, I brought it into Sketchbook Pro and did some super rough tonal/ color thumbnails, just to get a little more mood into it. But nothing is final here or detailed at all. 

Putting a little tone and color in

Some of the weirder ones.

After we settled on the layout, I did some research and worked up a slightly more detailed drawing of the whole thing.

The final layout 9 x 18 in.

Mars Cornhole Board

A few months ago I was commissioned to paint kind of a mash up of the Mars Rover Opportunity mission. Heres the finished oil painting Its 4 x 2 ft on a cornhole board.

In the next few days I'll post the whole process of designing and painting it on here.

Unicycle Boy For Free For Now.

Unicycle Boy (The game my brother and I made) is free for a little bit on the App Store.

ArtStation

I created a portfolio with ArtStation. I'll be updating it as I get more things finished and photographed.

danielnew.artstation.com

One Fantastic Week

During the long hours I spend painting, I like to listen to music, books, documentaries or anything interesting. Over the past four or five months, my favorite has been One Fantastic Week. Its a weekly Youtube show hosted by illustrators: Peter Mohrbacher and Sam Flegal usually featuring a guest artist as well. They talk for about an hour each week about day to day art stuff. They tend to focus on the business side of things like conventions and Kickstarter projects etc. but that's certainly not all. What I love about it so much is it's laid back, honest approach to being a professional illustrator. They inadvertently answer a lot of questions and clear up a lot of mysteries about it; and as a little aspiring illustrator, I am incredibly grateful. I've watched (or listened to) every single one of them and I find them all fascinating. I hope they continue the show for a very, very long time. 

Doing it again...

I can't believe that I agreed to do it all again, but I've been working on painting another set of corn hole boards for the last couple months. It's consuming absolutely all of my time, so I haven't been doing much else. But it shouldn't be too much longer.

The Raley's Barn

Here's a little unfinished oil painting I did a few months ago. The sun went down before I could finish, It got dark and the mosquitos started swarming. I set up my little pochade box (you can see it in my last post) on my parents' property while they were on vacation and painted the neighbor's barn. I think I've drawn or painted this same barn at least 20 times in the last few years. 

Fun Fact: This is where Primitive Tim lives, and you can see the barn in a lot of his How-To videos. 

Painting at the Swamp

I took my paints out into the swamp a few weeks ago. The experience was interesting, but the painting didn't turn out too well. I think in the future I'll stick to simpler subjects unless I have more time.

Primitive Tim's Cross-country Road Trip

One of my oldest/best friends Timothy Raley (aka Primitive Tim) hit the road today in his little grey van on a cross-country road trip to explore all things nature. He'll be documenting the whole adventure on his youtube channel: Primitive Tim. He just uploaded "Day One" today... I'm pretty excited about it. If you listen to the music in the videos, you'll likely be hearing songs that I wrote for him.

Good Luck Timothy!

Still Life

Here's a little Still Life my wife set up last night. I painted it in watercolor and gouache while she drew it in charcoal. We do this every so often, I wish we would do it more. We always enjoy it. 

It's amazing what you think you know until you actually sit down and start drawing. 

There are always whole worlds in the tiny objects you hardly pay any attention to, and when you finally start to see them, you realize you could never capture them completely.

Sketching a Gopher Tortoise

Yesterday a gopher tortoise wandered into my backyard. So naturally, I ran and got my sketchbook and pencils.

Sketching in Downtown Titusville

Here's another short video of a sketch I did on a little break from work.