The White Elephant oil painting

 Finished a new painting. The White Elephant, painted in oil.

I recorded the whole process and uploaded a youtube video:

Rock Studies

 

When I was teaching myself how to draw and trying to find a job in concept art, one thing I completely overlooked was the amount of rocks I would have to draw. Almost every scene I'm given (I'd say close to 80% of the pieces I'm assigned) includes rocks in some way. Whether it's sheer cliffs and canyons or small landscaping stones, there are rocks all over the place.

The strange thing, is they hardly ever take center stage. They have their place in the scene, but they never call too much attention to themselves. It becomes important to understand them and give them their proper weight, but not spend too long on them as there are more important things in the scene. This often leads to drawing or painting them from memory or imagination.

It helps to spend a little extra time to observe and take note of their strange, seemingly random shapes outside of work, when you can slow down a little. When it comes time to draw them from memory later, you can feel better equipped to just "whip them out" without having to give them too much thought. 

Black and White Tone Studies

 It's been awhile since I've done any sort of "painterly" work, both in photoshop or traditional paints. Most of what I do at work is a mixture of 3d models and photo manipulation. I did these recently as a quick way to get back into things; just copies of pictures/ other pieces. But it's not so simple. 

Here's the challenging part: 

1. They must be completed on a time limit. (I believe I did these in about 30 min. each)

2. No tracing of any kind.

3. The reference must be in color. No "black and white" filter. You have to translate the color reference into black and white yourself. 

4. Simplify the values to 3 or 4 tones.

5. Simplify the shapes. It's so easy to chase every little jagged outline, but the details don't matter. (Why is that so hard to remember?)

Doing these types of studies don't leave you with the prettiest pictures, but they certainly help to get the brushes moving again. Keeping things simple and constrained help to remove the bigger more intimidating aspects of picture making like design, composition, color etc. giving you a chance to focus on how it feels to move a brush again and how it's possible to represent anything in the world with just a few tones and simple shapes. 

Hello Again!

It's been awhile...

I've been working in an office full time for the Themed Entertainment industry for the last three years. Havn't had much time for any personal work.

Thanks to the whole pandemic situation, I've been granted a little extra time to have some fun outside work.

I may revive this blog a bit, It helps me organize things and its a lot of fun... But until I get the ball rolling again, you can keep up with me on Instagram. I'm a bit better at staying up to date with project, studies, sketches, and what I'm working on over there.

The Hiding Place

Here's a painting I just finished. I've always loved those houses built on cliffs and rocks by the ocean. So here's my rendition of one of those houses.

initial pencil sketch

A quick line drawing and some tone over the pencil sketch

Character Design

Here are a few character designs i did recently, mostly just for fun. I did a few thumbnails for a female rogue character in a steampunk / fantasy world, then chose my two favorite and worked them up a little.
I went with the 3rd one and the last one.

Alaska

Here's a painting I did recently, based on a few photos and stories from my friend who is in military training in Alaska.

Inner Cathedral City

This is some quick afternoon sketching, throwing a few ideas around.

Christmas Still Life in Gouache

I like to do these little still lives every once in a while. This one is in gouache in a watercolor sketchbook. I only used two colors plus black and white:Yellow Ochre and Carmine Red. To get the green color, i mixed yellow and black. 

Portrait Sketching

A portrait study from the other day, It's a copy from a John Bradshaw Crandall painting.

Tom Lovell Studies

I've been making my way through my new (incredible) Tom Lovell book. I'm amazed at how simple he keeps his compositions. Everything seems to be kept within 4 simple tones: Black, dark grey, light grey, and white. So, I've been going through the book and every time I see a really stunning composition, I do a quick little marker study. Here's one:

Halloween Still Life

A little still life I did of some Halloween decorations. Painted in gouache in my watercolor sketchbook. I tried a random pre-painted background of acrylic red, Then black, white, yellow ochre and I think burnt sienna. I tried to only use warm colors and let the black and white fill in for the cooler colors. I remember looking at the purple fabric underneath everything and having no idea how I would paint it. Its a little red (burnt sienna) mixed with the black and white. I think it looks purple. I was very happy about that, it felt like magic.

The Gardens of Selene

Gardens of Selene

Some close-ups:

monks and swans detail

Here's a painting I just finished. A few people asked me about the process, so I wanted to show a few of the steps on here.



Step 0:

I basically wanted some huge archways overlooking the ocean, very open and plenty of plants. I got the idea of an inside gardens/ plants with big architecture from Biltmore after visiting a few years ago and have been thinking about it ever since. It slowly got more and more Roman. I started developing a story and a setting as I was working, so certain things began to make more sense than others.


Step 1:

Quick thumbnail sketches. I did a few more, but they're all just very sketchy.

Step 2.
After some research, I built a 3d model in Sketchup and played around with a few different viewpoints.

Step 3.

More sketching.  Playing around with lighting and color, also materials and decoration etc.

Step 4.

Rough drawing over the 3d model, just trying to start deciding on things.

Step 5.

Finished drawing over the rough drawing. Although even the finished drawing is pretty rough. I knew I would change a lot later. I didn't bother with people or plants yet because where I put those would probably depend more on color.



Step 6.
Quick black and white sketch to figure out lighting (again) I liked this lighting better than the soft lighting of my earlier sketches.



Step 7.
I built a little model out of cardboard, Sculpey, and some grill skewers (?) that I found, then painted it and brought it outside. Snapped a few pictures and just stared at it for a long time, also tried a few different angles.



 

Step 8.

Shadow perspective. Because I did the shadows with a real model, I had to map them out in perspective myself. I think most artists probably do this in the 3d model, because its much faster. I kind of just wanted to test myself and do it manually.



Step 9.

Gather tons of reference for everything. Although I had been doing this the whole time,  I like to try and have as much as I can ready so I don't have to keep stopping during the painting... of course that happens anyway though. This is my file in PureRef, a reference program.




Step 10.

Paint. Erase. Sketch. Paint. Delete. Edit. Paint. Paint. Rage Quit. Paint. Finish. Paint again. Paint. Edit. Finish. Sketch. Paint.

I like to just paint on one layer except for the greenery and people so I can move them around. So 3 layers, and I do that all under a slowly disappearing finished drawing. I turn on the perspective layers as needed too. Towards the end I added a couple other fancy layers.


Let me know if you have any other questions about the process in the comments.

Pumpkin Cabin Cutaway

Here's a cutaway view of a Pumpkin Cabin. I did a few small sketches of this a few years ago, and decided to see if I could do a finished painting out of it.

Pumpkin Cabin

detail

detail

Here are some of the initial sketches.

pumpkin seed chair

The School Bug

This started out as a goofy pun i had in my sketchbook, that I turned into a more finished painting just for fun.

School Bug

some early sketches

School Bus study

Waterhouse Copies

I do a lot of  copies of J W Waterhouse Paintings on my breaks from work. Here's one I did a few days ago.

Fox Creek Towncenter

Cathedral City

Finally finished this painting, It's 20 x 30 in. on Illustration board painted in oil.

Cathedral City

close up

New Horizons and Opportunity Mission Cornhole Boards

I just realized I never posted the second board and/or both of these together. I finished them back in October 2015. They were commissioned a year before to be used at a NASA picnic. They're painted in oil on cornhole boards. The one with the Mars rover is based on the Opportunity mission, and the one with Pluto is based on the New Horizon's mission.

Opportunity Mission

New Horizon's Mission

The paintings with some photoshop to take out the hole.

If you want, you can read about the process of the Mars board here:

 Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 1: Thumbnails

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 2: Color and Tonal

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 3: Finished Drawing

Mars Cornhole Board Process Part 4: The Painting

Reading Lamp

This is where I usually read my art books at night. I was reading through my Dean Cornwell book before I did this little black and white watercolor sketch. Then I went to sleep.

Where I usually read at night.