Arrangement of Pumpkins

Happy Halloween!  For this painting I gathered my favorite reference images of pumpkins and squash from both my own image library and the web, and compiled them into a single picture.

The painting started with a watercolor wash over the paper, so that the bright white wouldn't make it harder to mix the proper colors.  It turned out I had difficulty mixing colors anyway.  As the gif below shows, I went over several of the squashes and pumpkins more than once when their colors did not come out like I wanted.

I'm pleased with how it turned out, but mixing gouache colors is still a challenge for me.  It's definitely an area I will look into improving.

Creature Design Workshop Results

Back from the creature design workshop!  My classmates and I learned about designing realistic fictional creatures from Terryl Whitlatch; she has done many illustrations for biology and paleontology purposes, for books and fiction, and also for movies (such as Star Wars Episode I, where I first learned about her work).  She was an excellent teacher, very helpful and dignified.  It was good to meet her, and great to learn from her.

Terryl's theme through the workshop was designing fictional creatures that could theoretically evolve, live, and reproduce in a manner as close to reality as possible.  She made a distinction between "chimeric" creatures–beings put together from the parts of various creatures, such as classically mythological creatures like centaurs, griffons, the Sphinx–and "discrete" creatures–beings that could theoretically exist and be molded by time, their environment, genetics, and so on.  If they had elements inspired by different creatures, they would be worked into the design as if the creature naturally had those traits.  Our mission in this particular workshop was to design flying winged carnivore/predator creatures.

 

During the workshop, I made two creatures.  Since I had sea creatures on the brain, I sketched ideas out for combining various existing animals, and ended up combining a krill and a flying fish to create a flying krill.  I envisioned it as a small creature, one that would frequent the very top layers of the ocean, hunting smaller organisms and flying away from danger when threatened.  I shortened and smoothed out the krill's body, and gave it angled wings, large enough that it could dart away from danger, but not so large they would interfere with swimming.  (Rather, they would assist in helping the krill swim.)  It had frilled legs to give it traction against the water and swim properly.  And it had the eyespot on its tail to direct its predators away from its vital parts.  The feathery antennae should've realistically be more like the actual krill's antennae, but I was feeling fancy and made them frilled like a moth's antennae.

The second creature was a combination of vulture and nighthawk.  This one was a large bird, living on a planet with one-sixth the gravity of earth.  It could fly much higher and spend more time in the air than a bird from Earth.  With lighter gravity, its prey would also fly higher and be easier to hunt for.  Inspired by the vulture's capability to cruise for hours, and the nighthawk's lifelong sustenance on insects, I combined those attributes and came up with a cruiser hawk, a four-winged creature that would spend almost all of its life on its wings, moving up and down through the atmosphere and living on the giant insects that it shared the planet's atmosphere with.

Terryl brought samples of Copic markers and pens, which we used to make our illustrations.  I liked how they worked, I will likely buy a set of them.  The workshop was excellent in all aspects.  If you like drawing creatures and get a chance to attend an event with Terryl, do it.  You'll enjoy it.

Port Jackson Pup

I like the Port Jackson shark.  It's a goofy little shark that lives around the coasts of Australia.  They grow to 30-36 inches in length and use their broad, flat teeth to crush and eat mollusks and echinoderms.  You can read more about them on their page at the Australian Museum's website.

I drew the outline in HB and laid down the lightest layers in 2H and HB.  I reinforced the darker areas (the harness patterns and overshadowed tail section) with another layer of HB.  Then I put down the darkest areas with a 4B pencil.  The final steps were shading in a minimal background in 2H, and using the 2H pencil to burnish the dark areas to make them less grainy and smoother.

This was another step in my practice for my upcoming creature design class.  Tune in next time for another animal drawing.

Orion Nebula

I started this painting nearly a year ago (last October, to be precise), when I was painting several variations of the Orion Nebula.  What inspired me was a false-color image of the Nebula's "tracer bullets"–globs of stellar dust shooting across space–colored in bright orange and blue.  You can read more about the tracer bullet phenomenon in this article by the Faulkes Telescope Project.

The original reference image.

There was some pre-planning to this painting, but not a lot.  I was afraid I would procrastinate on it and end up not doing it out of various fears, so I pushed ahead as fast as I could.  The lack of pre-planning made certain stages later on more difficult.  Even so, I do not regret starting it so quickly.

This was not a complicated painting.  I had the blue-and-orange Nebula, and the astronaut and his spacecraft.  I went back and forth painting layers for the Nebula and the dark blue of deep space, and the spacecraft.  Halfway through the painting, the orange and the blue were mixing together and becoming a muddy green.  I went back, whited the muddy parts out, and repainted them.  The final stages of the painting were lighting up the blue nebula bullets, and adding the off-white highlights on the astronaut and spacecraft.

What I learned from this painting:

• Prime the canvas the main background color.  This prevents the bright white canvas from throwing off how colors appear to your eyes.
• Develop the underpainting as much as you need to.  It is the foundation your painting will stand on.  I did not develop it for this painting, and it made finishing the spacecraft much more difficult.
• Don't leave your wet palette alone for weeks on end.  The paint becomes runny and useless for painting.  The palette gets smelly and moldy, and you have to delay working on the painting in order to clean the paper and sponge.

With these lessons in mind, I can do that much better on the next space painting.

Detail images of the painting below.

Making a Book Cover, Part 2

Part 2 of my process and progress of making the cover image for my friend Alena's poetry book, soon to be published through CreateSpace.

To make the custom title for the cover, I experimented with letters and shapes until Alena was happy with them.  Then I drew the title in ink, scanned it into my computer, and used Adobe Illustrator to make a vector version of the title and author text.

I took the vector image into Photoshop and painted gold beveling over the title.  This was the second-most time-consuming part of making the cover, the first-most being making the cover image itself.

Working out the lighting on the title.

Getting there, still defining the letters and polishing them.

Finished!

The digital paint-over took place on two layer groups, one for the top part of the title, one for the bottom part.  To achieve the glowing-gold look I wanted, I added a faded gold Color Overlay in Overlay mode at 75%, and a brown-to-brassy-yellow Gradient Overlay in Overlay mode at about 50% opacity.  This way the golden hue of the title and the bright yellow on the cover were roughly equal in value, so that neither overrode the other visually.  (I also put a transparent dark gradient on the top third and bottom quarter of the image, to make the title and author lettering more visible.)

And that's that!  I cleared the cover with Alena and sent her the final files.  Edit Sept. 2016: The book is now up here on CreateSpace!

Below are close-ups of the finished cover image.

Making a Book Cover, Part 1

This is a little more fantastical than what I usually post here, but I want to give you guys a closer look under the hood of how I make my art.

My friend Alena is publishing a book of fantasy and imaginative poetry, Songs of My Imagination, through the CreateSpace system, and she asked me to do the cover.  I said yes, and we worked out a contract (taken from the free resources for artists provided by PACT–Professional Artist Client Toolkit) and I got to drawing.

Since this is a book about poetry and imagination, Alena wanted the cover image to evoke feelings and thoughts of wonder, curiosity, and of course fantastical creatures.  I drew up sketches incorporating kids reading stories, a phoenix, and a couple dragons.

Alena chose the one with the dragon reading in his "library lair".  She liked the concept of the dragon relaxing in an old library, reading through every book he had, learning about the mysteries and wonders of the world.  She wanted a visible spirit or fairy of inspiration as well, so I added a cheerful little fey creature leaping out of the book.

I would eventually execute the final image in ink and watercolor, but first I went to Photoshop to draw the color rough.

Early version of the digital rough.

Since the dragon was supposed to be learning about the world in peace and comfort, I painted the library warm colors, like someone's well-lit living room.  The dragon I chose to be blue, to contrast with the yellows and tans of the background.  To spice up the image a little, I added visible "mists" of inspiration, ancient knowledge, and magic emanating from the books themselves.

The image ended up darker than I wanted, it made the library look gloomy and spooky.  I lightened the entire image about 10%, which got rid of the unwanted darkness and made the picture cozy and comfortable.

I had been worried about the title, whether I could do it justice or not.  Since this was a fantasy-themed book, both Alena and I wanted it to be properly fantastic and exotic, not just Helvetica Neue.  We discussed the title and its look, and settled on vaguely Gothic lettering, rendered in brass and gold colors.  I drew it first with ink on smooth Bristol paper, and then scanned it.  From here, I would paint over it in Photoshop and give it the ancient-beveled-gold look I wanted.

Next up is Part 2, which will cover the watercolor painting and rendering the digital title.

Heracles and Telephus WIP, Part 2 - Finished!

Heracles and his son Telephus are done!  The scanner washed out the lightest grays, most of the white in the image is 10-20% shaded gray in the physical drawing.

Total time for this drawing was around 8 hours, over the course of two weeks.  The first couple hours consisted of laying down the outline, lightly pre-shading areas that would be heavy shadows later, and of course fixing any mistakes I had made.  The remainder of those 8 hours was taken up slowly, carefully shading in the drawing.  Everything, outlining, shading, erasing, was done with a light hand, so that I could easily rectify errors.

I like it.  I still see problems in it.  I have, however, declared it "finished", and that means I never put a pencil to it again and move on to the next piece.  In this way, I keep myself from worrying about "screwing up" and keep sharpening my drawing skills.

Heracles and Telephus WIP, Part 1

My next work is a pencil drawing of Heracles and Telephus.  Heracles (or Hercules) is obviously the well-known Greek hero, while Telephus is his son by Auge, daughter of King Aleus of Tegea.  This is based off a statue that stands in the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles, California.

This is drawn on smooth Bristol paper.  I outlined the statue with light lines with a 4B pencil, and defined the shapes with very light shading.  After fixing any mistakes I had made, I darkened the outer lines further and filled out the shading with an HB pencil.  This was all done with a light and careful hand, so that mistake could be easily erased.  It's one of the big advantages of smooth Bristol.  Another plus is that you can get nice and detailed in the final stages of the drawing, which I will cover in my next update.

Reference photo of the statue.

Seraphim WIP, Part 3 - Finished!

The Seraphim painting is done and finished!

After Part 2 of the painting, I had about half the feathers laid in on the wings, and the foreground and background partly blocked in.  A few yellow outlines were still showing through as yellow-green.

I filled in the wings first and defined most of the feathers.  While I was doing that, I used some of the blue to tidy up and hide the remaining outlines.  Then I put one or two touches on the man, and put a medium tan down for the ground, and defined the fiery hole further.  The spit of land the man was lying on was at an odd angle, I bulked it up and added the man's shadow.  I touched up the feathers that looked out of place and added white to the Seraphim's blinding face.  Finally I filled in the sky, being careful not to make it too saturated or colorful.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well the painting turned out.  It's a common occurrence with me; I beat myself up about the early stages of a painting, and then it turns out not so bad.

There was not a specific theme or message to this painting.  I wanted to show a man in awe at being shown even a sliver of the power of a Seraphim, a creature beyond human comprehension in its entire and true form.  This would be the angel showing its most simple facet, a part of its being that a merely mortal mind could digest.  I do want to have specific themes for this kind of paintings; they will come in the future.

Seraphim WIP, Part 2

So I've got the main colors blocked out in the Seraphim painting.  Now what?

I have to slowly focus in from the large blocks of color, to local shapes (wings, the man on the ground, the surround ground, etc), to the final details.  This is the hardest part of a painting for me.  The novelty of starting a new painting has worn off, there's 70-80% of the painting to finish, and I have to just sit down and paint.  Sit down and paint.  I feel demoralized, I think it looks like crap, but I have to keep painting and keep the momentum going.

With this particular painting, I am regretting the bold yellow outlines around everything.  They're too saturated, too yellow, I'm having to tone them down and block them out.  I wish I had done a more detailed underdrawing as well.  This was a "sketch it and begin" painting, where you get the idea out quick, and then realize you really should've put in an hour of preparatory work, including and up to a tiny test painting for testing the colors.

I brought the man into focus, and wished I hadn't.  He looks like a blob.  I had more success with the wings of the Seraphim; I outlined the outermost edges of the wings with a mix of blue and gray so their edges didn't pop out too much, and sculpted the underlit feathers with a middle-value blue and  light blue.

I do like how the painting looks much better than its very first stages, though.  Maintain the pace, push through to the end.

Seraphim WIP, Part 1

For a while now I have wanted to do a painting or a series of paintings on angels, angels with the proper gravitas, awe, and terror that a supernatural being would inspire.  There are angels described as appearing human-like; this is not my primary intention here.  It is the mystery and unease of facing an utterly unearthly being I want to bring to the viewer's mind.

This painting is a trial run for this angel idea.  It is 12x16 inches, the largest gouache painting I've worked on so far.  The scene is not anyone specific in particular, an angel appearing to someone, maybe a shepherd, maybe Joseph.  The angel itself is a seraphim, the highest order of angels, described as appearing with six wings and many eyes.

I sketched a very simple underdrawing (mostly to get going so I didn't chicken out and quit), and started with a semi-transparent layer to get a feel for the colors.  I adjusted my colors and put the second layer down, which covers most of the painting except for the yellow light.  I'm going to rework that as well and make it less glaring and saturated.

Spectacled Eider WIP

The Spectacled Eider is a relatively lesser-known eider that lives in and around the Bering Sea, near the Arctic.  It also has its unique goggle-eyed patterning that makes it stand out in the waterfowl crowd.  This is an in-progress shot of my current gouache painting; the two birds in the foreground are mostly done, I only need to detail the bird in the background and touch up the water a little.

Cedar Waxwing in Flight

It shames me to say it, but I had never seen a picture of the cedar waxwing until a few days ago.  I misidentified a northern flicker, of all things, as a waxwing, and was corrected.  I looked up the cedar waxwing, saw that seamless gradation of gray-brown to misty blue, and knew I had to paint it.