Portraiture in Watercolor

I am super happy to post this painting. I was honored to complete this portrait for some friends of mine who commissioned the piece after seeing the Paintings for Presents that I posted.

The concept to use their daughter as Max from "Where the Wild Things Roam," was serendipity at it's best. I'd been thinking about how to make this a piece that would be something different than the classic portrait. One of the places that I found inspiration was with Gustav Klimpt, in that he often uses the 2d and the 3d to great effect. So initially, I thought it would be something like a Klimpt, in that there'd be a bold shape, and the the figure would fit in it. As I went through some sketches, I happily stumbled upon Max. From there it was shooting reference pics to support the idea. Knowing that the images we'd taken at the playground would be my only reference, I shot many pictures, and endeavored to match one or two to a scene.

Technically speaking, the painting was challenging to work on. After arriving at a drawing that I liked, moving to a painting can sometimes be an opportunity to flub things up, but good. This is of course always the case, but we must persevere through those moments. So, I prepared the board, and smeared Cobalt Blue over everything but the Max suit which was to be white, and set into painting.

I tried my best to keep the momentum going for the painting, and to not allow myself to be bogged down in details to early. Following the 3 rules that I learned when first learning to paint in watercolors: Work big to small, back to front, and warm to cool.

In the end I enjoyed the concept and the process from gathering reference pictures, to drawing and painting the finished piece. There's just no way to express the feeling of making a blend happen 'just so,' or working life into the face. It is just a joy to paint, and to have others enjoy it in the end.

Goggles Comic: Cover Up

Well, here is some work in progress { and I use that term loosely.}

I was working ahead with the cover image when a conversation with the author provided me with some crucial character info that I missed in my reading of the story... baddaboom, big baddaboom.

It turns out that the Goggles themselves need to be more chaotic, and wild. I think I can still save this image and add onto the drawing, it's still early enough in the process to make those kinds of changes. But I feel like a heel for missing that character element to begin with. So, I'll continue to try to save this image, and in the end if I have to burn it, so be it. But I'm not ready for that just yet.

Previous Post: here

Studio Bowes Art Online Store: Grand Opening!

Studio Bowes Art Online Store

I am happy to announce the Grand Opening of the Studio Bowes Art Online Store! I'm posting up prints and posters, mugs, and my favorite, the skateboard! Check it out {here}

The proceeds from this online store will go towards sending Brian to the 2010 Illustration Master Class held in Amherst, MA. Please feel free to stop on in 24/7 to take a look, and if you don't see something that you'd like, I am more than happy to special requests.

Also available are personalized portraits. Handcrafted with watercolor, these can make for great gifts for the Holidays, Anniversaries, or Birthdays. Feel free to contact me directly through my portfolio site {here}, and read more about it on my blog {here}

Goggles Comic: Cover on Board

After sitting on this for a while, life's cleared up, and the next project is up and running. A friend and I have worked out a story, and developed it for release as a comic. And by developed it, I mean that he's written the darn thing, and now I need to deliver the art! Our objective with this project is to have a bit of fun, we're both comics fans, and decided that we'd give it a go. The plan thus far is to produce a sample of the work, and then approach a few different publishers, to see if they are interested, and if that fails, there's always self publishing.

After doing considerable thinking on the matter, the cover is going to be the first thing, then I will work out the pages. So, with out further ado, or a-doo-doo...

Part of my intent with this cover painting is to keep things quick and loose. I feel like often by the time a drawing makes it to the final board, a lot of life has been wrung out of it through tracing. So, I've intentionally left this one looser.

First a few free-hand color comps. I really like the earth tone pallet, but after some consideration, I started thinking about James Bama's Doc Savage covers, images here, I like the tone of his images, he pulls a hue as the major key for his images. Which I thought would work better for a comic cover ( I do actually want people to buy this!)

I started working using white to knock back the background. The image below was started with a wash of orange, then knocked back with chinese white. There's an intentional halo around the edge of the shadow and figure, my hope is to create a little edge vibration, especially between the blue shadow and the orange edge.

Now, the drawing is on the board, and at least one thing has changed from the preliminary drawing, notice the tentacles along the bottom edge, which I am seeing as being in the foreground. I think they help to really emphasize the danger that our heroine has walked into.

I'll apologize now for the quality of the photo, it's just a snap shot that I bent around in photoshop to get the lines to show up.

It Figures...

Well, so in this post, I am making up for a little lost time. These first three drawings were done on Oct. 7, two weeks prior to the time of this posting, and the rest of the drawings were created on Oct. 21. (My Uncle's B-day!)

While I do think that there's tons of stuff that's awkward about these drawings, you know some of the proportions are off and so on, but there is a feeling that is starting to emerge from within the process of drawing.

2 - 10 minute studies

40 minute study

40 minute study

Some of this feeling can be attributed to just making drawings for a long time, in other words, confidence is starting to seep into the work. That's a slippery slope right? Certainly I don't want to become over-confident, or over-confident's cousins, arrogance and ol' big head. There's no faster way to kill a drawing than a huge dose of ego. That being said, there is a feeling of... "goodness" that is happening during the process of drawing, a certain sense that the pressure is off, and the drawing is happening for the love of drawing. Because through this looking and observing there comes an understanding, or if not that at least an effort to understand what is being drawn.

2 - 5 minutes
20 minutes
20 minutes

1 hour

I feel like I am approaching the room that my first figure drawing teacher told me about. He didn't call it a room, he didn't call it a state of mind (although it is both of those), he simply uttered 4 words into my ear when he saw that I was struggling, trying to make the drawing just so perfect that I was all locked up, he looked over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Just fuck it up."

Now, it's taken reams of paper and years of drawing to begin to approach that place. From where I'm at it is a place where there's no hesitation, a deliberateness of mark making, a facility and a joy of drawing. A place where the judgement is suspended, and there's no time or space for self doubt. In short a place and a time where Fear has no place; Fearlessness. Who hasn't at some point had to enter a situation and had to put fear off to the side and just do it the best way you know how. It's a powerful place to come from. I don't know if it's a place we ever fully arrive at, there may still be those nagging critics in the back of our minds, but it's as good a place as any to aim for, and that's all we can do.

Paintings for Presents

Greetings,

This year I am offering to do paintings for the holiday season. It will be a totally unique gift, created specifically for you or your loved ones. The above image is a flyer that contains more details, click on the image to see a larger version. Also, feel free to download it, or to pass it along to your friends. I am open to any reasonable requests.

This is a direct link to my developing online shop: Studio Bowes Art

Here are larger views of the images shown above:

You can see earlier posts on this image here which show part of the process used to create this piece.

This is a sample page from my sketchbook.

You can find the story of this portrait here from an earlier post.

I hope that you find this idea intriguing and feel free to contact me with any related questions.

The Return of Figure Drawing

I am so happy to say that the figure drawing sessions at CCA/ Illustration have resumed. One can never over value the power of drawing from life. In this particular instance I made three 20 minute drawings, submitted here for your perusal.

The following image was cobbled together in photoshop, just to give a sense of the page. While the patchwork of scans isn't the greatest, this image is only to give a sense of the whole page.
Prior to the drawing session, earlier in the day, I was in conversation with a friend regarding the work of Kent Williams. While we both agreed that there is some merit to doing straight master studies from an admired artist, that in the end that is only an exercise in seeing. While we both professed a love of his work, we both also agreed that there was already a Kent Williams in the world and that there really isn't a need for a second. Thus we were encouraged to follow our own paths. As my friend succinctly put it, "there is enough room here for all of us."

Having been thinking about what it is about Kent's work that I really like, one thing that came to mind is how he lays in his lines. No doubt after A LOT of life drawing that the artist grows accustomed to the form and can be more bold { or subtle } about their comments on the page. With this in mind, these drawings endeavor to be bold, more direct and then to allow the drawings to adapt over time. This of course can lead to distortions and misproportions, but after all these are drawings not photographs.