Baron Von Münchhausen

Summary: A late night internet expedition leads to Doré, Terri Gilliam, absurd romanticism, and results in an illustration of Baron Von Münchhausen.   It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was dark at least, and I was doing some late night internet ramblings into The Public Domain website which a friend had turned me on to. The […]

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Gabba Gabba Hey!

Summary: I share some of my process creating a faux Rolling Stone magazine cover of the Ramones. Giclee prints of the image are also made available! One of the assignments for my MFA program is that we are asked to create an illustration by look back into illustration history and finding an artist whom we admire, then we […]

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Begin Using Color Choices To Strengthen Your Paintings

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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.

Dorothy: Then A Strange Thing Happened...

"Then a strange thing happened.

The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon.

The north and south wind met where the house stood, and made it the exact center of the cyclone. In the middle of a cyclone the air is generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it up higher and higher, until it was at the very top of the cyclone; and there it remained and was carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.

It was very dark and the wind howled horribly around her, but Dorothy fond she was riding quite easily. After the first few whirls around, and one other time when the house tipped badly, she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.

Toto did not like it. He ran about the room, now here, now there barking loudly, but Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen.

Once Toto got too near the open trap door, and fell in; and at first the little girl thought she had lost him. But soon she saw one of his ears sticking up through the hole, for the strong pressure of the air was keeping him up so that he could not fall. She crept to the hole, caught Toto by the ear, and dragged him into the room again, afterward closing the trap door so that no more accidents could happen."

It was from this text in the Wizard of Oz, that the initial spark of inspiration flew for this piece. I was particularly struck by a few things here. One, that there is so much emphasis placed on the 'centered-ness' of not only the cyclone but Dorothy as well. Here her reaction is quite relaxed, what a Taoist might call the Wu Wei, or going with the flow. Secondly, there's the strangeness of the floating dog in the center of the room, that just sounded fun.

I owe a great big Thanks to everyone who helped me through out the completion of this piece; Zelda Devon, Rebecca Guay, Randy Chavez, Paris Raupach, and to my friends and family who helped keep my spirits up, thank you. The amount of learning that happened during the course of this illustration would be hard to quantify, certainly at each turn there was someone there to lend a helping hand.

Process wise, this piece was done in an effort to create a well composed, dramatic image, with a strong underling value structure. Consequently, it has seen numerous revisions along the way. This idea was germinated from the assignment options for the Illustration Master Class held earlier this year, due to personal reasons I was unable to attend and from there I realized that there was no need to hurry this piece along. In hindsight, that certainly allowed time and space for many small details to mature.

There will be another post later on reviewing some of the process tips I picked up and the journey from blank page to painting, but for now I hope you enjoy the image.

PS: to see the original post about this image and watch it all come together go to Post #1: Steampunk Wizard of Oz
to see the previous post about this image go to Post #3: Dorothy, as she is

In the between times

Somewhat in preparation for the upcoming Dorothy piece, and for the experience of putting paint onto the page again, I've sketched out this SciFi scene. It's all free hand, so it is what it is. 

I've had some recent inspiration reading the July issue of Imagine FX magazine, especially the Justin Gerard article. I really admire his work and was fascinated to glimpse his process, and the way that he utilizes Photoshop to manipulate his image. For my tastes however, I can't get over loving to make a painting. There's a certain thrill in that for me. Sure, as I stare at the blank page I am certain that I don't know what the hell I am doing. That's just a crucible that has to be passed through. I am told that other's have similar feelings, that doesn't make it any easier however. 

This piece is just a fun little thing. A giant tentacled creature, a spaceman wielding a broad sword and protected by his t-shirt and fish bowl helmet! {some of you may be able to spot the artist who's work I've been drinking in lately..}

Dorothy's up next, stay tuned.

All Trolls On Board!

Finely, the Troll image has made it onto the board! The next step will be painting, which can be a hair raising experience. This all took a little extra time due to a family emergency that came up. Now things are in order, and we're getting back on track. It's all part of the process.

The color study proved to be quite useful. It's done at about 25% of the final size. There were a number of smaller issues that either got worked out or became obvious that they will need to be worked out in the final.

As the painting was happening, I noticed a few items that hadn't shown up in the value study. One is that because I dove in for the darks first thing, the Troll's left foot all the sudden became the center of interest because of the strong value jump. Not that it's not a foot worthy of attention, as far as Troll feet go, it's a pretty nice one, bunions and all. But it ain't the center of attention, which I want to be the key hanging from the Troll's hand.

Another 'Key Issue' (oh hardy har har) is that the values are backwards between the key and the background. The key needs to be dark and the background needs to be lighter.

The biggest issue that there is the shadow shape behind the the elf. It meets the cliff that she's standing on, and is really odd. It is too flush and creates an unintentional tangent. That'll have to go.

Over all, the colors are in order, I'll just have to take care that the values are correct. I really want the sense of depth between the foreground and background. If all goes according to plan, the middle ground will be atmosphere.

Well, now, that brings us right 'round to the final painting. Right now I've transfered the drawing on to final board. I like to use a 500 series Strathmore plate finish bristol board. It's nice and thick and holds the watercolors well. It also dries flat which is great later on when it comes time to scanning and such.

PS: there are a whopping 8 posts that chronicle the creation of this piece, to see the next moves check out Post #4: Have a Spare
to see the previous post about this image go to Post #2: Troll Time