Steam-punk Wizard of Oz

One of the projects for the Illustration Master Class in Amherst MA was to create a cover image for a steam-punk retelling of the classic "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."

Conceptually this combination of two worlds is ripe with possibilities. It is an area that I hope to mine for a few more pieces. The first piece is the cover image, and these are my preliminary works for that.

The scene I've chosen for the cover is from the beginning of the book, when Dorothy and Toto are in the cyclone over Oz. In the book, there's a moment when Toto falls into the hole where the cyclone cellar was, Dorothy rushes over to save him. Only to find that he's buoyed by the air pressure of the cyclone. I chose this scene because it allowed me to show that she was falling into another reality. Around her will be the gray and drab world of home and below will be the radiant colorful land of Oz. I hope to heighten the effect with color as well, choosing desaturated grays and muted tones for the house, and vibrant golden greens for Oz.

Here is the compositional drawing. I am working on developing angles, trying to set the stage so that there is the possibility that Dorothy might fall into the hole. She should be right on the edge. There may be further refinements in this drawing later, simple things like lifting her heel up on her left foot, maybe pointing that right foot. Or, maybe I'll try switching the feet around so that the right foot is forward and the left is back. Clearly she'll need a top too. Those changes will be made after getting a model to pose for me and taking some photo reference. This will also help to add to the overall steam-punk style too.

Here we have the initial value pattern. Again, to heighten that contrast between the drab world that she's leaving and the luminous world of Oz, I've tried to keep the house in 50% gray, and kept Oz and Dorothy in 20% gray. A simple triangle or zig-zag pattern really. (I guess staring at those Hokusai prints flows out here and there.)

Now, we come around to the more finished value study. While I will make adjustments to bits and pieces of the drawing, this will be the template for the final piece. The area's that will receive some immediate attention will be Dorothy's pose, the whirling cyclone clouds (they just aren't whipping around enough for me yet,) and defining the Emerald city down there on the ground (right now it's some geometric shapes.) The Yellow Brick Road should also be a bit more clear after the color, right now it's the white line that leads to the Emerald City.

Stay tuned for more developments. I may be releasing some of my sketchbook sketches going forward too, just for fun. Please feel free to leave comments, I like to hear what other's think!

PS: to see the next post about this image go to Post #2: Dusting off Dorothy

Portraiture in Watercolor

This most recent piece was actually set in motion about 6 months ago, in an auction to raise money for a local school, I donated a portraiture drawing session. What originally started off being a 1 hour drawing session has morphed into this watercolor painting.

The girl is about 5 years old and her parents were the top bidders who won the portrait. The way that the painting came about is that we arranged for me to come to the school and to do some life drawing on the spot. But little children often suffer from Antsy-pants, soooo, I brought my camera with me. What I ended up with was two nice drawings that gave good gesture and sense of her proportions, and 2 or 3 pictures that were worth anything. Feeling good about that, I came home to the studio and set to work. Obviously photo's give one the ability to really get the details of the face. I really tried hard to leave things as fresh as possible, but my early inclination was to turn her into an 80 year old woman by painting into every nook and cranny of her face! Of course children's faces are soft and round, corners and lines have yet to happen, and so my intention was to create a sense that the colors and values were just ever so lightly floated there.

Technically, I felt that I found a good stride with this painting. I enjoy small crosshatching marks, and with watercolor one is able to build a rich color and texture due to the transparent quality of the paints. My heros for this kind of mark making would have to be George Seurat, his drawings are positively sculptural, and Andrew Wyeth (who could not just LOVE the way that he created his final paintings.) This kind of mark making shows up in some of my pen and ink work as well. For me it's a great way to develop tone. This was really the first time that I employed this method in terms of creating a whole painting with it.

Another note that I was conscious of during the creation of this piece was edges. There is a big effort to display hard edges, and to balance that with soft edges. The soft blending along the cheek and nose area are of particular joy for me. The outer edge is another place where I wanted to show some softness, as well as the rough brush strokes on the paper. For this I looked to John J. Muth for inspiration, I find that his blends and backgrounds are rich with wet into wet blends, and sensitivity to color and edges. I have to admit it was a brave moment putting those moves on there. At that moment, I had the head and shirt done, and most of the hair. So, I had to take a deep breath and launch into that, and well, the results are there on the page.

Finally, speaking of the page, the paper itself is a handmade piece of watercolor paper from Twin Rocker in Illinois. I was gifted a sample pack of papers from them, which I adore. One thing that I didn't account for was their sizing (the glue in the paper), and the way that it accepted water. In other pieces I've painted on Strathmore board, and Arches Hot Press. This Twin Rocker paper really should have been soaked then stretched rather than painted directly onto, consequently the watercolor didn't soak into the paper very quickly. However the back side to that is that the color also lifts very easily; making corrections was a breeze. The rough nature of the paper and the natural surface were positively a joy to work on.

I hope I have more opportunities to do portraiture, it was really fun. If I am being really honest, I admire this piece for the things that it is to me. So many times, I can create something and find that in the end, I am still not quite satisfied with the results. Here, I am.

Comic Book Finals

Ok, fun only begins to describe this project. Originally I was contacted by a really great company, Shinteki, who do games and puzzles for corporations as well as private events. Defiantly check out their website, it's amazing! So their latest challenge involved creating several faux comic book covers, that's where I come in.

The puzzle will be running until June 6th, and I will post the answer after it's all over and done with. I just couldn't resist posting the images though, because I enjoyed making them so much!

Process wise, I decided that for the sake of efficiency and authenticity I decided to delve into Photoshop to make these. They each had a very similar genesis, starting with sketches/ thumbnails, up to final drawing in some cases, then on to inking, scanning, and photoshop. Very similar to how I assume many comics are made these days.

I wanted these to have a somewhat classic comic look to them, with a dash of pulp, spiced with a little digital pizzaz. To those ends, I worked out some of the stressed features on the images; dog-eared corners, worn spine creases, and faded and stressed edges.

An interesting side effect of streamlining the creative process was I found some unusual color choices, that I wouldn't have made had I done these traditionally. I guess there can be a certain fearless quality to laying down color in the computer, simply because it is so impermanent.

Even though I was using photoshop, I did make an effort to to use too many filters, and to use the effects in photoshop judiciously. Although I may have gotten carried away here and there, c'est la vie.

So, go ahead, these are the clues. I don't know if there was a prompting question on the actual puzzle, but all the information is in the images (or else it wouldn't have worked!) Give it a shot, and send me your solutions, for each correct solution I will give you a free drawing! Deadline's June 6th.

Comic Book Gold

This newest project is turning out to be quite a lot of fun. Recently I was approached by a company (who's name will be revealed at a later post) to do some faux comic book covers. They had a series of seven specific characters in mind from the start and have given me a rough outline of what needs to be in each image. Otherwise, they've give me a lot of leeway to create the images in whatever way seems to be the most effective.

The images will be used as clues in a puzzle. I will be explaining the reasoning behind each image after the event has run. We wouldn't want some adventurous googler to get an advantage. Here's a sneak peak anyway. (P.S. I am not sure why the colors are so funky, the finals will have a different pallet to them.)

Final Figure Drawing Friday

Well, all good things must come to an end, and what an end it was. My post is two weeks after the fact, but the final drawing session was another one that amazed me. For what ever reason, there are some days when we feel like we couldn't write our name well, and then there's the other days. The days when all is well in the universe and we are in harmony with that. This is how I felt about this past session. 

Maybe I'd eaten well that day, maybe my mind was relaxed, maybe the planets were just lined up just so, but whatever the reason I felt confident in drawing. Also, the drawings were remarkably free of the usual mental strain that I put on them. Maybe simply allowing them to be what they are was enough to release that critic that resides in the dark corners of my mind.

These first drawings are just that, the first drawings. Almost immediately I liked the model, enjoyed her poses and figure, especially her nose. Weird right? Anyway, this first page is obviously very loose, 1 minute drawings.

These next two drawings are moving into the 5 and 10 minute range. Somewhere in here the pencil started to live a life of it's own. Really, there's sometimes no other language but poetry to describe the feeling when drawing is happening well. That's not to say drawing is happening "accurately," or "precisely" these are, I think, the ideas that need to be removed from ones mind. 

It's an important fact to remember that we are not cameras, that we are not creating photographs, but drawings. An impression of not only that which is before us, but as in the case of master works, that ineffable feeling that a drawing can allude to or call for from with in us.

I feel that the beginnings of that are what is going on when an artist is surprised by their work, or something "falls off the brush," this it is the case when the drawing is leading the way.

These next two pictures are an interesting set. I think it is of note to talk about how I created these. Basically, I am drawing and painting on a semi flat board. The foot of a drawing horse set on end. I mention this only because after looking at these pictures, the dis-proportion starts to make some sense.

The first pic is how the drawing looked to me while I was working on it. Notice that there is perspective, evidenced by the convergence of the the edges of the paper at the top of the image. All seems to be well or well enough with the proportions.

Yet.... when I look straight on to the piece... whoa! She's got a mondo head. This one had drawing creep from the start too. Notice the extra paper that's attached to the top. Drawing/ painting with watercolor is a little like being a train conductor, once it's moving forward, there ain't no reverse! This pose was about an hour, and probably 30 minutes of that time was spent wrangling the proportions around. Clearly the drawing won that match.

 

Finally we come to the last piece. There was some extra time at the end of the session that the model sat for about 20 minutes. In a flurry I decided that the earlier drawings utilized the pencil well, and that I would do the more traditional approach of pencil first watercolor second. (Off the top of my head, I do believe all the other watercolors were done just with a brush, in other words, no under-drawing.) So, quickly, lightly I worked around the figure for about 7 minutes, then for the remainder I painted in a semi-planer way. With a short time to go, I charged the brush with the Windsor Blue (red shade) and popped in the background. There wasn't any logical reason at the time, or at least none that I was consciously aware of. 

I was stunned at my own audacity at that moment. I felt it was a bold risk, and one that paid off in the end. Heck, you decide.

Troll, Digital Corrections

Well, here's the final, final, final... finally.

This one has been cropped to the final size and scanned in, rather than the snapshot from before. In an endeavor to keep on growing I've also taken this into Photoshop for some minor adjustments. Can you spot them before you read on?

After living with the painting for a little while, it became time to scan it and get digital. Those who may know my previous work, will know that I am a bit of a "Ned Ludite," and have pushed off the computer for some time.

Having read others' posts and listened to some arguments regarding the computer and it's place in the illustration process. I think that the argument that really sold me on it was the fact that in today's world, illustrations are ultimately digital at some point. That being the case, why then give away what control you as the illustrator have in that process. When one scans their own piece, you are able to modulate the colors (and hope that the recipients computer monitor is calibrated something similar to yours!,) and make any final adjustments before sending it off, i.e. Digital Corrections.

For those of you at home who've been playing along and tried to spot the changes, I'll point some out for you. Firstly, and most importantly, there is the elf's face. I was really disatisfied with how the painting turned out, and wanted her to be more ingaged with the troll. So, I've changed her eye as well as tried to build a bit more structure under her face. This being the first real attempt, I am not totally convinced just yet. It's a good start, but there is certainly room to grow.

Other changes are way more subtle. I've tried to accent the top of the Troll's head to pop it away from the cave wall. Of course there was the clean up from the muliple scans, edges needed to be made invisible, and there were actually some cat hairs that mysteriously appeared (he said as he casts a sideways glance at the peacefully sleeping cat.) That's about it.

Troll painting... Done.

PS: there are a whopping 8 posts that chronicle the creation of this piece, to see the first moves check out Post #1: Fantasy Series
to see the previous post about this image go to Post #7: Troll, The End

Figure Drawing Friday

A few weeks of figure drawing have gone by without any posts of the drawings. I don't know if any of these will throw the Art world on it's ear, but the function of art was definitely served here. That is Art as a verb. The following drawings are, to me, more about my experience at that time. Read what you will.

I have to say that the past few weeks have been pretty intense, and of course it shows up in the drawings. These are a far cry from sensitive light watercolors. I brought out the charcoal, just to keep the drawings skills sharp, and look for my elusive 'black'. 

This is a series of 5 minute warm-ups on one page. I guess sometimes good drawings happen when we're not looking, or is it especially when we are looking? The main drawing here really benefits from the previous work on the page. I like the economy of line here.

I really started to feel for the model here. She was really putting her energies into a 'Spring' theme, light music, little garlands, etc., and I was charging into a more physical, agitated state. Here she was the water giver. If you know your Major Arcana, she reminded me of the Star card. 

This was one of the final drawings from that session. You can see that the actual drawing moved on the page quite a bit through corrections and wiping out. I've totally departed from the vibrant, hopeful, spring theme of the session, and moved into a Frances Bacon state of mind.

This session and the next session I will post soon, are more to me like going to the gym and working out on a punching bag more than a ontological search for ethereal beauty. I guess some days are like that.