Gryphon Hunting

So after some time away I am back! (Special thanks to Cory Godbey for holding down the fort for me while I went and got married and explored some sea caves in the Caribbean and was almost nearly kidnapped and eaten by bats.)  

But I am back and I am painting again. And for Christmas Eve this year I'd like to share a few preliminaries for my next painting with you. 

Rough Design GO!

This painting is a private commission and will be done 4'x6' oil on canvas.  I've been having a lot of fun working larger and am looking forward to tackling something this size.  

Working large makes this early design stage really important for me.  Once I blow the drawing up and transfer it to the canvas I start to lose track of things fast.  Proportions start to slide off and perspective warps. 

So I like to nail down a really solid design here.  The little bits like leaves and individual bricks don't matter, but faces and poses and characters relations to one another is extremely important. 

Color Comp GO!

 Figuring out the light source and shadows is really important. Ultimately its story though. And we need to figure out what is the story is here most of all. 

Is it more interesting to have an ultimate-samurai-warrior-navy-seal-who looks like George Washington in a bear suit?  

Or a lost pizza delivery guy? 

Or a band of adventurers of dubious character who are trying for the big one?  

I don't know.  So we spend some time sketching to figure it out. 

Next Week: George Washington in a bear suit and a transfer to a very large canvas.

MORZOG! Lord of Destruction

After a week of shameless self-promotion, I am now offering a post with what is hopefully something more artistically useful...

For those of you who missed it, I had an artist's booth at DragonCon in Atlanta.
For the show this year, I decided I would do a dragon mini-portrait painting.  (Do you get it? A dragon for...Dragon... ?  I know, I know, highly original. I am living right out there on the very edge of the fantasy art world.)

Anyway, so I started sketching. I was thinking, "This guy, he's a huge dragon, and he's really ripping this castle up; just trashing the place. And he is loving it. Yeah, yeah this'll be great."

As I went along I added a lot of smoke and more of the castle falling down around him. It was a lot of fun.

Then I finished the painting.  (It was watercolor and gouache on bristol, by the way.)

But it was missing something.  It was so...

boring.  

I mean, I should have known right?  There is literally no story here.  And I felt like, surely I can do better than this. I'm a high school graduate after all.

There was just nothing of any substance here.  Sure he was real mad.  And that castle was getting real trashed. But there was no context for any of it.  I mean, who cares right?  I don't even know or care whose castle this is. And the audience certainly doesn't know or care.

I got kind of depressed about it.  How am I going to sell this at the show?  Everyone would be whispering at the booth when they didn't know I was spying on them.
"That Gerard is an over-rated hack."
"Yeah he is. I hear he doesn't even really paint anymore. Just talks about how great a painter he is on blogs mostly nowadays."
"Isn't he running some kind of pyramid scheme?"
"I don't know what you are talking about. But say, have you heard of Amway? You look like a smart guy and who would like to make a lot of money working from the comfort of his or her own home..."

Anyway, so I light the curtains on fire, crash my car, stumble off into the night and wake up the next day wearing a pancho, several garbage bags, a tear-stained face and a stray cat.  But with a resolution to not do such a boring painting.

On the flight back home I drew this guy. (Cory Godbey was there. Thanks Cory.) I had realized what I needed. I needed some kind of further context; some kind of irony.

Like most people I read books, and when I do, I find myself imagining myself as the hero, the dude, the gunslinger, the knight. Who is it who is imagining himself as this giant, fire-breathing dragon?  And that is where this little chameleon comes in.

Now the piece makes more sense. It has a story to it.  It wasn't much of an addition, but it works better now.

All in all I was much happier with the final piece and I think it did better at the convention for it. (We sold out the first run!) So I guess the lesson here is don't be afraid to stop and think about the message in your piece before finishing it. Even if you have to do some reworking. Make it tell something good that touches us in some way.

We need more than just a picture of someone who is real angry.

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ALSO: More shameless self-promotion: I am selling the second run of prints on etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/JustinGerard.  

Fox Princess Development Work

The following is some development work for a piece I am working on for Spectrum Live next month. 

Digital Color Comp

This color comp was a little break from other work I had been doing recently which mostly involved dwarves, wizards and other assorted hairy men. I wanted to do something different for a bit. 

Princess study on toned paper

I liked the direction it was heading, but then it just felt too empty. There was not enough narrative interest and my brain started to go numb from boredom. Beauty should be its own excuse to paint, but it is already beautiful outside right now; i needed to add something more.  

I realized it was missing the key element: 

Rat ninjas.

Early digital face gestures 

The ninjas made me feel a lot better about everything. Now there is a good tension along with (hopefully) something beautiful. They add a nice contrast to our princess and now I wanted to know more about her, where she is going, where she has been, and why they want to nab her. What will happen next?

Tight drawing on heavyweight bristol.  

If you are going to be at Spectrum Live in May stop by and say hello to see how the final color version turns out!

Color Comp and Painting for the Boar Rider

In my last post, I went through the layout phase of the boar-rider. Today I have the finished oil painting and for comparison, my initial color comp.

Color Comp in Photoshop

This color comp is a little unusual in that I took it really far, and I did it over top of drawings that were already pretty tight.  This tightness in a color comp can be dangerous because it can make me feel a little locked in and there are less happy accidents and explorations that go on.  It trades the energy of spontaneity for an idiot-proofed coloring stage.

Painting, Oil on Gessoed Panel, 12" x 16" 

As you can see I ended up sticking fairly close to my initial color comp. The only major difference is the heavier glazes that darkened the image overall.

 Detail

Lamp Post Guild Update:

#1 My course has launched!  And the powers that be have given me this:

Use the discount code MUDDY to get 25% off. This is limited to the first 30 takers. Act immediately.   

Check it out at:

http://lpg.pathwright.com/school/catalog/course/the-craft-of-illustration-justin-gerard/

#2 My Llama-herding course has been post-poned indefinitely.  Please do not ask me anymore about it. 

Layout Tricks

Here is a a new piece I am working on and some layout tricks I use when designing a scene:

Thumbnails and a digital comp

At the beginning I just draw really sloppy.  Sloppiness helps you because.... ok, it's not really helpful.  But nothing is perfect at first.  You always have to refine, refine, refine.  

What goes here?

After I have drawn up a comp based on my initial thumbnails I will sometimes draw a background separately from my character.  Sometimes I will draw the background behind the character, which allows me to move the character around a bit after dropping them in.  This can allow you to experiment with different layout options.  In this case I was too cool to experiment with different layout options and left a boar-shaped hole in my scene.

 A dwarf riding a boar

I then draw my character separately.  This is especially helpful in scenes with multiple detail figures.  Here I have done the drawing on toned paper to also start to get a better feel for how I want to treat the lighting.  

Combined layout

Then, using devilish trickery, I combine everything into a workable layout.  Now the layout is ready to be transferred to my final painting surface.  

Next Post: Color Comp

Rembrandt and Dirty Tricks

I will now show you a trick I stole from Rembrandt when he wasn't looking.

I begin with an extremely tight drawing, paying careful attention to the lines and proportions and expression.  I spend months and months of meticulous, precise draftsmanship to achieve the desired design.

I then destroy all of that and apply thick coats of paint like I am on fire. I also make sure to mangle the color. 

I then eat my drawing, fall into a deep depression and curl up under the table and weep while playing recordings of whales and sounds from outer space.  

Finally, I take a lousy digital photo of the painting. If there is one thing I am good at, it is taking lousy digital photos.

This is where Rembrandt's tricks come in.  Rembrandt had a curious habit of stopping a piece that was giving him trouble midway through and doing small studies of his painting to try and fix the issues that were troubling him. By doing this he could light his way forward without further savaging his painting. (see Rembrandt The Painter at Work from University of California Press for more on this.)

In my case here, I began to have doubts about my initial direction with color. I had originally been thinking the orange and green of mid day, but as I got into the painting I felt more and more like I really wanted this to be at night. So instead of possibly wrecking everything and having to rework it later, I took a digital photo, (HA! bet you wish you had one of these Ernst) after which I then applied a quick treatment of color in Photoshop (my native tongue).  This new comp, based on my current painting, is then used to guide me through to the finish and prevent me from losing my mind or trying to eat my own hands. 

"Ent"

 12" x 16"

Oil on Masonite

I hope Rembrandt will forgive me for this little thievery.

PS: For those of you wondering about the goats...  Here, this is what actually happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gvhTur_9co&feature=youtu.be

Dragon Watercolor and Final

Color Comp

Last time I posted a color comp and a few studies for a recent personal piece.  This is how the watercolor turned out:

 12" x 18" Watercolor on Bristol

As you can see, the watercolor is not nearly as intense as the color comp.  This is something I run into a lot when I do really saturated color comps.  I would like to say that it is a "feature" of my work, rather than a deficiency in my own ability, but I never plan for it.  Somewhere along the way I get taken in by the subtleties and then can't quite bring myself to take it further traditionally.  

Which is where the digital comes in:

Digital work over Watercolor 

The digital allows me to get a lot closer to that initial comp, while at the same time leaving the watercolor alone.  But this, like invading Russia before a winter, leads to its own set of problems. For one, things become more tedious.  In the initial color comp, you are pulled along by the joy of exploration.  There are still mysteries and borders never crossed in the world. But with our comp, we have already been there.  Now we are going back with magnifying lenses and little shovels and rock sampling kits.  It takes a different mindset for exploration. And while I usually love it, it's generally not as exciting as the initial comp for me.

I find that often the only time I ever get excited about a piece again, is after it is printed. Only then can I really judge wether a digitally modified piece has been a success or not.  The digital format can tell awful lies. Sometimes you need to get a piece into the light of physical reality before you can really know. 

Until then, like others whose armies got bogged down in Russia in the dead of winter, I am usually left second-guessing myself and wishing the final was a little closer to the original comp.   

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In other news: I have been working on Sketchbook 2012.  Preview next week!

Billy Bones Character Design Process

Pencil Drawing, Watercolor, and then Watercolor and Digital

This was a brief experiment in working more opaquely than I usually do. (Both in the watercolor and in the digital.)  

The digital work is very minimal.  In CS5 it is just one Color Balance layer and a few normal layers. 

Usually I will use hundreds, nay thousands, of multiply and screen layers to finish even a simple character when I am working over a much lighter watercolor.

As for the brushes themselves, they were mostly Photoshop standards and a few pencil brushes of my own.  Nothing fancy since the traditional watercolor does most of the texture work.

I didn't do very well getting bright colors in the original watercolor.  But if I ever need to paint something so that it looks like a complete mess, then I am pretty confident that I will knock it out of the park. 

The Silmarillion: Luthien

The Silmarillion: Glorfindel and the Balrog

The Silmarillion: Glaurung

To see more from the Silmarillion project, check out the rest of the show at Gallery Nucleus.

The Silmarillion: Fingon and Gothmog

"Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, high-captain of Angband, was come; and he drove a dark wedge between the Elvenhosts, surrounding King Fingon, and thrusting Turgon and Hurin aside towards the Fen of Serech. Then he turned upon Fingon. That was a grim meeting. At last Fingon stood with his guard dead about him..."

-From The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

More imagery from the The Silmarillion show on display at Gallery Nucleus.

Show Opening: The Silmarillion

On April 14, I will be having a show at Gallery Nucleus. The show is based around J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.

This piece is from the fall of Glorfindel, which is a precursor to a similar event that takes place in the Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf confronts the Balrog in Moria. 

Not much is written about this particular scene in the Silmarillion.  In fact, it lasts only 2 lines, which end in: "...And both fell to ruin in the abyss."  But it is one of the things I love a great deal about Tolkien, that he creates such a rich world, that even really brief passages are loaded with possibilities.

The show will feature watercolor paintings as well as studies and developmental drawings. I will be posting more of these in the weeks to come.  For more information on it check out the post on Gallery Nucleus's website.