MicroVisions No 1

For those of you who missed last Wednesday's post, I am going to be entering a single 5x7 oil painting into this year's MicroVision's show. This piece is going to be done without my usual digital trickery. It will be a completely original, unmonkeyed-with painting. 

I will be a Jedi with no mind powers, a samurai with no sword, a man without any pants on. 

(Some of you may say that pants, swords and mind powers are all overrated, but still, I feel a bit naked without my tricks.)

I NEED YOUR VOTES

Now, this series is going to be a little different than past series because I would like to ask everyone's feedback to decide which of these I should send in. The main question is, which of these paintings will do the best at an auction?
My deadline is next Tuesday, the 24th. So, with that in mind I am going to break with tradition and post these pieces very quickly, with their development stages all at once. I am going to post a new one each day. Then I am going to post the final 4 Monday morning at 9 AM. If you can make it, swing by here Monday and cast your vote!

MicroVisions No. 1

Cory Godbey Show

Cory Godbey has announced that he is having an art exhibition April 3rd. Prepare to have your socks rocked off.  If you are in Greenville, SC around thereabouts you should stop in and check it out.  

I have been able to go over and spy on him as he has been working on the show a few times in the past few weeks and it is looking really great. (He did most of the show with his arm in a sling. See example here.) 

He has posted a lot of progress on the paintings on his Lightnightrains blog as well as the back stories to these images.  One of my favorite aspects of Cory's work is his really wonderful sense of color theory. These thumbnail color comps for the show are really splendid: 

This show will be rather unique in that he will be displaying a lot of this developmental material at the show itself. It should be a really great insight into how he develops his images. I'm really looking forward to it.

Misty Mountain Walk

I took a hike up through the Smoky Mountains on the AT a little while back and I am just now getting around to posting these photos. It turned out to be the absolute best Smoky Mountain weather. Hazy, ominous and cold, like a Caspar David Friedrich painting. There is nothing quite like it for clearing your head.  

An Invitation to Microvisions at the Society of Illustrators and a Confession

I'm honored to have been asked to submit to this year's Microvisions show at the Society of Illustrators. MicroVisions is a charity auction for the Society's student scholarship fund that is put on by Dan Dos Santos and Irene Gallo. It goes up April 3rd and will be on display for a month before the pieces are set up for auction on ebay.

This year there are some amazing artists that will be contributing. Among them is Gregory Manchess, whom I must credit with the bulk of my painting eduction.

Confession:
When I was in college I stole a Step by Step Graphics guide that featured an amazingly helpful demonstration by Manchess. I picked it off the shelf, leafed through it, and immediately, I recognized its immense, earth-shattering value. Then, without breathing, without altering a single a muscle, I looked left and then right, like a crocodile, invisible at the water's surface. The magazine snapped into my jacket and I fled out of the library, ducked past the hostess and ran off into the night, clutching this prize to my chest. 

I know that I am a terrible person. I know that I have stolen from future generations so that I could possess this treasure as my own, so that I could hide its dark secrets away inside my brain, swirling through tiny solar systems and packed into cabinets full of old memories. It is a tragedy, I know.

But now, thanks to this Microvisions show, I feel like I can make amends for my past wrongdoing. I feel like I finally can make penance for this terrible act of barbarism against education. Yes, that's right, I am hoping that by contributing to a charity auction that furthers young artist's eductions I will be able to amend this wickedness from my youth.

However, (and this may baffle theologians) if I had it all to do again I have no doubt in my mind that I would immediately steal this Step by Step guide on Manchess again. (moreover, I would also take that other one on Peter DeSeve that Cory got away with.) 

I know it's wrong, but this magazine is a reliquary. It's mine! It is precious to me. Yes, precious... It's mine, it came to me!

Anyway, all that to say I am terrified to be up on display next to such amazing illustrators. (See the final terrifying list here) I wouldn't miss it for the world. My plan is to paint three of these 5 x 7 pieces before April. I am painting three, first as a safeguard against turning in something lousy, and second as a chance to experiment and learn more about oils. So in the coming weeks I will be posting a few of these and hopefully sharing some findings with everyone.

Until then, I want to send my sincerest apologies to every student out there whom I have wronged by stealing that Step by Step guide on Gregory Manchess back in college. To the innocent youth whose chances at a future I have dashed in my greed.  Although I refuse to give it back, (and will take it with me to the grave) I believe I can offer you something just as good and that no serious student of illustration should be without:

THIS LINK TO AWESOMENESS
It is a link to the demo that Gregory Manchess did with Massive Black. It details in real-time most of what was in that Step by Step guide and it is every bit as valuable. This video is worth its weight in gold. 

Greg Manchess is an illustration ninja. He has uncanny powers.

The Hobbit: Time to Head Back to the Shire

I'd like to take a post to thank everyone for all the great feedback you have contributed and for following along as I have posted the progress of the Hobbit project! It has been a lot of fun and it has turned out to be everything I had hoped it would be. I feel like I have learned a great deal in working through all these and from all of the great feedback. I really appreciate it.

I had originally intended to do just 6 images from the story. Now that I have finished the original 6 and am here in the series, I find that there are still 2 others that I would still need to take a shot at.  (sketches coming soon)

These Hobbit pieces have taken a long time to finish, mainly because of how difficult it has proven to try and fit them in between commissions and other client work. Recently, this has gotten worse because client work has picked up pretty heavily (a great problem to have, considering the plummeting economic situation.) And so I am going to have to put the remaining pieces on hold for a little while until things cool down again. I plan to do these 2 last images from the Hobbit sometime before Del Toro and Jackson start throwing their bombs into my head. But it may take me a little while...

In the meantime, I have posted a Hobbit gallery of this work on the Justingerard.com website that will hopefully be a little easier to navigate through than the blog. Thanks again for following along and for all the great feedback.  

The Battle of Five Armies: Final

The Battle of Five Armies: Beorne

Other than Gandalf, Beorne has always been the most memorable character from the Hobbit for me. Yes, even more than Biblo. Sadly, as a child my understanding of the Hobbit was essentially that long ago, a wizard and a number of short people went looking for gold and got mixed up in some bad business with a dragon. 

Bilbo actually got lost in the dwarves for me until I reread the story later on in life. And while the host of characters in the story were vague from when I first read it long ago, the big hairy guy who got so angry that he turned into a giant bear and killed everyone was pretty unforgettable for me. It blew my childhood mind. Later on I would read it again, and by then having read some history and read about berserkers, I found that his character made more sense and became even more fascinating.

It was exciting for me that, in the darkest moment of the Battle of Five Armies, when it seemed that the goblins were sure to be victorious, Beorne shows up in a rage and destroys everything. But that he then rescues the body of Thorin and carries him back to safety before returning to destroy the goblin hosts is absolutely wonderful.
Tolkien said that he loved the moment in the battle when Biblo cries, "The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!" But for me, it has always been this moment, where Beorne crushes the goblins in a fury and rescues Thorin.

The Battle of Five Armies: Digital Steps

This week, I have begun working on the digital stage of the Battle of Five Armies. I was not as pleased with the overall results of the watercolor painting and have begun using the digital tools more than I had originally intended. 

"Blaggard! Gerard, you foul villain! You said we wouldn't be digital this time!"

Now, I know that earlier I may have implied that this piece might be rendered more traditional than digital, and so some of you may cry foul at seeing the amount of digital painting that I fear may make its way into the final piece. While I think that some of you will appreciate the results, others of you may not find them as quite as charming...

"I WANT HIS HEAD!"

And some of you will think, "it's all a sham," and "why couldn't he just leave well enough alone and stop monkeying with everything on the computer." 

This new method that I used on this piece has offered some really interesting accidents, but overall I think I prefer the method that I have used on the previous Hobbit pieces.

To elaborate on the difference of the 2 methods, the previous illustrations utilized the watercolor stage only as an underpainting, which meant that the pieces would be incomplete without the digital stage where I would do the final rendering. I found this offered greater control and played to the strengths of both mediums, while minimizing their weaknesses. The other method, which I used here, was a straightforward attempt to render the entire piece as a watercolor, avoiding any digital work altogether. 

Unfortunately, this did not work out. In the end I couldn't help myself and after rendering the whole piece to final, I found that I had to use a lot of the digital tools to fix problems in the painting anyway. The digital tools offer so much versatility and save so much time (for me) that it seems almost absurd handicap to try and work without them. At this point, it may be too late for me to go back to working in watercolor alone. I would value your feedback on the matter.

"Gibblegrok Gnok!... 

Throw us down his computer, so that we may eat it!"  

The Battle of Five Armies: Process, Day 4

The Battle of Five Armies: Process, Day 3

I don't usually work in this method of object by object execution.  But I am taking a lot of notes from some other artists to try and learn something new on this one. I prefer to work in broader washes of color and tone and then work backwards from larger swaths of paint to smaller. 

The Hobbit: Reference Hunting and the Mad Dwarf Workshop

Earlier this week I went through the exhausting process of hunting down reference for this piece. (By that I mean that I sat on my couch and watched Kingdom of Heaven on mute and ate a very rare steak.) The people who worked on the costumes and weapons for Kingdom of Heaven literally could have invaded China with the manpower and resources they devoted to trying to keep everything historical and real. I really admire Ridley Scott's fantastic attention to detail in this film and I hope to learn from his example. 

One great source that I am using for reference on this piece is from a few really amazing swordsmiths I know who also have a penchant for detail. For the Lord of the Rings fans out there who are not familiar with them, let me introduce you to The Mad Dwarf Workshop.  Comprised mainly of the phenomenal talent of Andy Davis and David DelaGardelle, the Workshop hand-makes epic-inspired weapons with a phenomenal attention to detail. They also recreate historic examples from Viking and Celtic history. I really love to see artists really dedicated to their craft in this way.  

Their talent with Viking and Dwarvish weapons is really inspiring. I asked David if they ever made any goblin weapons, I was really curious what real swordsmiths might come up with if they were to put their efforts into the crooked weapons the goblins might have used.  He sent me the following image from a performance of the Hobbit that the Workshop was involved with. 

You can check out more of their work on their flickr gallery.

the Battle of Five Armies: Process, Day 2