The Minotaur

"Know thee well, that thou shalt never leave this place alive."

Study no. 2 from Theseus and the Minotaur

8 x 10

Oil on Panel

ImagineFX #56

ImagineFX recently asked me to do a painting of a faun for the cover of Issue #56.

It is out now in Europe and will hit Canada and the USA in about 3 weeks. Along with a short demo on how I did the cover piece above, there are a some great articles by Brian Froud, John Howe and Julie Bell. All of whom are AWESOME. I am really looking forward to getting my own copy.

Portrait of a Monster: Avarice Milpond

11 x 14

Oil on Panel

Milpond Detail

FFA DEATHMATCH: The Results

Oil: 26

Watercolor: 5

Digital: 37

Digital wins and retains the title belt for another season.

Or does it?

It appears that there were a number of issues and "voting irregularities" at the ballot box. An angry mob has been at my door for days and the press is calling for a recount.

The grievances are as follows:

First, some clever lawyers have counted up the votes independently, and have noticed certain "discrepancies" in the final tallies.

The reason for this is perfectly explainable. While the votes were being cast on the blog I also was receiving several votes through emails. Now, I realize that admitting phantom ballots which only I have access to could be considered sketchy but this is why I am in the visual arts and not in politics.

Secondly, many of you pointed out that the sparks and hot spots in the watercolor and digital piece were what pulled you over to digital, and that these effects could have been easily added to the oil piece. This is an excellent point, and I was remiss not to have included them in the oil.

Finally, a number of you wished to invent a 4rth category for digitally affected oils. (These digitally affect oils actually received 5 direct votes, and many more implied votes.) Many people suggested that if this category had existed it would have won out over its watercolor and digital counterpart.

Digitally affected oils is a very interesting idea to me. It seems like an excellent way of utilizing the best of both mediums while at the same time minimizing their respective weaknesses.

I will talk more about this later.

Back to the polls. The general consensus appears to be that

Oils seems to have the benefit of superior texture, beauty and as LuisNCT said, "oils supports a longer observation."

Digital for color, clarity and contrast.

Watercolor for the grit and the mood.

While these each have their merits, I would love to find a synthesis of all of these. And an airship full of all the treasures of ancient egypt. But a method that allows for a synthesis of all of these will do for now.

This brings me back to a digitally modified oil. I like the idea because I am still in love with blending classical methods and with modern technology. And one thing that has afflicted me as I experiment with oils is that people no longer see art in the way that they saw it 300 years ago. We no longer have to travel all the way to Paris to see the Musee D'orsay (which everyone should), or even across town to see fine art, but instead we now generally take in art through the glowing squares of digital media.

So if any of us decides to execute a painting and show it to the world, it is probable that 4 out of the 5 people who see that painting will view it through a monitor. The world is fast becoming predominantly digital.

So does this necessarily mean that images created digitally will have certain advantages over their traditional counterparts as it is disseminated to the culture at large?

Consider this example:

You may recognize it from a previous post.

This is an oil painting of the acrylic and digital painting from December. This time I did not paint directly over a watercolor as in the Doomhammer posts, but rather started on a new masonite panel and copied a new drawing over, and then executed the piece in oil over the course of a few days. It took longer, but I enjoyed the actual creation of it more.

What is frustrating however, is that the original piece has a luster that cannot be communicated by the digital copy here. The charm of the original is that when you look at it and see it from different angles, the various pits and nicks in the paint catch the light and give it a sense of depth. This is because it literally is made up of layers in space, which light passes through and before then bouncing back to your eyes, creating an effect that you cannot get any other way. The glazes give the shadows true depth and the highlights are actually closer to you in space and so appear even brighter. It is a dimensional object with a life to it that cannot be communicated through a digital image. I love this about oil and it seems tragic to lose it through digital copies. Yet, almost everyone who sees it will see it digitally.

But on the other side, the mere ability to display an image digitally is 100% certified actual magic. The technology that allows you to see this on your monitor is light literally being projected into your brain through your eyes. It is the coolest thing since the invention of fire.

This is a debate that has plagued me for some time, but I am certain that there is a synthesis of all of these out there that is worth pursuing. I also think that we are only just now beginning to really explore the possibilities in digital art for merging the classical with the contemporary with technology.

So that said, my next few personal projects that I hope to post up here will be experiments in the digitally affected oils.

Note: The best exploration and debate on the traditional vs. digital art topic that I have come across on the web can be found on David Apatoff's blog, Illustration Art in his January and February 2007 posts. It's worth a read.

FFA DEATHMATCH: Digital vs Watercolor vs Oil

Its Battle Royal and the rules are anything goes. You are the judge.

Which of these do you like the most?

Digital

Watercolor

Oil

Note: Both the traditional pieces are being displayed as they were scanned in, with no digital effects, magic filters, or cheat codes in.

Doomhammer 2010: Digital Final and Problems with Labels

Malacoda

12 x 18

Watercolor & Digital

I label this Watercolor & Digital, but as was mentioned before, the watercolor label is a bit misleading, as I am actually using acrylic inks. Likewise, I feel like labeling this "digital" is also a bit misleading because I have not done any digital painting here.

Adobe Photoshop was originally conceived to be a photo-adjustment tool and not primarily as a digital painting tool. While Photoshop does digital painting very well, (and this years Spectrum Fantastic Arts will show that quite clearly) I find that Painter X feels more suited to digital painting. And over the years it has embraced this difference from Photoshop and developed its software into a quite exceptional tool for building compelling, traditional-looking images digitally. Meanwhile, Adobe adamantly refuses to really invest itself into the digital painting aspects of its software, focusing instead to continue to further develop its photo-adjustment and web-related aspects.

That said, I have begun to prefer playing to Photoshop's strengths as opposed to wrestling against its shortcomings. (For instance, why oh why Adobe do you have such drastically inferior color mixing and blending to Corel?) But what Photoshop does phenomenally well, is what it was originally intended for; and that is photo-manipulation. That said, I no longer feel like I am painting in the brush and canvas sense when I work in Photoshop. If I need to do that Painter X is the tool. But for adjusting a traditional painting to pull up the colors, adjust the contrast and to refine the lights and shadows, nothing out there can beat Photoshop and I love using it for this.

So this is probably about 5 hours of "digital-adjusting" over acrylic inks. But that seems like a far too complicated label for how it was done.

I say all this because I have received some flak from students at a few conventions recently saying that they thought it was watercolor this whole time because of what I was labeling it here on the blog, and that they have been trying to recreate the effects in watercolor and having a terrible time with it. I was accused of running a scam and spearheading an effort to undermine art education world-wide.

So I'd like to be able to be less misleading in my labeling if possible here.

Anyone know a better label for this type of painting that is correct and at the same time not confusing to people unfamiliar with the tools used?

And now, labeling aside, on to the next step:

I will be posting the oil version of this and a comparison of the 3 methods this on thursday. I will be sealing this acrylic and then working oil directly over it. I'm curious which of the three images you think works out the best, and looks the most visually interesting.

"Watercolor", oil or digital?

I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks.

Doomhammer 2010: Watercolor

Man vs. Machine

12 x 18

Acrylic Ink on Bristol

So by watercolor, I actually mean to say Acrylic Ink. I have started using FW Inks for the last few paintings. And if you dilute them, they feel just like watercolor, except that once they are down you can't pry them up. No, not with a thousand golden crow bars. Their only down side that I can discover is that if you apply them straight, with no dilution, they will begin to take on the plastic feel of acrylic after several heavy layers. Other than this I really love them. Perhaps most of all because they preserve the underlaying drawing perfectly.

I am finished with the Acrylic phase, but I am not planning on stopping just yet. I am going to do an experiment:

I am going to do render a digital version of this watercolor, in the same manner as the Hobbit pieces. And then I am also going to take the original watercolor, and after sealing it in a few layers of acrylic polymer, I am going to finish it in oil.

Afterwards I am going to compare the 2 to see which looks superior and post the results here.

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on these and which you find more attractive. (or less hideous, as the case may be)

Doomhammer 2010: Drawing

Man vs. Machine.

I initially drew this image to be about the guy. Specifically about his left foot. The entire composition and action of the image was actually meant to revolve around that foot. But it was fundamentally about this guy leaping down at this assault mech. It was a cry against the tools that have turned into systems too vast to affect any longer and that slowly dehumanize us and demand that we become more and more dependent upon them.

But as I continued to sketch I got drawn in by the machine.

I began by thinking:

Idiot-machine computers... Absurd, plastic-jurassics built by sea monkeys out of bailing wire and kitty litter to be soma for the masses and flimsy replacement-brains... We must rise up, we must smash our television sets, hurl our phones into the sea and scream, "I'm a human being! Not some plastic toy, not just some number. MY LIFE HAS MEANING!"

But soon it changed to:

Hmm... If I was piloting a 15-foot mech, I would want a 30mm chaingun. And all kinds of communications equipment. Lights, computers, fiber-optics. And it would need to have smoke screen launchers, otherwise it would get chewed up by the air support. Yeah, ... and it would need to have a missle launcher. Laser guided... Something manageable though, maybe a javelein launcher to counter armor... And then it would need....Wow, I love the modern era...

And so on. Soon I forgot about the guy, who was the whole reason I started this piece. The audacity of some guy with nothing more than a pair of handguns, leaping out at a giant machine, at THE machine. I really liked that.

But now I began to see the image from the Machine's perspective:

Who is this anarchist leaping down at me?

I defend society.

I hold the line here.

I keep the torch of civilization lit.

I keep the forces of nature at bay,

and this bomb-throwing anarchist is attacking me.

I will crush him.

So now I identify with both of my characters, and it has seemingly become a matter of perspective on who exactly the protagonist is and who exactly the antagonist is.

In the end I found that anarchy was easier to draw. The guy was finished quickly with no problems. I felt like it just worked. Getting the forces of civilization together on the other hand, took a bit more.

I wanted to really make sure that this machine was convincing. That it looked usable, that it had been battle-tested. That it could survive full-scale war in densely urban environments.

Reference of modern technological wonders: Sikorsky Pave Lows, AH-64 Apache Attack helicopters, M1 Abrams Battle Tanks, 30mm Chain Guns.

Doomhammer 2010: Comp

I hate technology.

But not as much as I love it.

I've gotten away from doing action perspectives in recent years, having been so taken by the formal compositional arrangements of the Romantic and Victorian painters. But every now and again I like to go back to my comic book roots and do something really outlandish.

I liked the perspective in my original thumbnail, but something about the arrangement of the bridge pylons kept bothering me. So I decided to try to lay out my scene in Google's free 3d program, Sketchup to try and solve the problem. It only took about an hour to figure out, and after that it was pretty easy to work the scene out and solve the perspective issues.

It seems fitting that I would end up using technology to help me work on my piece about how much I sometimes hate technology.

Doomhammer 2010: Conceptual

Sometimes a person paints to communicate to other people a specific feeling or emotion they have experienced in their lives.

And other times, a person may paint for themselves, to make sense of all the fire in their head. To turn the static upstairs into something they can better understand.

Last week the Mac Pro, the Xbox and the cell phone all died on the same day. I found myself terribly frustrated at my circumstances. Why can't things just work? What idiot monkeys even made these things? Oh! Miserable life- it is better for me to die than to live.

...

Then I remember that people all over the world have lived happy and full lives without the benefit of this exotic technology for a long time and I should do some yoga, calm down and find inner peace.

But I drew this instead:

The Buccaneer

6 x 9

Acrylic Ink on Illustration Board

Fine Literature: Acrylic Final