A Rather Sinister Individual

I am currently in the middle of a brawl with a troop of apes disguised as TSA agents at the airport. They are after my beard.

So today's post is going to be a quickie...

The above is a tiny 4"x4"oil painting on linen I finished recently WHICH DIDN'T KILL ME.  

This is exciting because many of my previous adventures in oil have ended badly. I would paint, my body would have some terrible reaction to the materials, I would grow fangs, claws and unsightly hair, and then try to eat my neighbors.  

After the restraining order I did a lot of research into studio safety. From this I found a number of solutions THAT ACTUALLY WORKED and allowed me to finish a painting in oil without any of the usual side effects. So next week, after I have escaped the clutches of these baboons with all their wands and plastic gloves, I plan to share this with everyone. 

The Forest Troll: Digital Trickery

I am working in Adobe Photoshop CS5 for the digital final for this painting. (You don't always need the latest and greatest in software, but CS5 is amazingly stable by comparison to CS4 or CS3, both of which would crash regularly based on alignment of certain stars and lunar cycles. And on Tuesdays. And really just any time that they felt like crashing.)

  

Up until the halfway point I work in only multiply layers.  I am using these layers very much like thin transparent watercolor or acrylic washes.  

Digital Work In Progress: Midway Point

After the midway point I will switch into other layer modes, like screen and color dodge for highlighting. And some normal layers for opaque details. 

Final Digital 

You will notice that I added a few elements to the image at this stage, like the extra foreground foliage. These were decisions made after letting the painting sit for a few days and then coming back to it with a fresh pair of eyes.  It can be a risky business to always be going back and correcting an image.  Sometimes it is better to just leave your first ideas alone and move on to work on new projects. (You hear me Lucas?)  I will only do it if I feel I absolutely have to.   In this case, I had lost some of the forest-ness of the scene, and wanted to recapture a bit of it.

Troll Detail

Dwarf Detail

Thank you everyone for all the support and really helpful feedback!  You guys are awesome.

March 30th Workshop

This year I will be teaching at TLC Workshop's 2012 Professional Art Series. 

These workshops are located in the Seattle area, and focus on one-on-one interaction and instruction from a working professional artist.  See all the details at TLCWorkshops.blogspot.com. 

The illustration workshops offered this year are:

Beyond Reference: How to Imbue your Characters with Character with Justin Gerard, Fri-Sun, March 30-April 1. $375.

Idealized Realism and the Human Figure with Terese Nielsen, Fri-Sun, August 24-26. $500.

Self-Promotion: the Portfolio and Beyond with Jon Schindehette (Senior Creative Director at Wizards of the Coast. Blog here), Sat-Sun, Sept 15-16. $300.

Planning Great Images, From the Ground Up with Greg Manchess, Fri-Sun, Nov 9-11. $500.

To inquire about availability, ask questions or to reserve your spot, contact Tara Chang:TLCWorkshops1@gmail.com

The Forest Troll Part VII: Watercolor

13" x 21" 

Watercolor and Pencil on Heavyweight Bristol

Next: Digital Trickery

The Forest Troll Part VI: Tight Pencil Drawing

I am much happier with the composition this time around. Starting over from scratch generally involves an entire day of suicidal behavior and all-time-lows.  So it's always a good feeling to know that it was the right choice.
The trees do what I had hoped that they would do and the image is a lot more comfortable to look at now.

(Well... unless giant trolls with clubs make you uncomfortable. In which case there may be no hope for the image.)

Next: Watercolor

The Forest Troll Part V: Bungling It

Sometimes, in spite of all the precautions and idiot-proofing, I still manage to bungle things.

 In this case, I got halfway through the initial washes of the watercolor before realizing that I had screwed up the composition and it was really hurting the image. Since I wasn't under any particular deadline for the piece and I hadn't gone that far yet, I decided to start over. Under other circumstances I would have tried to fix it by painting in the corrections or reworking it digitally. Since I had the time though, I decided to repaint it.

Here is why it was bad:

THE TRIANGLE OF DEATH

A triangle of death is an area of the image where the composition allows the viewer to get trapped and leaves part of the image as dead space. In this case, the foreground branches at the top left lead down to the troll's face, which then points down to the boars and the helmet. This would be ok except that the sharp verticals in the background trees pull us back up into those branches, creating a self-contained compositional form that splits the image, leaving the dwarves, who are a main narrative element, as a separate dead space.

The strong red arrow in the middle shows the line where the image gets split. This can still work if you have text that goes in your image, or if this image were to be intended for a wrap-around book cover. Since my goal was a stand alone poster image, this compositional dead space was a failure.

How to solve this?
I didn't want to monkey with the characters, because I really like their arrangement and relation to one another. So I decided to employ a classical solution that has been used by artists for centuries: When in doubt, add more trees. 

Reworked Composition

 By placing this organic tree shape over the boars I am able to break the Triangle of Death and keep the composition moving, while at the same time adding more interest to the image itself.

Next: Tight Pencil Drawing

The Forest Troll Part IV: Color Comp and Drawing

The color comp is done as fast as possible. I don't want to get bogged down in the details here. This is all about the mood and atmosphere.

Color Comp

The main goals of the color comp are:

#1 Nail down the lighting.
(Sources, direction, strength. etc.)

#2 Nail down the value relations.
For instance, the tree behind the dwarves: is it more attractive as darker than the background or lighter? By exploring and solving this in the color comp I will be more confident when I tackle it in the final image.

 #3 Nail down the color theory.
This image will be confined to a warmer spectrum, one that you might find at midday in an old growth forest with patches of sunlight breaking through the canopy. I wanted to make most of the tones fall in a rather narrow color gamut, and then choose a bright color outside this gamut as an accent. In this case, it was mostly golds and browns accented with a bright green.
In the color comp I just want to make sure this theme will work for my image. I go through this on almost all of my pieces because my brain is incapable of solving value/color mixtures on the fly, so I need a cheat sheet. The color comp helps me idiot-proof my image so I don't bungle it in the final.

Tight Drawing

The Forest Troll Part III: Troll Studies

As some of you may remember I did several studies for our Forest Troll's bloodhound boars in a previous post.  Check them out here.

Next: Color Comp and Composite Drawing

The Forest Troll Part II: Dwarf Studies

Next: Troll Studies

The Forest Troll Part I: Thumbnails

One of the great things about the worlds that Tolkien creates are the half-mentioned places and events that are going on in the background of Middle Earth. By hinting at them and leaving them a bit mysterious, Tolkien gives the reader a chance to use their imagination and place themselves inside the world and explore it for themselves.

 Many of us, when we read stories like these, like to imagine ourselves there in the background as clever, dangerous warriors, or as powerful wizards and the like. We don't ever just place ourselves in there as hapless serfs who get ordered around a lot and eventually eaten. Or as complete bunglers for that matter.

 Which led me to an idea for a painting that I plan to share with you over the next few weeks as it develops. Here's an initial thumbnail:

 Makes sense right?

 Let me explain: A few months ago, I went mountain biking with a few of my friends. At the beginning of the trail ride my friend Asher listed off the names of the trails we would be on which would lead to which, and I sort of heard, but mostly didn't. We started riding and things were going well until I got myself into a spectacular wreck that involved several roots, 2 large trees, a stream and possibly a rabid squirrel.
 I had been in the rear of our caravan, and my friends hadn't witnessed my mishap (thankfully). While I was glad to be spared the embarrassment of having them see me wipe-out and then ask me if I needed training wheels or a squirrel-proof suit, I was dismayed to realize that I had lost them completely. I put myself back together and kept biking in hopes of eventually catching up with them, but it was no good. They were all experienced master Jedi mountain bikers and I was but a padawan learner. After a while I came to a fork in the trail, but the trail names were unfamiliar. Was it Firetower or Pipsissewa? I know he had said it was one of these trails, but I couldn't remember which one. So I took one at random and got myself randomly lost. 

It occurred to me, while I was out there bewildered and lost, that if this were war, I would probably have just gotten us all killed. Had I gone to war, I would probably have fought very hard, and then died very fast because of something really stupid, like mishearing the coordinates on a map, and getting myself caught by friendly mortar fire.

This image was a result of that. If I were wandering around in the background of Tolkien's world, I'd probably have been a dwarf. Not a legendary warrior, or a powerful orc chieftain or a wizard, but A dwarf whose helmet hadn't been tied quite right, and who got himself and his band into a lot of trouble.

 When I got back from the trail ride, I scribbled this thumbnail down:

This is often what my thumbnails look like, with little notes pointing out important narrative details.

 Over the next few weeks I will be posting up the progress and development of the rest of the piece.  And we'll see if our dwarf can make it out of the mess he has gotten himself into.
Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!

Let's Draw Warthogs

I have an upcoming illustration project that has warthogs in it. Before I begin, I am taking some time to familiarize myself a little better with these ugdorable creatures.

"I wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror, and I ask myself; just how did you get so good looking?"

I often do this before starting on a drawing that has animals or costumes I am unfamiliar with. (The drawings, not wondering how I got so good looking.) I like to do studies from life when I can, or photos when no models are available. 

As I draw from my reference, I try to commit everything I can to memory.  Most of this will happen automatically as you draw. Your brain beings to see certain things as correct and others as incorrect.  

Studies from photos

After you have worked from the photo it is amazing how much information your memory retains. Details you didn't realize you were taking in come back to you as you draw.  

From Memory

The next drawings, done from memory with no reference around, will lack the sharpness and realism of the ones worked from the reference, but they will have a little more personality to them and I usually find them more interesting. 

 Once I feel like I have a decent understanding of my subject I start on the final drawings for my illustration. 

 Warthog Tracker #1

Warthog Tracker #2 

Later on, when I am into the final illustration I will bring out my reference again to fact-check, and make sure I haven't put an extra leg in there somewhere.  My brain is good, but it has been known to trip over itself from time to time.  

Most of this method of handling reference with illustration I blatantly stole from the Disney artists.  On some films, like the Lion King, they would have workshops where they would bring in an actual lion and do life drawings of it before they began work on the film.  It was a very good way of both keeping the personality in the character, while at the same time making sure it is anatomically coherent and believable. 

To see this process clearly outlined and executed, check out Ian McCaig's Visual Storytelling Tutorial from the Gnomon Workshop. It is a really excellent demonstration and has been very influential for me in my approach to using reference.

This article is a re-post from an article on MuddyColors.blogspot.com.  To check out the original article and comments, click here.