It was a pleasure doing this pro-bono job for my buddy & colleague John Blondell at Westmont College. When John asked me if I would be interested in doing the poster for a series of six short plays by Samuel Beckett, I had only one condition: as long as it could be a portrait of Beckett, I was in. He’s got one of those fascinating faces, with an intense stare, and I had a great time drawing and painting him.

This piece was a departure for me media-wise: acrylic and pencil on watercolor illustration board. It was also done at a scale I would have never thought would be comfortable for me, around 18×24. Much to my surprise, this one went quickly and easily.

The thumbnail sketch concept for the poster, drawn with ballpoint pen on a Post-It note

The tight sketch, drawn with pencil on vellum

The full original art, sans text

The finished printed posters

My wife’s birthday fell on the day after Mother’s Day this year, so I knew I had to come up with a nice gift to celebrate both days, and on a budget. So when you tell an artist that they’re not allowed to spend any money on you, you pretty much know you’re going to end up with a painting for a gift. I’ve been wanting to paint our daughter ever since she was born, so this seemed the perfect time to do so.

The gift ended up late because the week I started this, we ended up being evacuated due to a wildfire that came within blocks of our home. Being the procrastinator that I am, this was of course the week before Mother’s Day itself, so I was already pushing it to begin with. I finally finished the piece and my ever-patient wife thankfully found it to be worth the wait. Now that it’s been varnished and photographed, I can finally share it with all of you!

Above is the initial thumbnail sketch on a Post-It, where I came up with the basic idea, followed by the final tight sketch. You may notice that while I drew angel wings on the initial sketch, I wisely realized that would perhaps be a bit much and dropped them from the final.

Above is the final tight sketch. I drew the lines and circles in Photoshop to make sure they were nice and perfectly geometric, printed the sketch out in reverse on a laser printer, and then placed the print face down on the canvas and went over the back of it with a Chartpak blender marker. This transfers the toner down onto the panel, leaving me with the sketch facing the right side up, and more importantly, saving me the effort of tracing over my lines as I usually do when I coat the back of my sketches with charcoal. I’ll continue to tinker with this particular method of transferring my sketches, as the toner transfers on very dark, and tends to come up a bit through some of the thinner layers of paint.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice a few differences between the sketch and the final, most notably the hair. When I first started this piece, I was already working from reference that was a couple of months old. By the time I got around to finishing the piece, Natalie’s hair had grown significantly longer as well as becoming lighter. They really do grow up fast.

The issue containing this illustration has now seen print, so I can now show it in its entirety, as well as show the process steps. Above is the final illustration as it saw print.

The article was simply about reversals in the NASDAQ market. With that basic concept in mind, I set about trying to figure out an effective way of showing it.

My initial thumbnail sketch. I was trying to show two businessmen trading money, each giving it away as they received it. I knew I would eventually come up with a better composition for this, but this at least established the concept that the AD chose.

A detail from my photo reference. I was the model for everything in the illustration, with my ever-patient wife assisting me with the photography.

The final tight sketch. Since the deadline was very tight at this point, I decided this would be another one to attempt to paint digitally.

My next step was to set the sketch layer to Multiply, which renders the whites transparent, and paint in flats using a hard-edged brush on a layer below. Once my basic values and colors were decided upon, then I could go in and begin to render.

At this stage, the figure has been rendered using Photoshop’s charcoal brush, and rays have been added on a layer underneath, with a radial layer mask added to make the rays gradually fade out.

While I felt reasonably good that the figure didn’t look expressly “digital,” the background most definitely did and needed some texture to humanize it. I dropped in a scan of old textured cardboard, desaturated it to convert it to gray tones, and then set it to Soft Light at 62% opacity. I then added some shadow gradients in the four corners. Once this was done, it was a matter of dropping in the arrow graphic (meant to reinforce the idea of the flow of money coming in and going out that is referenced in the article), and a little glazing on the flesh tones to warm them up just a bit. The file was created at 400 dpi so I have the flexibility to print it larger if needed.

And the very last step is seeing it in print! I’ve been pleased to find that my digitally-painted pieces are reproducing fairly accurately in terms of color, definitely closer then when I send scans of traditionally-painted work.

I was asked by friend and colleague Mitchell Thomas at Westmont College if I would create the poster for their next production, a play written by one of our own college students, Diana Small. Muéveme, Muévete (Move Me, Move You) is written in the tradition of Latin-American magical realism, and concerns a young woman and her connection to a peach tree that has served as a kind of protector for her family for ages. I chose to fuse the girl with the tree, in order to hint at the magical aspects of the play, as well as to speak of the dependence between the tree and the family for mutual survival. The play is intended as a gift to the Latino community of Santa Barbara, and as such will have performances in both Spanish and English.

The initial rough thumbnail sketch

The model for the piece. Thanks Cara!

Sketch with underpainting wash applied in Photoshop

For this image, due to a tight deadline crunch, I was looking for new ways to speed up my usual work process. I decided to print my final sketch (with a wash of midtone color applied via Photoshop) onto Epson Watercolor Paper via my trusty Epson 4000, seal the print with 2 coats of acrylic matte medium, and paint directly on top. This was definitely a significant timesaver, as it allowed me to skip the tortuous process of transferring the sketch down to final board, but it had its drawbacks as well. Despite the matte medium, the surface still absorbed more of the paint than I liked. I managed to get it to work for me, but doubt that I’ll return to that methodology in the future. Which is a regret, because I very much liked the fact that I didn’t have to bother with transferring my sketch, which always loses some of the vitality of the original drawing. So if anyone has any solutions I’m overlooking here, let me know in the comments.

A detail of the final image

The assignment was a poster image for Westmont College, for their upcoming Christmas Festival concert. I was given the sub-theme of “Lo How a Rose” and told to go for it. In many ways, this was a dream assignment—long deadline (which actually got me into trouble because like most illustrators, I’m a dedicated procrastinator), excellent reproduction, creative freedom, and surprisingly, a decent budget.

So, first thing is to do lots and lots of loose thumbnail sketches in any number of sketchbooks that I have lying around. This is the basic concept that I settled on, just a simply depiction of an angel contemplating a rose.

My initial rough sketch, drawn with ballpoint in a sketchbook

Next, it’s time for reference photography. While I follow my sketch, I also try to “sketch with the camera” and try out all kinds of poses. Often times the model will do something I didn’t think of that I end up liking and incorporating into the final piece. Thanks to my sister Kristin for posing.

Once the photography is done, it’s time to create a tight sketch. I really obsessed over this stage, doing five drafts before I was finally happy enough with the drawing to proceed.

The final tight sketch, rendered in graphite on tracing paper

Because I had the luxury of a long deadline, I decided to do a nice finished color comp for this piece. Usually these will be in gouache in my sketchbook, but on this one I decided to gesso a piece of illustration board and do a couple of 8×10 studies in oil. I had a lot of fun painting up the color comps, and below is the one I used as the basis for the final painting. Keep in mind that these process shots are all showing the glare from my drawing table work lights, so they’re not the best shots in the world.

The color comp—oil on gessoed illustration board

I print out a sketch sized to the board I want to work on, which in this case was an 18×24 gessoed masonite panel. I own an Epson 4000 that I got for this express purpose, as it can print out on roll paper. I coat the back of the printout with charcoal powder, and trace it down on the board to transfer it. I hate this stage, but it seems to be a necessary evil. Once the drawing is down, I go over the lines lightly using a Verithin pencil, which makes the linework permanent enough to withstand the next step, which is to put an acrylic wash midtone over the entire piece (hat tip to Kenton Nelson for teaching me the Verithin trick).

Now it’s time to just get in there and paint. I like to start with my dark shadows first, and gradually build up thicker layers of midtones all the way to highlights. Something I picked up from a painting workshop with Steve Huston was to make the color a bit intense in the early layers and then gray it down as you layer on top. Click on any of the detail shots to see a larger close-up.

The above state is as far as I got before having to take a break for a day to catch up on other work, and at that point I simply forgot to document any further stages. But you get the idea. For those who want the truly obsessive details, I like to use M. Graham brand oils, with Walnut Alkyd Medium to keep the paint flowing, speed the drying time, and add a little gloss.

Once the painting was completed, I took it down to Artscans, whom I HIGHLY recommend. They know their stuff. They use a proprietary scanner and software to capture images, and the result was one of the most finely detailed scans of art that I’ve ever laid eyes on. But don’t take my word for it—see for yourself below. Click on the detail shots to see how they really caught every nuance of my brushstrokes. Thanks to Caroline and the whole crew at Artscans!

The final painting

Hope you enjoyed the long post, and I promise I’m going to try and be more frequent about updating this blog. Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments section and I’ll be sure to answer.

Working on a fun illustration project right now, and I’m carefully documenting all kinds of stages of it for a nice long process post. But as it’s still in process, I’ll just post a teaser for right now, this is a detail of the final sketch. The deadline is upon me, so I’ll be back in a week with a full post on what the project is and how it all came together.

Since friend and illustrator Scott Bakal called me out in the comments section of my last post over the fact that I’m not exactly doing sketches per se in my Dialogue sketchbook, I figured I’d show some quick sketch drawings from my Monday figure drawing class. All poses are 2-3 minutes, charcoal on smooth newsprint.

For those just tuning in, Dialogue is a pretentiously-titled moleskine sketchbook that Peter and I are passing back and forth, each of us doing a two-page spread painting that is informed by the one preceding it. I started with a self-portrait, and Pete responded with a painting of himself taking a walk. I decided to riff off of his theme by showing someone else out for a walk. Your move, Cusey.

Big ups to Johnny over at Drawn! (one of my favorite websites for finding out about cool new artists), for featuring me a few days ago. I found out about it right as I was leaving on vacation, so I’ve only just now been able to get on the internet and check my blog and website stats. There was a HUGE increase in hits, so I appreciate the Drawn! love and hope some of you new visitors will continue to come by every now and then.