Been a while since I’ve done a process post, so here are the steps for a job done two weeks ago for art director Todd Bates at Creative Loafing Tampa. The cover story was a fairly straightforward one: the Republican National Convention is coming to Tampa Bay next year, and the city is already looking ahead to it.

In total, I submitted six sketches for consideration. The one above and the chosen sketch below were my favorites of the bunch.

The chosen rough sketch

First step: thumbnail sketches. Todd sent me a jpeg of the cover template, and so I did my thumbnails digitally to ensure I was working within the exact confines of their layout. The reverse-L live area created by their logo proved to be tricky to work with, as I wasn’t sure how comfortable the client would be with me partially obscuring it. Todd asked for an elephant lumbering powerfully towards the viewer, and my additional concept was to color the elephant to look like a living version of the RNC logo.

With the concept approved, I gather up photo reference and get to work on a tight drawing that will serve as the foundation for the painting. I like to do my drawings in drafts on tracing paper, lately using Prismacolor pencils. The orange drawing is a loose, rough first pass and the blue drawing is the more finished drawing. This second draft gets scanned at 400 dpi and then I’m ready to work on the digital painting.

Work in progress. Here you can get a glimpse of a typical layers setup for my paintings, which is pretty straightforward. The legs and ear have been rendered, but the rough block-in can be seen on the head and trunk of the elephant.

The final illustration, painted in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and completed in about a day and a half. Thanks again to Todd Bates for a fun gig!

If any readers of this blog will be attending this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, then please come find me over at the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles booth, #2616! I’ll be doing an oil painting demo on Thursday at 2pm and a digital painting demo on Saturday at 2pm right at the SILA booth, located across the aisle from the Dark Horse pavilion.

In honor of the Captain America movie opening during the convention, I thought I’d do Cap characters for the two demos. Above is my demo sketch for Cap’s nemesis, the Red Skull. Come by and watch me turn this drawing into a full-color rendered piece. Hope to see you there!

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

Okay, so it wasn’t really right out in front like that, I staged it for the photo. It was tucked in the upper right corner with all the other finance magazines. But still, it was there! I remember Greg Spalenka telling me back when I was a student that for an illustrator, the finished piece isn’t the completed painting, but rather the actual published version of the job.

I’ve been experimenting with digital painting for a while now, but this was my first published job that was painted digitally, using Corel Painter and Photoshop. It’s a technique I’ll keep in mind as a viable option for quick turnaround deadlines like this one, and seeing it in print reminded me of a few things I need to remember for the future: it’s so easy to get soft edges using Painter that I need to crisp up a few edges to make sure the whole image isn’t too diffuse, and I also need to watch out that my values don’t get too dark, because what looks vivid on an LCD monitor is going to dull down quite a bit with the dot gain that happens with offset printing. All that said, I was fairly pleased with how it turned out, and the nice thing about working digitally is that you don’t have to worry about any color distortions being introduced during scanning, as so often happens with my traditionally-painted illustrations. Overall, this was probably about the most accurate reproduction I’ve seen yet for my work.

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.

garykelley2

I don’t intend to turn this blog into a tribute to other artists, but when you find the good stuff, you gotta share it. Just came across this video interview with my good friend and mentor, Gary Kelley (you can find samples of his work at his rep’s site here). It’s a fascinating look at his work and has some great footage of him working on everything from a monoprint to a large mural project for the University of Iowa. The only frustrating part is that it’s in Real Player, so you may need to download their free player in order to be able to watch it. When will the world wake up and just use Quicktime exclusively?

I first met Gary as a student at the Illustration Academy back in ’97, and studied under him again at the Academy for the next two consecutive summers. I had the opportunity to study under him yet once more when he was a visiting instructor for my graduate degree illustration program at Syracuse (now transplanted to the University of Hartford). Julie and I get to see Gary and his wonderful wife Linda every so often, as they love Santa Monica and visit frequently, and we’ve even managed to get Gary up to Westmont a couple of times to do demos for our students. One of those pastel demos hangs in my office and is one of my most prized possessions.

Gary is hands-down the best teacher I’ve ever had, and I feel fortunate to be able to call him a friend. He’s funny, witty, well-read, and extremely well-versed in art history—I’ve discovered many artists upon his recommendations. And as you can tell from the image above, he’s one heck of an artist. I’ve always maintained that Gary is one of the best “designers” around—his compositional sense is without peer. He’s been a powerful influence on my work.