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

A sneak peek of a detail of an illustration finished this week for my favorite Scottish art director, Christine Morrison over at Stocks & Commodities Magazine. I’ll post the full illustration and process story once the issue sees print. And yes, I served as my own model for this one.

So, I’m pretty late to the game here with an Andrew Wyeth tribute, but I’ve been thinking about his work constantly since his passing on January 16th. I had literally been talking to my students about his work just hours before he died.

I didn’t care for Andrew Wyeth’s work at first. His subject matter was uninteresting to me, his palette was uncomfortably earthy, his brushwork seemed obsessively tight, and he suffered from the inevitable comparison to his father, N.C. Wyeth, who has long been an artistic hero of mine.

And then during my college years, there was a retrospective of his paintings held at the Portland Museum of Art, and it drew enough media attention that my good friend Jen Hess and I decided to go check it out. It was at this exhibition that I realized what my problem with Andrew Wyeth’s work had really been: I simply had never seen it in person. Wyeth painted relatively large—large enough that reproductions in even the most generously-sized art books simply cannot do justice to the work. The obsessively rendered tempera brushstrokes can only be appreciated when seen up close, because it’s when you see the work in person that you see the wild, expressive watercolor underpainting that lies beneath those tightly controlled brushstrokes. It was a revelation to me. A year or two later, I bought the A.W. biography by Richard Meryman, and was absolutely fascinated by the ferocious art spirit of Wyeth. There’s a memorable passage in the book where someone (can’t remember if it’s the biographer or someone else) recounts being in the studio with Andrew while he was painting, and his artistic process on that particular piece involved literally kicking and chasing a watercolor around on the floor, yelling at it the whole time and attacking the piece with fury as he worked. Not the process one would suspect from looking at reproductions of his paintings. But when you see them in person, you can see that chaos and fury peeking through the refined outer layers.

I prefer his watercolors to his finished temperas—they’re far looser and more expressive. Still, one has to respect the patience of his tempera technique and the kind of dedication it takes to meticulously create these paintings. This dedication to his craft was further proven by the creation of the infamous Helga series—in order to keep the creation of the works a secret, he upped his output from roughly four finished paintings a year to an average of seventeen in order to produce the more than 200 pieces in the series. There’s been much suspicion (and understandably so) as to whether he had an affair with his model, but if he did, he certainly was quick and efficient about it, because the fact remains that he more than tripled his normal output of work!

Wyeth has been dumped on by art critics for so long that it’s a knee-jerk reaction to many in the field. The most laughable has to be Hilton Kramer, who audaciously claimed that Wyeth “can’t paint.” It doesn’t bother me that some critics don’t like his work—taste is too subjective to ever be forced on someone, and it’s fine if someone doesn’t care for his particular brand of realism. But it rankles me when Wyeth isn’t shown proper respect for his prodigious, haunting body of work. Whether you are drawn to it or not, there is no question that he was an artist of tremendous originality, ability and power. For a great write-up on Wyeth, check out Charley Parker’s excellent Lines and Colors blog, where he posts an excellent tribute. Charley and I have essentially the same take, but he’s far more eloquent in his defense of Wyeth’s legacy.

Rest in peace, Mr. Wyeth. Thank you for the work.

For me, my favorite part of an illustration commission is going to the local Borders or Barnes & Noble and seeing the work on the stands. There’s something very gratifying about knowing that your work is communicating on a mass level. It occurred to me today on the way to Westmont that my cover for Stocks & Commodities Magazine was likely out now, so I stopped by Barnes & Noble, and there it was:

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.

Can’t show the full illustration since it won’t print for another two months, but here’s a detail of a job I turned around on a tight deadline last week for Christine Morrison over at Stocks and Commodities Magazine. Always a pleasure to work with Christine. Since the deadline for this one was unusually short, there wasn’t going to be enough time for me to paint it traditionally and get it photographed, so I opted to paint this one digitally using Corel Painter. I still have a ways to go with learning how to digitally paint, but this one felt like a step in a positive direction.

Just a quick post to give a big thumbs-up review to the new J.C. Leyendecker book. Good biographical information, well-edited, and most importantly, filled with top-notch reproductions of Leyendecker’s work. I’ve been waiting for a book like this for a long time, and it’s gratifying to see that they got it right. Go buy it right now at your local bookstore, or order through your online retailer of choice. Worth every penny.

Now if only we could get similar full-color monographs on Dean Cornwell (yes, I have the Broder-authored book, but there’s too few images in color in that one), Harvey Dunn, and Mead Schaeffer, I’d be content. And while I’m dreaming, books on Al Parker, Coby Whitmore, John Gannam, and Austin Briggs would be nice too. Note to any aspiring illustrators reading this blog: if any of the names I just mentioned are foreign to you, well, you’ve got some homework to do. These are some of the greats and you’ll love their work if you seek it out.

Ok, so things have finally calmed down enough for me to finally post again. Time to make good on my promise and do a nice thorough process post.

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.

Man, I am pathetic at keeping this blog updated with regularity. I promise to do better from here on out.

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.

Can’t believe I let two weeks slip by without posting. I blame the Olympics. Thanks for destroying my work output for a solid week, Michael Phelps.

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.