Art & Reference

As I was cleaning off my desk I can across an initial sketch from Gulliver's Travels. It was just a mere outline of where I wanted to go with the profile of Gulliver, but all I could see at this stage was Logan, who I used for a model. It got me thinking about how artists use reference material. So be sure to check out the links below. And Happy Birthday Logan!

This...

started as this...

and this...

and came from this shot...

Here are some interesting links to a few artists that I admire, and how they use models, props, and photo reference. Plus, a little sneak peek into their studios. (For Ruth Sanderson click onto her name for an indepth "Artist at Work" page from her website.)

 

Ruth Sanderson 

 

 

Mike Wimmer

 

 

Christopher Bing 

 

Work-In-Progress Part 5

And here's the final! Click on the image to enlarge.


To see all the steps of this work-in-progress click here.
To find out how you can win a signed print of the finished illustration click here.

Work-In-Progress Part 4

Finally the bubbles! They are done with Prismacolor colored pencils on DuraLar Matte . I've never used Prismacolor on Duralar before and thought this piece would be perfect for it. I've seen others use it, and I've played with it some, but wasn't sure how it would work with my "many layers" technique. (Which can easily be 10-20 layers. For the bubbles I probably have 4 or 5.) It was very different for me. There is less detail than I normally do. Which is fine. I was going for a softer focus, blurred motion thing. It sure went a lot quicker! And it gave me the shiny quality of a bubble that I don't think I would have gotten as quickly on paper.

Here's detail of one of the bubbles. I'm doing them on a separate sheet of Duralar, scanning, and adding them to the composition in Photoshop. This way I can play with the exact placement and add a transparent quality. Even though I'm drawing each element in this piece by hand my final "original" will be a digital file.

To see all the steps of this work-in-progress click here.
To find out how you can win a signed print of the finished illustration click here.

Work-In-Progress Part 3

Now I've finished most of the girl. I need to soften the darks underneath her neck a bit more. I faded out the wisps of hair at the ends. I like the white of the shirt. Having it vignette works fine. I don't feel the same about the hand. It's actually drawing more attention to it then I want. It looks kind of awkward. Like I didn't know where to stop, which is true. So I will be including her wrist.

Once I've got the form down, I really like drawing hands. Seems like most people don't, but I find if you look at what's really there, and don't let your mind tell you what to draw it's not so hard. Same thing with ears. Draw what you see.

The other thing that happened, without me realizing it, is my paper angle had shifted. While focusing on the details I lost sight of the original placement. Here I have angled the image properly and will have to extent her hair (hair extensions!) and sleeve down to make the bottom edge horizontal again. I guess you can see where I'm going with the color now.

To see all the steps of this work-in-progress click here.
To find out how you can win a signed print of the finished illustration click here.

Work-In-Progress Part 2

Here I have finished up her hair and face. As I work down her neck, I will decide just how "finished" to go with her shirt. I'm picturing having it vignette. I like the whiteness of the shirt. I'm noticing a dark, hard edge under her neck where I left off. I'll be softening that as I go. I'm considering doing a vignette with her hand too, but will have to see how it looks. Even though I'm working in values of gray here, I know as I work that she has blue eyes and sandy blonde hair.

To see all the steps of this work-in-progress click here.
To find out how you can win a signed print of the finished illustration click here.

Work-In-Progress and a Prize!

Prize!
Each day this week I'll be posting a different stage of this illustration. In celebration of hitting my 10,000th visitor to this blog, I will be giving away a signed print of the finished piece. Since it will be difficult to know exactly who the 10,000th person is, I'm going to open this up as a contest. Just stop by any day this week, check out the W-I-P, and leave a comment. Each comment will count as an entry in the drawing. (There will be no limit to the numbers of times you may enter.) On Monday June 23th I will post the name of the winner. So stop by and have a look. Good luck!

Work-In-Progress Part One
At this point I am using Graphite pencils on Duralar Matte. The overall size is 9x18. I know this piece will be mixed media, I know I will be combing B&W with color to push the "concept" of the piece. I'm undecided on where the two will meet. I'm approaching the girl as a complete B&W drawing that can stand on it's own, but keeping the option of it becoming an underpainting, with some color being added, in the back of my mind.

To see all the steps in this work-in-progress click here.

Mary in Color- Final

Final color drawing of Mary

Note* Just click on the label Mary, or scroll down, to see the entire work-in-progress. The new scanner worked great! I only had to do minor color adjustments. (I did tweak the color slightly after seeing this scan online. )

Mary in Color-Part 3

Detail of Mary.

At this point I've concentrated on finishing up everything on Mary. Next, I'll be making some adjustments to the reflections and moving on to the wood for the window frame. I should be able to post the finish on Monday.

Mary in Color-Part 2

I've finished up the leaves and most of the areas reflecting in the glass. The sepia color worked perfect as a base under the green leaves. I was able to get the depth I wanted, with less layers, by working over a complimentary color. I used ground pastel dust applied with tissues for the blue areas. Everything else is color pencil. While working on the leaves, I was able to take advantage of the view out my studio window. As long as it wasn't too late in the day, the sun hitting the leaves of the lemon tree just outside my window made a great source of reference.

Mary in Color-Part 1

With this illustration of Mary, my work has become true mixed-media. The final underpainting was done in graphite on vellum. (Previous post.) For the stage shown here I scanned the graphite drawing, then worked on the blue areas of glass in Photoshop. I also isolated areas that I wanted to print out in a sepia tone for the underpainting. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time and I felt this piece, with all the warm tones, would be the perfect one to try it on. After printing this out on my art paper I will be layering in pastel and color pencil.

Coming soon...Mary in Color

Now that I have a large-format scanner, I will be able to scan in one piece, hopefully, the final color drawing of Mary. If you don't remember, or didn't see it before, I did a work-in-progress of the B&W underpainting of Mary. Since I'm having some issues with the software on the new scanner and am waiting to hear back from tech support, I'll post the color in stages each day this week. So stay tuned!

Final B&W Underpainting

Drawing Mary Finished!

This turned out to be a great study in the art of the value study! The darkness of the glass, which basically works like the background, really changed how I needed to handle the values of the images within the piece. I ended up putting the glass into a layer in Photoshop so I could easily adjust the value and decide what was working best. When I add the color, I plan on going very warm with her hand and face. I might also darken their value slightly. But for now, this will work great for the under painting.

Drawing Mary Part 4

...and now you know who Mary is! I have one more step to post on this black and white under painting. I'm still working on the value of the background and creating the glass itself. I feel I need to push the reflective quality to distinguish between inside and outside.

Drawing Mary Part 3

Here's the start of the layout for the entire piece.

Drawing Mary Part 2

A little more of the work-in-progress of Mary. I'm doing this in graphite. I plan on using this as an under painting to do the final in colored pencil. At this point I will leave some areas light in value so I can layer light colors on top.

Drawing Mary

A while ago I was having trouble deciding what to draw next. I had a lot of options, some I knew I should be working on now. Another one I didn't need to be working on, but the whole concept was so cool that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had started gathering reference material and had decided that was what I'd draw next. Well, somehow things just change. Opportunities come up. So instead I'm working on a totally different piece. One I had no idea I'd even be doing.

It's funny how when you get to the stage where you're deciding just what the character will look like, you find yourself thinking a lot about this person. And the excitement builds. I'm so glad to be drawing again! I'll post this as a work-in-progress, at least the black and white stage. I'm open to any comments along the way.

First Snow, Step-by-step Part II

And here's the reveal...

I'm going to jump right in and show the color final first. It looks so much more...well, finished than the first steps do. They tend to look a little odd until I get enough layers of color down. This piece is mixed media. I use a combination of color pencil (Prisma Pencil and Derwent) and pastel dust (NuPastel ground into a dust and rubbed into the paper).


Here I’m layering in the color pencil (CP). This is where I feel like the characters start to come to life. This is the "odd looking" stage, but it’s a good way to show how I work. The three kids on the left have the skin tone and mouth and eyes pretty far along. The boy holding the paper snowflake has the base colors, plus some shading started on his skin tone. The two girls on the far right have just the first wash of color. I will end up using around 10-12 layers on the skin.



Moving on to the hair. I want to start getting some surrounding values in now so I can make adjustments to the skin tones. Again, adding very light layers of color. I'm alternating between warm and cool colors for the skin. And getting some dark values in for the hair.


Now I have the faces and hair done. I will keep checking them as I get more surrounding colors down and tweak as needed.


Now I've gotten the shirt colors in. This is still all color pencil. And I'm still going very slowly.


On to the brickwork. This is where I’m using the pastel dust method... and moving a lot faster! The brickwork is pastel dust rubbed into the paper in layers (NuPastel ground into a fine dust and applied with tissue and make-up applicators). Then I lift the mortar areas out with kneaded eraser and will be detailing with CP. (Started the mortar and added some CP on the far right.)


Finished the detail work with color pencil on the bricks. At this point I’m thinking the classroom scene is a little too light. Plus, it seems to need something to tie things all together, so I decide to make some changes to the classroom, darkening, bringing in some warmer brick colors for cohesion, and going a little more realistic, less outlined.


And the final piece! Made the adjustments to the classroom. That helped tie in the brickwork. Finished the window frame and snowflakes.

gail

First Snow, Step-by-step Part I

Here’s a detailed step by step, work in progress for a piece I’m just finishing. I‘ll be showing this in two stages, first the development of the “under painting”, then the application of color.

Initial value study. I start with a tight sketch in graphite. I did a lot of research, checked reference material, and did preliminary sketches and composition before getting to this point.

Revised value study. I make adjustments or changes and work up the values for most areas. At this point I know some values will be darker, but leave them as is for now. I will want to do some areas in color only.

Final print-out. I have decided that the snowflakes will need a blue under painting instead of gray to have a more crystal appearance later. I was worried I would be fighting the gray, so I went into Photoshop and made changes. Then I printed out the final under painting, on my final art paper. (In this case Stonehenge.) This is what I will be adding color to .

Double page spread. And here’s a sketch of the layout of both pages. The text will be centered on the left hand side. For this WIP, I’ll just be showing you the progress of the right hand side.

I'll post the color steps and final artwork in the next day or two.

gail

Time to Wish, Step-by-step sample

First, I start by outlining the main shapes as a road map of where I'm going. Then I start in on the eyes. This is about 7x10. I usually work pretty large, but since this is such a close up point-of-view, I was able to work smaller.


I'm working in graphite on Duralar, which is cool because it's a transparent support. So I can lay it right over my initial sketch without having to transfer. I get a very smooth look, and can blend easily, but it doesn't erase well. I basically do a full B&W drawing.


This is the final value study. I keep this as an original and print out a high resolution copy onto my final art paper (in this case Stonehenge) to then use as a grisaille or under painting. For this one I printed out a slightly lighter version. The color in then added with Prisma pencils.


For her hair, I start by deciding where I'll need lights and darks. So yellows and creams get layered in the highlights, and reds and browns in the shadows. For the skin tone I start with a light wash of cream, then peach. I layer color using a very sharp point and a very light touch. I'm working from left to right here, so you can see the initial colors on the right side.


Finals layers of color are added to the girl and fish. I used complimentary colors to create depth in her hair. Translation: There's lots of indigo blue in the shadows. The skin tone has probably 20 layers of color. Layering alternately between yellows, pinks, violets, and using darker colors with each layer until I get the depth I want. Time to move on to the fishbowl and tabletop, which are done in the same layering technique.

Final illustration.