Brainstorming for Spectrum

In a few short weeks, I will be entering a few of my paintings into Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art for their 22nd annual competition. Winners are chosen by a panel of judges who rotate each year. A winning entry gets into their book, which is fantastic advertisement for the artist.

Last year's book, Spectrum 21

I will be entering a few of my paintings that I had done throughout the year for other projects, but in addition to those, I wanted to paint a new illustration specifically for Spectrum. I thought this would be a great opportunity to share my process, so you can follow me as I create this new piece from start to finish!

Spectrum is a collection of fantastical art. In short, scifi, fantasy & everything in between. I needed to choose what I wanted to paint. The freedom of a personal project can be overwhelming, and I needed to narrow it down. I began by brainstorming, writing a word association list for "Fantasy."

You can see I worked through many tropes & cliches until I started to get to something more specific, and hopefully more unique. I wrote down those cliches anyway, as to not inhibit my train of thought. After the flow of words stopped, I reread the list, circling whatever stood out to me. From there I started to see a pattern taking shape. I knew I wanted to paint a lone hero/explorer, in some sort of lost world (jungle, ancient city, etc.)

The first thing I thought of was Tarzan, so I did a quick google search & brushed up on some of the original Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the answer sort of fell in my lap. The second book, The Return of Tarzan, featured a lone hero/explorer, Tarzan, and a lost city, Opar, in a jungle! Perfect!

Opar features a dangerous and lustful priestess, La, who attempts to sacrifice Tarzan & Jane to her sun god. The city is populated by human women and "frightful men", ape-like beast-men, who speak the ancient language of the Apes that Tarzan learned as a boy.

The book was first published in 1913, which meant it is now public domain and I was able to find a free ebook online. Burroughs is a wonderful author & the Tarzan books great fun to read, I tore through the novel and found what I needed in a few passages later in the book.

At this point I decided I was going to kill two birds with one stone. In addition to painting an illustration for Spectrum, I also want this piece to function as a mock book cover in my portfolio for future clients.

So now I have a story, a subject, and a format. I have a few thoughts at once, so I write them down first, and then I start sketching thumbnails. These are each about an inch tall.

The first three thumbnails are Tarzan standing in the trees, looking at Opar in the distance. I'm messing with angles and silhouettes here, attempting to frame the image with the foreground elements. In the other thumbnails, I'm attempting to capture an image I have in my head of Tarzan carrying Jane away from Opar, with La lurking in the shadows of the temple.

I work quickly with my thumbnails, scribbling with my pencil. Sometimes I start with line, other times I'm blocking in shapes right away. I don't spend more than a couple minutes on each.

Here you can see several stages of thumbnails on the same sheet, from quick lines to more tightly thought out value sketches. I am trying out a lot of ideas here, playing with a bow, with a movie poster style effect, etc. I'm looking at Frank Frazetta's Conan work and N.C. Wyeth's Robin Hood & Tarzan work for influence here.

Thumbnails are a great way to experiment, try out an idea visually, and see if it works. If it doesn't read as a thumbnail, it won't read any bigger either. I continue to explore the silhouette idea, but only because it reads so clearly. But for some reason, I'm really drawn to the idea of Tarzan holding Jane, with La in the temple behind them. See the top right thumbnail.
This stage, while liberating, can be very frustrating if you feel like you are starting to go in circles, which I started to feel halfway through this page. I couldn't escape that one scene, even though it didn't read as strongly as the silhouettes.

I knew the idea was good, but my composition that was weak. So I attempted to redesign it several times, playing with proportions, shapes, and where the horizon is, but nothing was making an interesting composition.

On the bottom left thumbnail you can see I began with an "S" curve, a common compositional device. I wanted the eye to move in that shape across the page, starting on the top left with a small figure, La, moving around the center to Tarzan and Jane's heads on the right, back across the bottom left to where the title might go at the bottom. To get the eye to follow that movement, I needed to control my values.

The thumbnail boxed in red is the composition I chose. I used the light of La's dress which can be shaped however I need, to lead into a spot of light on the steps of the temple, which lead to the brights on Tarzan & Jane's faces, across the light of their bodies to a spot of light on Jane's leg. I incorporate some foreground foliage to frame the image and really push the S shape.

The next step is to draw this composition again (or a few more times) around twice this size, to really flesh out the emotions, body language, and smaller details in the composition. Afterwards, I'll take reference photos with models that I can then do a final drawing based on. I'll then transfer that drawing to board and proceed to paint! I'll be covering these next steps in two more posts to chronicle my first entry into Spectrum. Wish me luck!

Studying Composition from Old Masters

Around Thanksgiving, I began a series of warmup exercises with the purpose of improving my compositions. Illustrators almost always start a painting with small, rough thumbnail sketches to quickly think through the composition of a piece. These can range from the simplest abstract lines, to basic value sketches of big shapes. 

I decided to take a tried & true concept of learning, the master study, and simplify it. In a formal master study, a student paints a copy of an old master's painting, trying to discern their color palette, painting techniques, and composition. But in order to focus on just composition, I began to do abstract linear thumbnails & value thumbnails as studies of compositions I admire. With this simple exercise, after only a few days I saw results creeping into my own work.

Every aspect of composition can be broken down into a value problem. Framing, movement, balance, all of it, comes down to values. N.C. Wyeth is one of my favorite illustrators, and his compositions are always simple and powerful.

N.C. Wyeth, Robin Hood

N.C. Wyeth

On the left, Wyeth shifts the value of the sky & water as needed to keep the viewer's attention on the main ship. The values in the clouds also shift as needed to serve as a frame for the ships. The angles of the sails & light areas of the main cloud forms create a dynamic movement.

In the Robin Hood illustration, the figures are only small silhouettes, but read crystal clear because they are surrounded by the brightest brights of the entire painting. The bright shape exists as a sort of kidney bean, and accentuate the curved diagonal separating the foreground and background. This piece also is a great example of how throwing the top and bottom of a piece in shadow serves to frame the main event, and keeps our eyes from escaping the piece.

N.C. Wyeth

Here Wyeth gives us a complex scene, but by throwing most of it into mid tone and shadow, leaving the focal point as a silhouette surrounded by a bright cloud, we know exactly where to look. What struck me about this painting was the dynamic movements throughout his cloud formations. I tackled these movements in my abstract linear sketches. We can see "S" curves stacked on "S" curves, perpendicular angles, and large ellipses.

N.C. Wyeth, Robin Hood

Again we see Wyeth employing some similar techniques. He frames his focal point by making it the brightest area of the illustration, while keeping our eyes within the image with dark & middle values along the sides of the piece. In this particular instance, his "frame" creates a wonderful "S" curve in the negative space that he left bright.

N.C. Wyeth, "The Opium Smoker"

Our last Wyeth for today, and a powerful image. Wyeth is doing a few things here. He is creating a triangle with his light values against a mid/dark background, the lights being the figure on the left, the dragon decor on the wall, and the head & hand of the figure on the right. Of course, the dragon is subdued compared to our main characters. Wyeth is also letting the smoker's suit disappear into the shadow, simplifying the shapes and allowing the bright skin tone really stand out here. A very simple, strong composition.

Edward Robert Hughes

Here is a painting by Edward Robert Hughes which features a single figure as the main event. Here, body language is the key to creating emotion and movement. Hughes is leaving his lights for only the skin on the woman's arm and face, with everything else in the painting significantly darker (save for an accent along the horizon). He is framing her face with her garments, and the shape it creates is mimicked by the trees in the background. The far trees and our figure are creating dynamic angles, as denoted by the red lines in my abstract, and the piece is stabilized by the level horizon and tree closest to us. Hughes is using the tree on the right as a framing device to keep us within the painting, as well as darkening the bottom third of the piece. It is similar to some of what we saw with N.C. Wyeth.

William Adolphe Bouguereau

My favorite figure painter of all time has to be Bouguereau. He is doing something similar to Hughes here, by framing his figure with her garments. He creates a striking contrast by keeping her such a light element and her drapery the darkest element of the painting. The movement of her drapery echoes and accentuates the twists of her torso, and the throw of her hip. She creates an "S" curve, and it looks more organic thanks to the perpendicular angles formed by the large shapes of the drapery.
Bouguereau also throws in the stones on the bottom left, which stop us from exiting the image, and also serves as a dark accent to her garments. The negative space between the stone and the figure create yet another "S" curve to mimic the figure. He is also creating movement in the background, by dividing it into quarters that bounce between light and dark.

Maxfield Parrish

Here we have an example by Maxfield Parrish. Another simple image, yet a wonderful composition that we can learn a lot from. The shape of the tree is an extension of the shape of the figure, creating an arch that cuts the painting in half. The rest of the piece is a play of perpendicular angles echoing the various angles within the figure, which we can see in the rocks she's seated on as well as in the mountains behind her. The value composition is a fairly simple one here and can be stated in three pieces from left to right. Dark (tree & rocks), light (figure), and middle values (background mountains).

Norman Rockwell

Finally, another one of my favorites, Norman Rockwell. From this richly detailed and busy painting, Rockwell teaches us the art of balance. When I first broke the piece down into values, it quickly became convoluted. But by looking at the abstract shapes, we see that Rockwell is creating an ellipse with the heads of his figures, surrounded by straight angles that keep our attention within the ellipse. He is balancing the composition with a few select brights; the white of the police officer's shirt, the highlight on the soldier's arm, and the two windows in the back. These key brights allow our eye to bounce around within a fairly stable shape (see the red shape over my value thumbnail). Furthermore, beyond values, Rockwell has arranged all his figures to be looking at the soldier, and he has also painted the flag in his hands as the highest chroma color in the entire piece. Both of these elements establish a clear focal point in an otherwise busy piece.

“Composition is the mortar of the wall, as drawing and color are its rocks of defense. Without it the stones are of little value, and are but separate integrals having no unity.” -Henry Rankin Poore

The quote above is from Henry Rankin Poore in Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures. This is one of the better books on composition out there, and luckily it's in public domain. You can grab a free PDF copy here. However, composition is a complex concept, and a "good" composition can take on many forms. Of course, there are certain optical tendencies that are universal, different techniques to direct a viewer to a painting's focal point, and considerations for balance and movement. James Gurney's books, Imaginative Realism and Color & Light, are authorities on composition (among all things illustration), and are must haves for any artist's library. But in the end, composition often comes down to a personal preference, so study & practice from compositions that you enjoy!

The best way to learn composition, is to just do it, just as the best way to improve draftsmanship is to simply draw. Studying the compositions of our forebears is like drawing from life, there is simple no substitute for the knowledge you gain from that experience.