The Fine Art of Illustration

The Imprisoned, oil on canvas board, 20x16"
Photographed by Katharine Manning at www.katmanning.com

Here is the figure painting from last week, finished up into a complete painting. I had a lot of fun on this one, and I've submitted it to Spectrum! Wish me luck!

The piece started off as a two day figure painting, and the most important part (the figure) was finished in those two days, around 12 to 14 hours. The study just so happened to come out well enough that I decided to take it further, and after doing a very brief digital sketch that I shared last week, I dove right into the painting, improvising as I painted, a very different process than how I typically approach my illustrations.

The figure painting already invoked some sort of feeling and setting to my eyes, so I knew the direction I wanted to go in and went for it. The last thing that really tied it all together was painting the gate behind the marble column. Every element in the background serves a compositional purpose; the dark drapery was meant to break up the large space of the back wall and help frame the left column, and the rug was added to break up the space of the floor and reinforce the perspective of the room. Finally, I was left with this cooler, lighter value against the right column to help bring it forward in space, but I didn't know what this shape would become. I began to add thin lines to suggest planks of wood on a door, but when my hand slipped and the line became thicker, I started to see a prison gate. I painted the rest of it in, and it worked!

It really helped give the suggestion of a story & added some mystery. I saw the figure as fairly regal, perhaps an angry, bitter or ruthless young ruler. By why would he be nude? What function would that serve in the story? As I painted the background, I thought of it as a Throne room or hall as first, but with the addition of the prison gate who knows? The curtain is pulled back as if to reveal the gate. Is the gate leading out into a prison, and the curtain revealing what's in there that we can't see? Or are we as the viewers inside the prison with our main character, nude and on display? Perhaps our character is a prized gladiator or slave, kept in a special chamber by his Dominus. Or maybe I've watched too much Spartacus. I'll leave it up to you to decide!

I really love painting and drawing studies from life, because the practice is it's own reward. There is no concern for a finished product that is meant for a portfolio or a client, but rather you are painting for the sake of painting and improving. It takes a lot of pressure off! In my illustrations, I spend anywhere from 40 to 60 hours per painting, and that's after thumbnailing, sketching roughs, taking reference photos, and doing a tight pencil drawing. It was rejuvenating to break away from that for a couple of weeks and just paint for the practice. And I got a portfolio piece out of one of them to boot!

While this painting has become an illustration, I'll shortly be adding a new section to my website to incorporate my other figure paintings, plein air paintings, and studies that otherwise wouldn't have a place in my illustration portfolio. Since I've shared my figure paintings on the previous two posts, today I'm sharing a few of my plein air paintings from July & August 2014 as a preview.

Shrine at Old Westbury Gardens, oil on board, 8x10"

Christopher Morley Park, oil on board, 8x10"

Child's Cabin at Old Westbury, oil on board, 8x8"

Castle Gould, watercolor, around 4x2"

Lake George, oil on board, 11x6.5"

Sands Point Bluffs, oil on board, 10x8"

Spectrum, Figure Painting Part 2, and Happy Accidents

At the end of last week's post I mentioned that I would be continuing my series about entering Spectrum today. After my initial Spectrum post about research, brainstorming, and thumbnailing, I continued to work on the Tarzan project. I sketched the thumbnail larger a few times, but something didn't feel quite right. I went ahead to take reference photos regardless, thinking I might be able to work out some of the kinks afterward. Take it from me, you can't!

There is a good lesson to be learned here; a crystal clear idea and preliminary drawing is key in order to create a successful piece. My reference photos came out well, but didn't match up exactly with my original thumbnail. That's no fault of my reference, but rather because my initial thumbnail didn't resolve a few basic issues, such as where the horizon line is. Chris Oatley calls rushing through stages of art, "The Starting Buzz."

After taking my reference photos and trying to work out a composition in Photoshop, I was really struggling to get it to look like my original thumbnail. I was unhappy with some of the body language and facial expressions, and it wasn't looking like a Tarzan book cover to me.

The end result; I've decided to shelve the project for now. No, it won't make it in time for Spectrum, but rushing into a painting and doing it anyway wouldn't do my portfolio any favors, or help my chances of getting into the annual. I'd rather sit on it for a while, thumbnail some more, and come up with an illustration that I love later on in the year. I can always submit it for Spectrum 23 in 2016!

That being said, sometimes there are "Happy Accidents," so-to-speak. This past week I was still in the figure painting class that I wrote about last Monday. The first week of the class focused on one day poses, while the second week we had the opportunity to paint two day poses.

For the first two day pose, we had a great model whose physique recalled classic greco-roman paintings and sculpture. The pose struck me as rather regal, and the result was a figure painting refined enough to be turned into a full illustration. And since the piece only needs an environment for this character to exist in, I am currently working towards having this painting done in time to submit for Spectrum. I'll show it to you in the various stages, as I did in last week's post.

The first stage: drawing done in very thinned burnt sienna on toned canvas board. I took 40 minutes with this drawing, working slowly and more carefully than with the one day poses.

Stage 2: Blocking in shadows and refining the drawing with some raw umber.

Stage 3: After premixing my average colors, I start to block in the figure. Now it's lunch time!

Stage 4: At the end of the first day, the figure is entirely blocked in. Keep in mind, this is where I would be by lunchtime on a one day pose. But I worked larger this time, and was more careful with every stage. I knew as long as I had this much done today, I could finish the painting on the second day with glazes. The painting is 20x16" on canvas board.

One other thing to notice is the intentional over-modeling of the ribcage & abdomen. You'll see after the second day that I soften things up quite a bit. This was a tip I picked up from reading Patrick J. Jones' Sci-Fi & Fantasy Oil Painting Techniques. Think of painting the figure as building the figure. You start with the skeleton, then the musculature, and finally the skin. This mimics the way I start off my drawings, I draw the basic shapes of the skeleton first (ribcage, spine, hips, head, etc). It is better to give yourself more anatomy to work with, to try to see every piece of the puzzle, and then soften it where you need by painting over it later, mimicking the way skin works to cover so much more than we can see under the surface.

Stage 5: The finished painting at the end of the second day! I used glazing on top of the block-in from the first day. Glazing is painting in very thin, transparent layers of oil. Glazing is something you can't quite do in a one day pose because the paint underneath needs to be dry, otherwise you can end up pulling paint off the canvas. As you can see compared to last week's works, I also spent a bit more time on the drapery he's seated on and some of the other background elements there. 

His pose and expression already suggest story, now he needs a setting! I use Photoshop to sketch in a background digitally, before going for it on the actual canvas.

Here is my digital sketch. You can see I'm planning on adding two marble columns, some sort of back wall a la Frank Frazetta, and some sort of mist or smoke the way I did in my figure painting of the old man last week. All in all adds to the regal look of the figure, puts him in a time and place, but is still mysterious and ambiguous. I'm working on the painting now, and I'm eager to show you all when it's finished! Be sure to follow me on Facebook if you don't yet, because I'll likely post it there first.

Finally, here are the other two paintings I did this week.

This painting was a two day pose as well, and quite a challenge! Reclining poses are always difficult, as you can get some really weird foreshortening, and it didn't help that our model was sinking into the fur coat she was laying on. This one is also 20x16" on canvas board.

I love this pose, especially with the props and the dramatic lighting, but it meant that all the subtlety in the lit areas were that much more important for the figure to read well, and not flatten out anywhere. You can see in some ways this painting is a lot less finished from the other two day pose, and that's largely due to really taking my time on the first day to nail down the drawing. It took several sessions to get the drawing right, and my block-in at the end of the first day wasn't very refined. I did much of the work to get it to where it is on the second day.

And finally, since we had five days of class, our last session was a one day pose. It was a relatively short day as we were ending early, so I decided to do a small study of a hand instead of a full figure.

His hand was resting on his thigh, though it also bears a resemblance to the position in which one holds a pencil. I painted this one on an 8x10" board, and the painting is just about life size. This one took about two hours.

Figure Painting

This past week, I've been taking a figure painting class with Doug Anderson at the Hartford Art School. If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen my daily posts this week. But here I'm going to dive a little further into my painting process. This process also applies to how I approach plein air painting in oil, though I took these figure paintings further than my plein air landscapes.

I'll be showing you some basic steps using a single painting. The model was a woman in a reclining type of pose. I chose a position where I could see the full figure, and her face was in profile.

I'm painting on an 11x14" canvas board, toned with burnt umber acrylic paint. I find that canvas can take more layers of paint than a gessoed masonite or MDF board in one sitting, so I prefer them for Alla Prima work.

The model poses for 20 minutes at a time. In the first session, I start with a drawing. I draw directly with paint, though you can also use vine charcoal at this stage. I find that vine charcoal mixes into my paint too much, so paint applied on top of paint is preferable. Also, I am using burnt sienna thinned to the consistency of melted butter with a mixture of liquin and turpenoid. I could write an entire blog post on figure drawing, and perhaps someday I will, but for now if you're interested in how to draw figures I recommend George Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life. It is a must in any figurative artist's library!

In the second session, after I have my basic drawing laid out, I lay in some basic shadows using burnt umber, thinned to the same melted butter consistency. At this point I've also fixed a few mistakes from the first drawing, lengthening the breasts & lowering the shoulder on the left. I use a rag to wipe away paint, as was the case with the shoulder.

My palette from bottom left to right: Ivory Black, Titanium White, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Red Hue, Winsor Orange (above the cad red), Permanent Rose, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Winsor Yellow, Lemon Yellow, French Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, and Viridian.

In the same session as laying in the basic shadows, I begin to mix my flesh tones. Here is a photo of my palette. To mix my flesh tones, I begin with titanium white and yellow ochre as a base. Then I mix in some cadmium red hue, and create an average mid tone for the flesh. From there I separate that mid tone in two, and add more cad red to one for a pinker mid tone. Now I have two middle value colors, which I then lighten with more white. For shadows, I mix in to those mid tones with some raw umber for greener, cooler shadows, and to that I add some burnt umber for an even darker, but warmer dark. For my darkest value, I mix burnt umber and ultramarine blue for a more natural looking black than the ivory black pigment.

These colors are averages of what I'm seeing on the model. It's important to remember here that I'm attempting to mix what I see, and that flesh varies greatly all over a single figure. Furthermore, the same flesh will appear differently under different lighting or in another environment. When I paint my illustrations, I consider the color gamut for my paintings when painting flesh. There is truly no single 'flesh' color. 

This next step is after a few more session, where I've blocked in the basic averages of flesh that I mixed. I've also blocked in some of the background elements. This pose made me recall the work of Frank Frazetta, so I started to think about suggesting a certain type of environment. The red of the drapery & the Frank Frazetta image in my mind also inspired the earthy color scheme. Now it's time for lunch!

After an hour break, the paint starts to dry up quite a bit, and is ready for more applications of paint. Everything up to this point has been pretty thin, and I follow the rule of adding increasingly thick paint on top of thinner layers. An easy saying to remember is; "If it's thick it will stick, if it's thin it'll mix in."

Wednesday's finished painting

This is the finished painting, after an 8 hour day and around 6-7 hours of actual painting time. You can see that after the block in, I added more variations in color to the flesh by mixing in my other pigments with those average mixes I originally made. I also continue to push the values as I shift the colors around. 

I'm also conscious of keeping my edges harder where I want the eye to focus (her torso & face) and softer where elements start to blend together (her calf and foot, and the background elements). I'm also painting what I see in terms of values, but I push and pull them as needed. I'm conscious of keeping the edges of the painting dark so you're eye doesn't run out of the picture. Notice how I also cast her foot and calf into shadow. This spotlight effect is an old trick from the Baroque era.

Monday's painting

On the first day, I tried to paint the figure and background as close to life as I could.

Tuesday's painting

On Tuesday we began to add props, so I started to deviate from painting everything exactly as I saw it. I began to control the colors of the background elements, and suggested some sort of story. I added an expression of fatigue to my figure, aimed his sight at the bronze vessel, and added smoke coming out of the vessel.

Thursday's painting

Friday's still life

Friday's figure painting

On Friday there was a snow storm in the morning, and our original model was unable to come in. Around 11am we set up a brief still life, and I sketched from that for about an hour and a half. In the afternoon, another model was able to come in on short notice, so we had two hours to paint her. Those paintings are left largely unfinished, so they show a good midway point in my process.

Next week I'll be posting the second part of my series documenting my illustration for Spectrum. If you haven't read the first part yet, check out last week's post!

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!