IF: Garden

Just a quick one as white death reigns down all around in the state of Ohio...

Groucho

The other night I was treated to seeing a bio on Groucho Marx. I did some doodles in my sketchbook of him as I studied his features. The really interesting thing was I noticed his nose was a bit fatter at the tip than I had always thought. But it was a great look into such a quick wit and the master of one-liners...but there was also a bit of sad stuff with regards to his life. It seems he was such a perfectionist and 'on' all of the time so much that it tended to drive people away after a while.

Anyway, the next day in class I was explaining some basics of Photoshop coloring. It is easier to think of it more as a 'painting tool' than a drawing tool. Most people may not see the difference but there is a freer mindset if you think of it this way...like oils, it can be a bit more forgiving filling areas and then going in and adding detail work vs. drawing with a fine point to cover areas. It was easy to 'blob' in spots and use the eraser to mold the shapes. After that it was just a matter of using the brush tool in screen for highlights and multiply for shading (both at lower flows). A lot of computer concept art is done this way and it can have some great results...(I also have a more refined color example of this way back at the start of this blog called skimmer...)

http://blankenstine.blogspot.com/2006/11/processs-is-key-final.html

Working in multiple layers and locking off pixels lets you 'stay in the lines' while also adjusting transparencies as needed to keep from having harsh blends when not desired. I chose a young Groucho for two reasons...I didn't have a reference available when I did it...and second...it is REALLY hard to screw up a Groucho drawing...get the hair, brows, and stache halfway correct and you pretty much know who it is...which is why so many people could mimic him...from Bugs Bunny to Alan Alda...a quickie but just a chance to stretch my legs back in the digital illustration realm since I've hit the traditional more the past few months...

IF: Leap 2

I know I already posted once...but sometimes funny (and I use that term loosely) observations hit me more than once...

IF: Leap

"As we bid farewell to Sir Edmund we know it isn't too far a leap to say he was all heart...but that's only because the hyenas were too full to eat any more..."

IF: Multiple

"What do I predict for my dad's record breaking jump attempt? Injuries...multiple injuries..."

Barratuna Header

After seeing so many great headers with images in them I thought I would give it a shot. This if for my barratuna site...Process was the typical...sketched the idea out...found a good reference of a tuna...redrew everything in my sketchbook to act as a template...went into Freehand and drew it all up...(as described elsewhere...Gradients are much better in Illustrator but being able to make good lines with the Bezigon tool and calligraphic strokes with the expand feature in conjunction with the Bezigon tool makes vector drawing about twenty times faster)...Imported it into Photoshop and did a couple of overlays. You can do lenses in Freehand that act as overlays, but unfortunately if you use too many you get the spinning wheel of death. One thing I noticed, as in real life...is the effect of water on color. My tuna actually has yellow eyes but the water layer tends to give a more realistic color blending.

Now let's see if I can get it to work!

NEW UPDATE: It seems that blogger and Mac's do not mix when it comes to posting headers! I moved to a (blahhh) PC and was able to post my header just fine!

IF: Theory

"Well that's my theory about what happened to the cake...if you've got something better I'd be happy to hear you out..."

IF: Choose

You'll probably have to click and enlarge to read it...

IF: Blanket

At 1:23 AM Florence made a blanket statement about their relationship...

IF: Old Wive's Tales and Legends: A cow's tail in the air means rain is coming!

"Well, at least part of it is true...A raised cow tail means something is coming..."

IF: Plain (w/bonus coverage)

Before she had put herself together in the morning Jane always felt kind of plain...


(click to enlarge)

Every year I do drawings for my kids' schools. This one I did for my daughter Sarah (yes, that's her in the corner with crazy glasses and underwear on her head). I'll detail the process later, but during the rendering I started throwing in IF folks whose work I enjoy...this made the composition a bit busy but such is life at times. Unfortunately I left some people out (actually a lot of people whose work I enjoy) because I couldn't find things in a short period of time that I felt would work okay in the scene.

Two less obvious ones are Amber, but she is super busy and never gets to participate in IF...although it would be great if she would...(aka Jane D'oh)...she's pretty awesome and has a keen wit about her which has always given me a good laugh...I couldn't incorporate the Monkey Peaches she grows in the can beside her microwave so I defaulted to the poi plant thing in the dog's flower box...I understand it is a felony to grow those things in Oregon so please keep her hydroponic lab under wraps.

I also started out to do this in color after planning on graphite, doing the linework and some of the painting, but knew it was going in the wrong direction and kept getting pulled to Detlef's site...who does pretty great graphite work. (check the barratuna site for links to these and others.)

So feel free to snoop around the pic and guess if you choose where some of the images come from...and I apologize for subtle issues due to the scanning and paneling of the work...

To ALL that contribute to IF, thanks for the inspiration and laughs!

LIST OF ITEMS (TO DATE):
Detlef-Rendering Medium
Jane D'Oh-Poi Plants
ValGal-Dog House
Pati-Godo Ball
Elizabeth Tofu Squirrel-Stuffed Animal
Steve Flying Turtle-Umm...The Flying Turtle
Ammon-Apple (from the apple project)
Amy Zaleski-Patterned Rug
Mac McRae-Hair Clips and T-shirt
Ms. Froggie-Seeing her wonderful work incorporating her kids I pushed mine in.

What is REAALLY Great About Being an 'Artist'

Every year about this time I get reminded of one of the greatest things about being able to draw and paint...I get to draw pics for my kids' schools...which is why my latest IF posts aren't the 'best rendered'...short on time and what time I do have goes mostly to them.

But there are moments when you run across another's kid and they ask you to draw them something when they see you doodling. I've been in hospitals in the emergency room waiting areas and had a long time to wait...and you see some poor sick kid or impatient one waiting and you can just doodle something and make their day. One of the defining moments in my life was when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade involving an elementary school teacher on cafeteria duty. I saw him doodling and I asked him if he could draw anything. He said he could draw most things. So immediately I threw out, "Can you draw Garfield? and a dragon? and a horse? and a soldier?" Of course I wasn't intending for him to draw those things but it was just a kid's way of thinking out loud. So he leaned over a cooler near us and I continued on a conversation with my friend not giving the other conversation another thought. Within a matter of 5 minutes Mr. Thomson slipped a piece of paper in front of me with Garfield, and a dragon, and a horse, and a soldier. It really blew my mind.

This drawing was done for a young lady that loved tigers. It didn't take that long and the smiles it got were great...I hope those of us that have such capabilities remember that...it NEVER takes that long...

IF: Stitch

Nurse...I seemed to have misplaced my hammer...

IF: Are you (100 Percent) sure?

"Well...it was kind of dark...and there were an awful lot of pies flying through the air..."

IF:Reading the (Horizon)...

"Reckon' it's gonna be a REAL scorcher today..."

IF: Backwards

I'll go with 'What is the proper way to walk into a proctologist's office?', Alex.

IF:Little Things

"You reckon you might have made those arm holes a little big???"

(In response to the competitive and sometimes catty underworld of child birthing...)

IF: Excess

"This is Bob Smith on location in Podunk, Oregon where young Timmy Tucker has fallen and scraped his knee...upon hearing the news, oil officials declared the event will cause gas prices to raise another 37 cents a gallon..."

I'm all for the free market...but when it is based on 'speculation' of events or raising prices for nonsense, I get a little miffed...

IF: Superstition

Bob's superstitious ways would prove to be his ultimate downfall...

Scale(s)

(click for larger view)

As of late (and that being the summer on to most of this year) I've viewed the IF topics and done thumbnails but never really got around to the finals. I should have the process for this posted shortly (and it now is). The entire piece was done in Prismacolor...I learned my lesson with watercolors on illustration board...too heavy and you get peeling illos if you aren't careful, so I just bit the bullet and ran with it...


First step was doing some sketches on the back of envelopes, napkins, bulletins...whatever was around trying to work out general design issues of angles and such...then I went to locate some skulls of the dinosaur I was wanting to use...Once I located the appropriate critter I did a sketch of the skull and started fleshing out and working on the composition...my first thought was to have two dinos fighting but I thought that if I did a slightly battle scarred dino (the white eye is meant to be blind and there is some tearing around it)facing off against a turtle defending his turf I might be able to have at least a touch of sarcasm...


After getting the basics lined out I started doing the detail work of the dinosaur. I had to do multiple drawings to get the pose correct. I then transferred the finished drawing onto illustration board. This was detailed in an earlier post and kept me from having to redraw the same elements over and over or overworking the image on the illustration board.



My first big traditional media dino was my Yuck! pic. I left off the background intentionally on that pic as I wanted to have a clean focus on the dinos. My next traditional media pic was Blue T-rex...at first I was going to leave the background blank but decided I needed to get back in the swing of working on the composition as a whole. So I used watercolors to fill in large areas...of course I forgot to leave it flat and weighted as it dried so I got a nicely curled illustration board that is now seperating (my framer loves having to fix my errors). During the summer Steve of Flying turtle fame posted an item about drawing outdoors and I knew it would be a good idea at that point to do some studies to use one day...well this was the time to work on my most ambitious full scene...I knew there was going to be water involved (and had messed with distortion some on the earlier Gravity post) and had already purposed to use nothing but Prismacolor. I drew all the other items using light blue (see the Thin Blue Line post for the coloring process). I finally did some study of reflections and started throwing in items to help lead the viewer through...included is a rather obvious turtle and perhaps less obvious lizard in the foreground. The hardest part was reminding myself not to get wild with heavy burnishing on the trees so that the tooth of the illustration board would show through...and not overworking the items as they headed to the back in dealing with a bit of atmospheric perspective.