Castle Speed paint

Castle one hour speed paint from today. Here's the Corel Painter Script. The image is 800x600 and you may want to add a dark gray background to the canvas before you start it.

 

Animated gif below, click to watch

Speed Paint 3

Today we moved past the black and white landscapes that we've been copying into still lifes. With this series of copies I want them to do them in two tones while keeping within the one hour limit. They also selected their own images to copy, while before I gave them a selection of simple atmospheric landscapes to choose from. The limitations of the two color palette can be seen in my selection. I chose a Chardin still life that includes a green apple and some yellowish tones, but I went with a blue and an orange as my base colors, neither of which can give me those two colors. By using the value scale that Chardin has and by maintaining the temperature relationships, I can still approximate a copy that gives a similar sense as the original.

My copy is below.

Speed Paint 2

Another demo from this morning's class. This is a copy from Arnesby Brown.

Speed Paint

As part of my digital painting class this semester, we're doing one hour speed paints. The first part of the semester we are doing speed copies, later on we'll be doing more imaginative and original works. I'm priming them with black and white atmospheric simple landscapes. The set we're starting with is on the digital painting handouts page.  Today I copied "Gray November" by Bruce Crane.

Here's my copy from Painter.

Van Der Geest Demo

After introducing my students to customizing their wacom tablets and styli, they requested a demo from me.  Their first assignments in the class are to do master copies, so I selected van Dyck's "van der Geest" portrait. The first two are to be in black and white, the second set in duo tone, and the third in full color. This comes from the second set. I selected a dark blue equivalent of Blue/Cold Black and an approximation of Transparent Red Oxide. These I put up in the upper left hand corner for reference and then quickly blocked in the lights and darks and modeled the turnings. After initially setting up that palette in the corner, I primarily selected colors from the picture as I worked. The brushes and papers I used come from the sets in the Digital Painting Handouts section of the blog. While I worked I answered questions and showed off various websites from different digital painting masters. I probably should have paid closer attention to the drawing, but either way, this is where I ended up at the end of class. Click to see full size image below

Animal Anatomy and Drawing Links and Resources

Updated June 1, 2011

I've seen a lot of posts on the importance of animal drawing and various methods by various artists lately.  Here are a number of them that I've collected. Let me know if you have any other great artists and resources that I should include.

First off, a few links to interviews of creature designer and paleo-illustrator Terryl Whitlatch.

Dan Dos Santos interviews Terryl Whitlatch.

Academy of Art interviews Terryl Whitatch in two parts.
part 1
part 2

She has a book that collects her work on Amazon.

Gnomon workshop interview and DVD.

 

Animal anatomist, draftsman and animator Joe Weatherly has a dvd and several books on animal drawing and sketching on AnatomyTools.com The DVD and the Guide to Drawing Animals are particularly useful, though the other ones are nice too.

Marshall Vandruff also has a digital download available from Gnomon Workshop on Animal Drawing (it's on my wishlist).

Fredrik Persson's Horse Ecorche process shots on Deviant Art. Be sure to look at both gallery pages.

Article on Creature Design for video games.

On the proper use of animal reference in creature design

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 updated

Liu-Jiyou

Other Reference Sources:

Animal Gesture Drawing Tool 

books

Eliot Goldfinger-Animal Anatomy for Artists 

Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists

animal blogs 

http://thebigcatblog.tumblr.com/ updated

http://anelephantblog.tumblr.com/ updated

http://membracid.wordpress.com/

http://herpblog.blogspot.com/

http://animalblog.me/

http://fieldherper.com/

http://theroamingnaturalist.wordpress.com/

http://beetlesinthebush.wordpress.com/
http://nutcase007.blogspot.com/
http://www.sybilofdelphi.com/blog/

animal photo websites
Bugs
Underwater Invertebrates
Mammals
National Zoo Photos

Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum is one of my favorite contemporary painters, he's referred to as a "new old master". Richard Scott Thomas recounts his experience of working with Nerdrum and how that has benefited his career.


updated April 8 2011
Nerdrum painting in progress photos.
Nerdrum Studio practice Pt. 1
Nerdrum Studio practice Pt. 2
Nerdrum Studio practice Pt. 3

Nomad Brush for the iPad

Matthew Innis presents info on the newly released and sold out Nomad Brush for the ipad. It looks really interesting, especially since you can have a light touch on it. Other styli I've used require a heavy hand.

Gesture Drawing Demos

I teach figure drawing at the 100 level at Brigham Young University. We focus a lot on the form figure and a simplified version of anatomical structure in this class. Students initially begin with the line of action, an armature, basic form figure, anatomical contours and notations, and simple light and dark value structure. We've just started applying enveloping and comparative measuring techniques using the head as a basic system of measure. This first image is an example of the process. The black conte was used for the underlying aspects and I saved the red conte for the contours. I had them break the drawing down into 20 minute segments for a one hour drawing. The First 20 was used to place the Line of Action, the head heights and widths, and the envelope. The Second 20 was used to lay in the armature and the form figure. The Third 20 was used to put in the contours and values. I spent about 10 minutes on this drawing, working up to each level quickly and then going around to check and see how everyone else was doing.

We start out each class by warming up with quick gestures. We start at 3 minutes and work our way down to 10 second poses. This is a sample of one session progressively going from 3 minutes to 10 seconds.

In these drawings you can see the underlying armature and line of action and how I apply them.

I posted some other figure sketches at my other blog.

James Gurney's Bag

Boing Boing blog did a picture feature on what's in James Gurney's bag. A wonderful assortment of drawing materials is what's in there!

James Gurney's Blog

Daniel Sprick

Daniel Sprick has an upcoming show at New York's Arcadia Gallery in March. It should be a jaw dropping exhibition. Matthew Innis has a preview of the show on his blog. Sprick was also interviewed in the Fall 2010 episode of American Painting Video Magazine.

The Art Department Tutorial Sale

I've not been posting much for the last little while due to a deadline.  Since this is time sensitive, I thought I'd take a little break and put this up.

ConceptArt.org's The Art Department is having a sale on their instructional dvds, streaming videos and downloads. There's a lot of great stuff in there that's worth checking out.

Mike Mignola

The preeminent Mike Mignola was recently featured in an article on his use of architecture.

He also provided USA Today with a great short Hellboy story.

I like to show Mignola's work to my students because of his application of simple black and white design (notan) to clearly show what's going on in an image. He allows the lights to merge together and the darks to merge together to convey mood and meaning.  Keeping them absolutely distinct clarifies the narrative and creates more engaging imagery. This is an especially helpful consideration when developing their thumbnails and should be kept in mind during the entire development of a picture.

Carlos de Haes

19th century Spanish landscape painter Carlos de Haes featured on the Bearded Roman blog. There are large detailed images if you click on them.

Art Project, by Google

Hi Res zoomable images from major art museums worldwide, not completely complete yet, but some amazing work available to see here! I've added the link to this page to the left hand Utilities/Reference section.

Art Project

Several recent blog articles about Art Project (added Feb 3 2011)

Flying Fox
Lines and Colors
Underpaintings 
Victorian Paintings

WWII Propaganda Posters

Propaganda posters featured on the Animation Archive blog.

Eight Dog Chronicles

Gorgeously illustrated Japanese book from the 19th century. 

Israel Hershberg

Israel Hershberg is a painter educated at the Pratt Institute and the State University New York in Albany. Recently founded the Jerusalem Studio School in Israel. He has recently been featured in a couple of blogs on painting.

blog features
Painting Perceptions Interview
Painting: Powers of Observation

other:
Marlborough Gallery Page
Jerusalem Studio School blog

Recent Additions

I added to the handouts pages for both Digital Painting and Head Rendering. To the Digital Painting Handout page, I added my paper set, which includes the mars textures, canvas textures, and various other useful papers. To the Head Rendering Handouts page I added a Drawing Procedure list, that I will also hand out in class. This hand out is not intended to be the final word on the ways and means of drawing or painting the human head, but is rather a general list and gives the order of general method that I follow. Additional considerations or models may be necessary depending on the circumstances you find yourself in.

Doug Fryer

Utah painter Doug Fryer put up a blog recently. Check it out.

Noela Young's "Wombat Tales"

In the early 60s Noela Young created numerous ink illustrations for a book series about a Wombat.  Some of her work is featured on Bibliodyssey.

Olga and Andrei Dugin

Olga and Andrei Dugin are a married illustration team who create mythical images in a Pre-Renaissance style. Lines and Colors features their work today.

Paper Folding

Complicated and intricate works of origami, many of these are from single sheets of paper.

Duane Keiser

Duane Keiser has been doing "a painting a day" project for several years now. Though, now he does take some breaks. He looks for interesting small images to paint daily in a single session. Afterward he takes  a picture and sells them on eBay. This is a recent great one that he did. The red kettle is quite striking.

Ideas for Creating Space in Pictures

Hillary Harkness blogs at the NYAA (New York Academy of Art) about simple, proven, and useful idea on creating space in paintings.  Starting with Overlapping.

Aron Wiesenfeld

Aron Wiesenfeld has posted a great new painting. Check out his work on his website.

Traditional Animal Portraits

Traditional animal photo portraits by Alex Castro.

Mr. Cylinder and Other Notes

Below are my notes that I used to explain to my BYU freshmen figure drawing students the basics of using cylinders to express volume and how they can learn to control their use of soft and sharp lines. We started out using an armature to learn the basics of triangulation and proportion when drawing the figure (see stick figure bottom right hand corner).  Learning to use the armature is a painful, but necessary, process to help them get a basic sense of proportions that then allows them to move much more quickly and with greater sensate accuracy through the rest of the semester's content. My cylinder is a one placement/four movement notation. You angle the conte crayon to the main axis of the form and push or pull up, then softly across then sharply down/up, and finally softly across.

I like to spend a portion of each class drawing, during the final drawing session I speed up the poses from a few minutes to a final set of ten second drawings. I try to use the process I want them to understand during that time period, so you will see a Line of Action, Volumetric Placements, and final anatomical details (time allowed details, that is) in each of the drawings.

 

Nelson Shanks' Class Demos

Nelson Shanks has decided to share some of his demos on his blog today.  Take a look.

Tony Ryder Workshop

Pt 1. of Innis' notes from a workshop with Tony Ryder.
Pt 2 - updated Jan 6
Pt. 3 - updated Jan 13
Pt. 4 The Poster - added Jan 16

From Frank Stockton, some interesting...

From Frank Stockton, some interesting thoughts, that I think may be especially valuable to my digital illustration students, but I think are generally important to any student of the arts whether they are pursuing commercial illustration markets or the fine arts.

 

While I may disagree about whether you may or may not need any digital experience in school (I do think it can be very helpful, though...I do TEACH digital illustration), I do agree that the most important thing you can study is design and composition (I would add drawing to that list as well). Any media is simply a tool in the hand of a visionary.

Those two elements Drawing and Composition/Design are the most important strengths I see lacking in the students that sign up for my class. And unfortunately, they're not ones that the curriculum can solve, especially the drawing part.  It is one of the reasons that I emphasize walking through the image making process of thumbnailing, generating and collecting reference, creating a comp and then doing the final.  This gives the student the experience of learning about the processes of composition, researching and developing design possibilities within a project of relatively limited subject matter. Plus it's a lot more fun than regurgitating rote projects. This also gives students the opportunity to see how their weaknesses impact their ability to generate work and then what they need to practice and learn to become proficient. 

If you'll dig through his blog, you will find many examples of how Mr. Stockton developed his imagery.

Having a profound understanding and a protracted development period of Drawing and Design is what makes the difference in a student who graduates with a professional portfolio ready to pursue their chosen career and a student who has to likely set themselves up for a future that they didn't think they were choosing (see megastore night stocker).

Jeffrey Hein

Jeffrey Hein has started posting again, or rather, one of his students has been assigned to post for him. It looks like there are a lot of exciting things going on there. I had the great fortune of studying under him a few years ago.

Copy Demonstration

I spent about the last 45 minutes of class demonstrating a black and white digital copy of a master painting in my Digital Painting course at UVU. I used the limited brush set that I gave them to demonstrate the variety you can get from a very limited number of brushes.

The Copy by Me

The Original by Thomas Moran

Huck Finn: First Edition Illustrations

Scans of the original Huck Finn Illustrations.

zBrush Quick Start Guide

Pixologic posted a new handy quickstart guide for zBrush today. I've flipped through it and it looks to be very helpful for those looking to start using the program.

Inspirational Drawings/Paintings

Francis Vallejo put up a bunch of drawings and paintings that inspire him, they also happen to inspire me.




And who is Lilian Westcott Hale???

Mike Yamada

Mike Yamada starts posting again.

Animal Skeleton Photos

Animal Skeleton photographs on LIFE's website.

Harvey Dunn

Student of Howard Pyle and later the teacher of Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn is one of the greats of the Brandywine line of illustrators, Lines and Colors profiles him and a new book on his work today.


Illustration Art's recent article on the same subject.

Nothing is Forgotten

Part 1 of Nothing is Forgotten by Ryan A.

It's pretty awesome

Charlotte's Web

High Resolution scans of original ink drawings for Charlotte's Web by Garth Williams.