Illustration Workflow

With 9 weeks at Smart school for Illustration there is one thing that is unanimously done and it seems for all Illustrators it is the same - the use of light boxing/tracing to get a nicely rendered piece. Without fail every professional Illustrator I have meet, talked with or just listened to admits to taking some very well set up photographic reference and then using them to quickly copy the image to their canvas and referencing them especially for lighting and several other things. The basic workflow then becomes something like this:

1.     Quickly layout some thumbnails to develop an idea. These are for you so can be as messy or clean as you want them to be and only need to be a couple inches squared. The big reason for them really at this point is to make sure that your painting (image) has a nice composition in large shapes and a quick abstract read you don’t need details at all here. Andrew Loomis and others recommend working in no more than 4 shades of black & white being – white, light grey, a darker grey and black to establish foreground, middle ground (second middle ground) and background. You can use the colours in any order to get the feel and depth you want usually though it is accepted that the foreground is the darkest with the strongest contrast and the background is the lightest with the least amount of contrast.

2.     In a professional Illustrator setting you will develop 3 of these into more worked out sketches, in Concept Design it may be closer to 5 or 6 but you will also probably be showing a lot of your thumbnails as well for that. These don’t have to be very big but do need to be big enough to show the client what the idea is, potentially about postcard size 4”x 6” or so. You don’t want to waste too much time on this stage doing elaborate drawings before the client picks one they like.

3.     Then once an image is decided upon then go shoot some reference images. I say shoot your own as you then have all rights to use it as much or little as you want. Get costumes, dress up as the characters you want in your piece so you know how the fabric folds and the lighting falls on them. Set up the lighting you want to make sure this happens. Take multiple photos. Dan Dos Santos takes 100s of photos for a single piece as do others. I get about 4 or 5 shots for each possible pose I may use and should probably do more. One of the reasons for this is your final image is probably going to be a cut and paste mesh-up of all the other photographs typically called “frankenstining”. When I was in college and taking a design class the instructor had us go through magazines cut out images that we wanted to use from the background to the foreground and all the characters in it. Now with computers you can arrange them in Photoshop, cut and paste, change the colour to match and develop a clean looking image already.

4.     Which brings us to the next step. We’d lay them out and match our sketch. Then we would go to a copier and make at least 2 copies, one black and white and one in colour. If you do this in Photoshop print out both copies of the image corrected to being as close to what you want your final image to look like as possible.  This is where using something like Photoshop, Painter, Gimp (which is free and just like Photoshop) or Pixia (also free), ArtRage or any of the other photo/art software really shines. You can develop a complete colour comp of your image so if you are working traditionally you have exactly what you want to paint laid out and thought out already.

5.     We would put charcoal, graphite or transfer paper to rub on the back of the image copied to the right size that we wanted to paint it and trace over the image to layout everything in place. Or use a lightbox to trace the image on to your paper if it is thin enough.

A quick word about lightboxes. I never understood why people pay large sums for them. There are windows everywhere. All you have to do to have an instant lightbox is tape up your image and the paper over it with the light behind it and voila instant lightbox no matter where you are. You can also lay down some glass and shine a light from underneath if you want a flat one or are working at night. No real cost to you just as good as paying $100s for it.

Then clean up the line work you now have on your “canvas” (Illustration board and stiffer painting surfaces are easier to do this on than an actual canvas.)  and possibly lighten up any areas that you may not want to show through depending on what type of medium you work in and how thick you paint. In Photoshop you can basically trace/light box the image by lightening the layer with the photo reference and drawing your line work on a normal layer on top of it.

6.     You can then start painting, basically copying and using the colour copy to match the paint colours. We would mix the paint and then apply a small amount to the colour copy to see if it blended or stood out from the colours there.

Now this is also assuming you have lighting and a colour scheme that works together, if not you will have to change those elements and can’t match the cut outs as easily but in taking your own photographs you can set up everything to make sure it all works together. Which is again a major plus in having something like Photoshop to correct all this before hand. And that is it the basic steps to get a nice laid out image and render it as wonderfully as the professionals do. And they all do it so why not you?

As I write this out I am presented with the all time question from a contest that I have entered with this piece: If you just paint what you have laid out in your reference photos the are you copying? This is a big on going debate and has been and will be from generations past to generations to come: Tracing and duplicating your reference image colours is why you lay them out in the 1^st place.  We are just saving ourselves painstaking time (money) and making sure our images are as technically correct as possible. It should not stifle your creativity to have them or make up for your lack of technical ability to draw freehand and mix your own paints. Picasso and every other famous abstract artist once upon a time were extremely talented at what they were doing. Which I firmly believe you have to understand the rules of art and be able to create it on your own before you can break them and be successful at it.

So is it a bad thing? That’s for you to decide. I do heavily suggest you actually learn to draw and don’t just do simple photo manipulation as is popular today. I personally will put my drawing skills up against anyone. If there is one thing I have gotten compliments for from every professional I have meet including Iain McCaig is that I can definitely draw. And a good drawing is the foundation to a good painting as painting can be looked at as being nothing more than drawing with a brush.  But if you want to compete with the pros, in the allotted time frame they have, working on multiple projects at once you are going to have to learn to make good solid use of references.

As a closing recommendation on the subject check out James Gurney’s book “Imaginative Realism” about using references to make your image believable.  

For a recent Diablo III contest. I think I might like the sketch more but then I really dig line work and sketches.

Preparing Sketches for Digital or Online Use

Okay, I have sometime to knock out a few more portfolio pieces since I am shooting for a May deadline so I can try to make it to Spectrum Art Live and pick up some work. I want to do more to the level of this last piece “Artemis & Orion” which has gotten some good reviews. The sketch for it did in-fact just get me 1^st place at Sketch Theatre Forum’s monthly contest Lover’s Embrace, which is a prize of 15 Gnomon DVDs ad worth a bit of money. So that will help my education and replace some of the one’s I had that were lost when my computer was stolen this past August. Here is the sketch.

Now for a little bit of education today and one of the things that bothered me for a long time until I talked with Justin Gerard. Great guy met him at Spectrum last year. He recently married Annie Stegg, another wonderful Illustrator. Together I think they are trying to corner the market in storybook illustration. Justin had some wonderful prints of watercolour pieces he had done. So I asked him how he got such deeper colouring with watercolurs. He told me that he scans the original then places a multiply layer and an overlay layer on top of it in Photoshop. It is a simple thing to do but it works wonders for the piece. I recently used it after scanning pencil sketches to get a clean line but still retain the actual look of a sketch. I couldn’t be happier with the results. Though I will say given the parameters of the Sketch Theatre competition I didn't use it on the image above.

The whole simple process is as follows:

1^st Scan your sketch or drawing at 600 dpi or better in grey scale (it looks so much better this way).

2^nd Open it in Photoshop and duplicate the layer twice.

3^rd Change the 2^nd layer to Multiply and the 3^rd to Overlay. Then adjust the opacity of the layers to give you a clean look.

You may need more than one Multiply layer if it is a light sketch and you want a darker line. If this is the case merge the 1^st multiply layer and the original scan then duplicate the now darker line work.

And that’s it to having clean looking sketches as you can see. It works well for any traditional pieces and even to heighten colouring from digital works.

This one was done with coloured pencil over marker then scanned in and heightened with the method above before adding the digital background. 

Art Education

So, I decided I would expand this blog to include more tips, tricks and all around art information, which is actually the main reason I started this.

Now first and foremost I have a Bachelor in Fine Arts (Which was nothing but a waste of time for me from THAT school.) I have attended some online training with Computer Graphics Master Academy (CGMA http://2d.cgmasteracademy.com ) in Concept Art, studied very briefly with the Safehouse Atelier/Massive Black in San Francisco (http://www.thesafehouseatelier.com) and am currently auditing classes online at smART school (http://www.smarterartschool.com ) for Illustration which is essentially a mentorship that others go through and I get to listen in on. As well as all this sounds, and most of it was this last year even though I got my degree in 2007, I am essentially self taught as my college classes left a lot to be desired. That is good and bad seeing as you don’t know what you don’t know and therefor can’t always be sure you are heading in the right direction or even know what the right direction is.

That is actually where I have found myself until recently thanks to attending the Spectrum Live Fantasy Art convention last year and meeting a lot of great artists up to and including Ian McCaig, who designed Darth Maul for Star Wars and is a personal hero of mine and spent quiet some time talking with me about improving my art. There was also the workshop I attended in San Francisco with Massive Black that started me off on really improving my art and getting more of a direction to where I was going. Thank you Coro, Carl and everyone else. Now I have Donato Giancola, Dan DosSantos, Greg Manchess, Todd Lockwood, and Rebecca Guay from the smART school to listen to each week and hear what they have to say about being an Illustrator, very, very helpful.

Then there was my biggest problem though – What the hell is the business side of things and where do I find work? Well just recently I came across Noah Bradley who is an Illustrator and Concept Designer. You can find him at http://www.noahbradley.com . I will highly recommend you check out his sight and if you are interested in Illustration or Concept Design as a career get his Art of Freelancing lecture with all the notes and resources and sign up for his 12 week Art Camp. It is $250 for the camp, less than half of what one month at the Safehouse cost, a 10 week class at CGMA, and 12 weeks of just being able to listen in on class but not really participate at smART school all of which happen to be $600. Now the next one starts in May so I haven’t actually taken it yet but looking over the syllabus it is more in-depth than most anywhere for one class and seems to have a definite Illustrator approach to it for the exercises. If animation is more your thing then check out Chris Oatley at http://chrisoatley.com where he offers constant free email information on improving your art and a 18 month program called the “Magic Box” that is a digital painting class for $18 yes $18 each month. These two guys are against the high cost of art schools and are trying to make it easier for those of us who can’t really afford them to still get a decent education in the field. Plus there is a ton of stuff on the web that can help you depending on what you are interested in. I am into Illustration and Concept Design. I wont list everything here I think is good not all at once anyway, (I still don’t type that fast and don’t want to be up all night.) but you should know

Muddy Colors http://muddycolors.blogspot.com - all the famous Illustrators from         

                            smART and big name Art Directors

Gurney Journey http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com - James Gurney if nothing else

                             read his 2 books “Color and Light” and “Imaginative Realism”

The Art Order http://theartorder.com - by now former Wizards of the Coast Art

                            Director Jon Schindehette

Concept Art.org http://www.conceptart.org - which is a slew of everything

With these four basic blogs/forums, Noah Bradley and Chris Oately you should be able to find anything else worthwhile linked somewhere from online life drawing sessions and still life lessons to designing futuristic spaceships on alien landscapes. I must also recommend Riven Phoenix's Figure Drawing course. It breaks down the human figure into easy and workable measurements and guidelines that lead you pretty quickly to being able to create much more accurate sketches of figures. I have not got through all the videos offered as there are well over 200 if you pick up the course for only $45 at http://www.alienthink.com definitely helped me with even just the 1st 20 lectures. 

So there is a quick bit of info on how to get an art education for almost nothing online. I would also HIGHLY recommend Andrew Loomis’ book “Creative Illustration”. Written in the Golden Age of Illustration, mid-1940s, it is the definitive guide on making good art. If you own nothing else own this book. It is in print again so if you are like me you and like to read from a book and get away from the computer you can get a copy or if you want a completely free education it is here http://www.fineart.sk/photo-references/andrew-loomis-anatomy-books/creative-illustration-andrew-loomis  or download it here http://illustrationage.com/2013/04/02/free-andrew-loomis-art-instruction-downloads/ both also have his other books as well which if you are just starting off drawing I suggest starting with his 1^st “Fun with a Pencil”. It uses simple caricature drawing as its means of really drawing but it shows you how to use simple shapes to design and draw anyone or anything.

Now just because it bugs me - I don’t know if you use blending stumps. I never do. I have tried them but didn’t really care for them and never bother with it now. But if you are into it let me help you out instead of paying whatever the outrageous price for rolled up paper is a the art store do this instead:

General blending on a large area is easily achieved with a soft paper towel or tissue. Something you should already have lying around the house. Just remember the softer it is and more of a “tooth” it has the more graphite/pastel/whatever it will pick up lightening your colors, meaning you will most likely have to go over them again. I recommend those crappy, hard and smooth brown paper towels in the bathroom to even out a surface without really taking away too much media. If you aren’t at school or work and don’t have some around a simple sheet of regular paper will do. Now you don’t have to roll it up just put it on your finger tip and use it flat and smooth. If you want something rolled to get into the tiny corners and don’t want to fold up the paper here is what I did when we were required to have them – lollipop sticks are great. They are the same thing, rolled paper. They are tight, get good corners, can be peeled for new surface area and are a lot cheaper and more fun to get. Try and eat your stumps when you are burning oil in the studio and can’t stop it won't taste as good. 

Finally, since I have been busy and this is an art blog after all I offer up this piece, which served a 5 fold purpose.

      1. Inline with an assignment from Dan Dos Santos’ class to illustrate a book cover using one of the pantheon of planetary gods and include their symbol somewhere on them. I chose Artemis the Greek Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt.

      2.  ImagineFX Fantasy art contest to do an illustration of one or more of the pantheon of the Greek Gods. Got lucky on that one.

      3. SketchTheater monthly contest to traditionally sketch a Lover’s embrace.

      4. It was after all Valentine’s and I wanted something nice for my wife and it is so hard to shop for gifts in Korea.

      5. A portfolio piece to hopefully help get some freelance Illustration work.

We’ll see how things turn out in a couple weeks with the contests and hopefully soon with everything else. Everything in the piece is a symbol for Artemis from the amaranth and asphodel flowers and plants around them to the deer and hawk and of-course Orion her only love.

So here is the final version (at this time). I finished awhile ago but have been busy and slow about uploading. This was done completely out of my head, no references for anything. Can make it better in some ways - loser, more expressive but I am sure with a bit of reference it could also be even better technically. I am happy with it though where it is at. It is what I wanted to do in a way I wanted to do it, and if it goes into the storybook illustrations then it is how I want to be able to do most of the illustrations and so far have been able to thanks to the initial sketches.

So here is a colour WIP of a Necro-Warrior that I drew up the other day. He is something of the other half of the pair from the Nightmare girl below (or previously). I am not sure if I want to work him into the story somewhere in the background maybe, cameo appearance, or if he will just stand on his own. If he does show up in the story he most likely be working for the Rabbit's father one of the protectors. He is actually being done in a way that I hope will garnish me some attention (positive) from the Wizards of the Coast company for their Magic the Gathering series. He is definitely for the Black decks. Here is the original sketch as well.

So, here is a little something for the Christmas season. Santa's Little helper, before Frankenstein got his big break and was just starting out.

Korea

I have now been in Korea for a month. I have been reunited with my wife and 2 year old son! While this has been wonderful it has been keeping me more than busy. I will see if I can start an art club here in the area as there doesn't seem to be much for anyone other than ladies who want to do crafts or kids. Neither is a bad thing but seeing how most of the people here range in age from 18 on up with the military I am surprised there is not more for that demographic especially with as little else as there is to do in the area.

This post is mostly to say I am still alive but it may be a little while before I add more as far as developing the IP story line. But here are a couple of sketches one of the Fairy Queen, who's head dress is based on an orchid, that is to be the Rabbit's mother:

and one that was more for fun but may find it's way into the illustrations if even just in the background working with the father, a vengeful protector, perhaps like the rest of them. 

I will keep this up as my time is even more limited now but it will progress. 

Just keep drawing. . .

So, I signed up for a comic book as literature class and they asked us to make our own comics. Since I just started this story I thought I would put it to use and expand on some of the illustrations. They only want a few pages though, and cutting the story down from what I intended to fit the format and still flow is a little difficult and takes a lot out of the story but is another challenge for the format. I really enjoy comics though, and am having fun with the idea. We'll see how it all comes out in about a month when the deadline is. Until then I'll keep posting stuff on the way there and then beyond.

Another sketch to add. Not really sure if I will make use of it in the story line but it is worth holding on to.