The Art Educators Blog

"The Longest Winter" for Cricket Magazine

2011-12-28T15:35:00.000-08:00

This month's Cricket Magazine features a story called "The Longest Winter" by Pamela D. Guaci, with illustrations by me! The story is about two Inuit brothers who go on a seal hunt. In this one the younger brother dreams that he's a seal, struggling to get through to the surface:

This one shows the distance between the two brothers:

They bond through the hunt, imagining their father, who had recently died, smiling over them.

Like the last piece I did for Cricket, these required a lot of reference. The first challenge was to try to draw a harp seal. Unfortunately there weren't many pictures of swimming harp seals on the web. Here was one of the few I was able to find:

But it wasn't quite enough to really get a sense of what they looked like in motion. So I found more reference for a seal that looked similar who lived in a warmer climate, the monk seal.

So I found pictures of monk seals, watched videos on Youtube, added a little blubber, and whoola! I had a harp seal! For my Inuit reference I watched everything from the classic documentary Nanook of the North:

To this pretty horrible Anthony Quinn movie:

But these were Inuits from Greenland, and I was drawing Alaskan Inuits. So I did eventually find more authentic reference for my Inuits, and took a few photos using the timer on my camera for some of the harder poses:

I also had a student of mine do a few poses, but ultimately, I only use photos to get a general sense of the pose. When I draw directly from the photo my drawings tend to look a little stiff, so I try to reinvent the figure in the drawing.

These were the sketches I submitted to Cricket:

The art director, Karen Kahn wanted me to make sure the horizon faded out as it met the sky in the second image, something I could resolve in the color stage, and for the third, she wanted the hole in the ice to be smaller and more of an uneven shape. She also wanted me to show the tool made out of a bone and feather that the boy uses in the story. These changes were easy enough to make, and they were happy with my solutions.

Not long ago, I received an e-mail from the author, curious about how I had handled the story. I sent her the images and was gratified to hear that she was very pleased with them. So hopefully I got most of the details right! And here's the magazine, with a great cover by Heidi Younger:

Breakthrough Contest Winners Announced!

2011-09-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

I thought there may be interest in this:

The Breakthrough Contest Has Broken Cover!

For the past year, Richard Solomon and staff worked on creating the first ever Breakthrough Contest. The idea took shape while brainstorming last winter. All artists appreciate how hard it is to break through and succeed as a professional illustrator in today’s market; this is why we named the contest “Breakthrough”. We wanted to reach young artists and as such the rules stated that the entrant must be under 35 years old with less than 5 years professional experience from anywhere in the world.

The goal was to create a contest that would produce long term benefits for the winner since every young artist’s greatest concern is to have a successful career. Unlike other competitions which simply offer a cash prize or a scholarship, we have gone a step further. The winner would be brought to New York City, have their portfolio shown to top art/creative directors, be given the constructive criticism and advice by the industry’s top pros to succeed as a professional illustrator, and receive a cash prize.

In March of 2011, we opened the contest to submissions. Soon thereafter, we began to receive a diverse collection of portfolios from artists all over the world. We were soon flooded with an amazing number of very talented young contestants. At the end of 3 months, we closed the contest to submissions and began judging. Our panel consisted of 20 art/creative directors and top illustrators who scored the submissions online based on skill, professionalism, and potential commercial viability.

We can now proudly announce the winner: Michal Dziekan, a 26 year old illustrator from Warsaw, Poland; a true diamond in the rough. Since 2009 Michal has been working as a freelance illustrator on book covers, editorial/advertising illustration, t-shirt/character designs, and animation. You can see more of his work on his website michaldziekan.com. We look forward to bringing Michal to NYC in late October, introduce him to many art/design directors, and award him his prize.

Using Your Time Wisely, or Why Never to Say, "But I Didn't Have Enough Time!"

2011-09-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Pomodoro Technique

Illustrator's and freelancers often struggle with time management. It's particularly difficult to manage your time when you have an inconsistent workflow. I recently started using a time management technique called the "Pomodoro Technique." It's very simple: Set a timer for 25 minutes. After the timer goes off, set the time again for a five minute break. Then set the timer again for another 25 minutes, then another five minute break. Each 25 minute interval is one Pomodoro. After four Pomodoros you give yourself a longer break, Maybe fifteen minutes, or break for lunch. Then start again.

I'm finding this helps me in a number of key ways: for one, it cuts back on my internet use significantly. I like to use the internet. In fact I love to use the internet. But I often waste a lot of time just checking in with Facebook, or Google+, or checking my e-mail. Or someone posts something on one of the social networking sites and I spend entirely too long chasing links. Well that's something better left to one of my long breaks. And the checking in stuff I can do during my short breaks. But I'm also finding that I want to do all this obsessive checking-in less when I know I have only a short time to do it. Often I'd rather spend the time eating a snack, or getting my studio for a change of scene.

These 25 minute intervals are deceptively short, but it's a good kind of deceptive. It's the perfect way to fool myself into keeping focused, knowing that there's a break right around the corner. I find this makes me a lot more productive than when I do long marathons of uninterrupted work, at least, as far as drawing is concerned. Drawing is the one activity where I really have to push myself to keep going. Writing, I can do for hours. Inking, coloring, I have no problem sustaining. But keeping up my drawing stamina can often be difficult. This technique has proven to be a great solution. 's made me rethink: what is a an 8 hour work day? What's a 10 hour work day? How can it best be spent? As a freelancer and work-at-home artist, when I'm working on self-motivated projects there sometimes aren't set, external deadlines, so I'm forced to structure my day in a meaningful way. It's easy to get distracted. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking you've put in more time than you have.

To make the most of your work day, you need to have a way to account for your time, especially when those distractions can be such compelling ones, like the internet. Many of us don't have that incredible focus that allows us to work hours on end--I do for certain tasks, but not for all of them, particularly drawing, since I find it most demanding. I envy people who have that kind of relentless endurance, but I'm not one of them. You don't have to be one of them either. Everyone has their own working method and pace, but it all comes down to how you manage your time. Not having that endurance doesn't make you a lesser artist, but if you don't, you need to discover what will help you to stay on task.

So I need tools to keep me motivated. Audio books are incredibly helpful, especially fun ones. Right now I'm listening to a lot of Sarah Dessen, my current favorite young adult author. If a book requires too much of my attention, it only makes it harder to keep focused, but when it's an enjoyable and easily engaging book, it gives me one more reason to look forward to working. Since I only listen to audio books while working, this can be a big motivator.

The other ritual I have is putting on my shoes. This may seem odd, but putting on my shoes is a cue for me that I'm officially working. Working at home, I don't have to put on my shoes. I could work in my boxer shorts if I wanted to. But maybe it's like the way Mister Rogers takes off his dress shoes and puts on his sneakers at the beginning of every show--the shoes somehow affect my attitude. Don't ask me why. Whatever ritual you have that does this for you--a cup of coffee, a shower, seize on it. Work is ritual, and in working at home, you need to separate what you do with the rest of your time, and work. When work time easily flows into every other task at home, it's easier to be just kind of working sometimes, or preoccupied with the idea that you should be working. I haven't fully masters this skill, but the Pomodoro technique has helped. So what's your cue to start working? Starting can sometimes be the hardest part.

Which brings me back to the Pomodoro technique. If you need to at first, or if other responsibilities require it, maybe 10 minutes of sustained activity and then a five minute break will work better for you. Not all of us have the luxury of a full, uninterrupted work day. So if your time is divided, how can you maximize the time you do have? How can you make it more focused? How can you give yourself a cue that now is work mode, and that all other distractions have to fall to the wayside? Take your work time seriously.

But even if it's drawing in front of the TV, there's value in having small goals, for example: I'm going to finish this drawing at the end of this TV show. If all you have are small snatches of time, take advantage of them, which again, means, take them seriously. Making small goals and achieving them helps to give you the small satisfactions required to go to the next step.

But I Didn't Have Enough Time!

It's bad enough to give this as an excuse as a student, but never give this as an excuse as a professional, even if it's simply a workshop. If you need a deadline extension, ask for it, but never excuse the quality of your work because you "didn't have enough time." Of course, sometimes you won't have as much time as you would like, in which case, your fundamental craft comes into play, your ability to give something polish, to pay attention to every part of the image. You may not have time to give the piece the level of rigor that you would like, but you do have a fundamental responsibility as a professional to make sure it's polished. The words, "I didn't have enough time" simply indicate to an editor or art director that you aren't ready. Every piece should have this fundamental polish, which is why it's so important to maximize the time you have. So give yourself the tools you need, whatever they might be! Time management is as important a part of your craft as any other skill.

--Jed Alexander

"Eagle's Trial" for Cricket Magazine

2011-04-26T05:21:00.001-07:00

So now that the magazine is out, I'm finally able to post the work I did for Cricket Magazine.

Cricket is one of the few children's magazines still being published nationally. Carus is the parent company that publishes a number of other children's magazines as well, such as Ladybug, Babybug, Appleseeds and Cobblestone. They're pretty much the last word in Children's literary magazines. The other children's magazines like National Geographic Kids, Boys Life, American Girl and Ranger Rick tend to be more non-fiction oriented, and then there's HIghlights, but otherwise, Carus is the only game in town, and Cricket is their flagship title, so it's an honor to be included in the magazine and one step closer to doing children's books and children's lit for me.

What a Good Art Director Will Do

I was also privileged to have an excellent art director in Karen Kohn. A good art director can compel you to make better images, and Karen definitely pushed me to be better.

With too much art direction you end up questioning every decision, second guessing yourself as you try to guess what will please the art director. This generally results in a poorer image. A good art director will steer you in the right direction, helping you hone in on the objective of the image, but will also trust you to do what you do best, because this is why they hired you in the first place. Because they trust that you know what you're doing.

Eagle's Trial

The story was called, "Eagle's Trial" and was written by Gillian Anderson. It's a fictional story about a starving eagle who comes across a dead goose carcass floating in a lake in British Columbia and rows it to shore with his wings, based on something that the author actually witnessed. It's told from the point of view of the eagle.

In this first image the eagle sees some gulls going after a mostly picked clean salmon carcass (there are a lot of carcasses in this story), and as the Eagle descends on the salmon, the gulls scatter. In the original sketch, for some reason I drew ducks instead of gulls, but that was easily fixed. Here's the finish:

I've done other wildlife images, but I tried to pay particular attention to accuracy is these, since the object was in part, to educate.

One thing I discovered as I drew the eagle was how a wing operates in flight, the way the wing whips through the air similar to the way you might snap a beach blanket in the air before you lay it down on the ground, a sort of rippling effect, rather than an up and down paddling motion, and I tried to reflect this in the way that I drew the wing in profile.

I chose a dramatic angle with cropping akin to the cropping you might see in nature photography, suggesting both a kind of claustrophobia, and a world outside the edges of the image. I highly recommend looking at photography, especially journalistic photography, to inspire more compelling cropping of your images, so that you don't end up always arranging the elements of your picture as though they're food on a plate. Imaginative cropping can make your images feel more alive and dynamic.

And here's the second illustration:

How Do You Effectively Use Photo Reference to Draw An Image From Your Imagination?

This one was the most challenging, and it was an image that the art director specifically requested me to draw: the eagle rowing the goose carcass through the water. As you might imagine, there was nothing in the way of photo reference available for this sort of thing, so I had to conjure up the image from my imagination, and this posed a number of interesting challenges. One challenge was that the part of the goose that was visible above the water would be hard to identify, and it seemed like, no matter how I drew it, it always ended up looking like a frozen turkey.

The other challenge was to show some kind of movement, that the eagle was treading through, rather than drifting through the water.

So first I decided to do a cutaway to show the rest of the goose under the water so that there would be no mistaking that it was a goose. I used lots of photo reference in general, but the image that inspired the cutaway was from a photo taken by a diver or snorkeler that showed where the water met the surface. Using what I was able to gather about Eagle anatomy from photos and animal anatomy illustrations, I was able to visualize how the wing might look treading through the water, and I used images of oars being dragged through the water to get an idea of what a rowing motion would do to the surface of the water. From these images of oars, I was also able to discover the way a pattern of drips would trail from the part of the oar that had emerged from the water, an effect I also added to the wing.

Then I looked at images of swimmers to get a sense of what they looked like under the water when they were in motion, and the way the air was released in the form of bubbles from hair and clothing, since I imagined that a certain amount of air would be caught in the goose's feathers.

This was my first sketch as originally submitted:

Since this was a line drawing rather than a tonal rendering, I did it in blue and red to more clearly delineate background and foreground elements.

The art director liked my approach here, but asked me to make the eagle less plump since the eagle was supposed to be starving, and asked me to make the head a little more raised and expressive, since the eagle is supposed to be struggling. In redrawing the head, I also found some good reference for waterlogged eagles which was really helpful.

And here's the second sketch after I turned the ducks into geese, slimmed the eagle down a little, and added a little more tail, all suggestions from the art director that improved the image:

As I've described before, the drawing was done in ink and brush and crow quill for the background and water elements, and the color was done with scanned in watercolor textures that were added using the photoshop clone tool. I also use a a coarse pastel-style photoshop brush for highlights and more natural edges.

And here's how the images ended up looking in the magazine:

I was really pleased with the how the color turned out.

They ended up bleeding both images all the way to the edge, which is something I hadn't anticipated or made an accommodation for. Ordinarily you want to add a quarter of an inch on the bleed edge, but I lucked out here, because for some reason the crop was really tight and I lost very little of the edge of the image. I don't know how they managed it, but I guess they knew what they were doing.

And a beautiful cover by Ron Tanovitz:

As you can see, it's a pretty classy magazine. Not your typical kids magazine. There's a real sense of care and overall vision for the magazine that you don't always see, again, reflecting Karen Kohn's excellent art direction.

--Jed Alexander

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Teaching One-On-One

2011-03-30T04:37:00.000-07:00

I've recently been teaching my student, Henry, glazing techniques in acrylic, and am surprised to find that even after not having painted in glazes in over 9 years, I've learned quite a bit about painting in the meantime just from looking at paintings, and I suppose, from rendering my ink drawings in color, even though the method is quite a bit different. In this way I'm able to save him from a lot of my own former bad habits, not the least of which was a tendency to use entirely too much thalo blue.

It's such a pleasure to be able to pass on what knowledge I have and to teach someone something practical. In my own school years we were expected to figure out quite a bit about painting on our own, and no one really taught me how to glaze properly. Most of what was taught was opaque rendering, and my own discovery of glazes was something I had to fumble through on my own.

In teaching one-on-one as I've been doing in the last two years, it's easy to impose all your best and worst tendencies on your pupil, and frustrating when you see your own deficits appear in them. I've tried to compensate for this somewhat by offering when I can, supplementary material, such as video anatomy lessons. Right now he doesn't have the benefit of a fully rounded body of course work, so I do what I can. He's just about to turn 16, so when he goes to college he'll get more of that, but I'd like to prepare him as much as possible. My goal is to give a strong foundation in drawing, ink rendering and painting, and eventually, offer him a little bit of figure drawing experience from the model when I introduce him to our figure drawing sessions when he's a little older.

He's a sharp kid, and it's a great benefit to have someone motivated and passionate to teach. I imagine it's frustrating when you don't have that advantage. Most of my teaching experience involves younger kids without much drawing background, so it's a pleasure to see his skills develop. I've been building his skills starting with contour and gesture drawing, working up to full tonal rendering, and what is often neglected in drawing classes, deliberate and comprehensive attention to craft. I've been trying to teach him how important it is to pay attention to every aspect of the drawing or painting, making sure that everything is purposeful. If there are any accidents, they're happy accidents that he's allowed and considered, rather than simply mistakes.

At the same time I've been trying to help him develop hand skills, and before we even touched paint, I had him learn control with the brush, until he could feather and do fairly precise line work with brush and ink. We've also introduced a little bit of crow quill and cross hatching techniques.

He has an enthusiasm for comics, which I've encouraged, and I try to send him home every week with something a little different from my own collection. He's done some of his own comics that I've guided him through, using them as a vehicle to develop his hand skills and ability with ink. I think this has been important, especially at his age, because it helps keep him focused and interested when he's not strictly working academically. Hopefully he's also developed a nice sketchbook habit, but that's something I've allowed for him to maintain privately. This way, he doesn't consider the sketchbook homework, but something he does for pleasure, or at least that's the idea.

I've also tried to help him develop a knowledge of a little art history, with a focus on modernism, which again, is my own bias. I'm not teaching him art history in the strictest sense, but simply introducing different artists relevant to what we're doing, or that I think will intrigue him. In college he'll get more of a comprehensive art history education, but it's good, I think, now, to familiarize him with a few interesting painters. We've gone over the impressionists and post impressionists primarily, but I hope to introduce him to other artists as we move along. Today, for instance, we'll be meeting at the library to look at a number of painters so we can talk about some of the techniques that they use that we've discussed.

Ultimately my hope is to give him a kick-ass advantage before he hits college, and if I do my job, he'll have a real primer in art fundamentals that I never had, and his beginning course work will seem more like review, sort of like what high school offers in other areas of academics. Art, unfortunately, isn't often taught, or considered this way, and it's often the job of a good university or art school to give students a crash course in what they would have better benefited to have learned earlier on. That is, if they have the benefit of an school with a strong foundation in fundamentals, which is a little more rare than it should be.

Punctuated Equilibrium

It's been a pleasure so far, especially watching him hit those little marks of improvement along the way. It's fun to see this build up of knowledge result in these periods of what I like to call, "punctuated equilibrium." Just like the term in evolution, I use this in reference to those moments of big change after long periods of little changes or improvements. In evolution the word "adaptability" would be more accurate than "improvement" since improvement is a relative concept that relates more directly to what we're trying to achieve in teaching, but I still think "punctuated equilibrium" is an apt way to describe these little epiphanies that occur every once in a while when all the pieces click together. These moments can be the most satisfying in teaching, when you really feel like you're effective in what you're doing.

He seems to have set his sights on going to art school, but what he ultimately decides to pursue, of course, will be up to him. He may end up being a performance artist or an abstract painter, but if all goes well I'll feel content that I've been able to give him a strong foundation that he might not otherwise have had.

ILLUSTRATION UPDATES WITH PROCESS

2011-01-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

*** the images are all cropped on the right, so to view the full image, you have to click on the individual thumbnails. Sorry for the inconvenience guys.

This was a full page illustration for XXL Magazine. It was for an article that talked about the history of the Illuminati in American culture and Hip-Hop. Where it originates from? How does it allegedly play a role in American society? When did it become a factor in hip hop. In 1996, Tupac released his album Killuminati dispelling the many rumors of the Illuminati that existed in Hip Hop.

This illustration went through quite a few revisions. Below are the first three sketches I submitted.

Kanye West is known for gesturing the Illuminati symbol with his hands so I wanted to show him spying on Tupac.

I was shooting for a comic book cover look in my second sketch. The white owl is usually associated with the Illuminati cult and the Cyclops is representing the seeing eye generally found on the pyramid.

The third sketch was supposed to be an alternate cover of Tupac's Killuminati album.

The first sketch was the direction the editors wanted to go but I was asked to do further tweaking based on that approach.

I tried to toss out a few ideas I had floating in my head, but the fourth idea was definitely my favorite. I really wanted to do a more painterly approach for this illustration and a completely different composition.

I also did a value study of the last sketch to push this idea. Luckily the art director felt the same about this drawing and I was asked to do more tweaking of the image. The editors felt I should make the main figure Tupac since there's mention of him in the article, especially the release of Killuminati.

I initially added some plants around the figure to suggest fear and isolation but was asked to change it to flames as they appear in most illuminati images above and around the pyramid.

The image below was a full page illustration for Military Officer Magazine. It's a continuation of the Super Hero series which has been on halt for a while. This time it was for an article that talked about the many new changes to our tax programs in 2011.

This piece was extremely fun to ink. I was going with a more traditional comic book style and tried hard to give the lines a more natural look while still using the Wacom tablet.

The selected concept was in reference to H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The inked image below was another concept I might finish for myself another time as I'm somewhat happy with the overall composition and perspective. With this alternate concept , I wanted to give the hero an actual nemesis that could portray the taxes rather than having him always battling papers and numbers. Since this might essentially take away from the reading too much, we decided to go with the idea above.

The last idea was referencing Atlas from Greek Mythology. At first, I thought this was a good way to show tension and struggle with the weight, but it simply didn't work well for this article and was compositionally very weak.

Lastly, I wanted to create a Super Hero character that would be used for all future articles since this is an ongoing series. Giving the publication its own character would create more consistency since the images are usually linked to tax related articles. I have not received any feedback about the reuse of this particular design, but maybe it is too boring showing the same figure flying around every time. Either way, I want to thank Jill for keeping this series going and allowing me to be experimental with my work.

Thanks for stopping by guys,

-Tin

Illustrating a Still-Life: Good Illustration Doesn't Always Have to Be Figurative!

2010-12-16T18:35:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of months I've been working with an amazing editor named Abigail Samoan to create interior illustrations for a YA book for Tricycle Press about a boy who writes letters to his dead father, and how his father eventually starts writing back from purgatory. It's a great book, but unfortunately, just a few weeks ago, Tricycle Press was shuttered by Random House. The fate of the book is still in question. It may end up going to another imprint at Random House, and that editor may or may not decide to use me as an illustrator. They may decide to use no illustrations at all. It's been a long frustrating ride, but Abigail has been very encouraging and positive about the work I've done and I've really enjoyed being involved. I wish nothing but the best for Abigail and really hope that I can have the privilege of working with her again wherever she ends up.

Strangely enough, this is the second time this has happened! Shortly after I did the piece I did for Nickelodeon Magazine for Chris Duffy, Nick Mag was given the kibosh. A great art director, a great magazine, but at least I got my picture in under the wire and it did eventually see print. we'll see what happens with this one.

At any rate, here's one of the few illustrations for the book that I actually took to a finish. The original idea was for me to just do the drawings described as being drawn by the two protagonists in the book, but I thought it would add something to draw the images in context, in the spaces where they were drawn.

I don't know when exactly the last time was that I tried to do a still life from my imagination. Drawing a still-life from a photo, no problem. Drawing a still life from life, also no big deal, drawing a still life from your imagination? Just like a miniature landscape, you have to find a horizon line.

In the finish I used reference to get the details right and I cropped-in considerably, and there was a temptation to show EVERYTHING since I had done all that pretty perspective (check out that elipse!), a temptation best fought.

Here's the drawing. I had reference for the napkin, but drawing straight from the photo wasn't working out. I ended up idealizing the shape to give it more napkin-ness. I also took out the napkin holder--what that box was supposed to be--since it wasn't reading, cropped.

And the finish:

he idea is that the dad is in purgatory, and he's scrawled the face of this hideous looking wraith-like woman onto a envelope with coffee and a napkin. It isn't quite 100% plausible that the guy could paint something like this with a napkin, but you got to make things look just a little better than they would ordinarily to make it read and to get the point across. I did the face in ink wash and foreshortened it with the photoshop perspective tool which is really only good for foreshortening flat objects. The rest was done with watercolor and gouache textures cloned in on photoshop, line art done with a brush. Really pleased with that napkin!

We'll see what happens. I'd really love to illustrate the book.

DAZ 3D STUDIO REVIEW-GREAT REFERENCE TOOL FOR ILLUSTRATORS

2010-11-15T10:59:00.001-08:00

One of the most fun and user-friendly programs that I have used in a long, long time. A life saver when tight deadlines come flooding in and I don’t have time to shoot proper references. And it’s FREE!

What is DAZ 3D STUDIO:

DAZ was originally developing content for POSER and became an independent company in 2007. They have created various applications such as: DAZ STUDIO, BRYCE, CARRARA, and HEXAGON. DAZ is very similar to POSER, but it’s much more accessible by offering a simpler interface with the ability to create very complex poses and dramatic lighting in just a few minutes.

Here is a 2 min setup of my reference in DAZ for the HULK drawing above.

And here is another quick example I did of Lara Croft using DAZ as reference for the pose.

WHY DAZ 3D STUDIO FOR ILLUSTRATORS:

As a commercial illustrator, I deal with very tight deadlines every single day. My process involves taking reference photographs almost every time I do an illustration. Even though my style is cartoony, having the proper reference can add a hint of realism to the piece. Drawing folds (for example) that flow correctly on a figure in motion will look more convincing when using a reference than when making it up. This is especially the case when you are dealing with extreme angles and difficult foreshortening.

Of course there’s those that have a photographic memory and can draw all kinds of things out of their head (ehm… Marko Djurdevic), but I’m definitely not one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love photography and still feel that it’s the primary option for shooting references. Unfortunately, there are times when finding the right model, setting up the lights, getting the right pose after a hundred shots, (or even having the proper outfits for your models) and finally matching it with your original thumbnail composition can take a bit more time than is available to me.

Start with a simple model:

Start morphing the model:

Go crazy with the morphs:

This is where DAZ3D STUDIO comes in handy. Not only does it take just minutes to set up the right pose (once you familiarize yourself with all the tools and program navigation), you are able to use figures that would be impossible to find in real life. (Check out that beastly muscle man above) :)

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF HOW IT WORKS:

Once you install the program, you have an entire warehouse of free files on the DAZ website that you can download and use as a starting point. They have simple male, female, and children base figures. These figures can be manipulated and morphed like a polygon sculpture. (Think of Z brush ,but not as detailed) As you can see, the figure above is a morphed version of the Michael-Base character. You can morph his muscles in so many different ways that just a few clicks here and there make a completely new figure.

POSING:

Not only is posing the figure easy, it’s extremely fun. The image below shows you the tool that pops up once you have a body part selected. You can pull, push twist and squeeze every joint in the figure’s body, creating poses that would take several hours to photograph if using a real life model.

This is where having a MAC is an advantage. For some reason, the pressure sensitivity of the WACOM tablet goes crazy when using a PC and trying to pose the figure. Also, using the camera rotation tools is almost impossible because the slightest click of the pen will send the camera flying. On a MAC, however, it is super smooth and easy, like drawing in Photoshop.

VARIETY:

I remember reading a lot criticism by some users claiming the expressions of the figures are limited and look very stiff. While this is true to some extent, the new version of the software and the many plugins allow you to adjust every facial muscle and create any expression you desire.

Reviewing this as an illustrator, I don’t have a big problem with that because I can exaggerate the expressions when drawing.

The screen shot below shows you some of the base expressions that can be manipulated and stretched. You can create custom ones as well if you have the time.

Each base figure offers various poses to begin with if you already know what kind of scene you’ll be working with. You can mix and match the poses from the different figures giving you a very large selection of movements to choose from.

There is also an animation section that enables you to animate and record your figure, but this is more useful if you’re working with animation and/or film.

There is a large section on the right side of the working area (see below), which gives you the actions to morph your characters. Depending on the base model and the amount of plugins you have installed, the manipulations of the figures can go anywhere between making the model taller or shorter, skinnier and fatter, to stretching them out resulting in monstrous proportions.

If the figures alone are not enough, DAZ offers a ton (and I really mean an almost unlimited amount) of downloadable clothes and gadgets to dress up your figures.

From simple street clothes to science fiction outfits, there are add-ons for every imaginable project. (And again, don’t forget, everything can be morphed, manipulated and adjusted to your own desires.)

Here are a few images of the working area and the various tools you use while posing:

THE FEW HICKUPS:

Unfortunately, the program is not perfect and has a few small problems that I’m hoping they will fix in the future. First, if you are new to the program and wish to download new content, you might find yourself lost for a while. There are no clear explanations of where to download the various files (Each package contains multiple downloads) since the automatic location when installing the file does not work and you cannot locate the file in the program itself. It’s sad that it actually take more time to figure out where to download and how to locate things than how to use the entire program. The various tutorials online are completely useless because half of them have descriptions for an older version with a different layout and those supporting the new version don’t always have the right information. (Meaning- following most of the steps won’t work)

Second, some of the functions (like the texturing of the various renders) do not work, or rather they work randomly. I am not sure if this is a bug or if some of the functions are simply broken.

Having said that, the program is still new and it’s being constantly updated, so I am sure that these issues will be resolved in the near future.

THE VERDICT:

Since I am reviewing this from an Illustrator’s Point of View and I’m mainly using it as a posing for reference software, I’d say that this is a must have! Most of the reviews I’ve read about DAZ3D STUDIO were from people who have used the program to create fully rendered CG scenes with minimal touch ups in Photoshop. (Such as the wonderful examples from the artist below.)

If you decide that this program is for you, DAZ 3D Studio has a really cool premium membership option that allows you to purchase most of the add-ons for really cheap and has a very active online community of DAZ users. I hope that more drawers give this program a shot and spread the word so that the developers can make it even more useful for those that only use it for reference.

Some sample artwork by GENESN.

One of the free city environments available for download. There are tons of sets and scenes that can be downloaded from the DAZ site:

The rating is based on a 5 globe scale.

Thanks for reading guys,

Tin

CAR RENDERING TUTORIAL

2010-10-31T08:38:00.001-07:00

This is my second attempt at a more rendered approach since the Concept-Motorcycle two posts ago.
I basically wanted to do a modified version of my Ford Mustang in which I'm still mainly focusing on the technique and not so much on the concept yet as I'm still learning to render this way. Because this process is still new to me, recording the individual steps helps me see where I went wrong along the way and see what worked and what didn't.

Above, you can see the brushes I used and how I used them. I only used two brushes, a custom made elliptical brush and the soft airbrush for certain areas. The brush circled in blue is the custom brush and the settings applied to it are displayed in the box on the right: transfer, smoothing and sometimes shape dynamics. The brush flows very naturally on the canvas allowing for easy build up of large shapes while still being able to control details with pen pressure. To get some of the smooth organic shapes (far bottom left), I used the Elliptical Marquee tool and brushed in the color using a soft airbrush.

Below, you can see that the initial sketch was very loose. I was trying to get the main structure of the vehicle down, mainly focusing on getting the perspective correct right away so that it does not become an issue once I'm too far into the rendering. When I draw an object that will interact with the environment, I try to but down a dark background gradient to suggest simple light source and to help me build up the shapes as I'm working.

I generally start working in black and white so that I can establish the main values before applying color.
The elliptical brush works great both as a large brush for bold strokes and as a small detailing brush for fine lines.

Once I have a general Idea of where the light is coming from, I start applying the color. The best way I can explain this stage is that it's similar to glazing in traditional painting. I am still using the same brush, occasionally using the marquee tool and the soft brush to highlight certain areas.

Now I am starting to think of reflective light and am applying cooler tones to the shadows and warmer tones to the highlighted areas. Below is a screenshot of the entire workspace as I wanted to show how far zoomed out I am at this stage. I don't zoom in until the image is almost 50% complete.

At this point (below), I feel like I have enough information to start thinking about details. I start applying some bold geometric shapes to the rims to figure out what would work best. I play around with applying photographic elements to the rims and painting over them and cutting them out until I get some interesting variations going on.

Using the free program Alchemy, I create abstract shapes to create custom vinyls for the car.

The rest is a back and forth of zooming in and out, and adding details here and there building up the values. Since I wanted this to look like a car show room, I added a few large abstract shapes into the back, mainly painting various transparent geometric shapes on top of one another and adding a few small photographic elements in small areas to add a bit more realism to it.

At the very end, I added the Unsharp Mask filter on the image to give the overall piece a sharp, rendered 3-d look.

Voila, took about 15-20 hours to complete.
thanks for visiting,
-Tin

6-Fold Self-Promotional Mailer

2010-07-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

Another mailer to promote myself a children's illustrator.

I'm pretty happy with this one. The monster ended up looking a little like something drawn by Eric Orchard, but this didn't occur to me until later, so, sorry Eric. Apparently you were my unconscious inspiration.

Again I was thinking about type and how it can be integrated effectively in an illustration, but at the same time I was thinking about how I can use the format of the mailer in a novel way to show sequential action. Just like the way illustrators try to take advantage of page turns in book illustration, I wanted to take advantage of how the mailer would be read as it was unfolded.

Here's a detail:

This is the full sequence:

This is the orientation of the images as they will be printed, with the larger image on the opposite side:

This is the order in which the recipient will see the images as they unfold the mailer, each row representing one fold:

With the final image on the back:

The ground for the image was a pastel texture with soft pastel on print-making paper. I first laid down a blue color, fixed it with spray fixative, then laid in a blue gray so the dark blue would show through in a textured pattern. Since all the color was eventually manipulated on photoshop, all that mattered was that it was two analogous colors. They could have been any two colors and I could have achieved the same result on photoshop, which is how I got all the nice purples in the monster. The figures were colored with watercolor texture. All the line art, was, as usual, done with brush and ink in multiple parts, scanned and assembled. Some changes had to be made: for example, the monster's hand had to be enlarged from the original drawing.

The letters were tricky. I didn't want them to have an entirely mechanical look, so after distorting them to put them in the right perspective and making the little pieces (Last time I made a big to-do about distorting type and what a bad idea it was, but this is kind of a special circumstance), I printed them out in pink on bristol board and painted the 3-dimensional edge on them using gouache, a water-based paint similar to tempera. Then I grayscaled them, separated them from the background and colored them on photoshop. All the type was done with Futura condensed.

My long term plan is to send mailers out about once a month for the next 7 or 8 months, then to send mailers about once every two months after that. This one is going to probably be sent in January or February. I sent a 16 page portfolio booklet to about 50 publishers, about a month ago, and will be sending my first mailer to these publishers and about 40 more, next week. My idea is to get a bunch of these in the can, first, so I can work on other projects in the coming months and continue to stay current with the mailers I send.

This is all a part of my single-focus effort to get involved in the children's and young adult book market. There's the writing side to this too: I'm in the process of putting a final draft together for my first YA novel for teens and am about to finish the fist draft of my second YA novel for teens. I've also got a chapter book for young readers and a picture book written that I would like to make dummies for, and a two-person show of new work at the Pence Gallery in February, my first real fine art show. The work in the show is very different than my illustration work: mostly dry brush and watercolor studies of animals and landscapes.

So a lot is in the works. hopefully in the next year or two my efforts will start to pay off!

"Illustrators should Animate" (Or should they?)

2010-07-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

What do you think?

I have to say that I do see some stuff moving toward being animated, and that is fine. However, my issues lie with the business side.

Will these animations demand a higher commission? Will art directors be willing to pay more or will we still be working with the "fixed budget?" Obviously, making these animations will take more time, and that should affect commission.

Will a demand for animation affect deadlines or will we be expected to produce something with movement (and possibly sound) within the same timeframe as a single image?

These are things to consider. Honestly, I see only a small amount of work heading towards animation due to these restraints listed above. I for one won't be willing to take extra time to produce movement on a quick turnaround assignment simply because the client wants it to move.

Granted, I'm sure there are instances where movement may actually enhance a concept. If so, then maybe the art director and illustrator should collaborate (gasp!) to make that happen. For example, several illustrators I know provide artwork TO BE animated in animatics, film credits, online applications, etc. These are usually static figures and backgrounds or character body parts to be put together. Someone else does the animation.

I don't think making images move should be a skill that illustrators need; I think it is a skill that art directors need if they want animation. Asking a conceptual thinker to make moving images is like asking a an architect to build a Winnebago :)

Why would a client even expect that? It is like expecting a graphic designer to be a web designer. Yes, some do both but certainly not all graphic designers know coding, flash, etc. I assume my current and future clients will know my art well enough to respect that I choose not to animate as it is simply not something I see as enhancing my work.

It is up to the individual as to whether they want to offer animation or not. Those wanting extra skills to bring in a bit more cash should learn, but I don't see art directors ceasing to hire great conceptual artists or truly talented draftsmen and (women) just to have a possibly inferior concept that moves.

Just my thoughts; I would be really interested in hearing what other "faculty" from this blog have to say as well as the students!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Check out EFII's forum to see what others are saying:
http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/2010/07/23/weekend-forum-to-animate-or-not-to-animate/

{ UPPER PLAYGROUND CONTEST }

2010-06-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Facebook contest for a Jason Jagel Intaglio Print

as posted on Upper Playground:

We just went through our marketing budget and decided that we had three options with what to do for the rest of the year:

a) Pump money into traditional advertising / media conglomerates and see it all trickle into a faceless wallet b) Use it to give something back to the community that’s supported and embraced us for the part 10 years c) Buy everyone in the office an Ipad and open a company tab at all the bar’s in the Lower Haight.

After very little deliberation, we all unanimously decided on option C, sorry guys.

Just kidding, we went with option B. The first segment of that starts today as a Facebook design and photo contest. To enter, submit a photo of any design/artwork/photograph/creative-piece you’ve done to our Facebook fan photos section (you can just post it to our wall in the top bar and it’ll go to the Fan Photos section). The winner will be decided by who has the most ‘Likes’ on their photo, so it’s up to you to promote your design. We’ll tally the votes next Monday (June 28th) at 12 noon PST and announce the winner.

Whoever has the most ‘Likes’ will receive a Limited Edition Jason Jagel hand printed Intaglio/Wood Block print and will qualify to be entered for a larger grand prize to be announced at a later date. AND we’ll put your piece on our blog and include it in our weekly newsletter to give you some more eyeballs on what you do.

Self-Promotional Mailer

2010-06-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest self-promotional mailer. this is aimed at children's book publishers.

This was inspired by an exercise that Kristen Nobles from Candlewick Press had attendees attempt at the 2010 SCBWI Spring Spirit Conference. She gave us all a very short time to thumbnail the nursery rhyme, "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumps over the candlestick". After the exercise she asked how many people drew Jack as a boy, and pretty much everyone had. She then suggested that Jack could be an animal, or just about anything that jumps. She then asked how many drew the candlestick on the floor, and pretty much everyone had. Then she asked, why was the candlestick on the floor? Where do you usually see candlesticks? She wanted to encourage us to look outside of our first impressions and basic assumptions about a story.

My approach to illustrating my recent children's book subjects has been to try to be as accurate as possible to what I felt was the author's intention, but most of the subjects I've been illustrating have been prose chapter books. Since picture books have very limited text, the process is much more of a collaboration. The artist does a lot more narrative heavy lifting because the text doesn't always suggest exactly what should happen on the page, so this is my attempt to stretch the text in a different direction.

I also wanted to try to do something interesting with the typography since in picture books, type is often integrated into the imagery in a more meaningful way. The typeface is Futura, a typeface that the illustrator Frank Staake tends to use often, and I was inspired by the way he uses type. I I wanted to have they typography mesh nicely with the imagery and reflect the character of the words. I've found that generally when I distort type, it doesn't tend to look as good--the characters of the best faces are designed to fit together well, and everything is considered, including the negative spaces between characters and the way characters fit together. When you distort type you change all of this. That doesn't mean that distorting characters can't be effective, but in my personal experience, it looks better when I leave it alone.

So for "nimble" I wanted the type to look flexible and stretchy, without stretching it out, so i curved the path of the text and made a dotted line thread through the words to emphasize the path, alternating the color of the characters to give it a kind of rhythm. For "Jack be quick" I made a dotted line that bounced from one word to the next, with the word "quick" larger, and in the condensed form of the typeface to make it visually correspond to the build-up of speed, again using the same color scheme but making the emphasis in red on the word "quick". I thought about doing something similar with "jumps" by making the text appear to jump over the candlestick, but this ended up making the image too busy with text, so I decided to keep the last passage simple.

Affordable {Private Art Classes Available}

2010-05-27T11:07:00.001-07:00

I will be offering private art lessons starting August 20th 2010. The first 10 weeks will focus on life drawing only. The emphasis will be on working in sketchbooks and one-on-one guidance, helping the students strengthen their drawing skills. The seating is limited, so an early sign up is encouraged. For more information regarding class outline and pricing, contact Tin Salamunic at: Tin@salamunicart.com

Location: Richmond, Virginia

{ Critique of Student Work }

2010-04-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

Every other week or so (from now on) I will be giving small illustration challenges to my class as extra credit. The chosen winner will have their work displayed here on the blog for critique.

The first challenge, shown below, was to illustrate the quote "Motivated by good intentions". It had to be done digitally (since it was for a digital drawing class) and no additional texturing aside from the initial drawing and custom brushes was allowed.

The first one is by { Eric Pfeiffer }

This one( depicting Truman/Hiroshima) is by { Joshua Graydon }

Constructive criticism is encouraged. Your feedback may be brief, but you may go into details as well.

Thank You

Jason Raish Illustration Process

2010-04-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

This was done last year for New Physician magazine. the article was about how hard it is not sympathize with your patients. Concept wise I was trying to think about how to show force/feeling that you feel when you see someone lying in a hospital bed in pain. All 7 of my sketches featured beams of light coming out of various parts of the doctors body. I guess its not good to send 7 variations of the same concept but I really wanted to do it so i did. My favorite pieces are these darker atmospheric emotive pieces. I don't know if art directors feel the same though. I didn't hear any response from ADs so this piece isn't even on my site anymore but it's a fav of mine.

First of all I only do the coloring of the figures and small changes in photoshop. everything else is pencil and paint. I wish i didnt have to use the computer at all but it is such a fast and useful tool especially in the tight deadline editorial world. Here is my pencil drawing with levels and hue and saturation adjustment layers applied so its not dead gray graphite anymore.

since my stuff gets reduced down you don't get to see the pencil details and texture, I should really stop spending so much time on that when I know it will be reduced so much that you can't even tell it's pencil anymore.

Here is my acrylic paint background with levels and color changes. Looks like total crap right? That's good because the crappier it is the better texture it makes. I have been using 2 fifty cent brushes from Utretch for something like 3 years now. They are the crappiest brushes in the world but are the best to make these textured backgrounds. Maybe its because I know they are cheap so i know i can do whatever I want with. It's also nice that my style has kind of become a tight figures and crappy loose background style so i can have fun and slap paint around for 15 minutes on the background.

Next the background lines. When you slap this on top of the crappy paint background it really feels good because this is the moment when you see the whole thing come together. I used to do the background drawing on paper and scan it but I have switched to using a pencil brush on photoshop because it is easier and allows for more freedom actually. You can't tell the difference either.

next is the color layer, the red color accents layer, and the opaque highlights layer for eyeballs, and hair highlights. I mask out the highlights on the skin in the color layer. These three layers is what makes it look like photoshop magic to people when you show them on your computer.

What did I do here? I added some atmosphere, I added a slight layer of dark around the edges so the focus is more in the middle of the illustration. It's easy to over do the atmosphere layer.

Next is the show stopper layers, the ethereal glow. Actually I try to work on any elements that will affect my color choices evenly so i had already worked on the glow layer already checking back and forth periodically to see how the colors are working together.

Something i've started doing to some pieces is adding bounce light to the faces. So here there is blue bounce light on her face and the guys legs. This is the final illustration.

One final parting detail shot of the face and all the background texture and pencil texture that will never be seen because it will be reduced down as a spot illustration.

{ New RIDES Magazine illustration with steps }

2010-04-15T02:49:00.000-07:00

For May Issue (out now) of RIDES Magazine.

Start of a new series of car-cartoon personifications of Hip Hop Musicians. Each issue will feature two artists whose look and/or personality will be reflected in various car models. Probably the most exciting assignment I have worked on. Each assignment provides me with the opportunity to both design the graffiti text of each name, as well as play with various abstractions of cars, which are my favorite things to draw!

This is the final layout that was chosen for the Issue:

A few progress shots:

First round of sketches:

Playing with different car abstractions. The BMW is a personification of 3Six Mafia and the Rolls Royce is a personification of Ghost Face Killah.

Here is my first round of background design experiments:

My set of page sample layouts that I submitted to the client:

Tip for illustrators: I personally believe that you can benefit a lot if you take your sketches as far as you possibly can. Originally, this assignment was supposed to have small 2 inch car drawings surrounding the body of the text, yet the editorial team decided to turn it into a full page feature because I provided them with a variety of fleshed out choices to work with. Generally speaking though, if you develop your sketch as far as you can, the client will have a better idea of where you will take the final, providing you with more accurate feedback and a quicker path to finishing the piece.

Forward Magazine: Bankrupt Nation (Interior)

2010-04-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Here is some new artwork from a great client, Forward Magazine.

From the art director's lips (or rather, the email): "This story is simply about the great debt our nation is in. I think we want to depict the “gruesome” aspect of this topic, and really drive home the point that our debt is ruinous. Your style struck a chord with me because you’ve done several pieces that are sort of dramatic in manner, but can deliver the message in a palpable way. I’ve attached a cover template so you can also get an idea of where things fall in placement. I’d like to get 3-5 different sketches, and then we’ll choose one for cover, one for inside."

In order to milk this assignment for two blog posts, I will post some of the sketches and the interior illustration today; then I will post the rest of the sketches and the cover art next month :)

I had a pretty confident idea that a certain sketch (not shown) would be chosen for the cover, so I explored a wide variety of subject matter for the other concepts. The first 3 of the 6 sketches:

Lady Liberty drowning in red ink (a quote from the article) explored in two sketches:

And a bank picked clean:

In the end, the art director went with the torch as the interior image:

Read the article here.

Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Connecticut Magazine Illustration

2010-03-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! I won't be chatting much as I have a busy day. So here is a quick rundown of a recent commission from Connecticut Magazine. The article was their annual "Rating the small towns," in which the towns of Connecticut are judged on crime, culture, education, etc. Cover sketches:

The article also had a spot illustration. Note how these spots tie-in with the cover themes, and yet the art director also has a choice of mixing up themes if need be. Sketches:

The art director decided that she like the first cover sketch and the gauge-theme spot illo, but she wanted to place the cover sketch's #1 on something rather than it be a giant object itself. She asked for a hot-air balloon, and I did a quick revision. The art director tried it out with the text, and she liked it. After approval, I provided the refined drawing on the right to give her a better idea of the final art:

Final artwork:

I mocked up this cover based on the text the art director tested on the sketch; I think its pretty close to the actual cover. I'll find out when the issue arrives!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris
chris-whetzel.com

Ode Magazine Illustration

2010-03-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

In mid-January, Ode Magazine contacted me seeking an illustration for an article about valuing green spaces. The article was mostly about how we are not assigning value to open spaces; we clearcut and destroy beautiful scenery for strip malls and housing.

The sketches:The final artwork:

Enjoy the Day,
Chris

Rhythm-Line of action

2010-03-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

Rhythm is one of the biggest problems intermediate level artists have when learning the figure. When people say your figure is "stiff" or "static" this is what they are talking about. In order to begin to study rhythm, I recommend first studying the line of action.

The first problem people have is usually seeing the whole figure as a series of small parts rather than as a shape. Quickstudies (or Gestures) can solve this problem. Quickstudies are poses that range in time from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. When doing quickstudies pay as much attention to finding the line of action as possible. At first it will be difficult, but learn from your mistakes and after a while it will make drawing the figure a lot more fun. These examples are mostly from the 1-3 minute timeframe--->

The great thing about Quickstudies is that you don't have enough time to work on anything that's not important.

Rhythm can't be taught in the same way as anatomy because the rhythm changes completely based on the pose and no one part of the body has the same rhythm for every pose. On top of this, what you choose to emphasize can be subject to the artist's opinion. In a pose that's lacking clear rhythm, 2 different artists may push the rhythm in separate ways in their drawings (like quantum mechanics ;)

Skills learned doing quickstudies will immediately translate into more lively drawings for longer poses. Like everything else, results can't be achieved without practice and patience.

TAD RVA OPEN HOUSE + Workshop with Josh George and Sterling Hundley

2010-03-19T20:40:00.000-07:00

TAD RVA

What: OPEN HOUSE
When: Saturday, March 27, 2010
9am- 5pm

Where: The future site of TAD RVA, The Art Department's Richmond, VA based POD.
Who: Potential and Future TAD students.
In attendance: Sterling Hundley (Director, TAD RVA), Josh George (TAD RVA, Studio Lead), and Jeff Love (TAD RVA, Resident Assistant)

Rocketts Landing
210 Rocketts Way
Suite 120
Henrico County, Virginia 23231 (Just East of Tobacco Row in Downtown Richmond)

TAD RVA will be holding an OPEN HOUSE in our future TAD RVA location on Saturday, March 27th from 9am- 5pm. TAD RVA's OPEN HOUSE is being held as a forum for future and potential students to ask TAD RVA specific questions, as well as to offer insight into future TAD programs at large. The TAD RVA location is under construction, but the OPEN HOUSE should give future students a better understanding of TAD, TAD RVA's connection to the city of Richmond, our Faculty and Curriculum, and the Region as a whole.

Sterling Hundley, Director of TAD RVA, Josh George, TAD RVA's Studio Lead, and Jeff Love, TAD RVA's Resident Assistant, will be in attendance to answer your questions.

Sterling and Josh will be doing live painting and drawing demonstrations from 11am until 4pm during the OPEN HOUSE.

Please come to meet us, we have amazing things in store for our future students!

For questions regarding the TAD RVA OPEN HOUSE, or the TAD RVA POD, please contact Sterling Hundley directly at: sterling@sterlinghundley.com
(804)306.9536

{ ILLUSTRATION FOR 0-60 MAGAZINE TUTORIAL }

2010-03-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Editorial illustration for {0-60} Magazine.

:: shot of the color study/sketch that I submit to the client ::

:: Here is the other sketch that I submitted + color study ::

Step by Step by Step

2010-03-11T11:06:00.001-08:00

Corporate commission.

Clients wants a Parisian/urban style cafe scene that is both timeless and contemporary. Responded favorably to similar works that I have done in the past. Attracted to sad and stoic characters. Prefers a color pallet that is de-saturated and in the realm of warm earth-tones. 48"x36" horizontal.

Step 1. Treat myself to brunch at a local cafe that is always bustling, a lot of customer interaction and movement from the waitstaff. I take about 100 photos with a point and shoot digital camera, exploring all angles, making some of the diners around me uncomfortable. I am looking for little details, groupings of people, woodwork of chairs, subtle shifts in posture, forks and spoons, basic shapes of aprons and table tops. I have an omelet of duck confit and winter squash.

Step 2. Rough thumbnail sketches no bigger than 2 inches. From photos that I have rearranged roughly in Photoshop I work with shape mostly, silhouettes and symbols of objects, thinking in 2 basic values. The figures are inspired from the photos, the environment and the street scene are invented. These are done just for me to decide on composition. Even in this stage everything is clear and concise and readable on first glance. Simple, simple, simple.

Step 3. Tight sketch that I send off for approval. Shows compositionally exactly what I am going to do.

Step 4. Redraw my sketch on a wood panel that has been primed with a brick red color. My under drawing is a basic road map where everything will go. I don't worry about details because it will all be covered up. I have my sketch to refer back to when I need to add elements.

Step 5. Collage stage. Working big to small, background to foreground I go nuts. Playing with intense color that I plan to charge the paint with. Thinking about pattern and texture. Though a lot of this will be covered up I like the history that it presents. This can be the most tedious stage, like building a LEGO space station.

Step 6. I begin my underpainting in acrylic. Working with a palate knife I again work big to small, background to foreground. Trying to paint all the areas all at once so the color is a bit cohesive, expressionistic and energetic. The goal is to blend the collage elements and the paint to make them seem as one. As if the paper came straight out of a paint tube.

Step 7. Finish it off with oils. Knocking back some of the intense color, working up some of the details, deepening the darkest values, punching up the highlights, glazing areas to solidify the color scheme.

Step 8. I treat myself to lunch. This time I do not make customers uneasy by taking pictures of them. I have a chicken tartine and a glass of Touraine Sauvignon.

Toomai of the Elephants!

2010-03-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

Unlike the other illustrators on this blog whom I admire a great deal, I'm still building my career, but Tin seems to think I might have something to offer, so here's a little bit of the process for a recent portfolio building image.

This is the first of three illustrations for Rudyard Kipling's Toomai of the Elephants from The Jungle Books. This would be a double page spread allowing for a column of text to the left. This is a scene briefly mentioned early in the story where it describes how the elephant Kali Nag (black snake) bats away a wounded tiger with his head. I thought of this as my one opportunity to show Kali Nag as a bad ass, a flashback to his younger years.

My object here is to put together some sample illustrations for a possible dummy for a proposed Toomai book.

And a couple of details:

After I've roughed out the basic composition I work in pieces, inking each individual element and recombining the whole mess on the computer. In this one there's a bird I didn't end up using, but I used pretty much everything else. The reason I work in pieces like this is because I find it easier to tackle a complex image with lots of detail when I break it down into smaller more manageable parts.

For inking I use a Winsor and Newton Series 7 brush, vintage Esterbrook 355 dip pen points (purchased by the gross on E-bay) and any disposable technical pen that will do the job.

Some textures I scanned in. All the color aside from a few highlights is cloned from watercolor and pastel textures. Here are a few examples:

The only texture I didn't make was the texture on the red cushion which I borrowed from A Dover pattern book and then tweaked using "spherize" and "distort" on Photoshop until it fit. Usually I like to hand draw everything including patterns like this, but it was easier and simpler just to use a preexisting image. It's not so jarringly different than the rest of the line art that it's distracting so I figured it was a fair enough cheat.

And some reference:

Me, acting like a maniac for some reference:

I print out all my reference in black and white to save ink because I print out a lot of reference and ink is expensive. Since I don't add color till everything's scanned this works out pretty well.

{ INKSCAPE } :: Free Inking Software ::

2010-03-04T14:26:00.001-08:00

{What is Inkscape ?}

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

:: Screenshots ::

{ GIMP } Free Alternative to Photoshop > Free and Legal!

2010-03-04T07:25:00.001-08:00

GIMP is a multi-platform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.

GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

One of The GIMP's strengths is its free availability from many sources for many operating systems. Most GNU/Linux distributions include The GIMP as a standard application. The GIMP is also available for other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows™ or Apple's Mac OS X™ (Darwin). The GIMP is a Free Software application covered by the General Public License [GPL]. The GPL provides users with the freedom to access and alter the source code that makes up computer programs.

{ Features and Capabilities }

The following list is a short overview of some of the features and capabilities which GIMP offers you:

A full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an airbrush, cloning, etc.
Tile-based memory management, so image size is limited only by available disk space
Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high-quality anti-aliasing
Full Alpha channel support for working with transparency
Layers and channels
A procedural database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs, such as Script-Fu
Advanced scripting capabilities
Multiple undo/redo (limited only by disk space)
Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
Support for a wide range of file formats, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others
Selection tools, including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent scissors
Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.
( As posted on: http://docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/introduction.html )

:: Click on The Logo below to enter the site and download Gimp for Free ::

:: Screen shots of the Software ::

J. C. Leyendecker

2010-03-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

I wanted to share an artist that I don't think gets enough credit for his huge impact on illustration- J. C. Leyendecker. Norman Rockwell wouldn't quit doing Saturday evening Post covers until he'd topped the number that Leyendecker (his biggest influence) had done in his career. I guess you have to be competitive to be Norman Rockwell!

If something was old fashioned during Leyendecker's time...

it was either rocks or wood.

Leyendecker's a great Illustrator to study for shape design as shapes don't get much cleaner or better designed than this. For this reason, I have my students do Leyendecker master copies in order to get a better feel for the shape of things like feet.

The good old days of beating the children with a shoe....
Then putting it on magazine covers.

One of the reasons that Leyendecker wasn't too well known was that there were no Leyendecker art books for a very long time. That's no longer the case. There are a few small complaints (some people don't like the color reproduction, and a fake actually made it into the book) but it's 100% better than nothing which is what was in print before.

More Leyendecker---> Link

Leyendecker's so great that despite being dead, he has his own Blog! (credit goes to Andrew Bosley for the blog)

{ Smashing Magazine } + Tutorial Link

2010-03-02T17:35:00.001-08:00

An Excellent resource for tutorials, inspiration, articles, as well as links to other high quality sites related to the visual arts.

{ Designing for Print – Setting Up Crops and Bleed } > click image to enter

{ Creating a Movie Poster } This could be useful for those of you trying to redo the Movie Poster Design Project for the Digital drawing class. (COAR Students).

{ First Post } - Quick Tutorial

2010-03-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

To get things started, I decided to post one of my older tutorials (on the image above ^) done about 2 years ago. I will have more updates soon.

(The write-up is old. I will have this replaced with a newer tutorial later this week).

Step 1: The Sketching
I have been doing my sketching directly on the computer recently, because it allows me to work faster and make adjustments much, much easier. Since this is an action oriented illustration, I like to consider triangular composition to enforce movement.

Step 2: The Inking
Below is an image of all of my inking tools that I used for this illustration. I like using fine brushes for my finished work because it brings the drawing to life and makes the illustration look much more interesting. When I apply my black shapes, I constantly place either tracing paper on top of the image or blur my eyes out to see how the overall shapes read. I strongly believe that if an image does not work as a black and white, then it will not work as a color piece either. In this case, I wanted to create a circular pattern of my blacks to contrast the triangular composition of the image and also lead the eye around the image.

Step 3: The Flats

I start laying in my flats working in CMYK using Adobe Photoshop at 600 dpi. I set the line layer to Multiply and use the white canvas layer underneath to lay in my flat shapes. As I am laying in the colors, I use the "Selective Color", "Replace Color" and "Hue/Saturation" options to adjust the colors to my liking. I like to stick to a maximum of 3-4 colors in all of my work because anything beyond that becomes visually too busy and unbalanced.

Step 4: The Shadows
After all flats have been tightened up, I start laying in my shadows by using the lasso tool to create various shapes and fill them in with the darker value. This step is one of the fastest steps in this process.

Step 5: The Textures
The final step is to add some texture to the piece in order to make it look less flat. I either scan textures, or in this case found some free dirt textures at www.mayang.com
I lay the textures on top of the image and mess with the opacity of the texture layer and also use a soft eraser to define my edges and clean up the image.
7-8 hours total. I hope this was helpful.

-Tin