Summer/Spring Stuff pt. 1

Haven't posted much in a while.

I moved all the writing, recipes, and music related stuff to another blog. This one is now designated purely as an art blog. This makes it easier to keep both things organized and is easier to read.

The Beta Position

So, without further ado, here is some art!

German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. He came out rather well, I think.

The clothes and hat are done with General's Primo Euro-Blend charcoal sticks and pencils, and the skin is drawn with Wolff's carbon pencils. I use them similar to how I would a graphite pencil - gentle, slow circles to make the skin texture and tone. It's pretty easy; easier than I expected considering that I've never really used them much before.

He's the first in a multi-part series consisting of Rommel, Patton, Montgomery, Omar Bradley, and others (to be determined).

Self portraits rock. I love doing self portraits.

This is 8x8" in graphite and took between 16-22 hours... which makes me lightning fast compared to many artists! (Albeit not as reliable as far as actually FINISHING things!)

I like Tombow pencils. They're fantastic as far as pencils go, really smooth. Not as black as General's, but SMOOTH. Another example of great Japanese quality! Staedler's another good brand I wish I had more pencils of. Along with super nice knives, Germany produces some of the finest art implements I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Ah. As of this posting, I have 3 day left to do an 11x14" drawing for a wedding... better get at it!

Mark Harmon

I found three illustration board pieces that I'd cut up a while back and figured I'd make use of them.

Illustration board's not the most permanent medium (The paper on the Crescent 310 board I use is 100% cotton and acid free, but the gray-core board isn't quite so good.) but it works well for ink so that's what I use. I use a TON of water, and illustration board is the only surface that can handle it besides watercolor blocks. Clayboard would too, I suppose, but it's more expensive.

Crescent Premium watercolor board is the archival stuff: it has a white core. 

I took two scans. The first is about 1/3 of the way through, the 2nd is finished.

Mark himself is done in sepia ink. The background and shirt are black ink.

The wash method I use isn't exactly common. From what I understand, ink & wash was very popular earlier in the 1900s, but has become somewhat obscure these days. I recall reading about the technique in Rudy de Reyna's "How to Draw What You See" and thinking that it looked just dandy: thin ink with water and brush it on. How much more simple can it get?

The end result looks very much like a watercolor painting although it has very different characteristics:

• Ink thins with water but it sure doesn't lift like watercolor. Once a layer is dry, it's on for good unless you want to risk damaging the paper scrubbing.
• Ink handles a little differently. The vehicle for ink isn't gum arabic, so it behaves differently on wet paper. I can't describe it exactly, but if the paper is dry, it doesn't wander. It stays put exactly where you brush it. However, if there's a wet area nearby, you can count on that heavy ink you just laid down to go racing towards it and spread out. For fun, just wet a large area of paper and brush ink wildly throughout it. It spreads out in many interesting ways.
• It's very easy to layer ink. Since it dries waterproof, each layer goes on without disturbing anything else at all. This is an extremely useful property for tweaking gradients.
• As ink in a container dries, it thickens and becomes extremely easy to drybrush, much more so than watercolor. This is handy for adding texture to areas and doing hair, wrinkles, etc.

This is probably my favorite method of drawing. It's basically a western version of Sumi-e although I just use a cheap #6 white nylon brush, small script liner, and spotter. Drawing doesn't get much cheaper than that. I honestly believe even plain pencils would cost more in the long run.

I haven't seen it used much for portraiture but it works fine for me.

Comics with Kirk: pt. I

Here are some pages from a comic I've been working on for a few months. (Not much progress, huh?)

Only the bottom page is finished. It was adapted from a little drawing I did in my sketchbook while sitting at a cafeteria table.

Some commentary:

1st. Page: I can't come up with dialogue epic enough for that expression. I figure that as I get the rest of it done, it'll come to me. I don't even know where in the story it will fall. It was the first panel completed.

2nd. Page: Not sure whether or not to give the guy an afro or not. You can see that I penciled it in but it's one of those things I'll continue to sit on the fence about for quite some time.  The revolver was very hard to draw, it's an odd perspective. I used my Smith & Wesson model 10 for reference.

3rd Page: The rat has chewed through the cables. A running joke through the whole comic is that the couch is the only thing in color.

These things are hard to draw. I have no photo references so I have to just make stuff up and do a lot of studying.

Pastel Swatches

Took the time today to prepare swatches of pastel like I did of my watercolors. This doesn't serve as much of a purpose since opaque pastel lays down pretty much exactly as it looks from the stick, but they're pretty, at least.

I did my best to color-correct for how they appear in the real world. They're not quite as finicky as watercolor in that department.

Set 1:

The first set we have here are from Sennelier's 80 half-stick assortment. These are very good pastels for the money, IMO. I've read some complaints that a few colors are really hard, but from what I can tell, only a few colors seem noticeably harder than the others. Generally, these are soft, rich colored pastels and I've thoroughly enjoyed using them. (Not these of course. I haven't painted a single thing with these and I've had them for 5 months now. :D )

Set 2:

These are assorted pastels and pencils I've accumulated since the Fall of 2009.  I'll note a few interesting things here.

The Yarka Russian Sauce crayons are very nice. The colors are all muted and subdued and the sticks feel quite similar to a Conte crayon. I haven't got the chance to try them out yet.

The rest are typical pastels I've collected based on my primary style of portraitrature, you'll notice a lot of earth colors. These also tend to be REALLY TOXIC in some brands, so watch yourself.

Of the brands, I believe Great American Artworks are my favorite. They have great names too. I just love that Atmosphere color.

Painting 1

Oh boy, I always said it was a-comin': the day when I made the first "Painting" post. Yay!

As I may have mentioned before, I don't paint a whole lot but enjoy mixing mediums. This originally was intended as a quick and to-the-point monotone watercolor painting in sepia; however, I completed the painting and figured I'd add in a few details.

So I whipped out the pastel and charcoal pencils and went to town on the painting. I always liked to use charcoal over ink for the textural effects, and it worked similarly here. There's actually quite a variety of colors here: about 9, I believe. I left them kind of subtle to keep with the original plan but I think they definitely add something.

The painting is on Crescent 310 illustration board. It's an okay surface for this sort of thing: not as absorbent as good watercolor paper (the water WILL run) but tough and it holds its shape well even under my "soak it" approach. Crescent recommends it for pencils and not wet media but it is a multi-purpose board, so there you have it.

*UPDATE*

Added in a background with some sort of brown paint that was on my palette mixed into a bunch of Cadmium Red.

Sexy.

Watercolor Swatches

Tonight I took the time to make color swatches of the 19 watercolor paints I have.
Make sure to view the full size image.


I labeled the brand and color beneath each sample, although my handwriting never improved past about a 2nd grade level, so if you can't read any of them and want to know, just ask.








My oldest paints are the Winsor & Newton Cotman paints, a student line but they seem to be of fairly good quality and have some nice colors. I've done at least a dozen ink and wash paintings using only the W&N paints you see here: earth colors. They work well together and are great for sketching/painting landscapes and fall scenery.

The Van Gogh and Grumbacher paints are also student paints that I pick up sometimes at art stores when they're on sale. You can find them extremely cheap and they seem to be very good paints for the money. For around $2, I can't find anything to beat them for cost/quantity/quality in a student paint for sketching or adding color to ink drawings.

I really like the Maimeri Blu paints. Their Cobalt Blue is completely awesome even though it's really expensive, and their Cadmium colors are very vibrant, the only fault I have with them (Cadmium in general as a watercolor pigment) is that they are so opaque. That does have its uses, though.
The blue is a bit grainy but really potent, it mixes up some nice purples or greens with ease.
The earth colors are good. I strongly recommend you at least try their blues and siennas. From what I've red, they make some good violet colors as well.
Viridian is a nice sea-green color and I've found it useful for painting plants.

Drawings 4

I haven't updated this in a while.

Here is a carbon pencil drawing I did of my grandparents as a christmas gift for my grandma.


General's Carbon Sketch pencil is probably my favorite pencil I've tried. It's soft and easily blended with a tortillon, keeps enough of a point for details, and is really, really black. I still use charcoal pencils, but this has basically replaced them for general sketching or drawing. It also works well with pastel pencils as a black.