Wilderness Lessons

I was asked to create an illustration of a wilderness scene. After kicking around some ideas that were mostly Photoshop image composites, I was asked to do something with natural media.

I painted the background with gouache and a smidge of a  new long-drying acrylic sample I had on hand from a local art store. I painted directly onto some computer paper which I had taped onto a portable lap desk. I kept working the image over adding color before moving on to texture.

I ended up incorporating some paper towel into the painting (the mountain range, lower left corner, and area behind the tree). I sponged the painting with paper towel and flicked paint to add more texture. I wanted a really physically tactile painting.

When I was happy, I moved on to the tree which I painted in a similar fashion on a different piece of paper. On the version shown here I actually created a negative out of the drawing of the tree. I liked the contrast and openness; the Joshua tree is almost a doorway into something beyond the desert landscape.

I created some texture to scan using bubble wrap and cellophane, scanned every thing and brought it into Photoshop for compositing. When I scanned the background, I placed piece of cellophane directly on the glass, creating some interesting reflection lines which I liked.

I played around with layers and blending modes and added some texture with a custom brush and incorporated a gradient overlay.

I sent the client 4 variations but like this one the best overall.

Honeybear a la Thiebaud

I really like Wayne Thiebaud’s nearly edible paintings (thanks Mykelle). His layering of rich, luminous color and texture are so enjoyable and engaging. Common objects attain a kind of sublime transcendence, forcing the viewer to see them in a new way.

Natural Inks

Yesterday a friend invited us over to pick blackberries. I ended up sketching some flowers and plants in her backyard. I was promptly loaded up with clippings from a variety of plants to take home with me. One flower (whose name I don’t know) had petals with a vibrant, nearly flourescent blue-purple. I boiled some of them to make a thin ink. I also made some 2 strengths of Blackberry ink and used some of my morning coffee to round out my pallete.

Sketching a quick composition of some leaves from a Bleeding Heart plant, I just began layering the drawing from light to dark with my natural pigments. I did add a little baking soda to the various mixtures since I don’t know what the pH values were and I didn’t want any acids eating into my sketchbook paper too soon (I have no idea if my logic is sound from an archival perspective, but I know that coffee is acidic so a base should neutralize it , right?).

I mixed linseed oil with the darker blackberry ink so it would stick to my chop.

I also scanned some negative washed paintings of the actual Bleeding Heart leaves that were my model as well as scanning the leaves themselves. I took those and messed around in Photoshop using various blending modes to get the final composition.

Below is the final composition followed by the 4 painting stages:

1. Coffee
2. Petals
3. Blacberry thin
4. Blackberry dark

Not One Falls to the Ground…

I had the fantastic opportunity of having a dead adolescent (Stellars Jay, I think) bird end up in front of my house. It must have been a recent mishap since the body wasn’t decayed and was relatively whole. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity for some up-close study of avian anatomy, I did these quick pencil and watercolor studies.

Probably the greatest discovery for me was to find that the birds rear-projecting claw is in the same position relative to the human thumb. I guess cartoon drawings of birds leave the impression that 3 claws project forward and one projects backward, diametrically opposite the middle front-facing digit. Actually, the back claw is what your thumb would be if you sliced the tissue separating your thumb and index finger all the way to were your thumb connects to the wrist bone, then bend the whole thing back. Amazing!

Moonflower

I cut a little canvas out of a brown paper grocery bag. I like the texture and weight enough to paint an impromptu character sketch. A little hippy girl from days gone by. It had been awhile since I painted with acrylics. I like that her shoes are the bag color.

Watercolored Matron

The mysterious Blue-Plumed Figment

I’ve been itching to experiment with Gouache and I recently got the chance during a brief visit to the park. The subject didn’t move the entire time. I think I’ll try a scene next time…

A few weeks ago I spent an hour or so painting gesso onto various pages in different sketchbook. I wanted to provide a ground for gouache, pastels, acrylic or other media. I also wanted to prevent these media from bleeding through the paper to other drawings and sketches.

This is a oil pastel drawing of a finch that I scanned through a sheet of wax-paper, color adjusted in Photoshop, then played around with the filters until I got an effect that I liked (and effectively masked my deficiencies as a master of oil pastel).

I also got to apply my Chinese chop that I scanned a couple months back for just such a purpose. It seemed to lend itself well to the subject matter. am happy to apply it to my digital work.

Gouache Painting

I’ve been seeing a lot of gouche illustrations, particularly on Pixar peeps blog. I remembered that I had inherited some tubes of the stuff from my sister-in-law, who is a pretty amazing illustrator. I also saw a series of book illustrations by Belle Yang at the Monterey art museum a few weeks ago. The brilliant, matte colors of her paintings were very exciting and inspiring.

I spent some time applying gesso to pages in some of my sketchbooks (I’ve got about 7 or 8 going at various stages of use) so the gesso wouldn’t interact negatively with the existing sketches.

Since I’m not exactly sure how to approach gouche from a technical standpoint, I just jumped in using a character from my Labsquad project. I mainly used a pointed round watercolor brush and worked in shapes with minimal (intentional) blending.

If anyone has pointers or knows of a good resource on how to effectively mix, apply and utilize gouche, I’d appreciate the help. I have a limited palette of colors (all in the warm end) so I colorized the final painting in Photoshop with a gradient overlay.