There's a lot that's attractive about the speed and ease of digital media. No setup time, no cleanup time, you just take off right from the bat. You don't stop to clean brushes, or need to set up the palette or replenish the paints.

It's pretty awesome. And it's also one of the disadvantages of the media.

Painting in oils, you set up your palette, get your brushes together, prep your surface for painting, a whole (very possibly tedious and frustrating) set of maneuvers and tasks you've got to make before you lay down the first stroke.

A ritual.

In martial arts, in sports, in competition, in performance, in so many things, there's a set and expected warm-up time. You're stretching out, maybe bowing in, or going through some codified or informal ritual (casting salt across the ring) -- and the whole time you're doing that, your brain, and all it's whizzing chaotic little bits, are aligning for the task at hand. Focusing.

Of course, sometimes it's great to jump in head first -- a spontaneous dive into the task. Gusto can be just as valuable as focus. But I think for a lot of us, we don't make time for the focus and preparation as often as we should. I know I'm trying to put together a way to get truly focused as I start a digital piece. The default ritual for digital tasks is checking e-mail, a bit of web-browsing, fiddling with the music playlist -- and it's all very splintering rather than aligning.

(p.s. sprinkling salt across the ring is one of the many rituals before a sumo bout)

It was a fairly good model, but kept instinctively moving to help with the drawing (rotate the page, grab the white charcoal, etc.).

These are done w/ a 2b pencil and a white charcoal. I should have been using an eraser, too, but I was too lazy to get up and find one.

--NOTE -- I wrote the following late at night, and by the light of day, it's much too harsh. The advice I'm panning below is actually not bad advice, and only needs a few explanatory notes (which I'm sure any good teacher spreading this advice uses) to make it pretty much universally applicable. I prefer a different approach, but the "closest to the light" one is probably easier and quicker to understand -- Here follows the rant:

I overheard somebody teaching a student about light and shadow, and he said something I think is . . . well . . . wrong. I looked it up online, and found a number of mini-lessons and tutorials that say the same thing, and I still think it's wrong. Here it is:

"The highlight is the point closest to the light source."

This ain't true. Well, on a perfectly non-reflective sphere it's true, but that's about it. And it's true on a sphere because the point closest to the light is the point most perpendicular to the light. On more complicated forms it's going to lead you astray. There are three things that determine how light an area on an object is:

1. How perpendicular to the light source is it? A plane slanting away from the light is darker than one facing the light.
2. How close to the light source is it? Light does get weaker as the distance increases, but this is usually quite neglibible. The sunlight doesn't care about the distance from the near side of an apple to the far side. Even if we're exaggerating this for artistic effect, it's nowhere near as important as #1.
3. (and this is the one most people skip) where does light have a straight reflection to the eye? Most surfaces (including skin) have a bit of a gloss to them (just a bit) and this places a different highlight (and usually a different color highlight) than the basic illumination does (#1 and #2). This highlight will move around as the observer's eye does. The other highlights will stay in place no matter where the observer's eye moves as long as the object and light source don't move in relation to each other.

It's been a pretty good day for me. I finished up one painting (which I can't post yet), mounted the drawing for another painting, and blocked in a third:

One of Vlad's favorite styles was Film Noir -- and he was an ace at the genre. Here's a little tribute piece I did.

A friend of mine died last week. I found out Saturday, and haven't really known what to say since then. He was an internet only friend, I'd never met him in person. But I've been talking with him for eight years or so -- heck, longer than that. Probably ten or eleven. We've collaborated on a bunch of art pieces, that sort of stuff. He, myself, and a couple other friends have been collaborating on an artbook for the last few months.

I haven't known what to say, but it's been on my mind so much that it's just wrong not to say something. Vlad was a really considerate, helpful guy. He was a warm and caring friend, and I'm going to miss him. I've written and deleted paragraphs over and over here, with none of it ever getting to the point, so I'm just going to leave it at this -- the world is poorer without him.

I'd forgotten my younger daughter doesn't have daycare tomorrow, so I've got one less workday this week. Suddenly I'm in a panic about reprioritizing projects because I'm not going to finish what I'd planned on this week. I'd planned on getting the first layer of paint in on the piece I posted the thumbnail for the other day, but now I need to delay that 'til next week. Dammit. I may sneak in the time to mount the drawing for my motorcycle samurai painting, though. I've also prepped a handful of 5x7 boards and am going to try to work some littler paintings into my schedule. I find the energy built up from doing little paintings always carries over into bigger, more elaborate pieces.

Some clients had commissioned a mural of Don Quixote from me a few years back, but they've since had to move and leave the mural behind. So they commissioned me to do an oil of the same subject. It's fun subject matter to work with. I was trying to pull a little more of an "old world" feel into the paint, and to make Quixote and Rosinante (his nag/steed) bespeak both the heroisms of the fantasy and the awkwardness of the reality.

I can't honestly tell you why the sky is green. It was green in my first conception of the scene. In the planning stages I pulled the sky more naturalistic a few times, but was always compelled back towards the green. The whole way through the painting I was worried about that green sky. But now that it's done, I think it's just as it had to be.

I've got three pieces in the works, all part of my cutting loose project. The one I was playing w/ thumbs and color studies for this morning is probably the most pure example of trying to pull the freedom and "chunkiness" of my sketchbook work into my paintings. No fancy architecture, hardware, or perspective to this one, just the human figure -- wiry, knotted, and twisting -- and some fun lighting and textures. The pecs/lats/deltoids girdle on the sketch here has gotten kinda super-hero-ey. I'm going to pull away from that, though.



The blue rimlight is such a cliche in illustration I wanted to go with red, and push the glowing energy the character is manipulating blue. But man, that blue rimlight/ red energy version looks pretty good. Sometimes things become cliches for a good reason . . .

I'm planning on submitting to Spectrum this year. As you might guess, the piece I've got in mind isn't finished -- it's the one I've put the most work into, but have gotten the least far on.

I love working in real media. Even the best, most awesome digital piece I've ever done, satisfying as it may be when it's finished, never has the moments of enjoyment in it's creation that even a frustratingly mediocre traditional media piece does.

I sure don't love storing those real media pieces. If I could pop them into a portable hard-drive I'd be a happy, happy man. Hanging them can be really nice (though space gets tight fast).

Hanging has always been easy because I've either gone for that modern art thick stretched canvas look, or a simple wood frame. I love wood, so give me something with an interesting grain and I'm pretty set. But the pieces I've been lately have been on panel, so I can't just hang them from the stretcher bars, and they're not . . . well, a plain wood frame isn't right for them. I took a trip to the art museum a few days ago, and really studied the frames. It's a really interesting aspect of art, and one I'd never really studied before.

As a kid painting in high school (or art school for that matter) we'd look down on fancy frames, saying that a piece should stand on its own. If it's good, it won't matter how it's framed. But I don't think it's that simple anymore. (Sidenote, I don't think ANYTHING's as simple as I thought when I was twenty -- if life were really that simple we'd have solved all of life's problems by now).

No, a frame won't make a bad piece good, but the wrong frame can really destroy a piece's impact.

Sadly, the frames that seem right for my two most recent paintings are . . . pretty damn expensive. We'll see what to do about that.

So I'd been thinking that my oil paintings were all pretty quiet.  Which isn't a bad thing, I like a quiet painting.  But I wanted to stretch out a bit. 

The tentacle painting was my first shot at cutting loose, but the figure still stayed pretty still and quiet.  Since there doesn't seem to be much point in cutting halfway loose, here are the pencils for the next one in the works.  The idea is to make it the opposite of subtle.

My standard postage-stamp thumbnails for this painting didn't bring out a clear direction for me, but pointed out a few pretty neat options.  So I decided to work a few of them (originally planned 3, actually drew 6) to a more developed stage so I could better see what was going on with them.  And also so they were at a stage where I could show them around and have them actually make sense.

I drew these about 4 inches by 5 (some a good bit smaller than that).  Big enough to make the elements in the drawing clear, but not so big I get bogged down with the drawing and the details, just looking at shapes and composition.  And concept, in this case.  The paper I'm using has more tooth than I usually like.  But that's also helping me move fast and not get bogged down in detail.  The whites are a white charcoal pencil (General's).

And now .  . . I set them aside to work on a couple other projects.  When I come back to them (Friday?) hopefully I'll have a fresh eye and the direction I should go for this piece will pop out to me.  Anyone wants to weigh in on something here, I'm all ears.

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I'm going to be shooting for a fantasy setting (though not a D & D / Tolkein fantasy setting) with the girls in contemporary outfits, like they'd gotten dressed up to play adventurers.  The arrow point will be nerf-foam, and the shotgun obviously plastic (bright orange and yellow, I'm thinking).

Saturday Sleep-in Project -- FAIL

Was woken up to deal with a wet diaper, again for problems reaching halloween candy, then for missing shoes, but the coup de grace was settling back under the covers when suddenly there's a pop and a woosh from the bathroom, like someone had suddenly turned the shower up to 11.

The inlet pipe to the toilet had broken, and was spraying water across walls, ceiling and floor.  Couldn't quite get the shutoff valve all the way off with my hands, but got it to pour instead of spray, and put a trashcan under it while I ran to get my channel-lock pliers.  I mopped it up, and in defiance hopped back in bed and pulled the covers over my head.  Five minutes later another kid mini-emergency got me out of bed.  I tended to that, gave one last longing look at bed and gave up.  It was 7:05 AM and I was up for the day.

So since then I've had a little outing to the hardware store, replaced the broken pipe (getting sprayed with water again because I missed a joint until after I'd turned the house water back on), and things were just fine.  There's a giant pile of wet towels, etc. in the shower, but frankly dealing with those can be Ellen's job (her sleep-in day is going much better than mine -- it's 9:15 and she's still in bed).

Getting up from hugging a wet potty, wrench in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, feeling both the minor triumph of fixing something and the minor disgust of having to deal with it in the first place, I caught sight of myself in the mirror.  Days overdue for a shave, water sprayed all over my pirate flag shirt, and by coincidence in a pose Rockwell would have loved to have captured.  Or better yet, Annie Liebowitz.  Wish she'd been there.  That would have been a photo portrait I'd glady hang all over the place.

Alongside some other ongoing projects, I've been working on a new portfolio piece, kind of an action-adventure/fantasy with more of a contemporary bent to it.  I've done a few dozen thumbnails (I posted a crayon one a few days ago) , and have started to narrow down some options.  I've also been working on designs for the characters, and think I've just about got them (though as I look at it, I'm going to push the sleeveless hoodie more towards a charcoal gray):

The bigger girl's going to have a bow and arrow, the younger a brightly colored double-barreled nerf shotgun.  Here are a couple sketches from earlier in the process:

Next up (on this project at least) is to draw up three or four of my favorite thumbnails a bit bigger and more refined, then make a decision about where the final painting's going.  The background's going to have maybe some floating ships, some floating islands maybe, and maybe some of those mortars with streamers that I posted the other day.  The octopus in the mason jar probably won't make the final cut, sadly.  He'll have to wait around for another painting.

These things may or may not turn up as a background element in a piece I'm working on:

When we go to the public library my youngest likes to do coloring pages.  Not one to miss out on the fun, I usually grab a sheet or two out of the trash can, turn them over, and grab some crayons myself.  Sometimes it's random little doodles, but it's also a great time to work on thumbnails and designs.  Yesterday it was thumbnails for a new painting I'm playing with.

There's stuff I like about it, but I'm thinking I'm going to go with something a little more action-oriented for this.  I'm playing with jumping through the air, kinda a low-gravity thing.  I'll probably have to lose the cat and the octopus in the mason jar, though.

It's crazy how long I've been working on this piece -- there's interruptions for you, turned a two week painting into a two-month painting.

My artistic ego took a couple of nasty shots Sunday.  I'm a bit stumbly after it, but haven't hit the canvas yet.  Thank heavens for having a good guard in place.

I'll be wrapping up my tentacle painting this week.  I think it'll slide nicely into the halloween season, even if it's not really a monster piece.

I've been doing some photoshop mockups of some different options for finishing it off.  Doing some big, flamboyant stuff.  But now I'm back to leaning towards something a bit more understated.  It's not set in stone, though.  Part of the motivation behind doing this painting was to be over-the-top with it, and I don't think it's really hit that goal.  I'll finish the piece along my current thinking, and then if I think I ought to go back and add on the extras after all, I can.

It's a half-day at school today.  Hanna usually goes to after-school care, but doesn't want to today because there's a party with a pinata and she hates pinatas.  Doesn't like how everyone's loud and pushy trying to get the candy, feels like it's rude and not fair.  So she stands back, and some adults bring her the leftover candy that's leftover 'cause nobody likes it.

So I'm going to break off work to go pick her up soon as I can.

So I've had this plan to do some simpler paintings.  Maybe a waist-up shot, one prop, simple background.  But every time I start thumbnailing one I keep adding stuff in and I wind up with two motorcylcles, flying ships, an octopus in a mason jar, etc. etc. etc. all sliding into the composition.

Oh well.

I made my last jug of sun tea for the year yesterday -- and here's why it is the last:

The sun moved so the tea was in the shade, so it cooled off.  Now that it wasn't scorching to the touch, the ants climbed all over it.  I didn't notice this until I brought it inside and set it on the cutting board, then stepped away and noticed there were ants all over my hands.  And my cutting board.  I opened the lid and saw there were a half dozen walking around on the tea bags, and two dozen drowned in my tea.  Bleh.

Speaking of bugs, when we're playing outside, Harriet frequently says that the ants are coming to play with her.  She likes to pick juniper berries and throw them on the ground saying "here's food bugs!"  But I noticed this morning that how the ants were playing was by being stomped on.

Yesterday, for the first time in I don't know how many weeks, I actually finished more work than I expected to.

Which means I'm going to get back to the tentacle painting earlier than I thought, which makes me happy.  It's been hanging over my head -- and that's a fairly literal statement.  It's way up on my easel, right behind me when I'm sitting at the computer or the drafting table.  So every time I look over my shoulder . . . .

I've been enjoying the work that's been keeping me from the painting, though.  Gotta love it when your paid work is genuinely interesting and rewarding.  I'm doing a bunch of illos who's are is  comic-book style in the sense that they are inked lineart and digital colors, but I'm really playing with color holds (where the black ink gets colored different colors in different places).  It's something I'm enjoying exploring.  And it looks like I'm going to have a big stack of these illos over the next few months, so I should really get to run with it.

I think the first thing I'm going to do this morning (after taking Hattie to day care) is give the studio a good clean.  It's at the top of it's disaster area cycle.  It'll be good to get it back in order.  Gotta go get a big lawn bag to throw away a few reams of preliminary drawings for various projects.