Aaaand Dragon Tamer . . . Might Be Done?

I just . . . don't know.  I can't get the colors right - or at least the way I want them - on the computer.

Acrylic, watercolor and pencil on watercolor paper.

Dragon Tamer . . . Again

Housewives didn't kill me last weekend.  But this past week has been really difficult for a number of reasons that I don't want to get into.  Still plugging away at DT.  I have piled masses of color on it in Photoshop and I think I've found something.  I hope.

Where Dragon Tamer is now.  

Where I was going originally.

This is a little too dark, I think.  

But I have a tendency to leave my pieces too light, so . . . 

There are still a lot of aspects that I am struggling with, but I am happy with the overall values and I think that pushing the dragon back a little as far as value goes is going to work.  Hopefully the final wont be the riot of color that you see here.  I'm still not as comfortable with Photoshop as I should be.  But I think I have enough here to make informed decisions about my palette.

As you can see, I am no where near where I wanted to be by the end of last week.

1. Dragon Tamer: new color comps and start on the final again.
2. Clean my room (this is an epic undertaking, I may not survive, so if you don't hear from me again, that's why).
3. Sketches for the New Commission - send them off for approval by the end of the week.
4. Help my mom set things up for the Garage Sale this weekend (Again, I might die . . . or get mauled by housewives.  Whichever comes first).
5. Review and edit my summary of the steampunk Little Red Ridding Hood story and lay it out in the format I am going to print the booklets in.
6. Outline my plans for teaching art classes from home.
7. Continue to revise, edit and research painting for sister and FBIL.
8. Not die cleaning my room or setting up the garage sale or participating in the garage sale.
9. Wash my dog . . .
10. Start assignment for LPG class.
11. Email sample images to art directors.

A Much Needed Update

My dog got bit by a snake last week.  That was interesting, for lack of a better description.  The vet said all the rain we've been having has flushed the sankes out; he already had three other dogs come in with snake bites.  She has cancer and she's blind, so I think we need to start adding "the indestructible" to her name.  She's been such a good girl though all of this, no complaining at all!

So, updates.  I'm trying out Glipho which is a social media site that's compatible with Blogger, Tumbler, and a bunch of other sites.  As of right now, it looks like I can't set a time and date for the post to be published, but I might be able to work with that . . . I'll let you know how it goes.

I entered Spectrum, found out that I didn't get in which was a let down, but I'm moving forward.  

Haven't gotten the new cards yet - they should be here by Thursday.

Justin Gerard, Cory Godbey and Chris Koelle's Lamp Post Guild is up and running, I am taking one of the classes with them.  About to start the first assignment later this week - again, I will let you know how all that goes.  

I have a commision (my first one! (Save the Dates for siblings don't count)) which is exciting.  Starting work on that this week.  

I also, in conjunction with the postcards I ordered last week, have been trying to figure out what I need to do for future promo pieces.  I've come to the conclusion that I need to do something that really exemplifies who I am as an artist, something that shows where my passions and interests lie.  

Defining my passions and interests was easy: story.  Working out how that can be developed into a tangible mail-out or email isn't as straightforward.  But I think I have decided on a place to start. Maybe.

I'm going to take some of my stories and some other people's stories (public domain) and create a small series of ilustrations and spots for each.  I'll create a summary of each of the stories and lay them out with the illustrations, print and bind it in a booklet to mail to publishers.  Hopefuly it will show that I have a concept of narrative illustration and layout, etc., etc.  

Now part of the problem is that a lot of art directors seem to want emails - but maybe that's not a problem at all.  

I'm going to start with my Steampunk Little Red Riding Hood, maybe Dragon Tamer (when I'm finished) and then probably something by Dickens - Tale of Two Cities or Christmas Carol, I think.  Eventually, I want to take a public domain book, fully illustrate it myself, hand-bind a few copies and self publish.  Tale of Two Cities is where I'm going to start, I think.  But that will be a project years in the making, so we'll see.  But that's potential-future-maybes . . . 

In the meantime I am also trying to get set up to teach some art classes from home . . . And then there's the gift I'm painting for my sister and future-brother-in-law . . . Yeah.

Right now, my goals for the week are . . . well, it's me, so there are a lot of them:

1. Dragon Tamer: new color comps and start on the final again.
2. Clean my room (this is an epic undertaking, I may not survive, so if you don't hear from me again, that's why).
3. Sketches for the New Commission - send them off for approval by the end of the week.
4. Help my mom set things up for the Garage Sale this weekend (Again, I might die . . . or get mauled by housewives.  Whichever comes first).
5. Review and edit my summary of the steampunk Little Red Ridding Hood story and lay it out in the format I am going to print the booklets in.
6. Outline my plans for teaching art classes from home.
7. Continue to revise, edit and research painting for sister and FBIL.
8. Not die cleaning my room or setting up the garage sale or participating in the garage sale.
9. Wash my dog . . .
10. Start assignment for LPG class.
11. Email sample images to art directors.

That's enough.  Right?

Contact Cards and Postcards

Just put in an order for new contact cards through Moo.com, along with a set of postcards.  I love the quality of the paper they use!

Also, your first order through them is 10% off . . .

Sorry, I've been so bad about posting.  I will try and keep you abreast of developments, but other than working on postcards, Dragon Tamer, and another project I can't tell you about, I haven't been doing much of note.

Dragon Tamer: Still a WIP

I imagine sometimes that this stage of painting is not unlike being pregnant.  The vision of the final is so close to being real, but there's still so much time to put in before you see it.

Meanwhile you just feel fat and irritable.  Those of you out there who have been pregnant, let me know.

I did a study over a photo of the Dragon Tamer piece and it was . . . not a pretty sight.  So after aimlessly perusing the internet for "photo night scene" and "moonlit person", trying to remember the name of night paintings I'd seen or come across, and countless other queries, I hit the books.

Which is honestly what I should have done in the first place; I own a copy of "Color and Light" as well as "Imaginative Realism" by James Gurney, after all.  My obsession with books can get me into trouble sometimes; I have so many that I forget or get overwhelmed by too much information.

If I hadn't been so busy looking and reading I would have kicked myself - all the paintings, all the information was there.  At the very least I had a new direction to try and take the color studies.

And as you can see below, take them places I did.

Glowy dragon needs to not make a reappearance. 

Meanwhile I was also working on the final sketches for the Save the Dates.  Simple, I kept telling myself, beautiful color, strong shapes, concentrate on the feeling.

I can't help but think that simple really just means LOTS of work, but maybe I'm doing something wrong . . .

Last year when I went to Tennessee, I went to Cades Cove (possibly one of my favorite places on earth).  We got there before the gates opened and were able to drive through just as the sun was coming up over the mountains.  There was fog and fall trees and deer and it was amazingly beautiful. So when I started working on this piece, that morning is what I was thinking about.

The first one . . . wasn't awesome.  At the very least it didn't get me excited to start the piece.  It didn't recall any of the beauty, any of the feeling I was trying to capture.  There were things I liked, but overall it was just boring.  So I did another one.  It was better, but my struggles with Dragon Tamer have shaken my confidence, so I kept at it, trying to find something that really worked.

I looked up some morning fog, looked up paintings of fog (oh, hello Turner, hello Whistler), trying to just steep myself in the essence of what I was trying to create.

So I made, like, a million color comps.  And then just quit and broke out the watercolor paper and started doing it old school.  I didn't have much more success.

So here's where I am with Dragon Tamer:

Wait, aren't those color comps, you say? Why yes, yes they are . . .

Because this is where it is in real life.  Still.  I still can't seem to find the key.  I've been taking it into my room at night, hoping that by looking at it before I fall asleep, I'll be able to work out the problem in my sleep.

It hasn't worked.

And here's where I am with the Save the Dates:

Color comps everywhere!

Fog doesn't usually drift like this, I am discovering . . . 

I haven't done so many color comps since I was a sophomore in college.  Little Red Cap tricked me with how very easily the steam effect was created and I dived into the color comps here thinking "Fog is like steam, I got this!"

WRONG.

Fog is not like steam.  Especially fog that has light coming through it.  And I can't seem to make up my mind as to what this is going to look like - realistic?  Stylized?  And I'm worried about this nagging voice that's telling me to go make maquettes for the owls so I can light them (shut UP!) correctly.

Both of these were supposed to be DONE by now.  I have a schedule!  Save the Dates were supposed to be a mash up of watercolor-y effects goodness.  In-and-out, easy-peasy.

Freaking owls.  Freaking fog.  Freaking DRAGONS.  Do your worst, you won't win . . .

Working on something for Ten Paces and Draw: check back February 18th to see the final reveal.

Holy crows, I really am a masochist . . .

Dragon Tamer: WIP

Just in case someone out there is wondering what "WIP" means - it stands for "Work In Progress".

Moving along, slowly but surely.  This piece has become infinitely more intricate and complicated than I originally anticipated.  I'm about 22 hours in on the final, way off schedule (I'm supposed to be working on my sister's save the dates, shhhh), and I am now stuck and having to lean heavily on Photoshop to solve some of the color problems I am having.

I had intended to have the final done by next week's post, but I doubt that is going to happen.  So look forward instead to another update on this as well as an update on the Save the Date illustration I will be working on.

It's going to be awesome when it's finished, though!

The sketch for the Save the Date.

Dragon Tamer

This is a rough summary of the story that was inspired by the Dragon Tamer piece.  I debated for a while even putting up this much, but I wanted people to have an idea of what was going on.  

I hope this gives you a good idea of what I was thinking when I thought of this piece.  There may or may not be a book in the works, and I reserve the right to take everything back to the drawing board.  I'd love to hear what you think, so please feel free to leave a comment.


Please don't steal anything.

Once upon a time, but not very long ago, there lived a boy named Gabriel Predergast. He lived somewhere between this world and Fairie, so as you can imagine, some wonderful and fantastic things have happened to him. But it wasn’t always like that. For a long time - 17 years in fact - nothing amazing had happened to Gabriel except that he was the one wizard in a family of wizards who couldn’t do magic. Magic never did what he wanted it to do. He was very good at building things, however. But in a world where magic is the rule rather than the exception, “handmade” is rather less than ordinary. For years he despaired of ever doing anything important or great or even interesting until one day his family went to a party. 

Gabriel and his whole family were invited - his father and mother, his seven older brothers and three younger sisters (who were all fantastic wizards, which made Gabriel’s failed attempts look even worse). Now, lots of things happened at this party – most important being that there was a real, honest to goodness dragon in a cage. A dragon that Gabriel and Jason, one of his older brothers, stole.

It was, of course, Jason’s idea, but he ended up dragging Gabriel into his hair-brained scheme (it happened a lot). Through a series of events too complicated to get into now, they ended up sneaking the dragon out that very night and no one was the wiser. Gabriel and Jason managed to ‘borrow’ their father’s car, stuff themselves and the dragon inside and drive out past the city limits. It’s a good thing it was late and there was no one on the road; neither of them had a license and Jason had never managed to pass any of his multiple driving courses. They stopped at the first secluded spot they found and let the dragon out of the car with firm notice that it was to ‘go back to its home’ and, this from Gabriel who was a little bit smarter than his brother as you might have guessed, that it wasn’t under any circumstance to follow them home. But you never know with dragons what they understand and what they don’t. Or at the very least what they choose to listen to. 

Gabriel and his brother made it back to the party in one piece - sans dragon.  What is more important is that their father’s car made it back in one piece, which could be considered a minor miracle. Everything went according to plan - at least until the morning. 

The dragon took a liking to Gabriel and ended up following them home.  You can imagine the chaos that ensued as Gabriel and his brother tried to hide the dragon from the rest of their family – but no matter how they pleaded threatened or cajoled, the dragon would not leave.

They hid it in the basement. No one went down there much and they might have hidden it pretty well, if the dragon could have been persuaded to stay there. Jason’s skills were sorely put to the test finding and fixing the myriad of things the dragon broke on its wanderings through the house. He didn’t find all of them in time either - Mrs. Predergast’s china and china cabinet fought the dragon and were cast down rather spectacularly. And loudly. Gabriel ended up shouldering the blame for that - even though Jason fixed everything ‘good as new’ for his mother - and was grounded for a week. By this time, the “theft” of the dragon was headline news and Mr. Prendergast was heavily involved in the investigation casting more than one suspicious glance at his sons. To Gabriel’s credit, he thought all eight of his sons were in some way responsible, and by the end of two weeks, all eleven of his children knew and were actively involved in trying to keep the dragon hidden. The triplets of course were first, being the most in the house, but the other six boys weren’t far behind.

Now, the really remarkable thing was that the dragon – the wild, untamable, fire-breathing dragon – followed Gabriel around like a puppy (or at least it tried).  Both brothers were at a loss to understand what was going on, until Jason came across an old book on dragons. It talked about a very rare kind of person that dragons were attracted to - any dragon, whether it be old or young, from near or far, ferocious or gentle, would be docile and calm and good natured when confronted by a dragon tamer. 

Gabriel had lived all his life without magic, without anything that really set him apart from the rest of his siblings, or even brought him up to their level. But being a dragon tamer didn’t sound like all that great a consolation prize. What good is it to be able to charm dragons with your mere presence in a world where dragons were all but extinct? And that didn’t help them with their immediate problem which was that they couldn’t get the thing to leave. He didn’t care about the dragon, he didn’t care about being a dragon tamer – he just wanted the dragon gone. 
Unfortunately the dragon belonged to a very powerful wizard who wasn’t about to sit back and just let a bunch of kids steal his dragon. Obviously.

Now a lot of other things happen before Gabriel gets to the  point you see developing in the illustration above.  One important thing is that Jason and Gabriel find a flute that allows a dragon tamer to control a dragon.  More things get stolen, feelings are hurt, the dragon gets kidnapped and in the process of rescuing him (and with no small degree of anger) Gabriel ends up doing a lot of stupid things - including setting a house on fire.  But while things don't end perfectly  lessons are learned and Gabriel takes a step towards understanding and accepting himself for who he is and who he is not.

I will update this again when things are a little more settled story-wise.

Drawing Dragons

On the off chance that this might be useful to someone, or for myself to look back on later: here is how "Drogo" came to life.

Anytime I try and do something in art that I haven't done before, I look to the masters.  Fortunately there are several Dragon Masters and they all tend to congregate over at Muddy Colors blog.  What's even more helpful is when all said Dragon Masters congregate to talk dragons over a two week period - which they did last September.  And piz-de-resistance: Justin Gerard's fantastic post on filling the storehouses in your brain with reference info from real life which you can read here, as well as some other tips on using real life to inspire fantastic illustrations here.

So I pulled up a whole mess of reference and dived in - and almost immediately got lost.

But I discovered two very important things: one being that I don't like drawing reptiles.  At all.  And two, Gerard knows his business and should always be heeded lest brain sucking aliens who feed on the unwary and under-researched find you and . . . well, eat your brains.

What I'm trying to say is that despite my distaste for two-dimensional reptile reproduction, I learned a lot.  And I know my dragons are better for it.

I sat myself down and drew a bunch of lizards and crocodiles and eels.  That was more frustrating than I anticipated and might have added to my general dislike of the species.  I leaned a bit too heavily on my reference and the first few came out too . . . crocodile-ish.

I kept at it, hated everything, and finally just put all the reference away, listening to Gerard's advice despite my doubts of being able to pull something like this off without guidelines.  Then I put in too much turtle - which was odd because I hadn't been looking at any turtle reference.  Then because owls are always on the brain, they decided to jump in at one point and I had to call everyone to order.  But by then, my youngest sister had tossed in some seahorses and that yanked all of us down a completely new path.  Out of nowhere, some real horses joined up with a komodo dragon or two and by that point I really had no idea where we were going and was just along for the ride.

After I had the rough idea of what to sculpt (the word sculpt being used here in a very general rough vague sort of way) I attempted several times to start . . . and restart.  And restart.  Then I brought out the tin foil and everything started working a little better.  A not to those who are masochistic enough to try this in the future: armatures make Sculpey much more bearable.  And usable.  

I did the head separate because it was a nightmare trying to shape it while it was on the body.  And it kept coming out looking like the lizard from Rescuers Down Under.  No joke.  

Finally I cooked the darn thing and hung it up between two chairs to photograph.

The problem that I ran into after that is I tend to lean too heavily on my reference and the lack of detail 1. was making my drawing look half-assed and 2. was good because it made me see that about myself.

So.  A general outline of how I made the little dragon guy.  Hopefully some pitfalls identified to avoid in the future.  

My Process

First let me say that there are some much better (and knowledgable) illustrators out there who have done post similar to this.  You should check them out, too.  A good place to start is the Muddy Colors blog.  Justin Gerard takes you through his entire process for a painting starting here.  Greg Manchess has a great series that he's been doing called 10 Things . . . This article on generating paintings is very useful, as is this one on planning pictures.  And Dan Dos Santos has a great article on sketching thumbnails here.

This is mostly a record for me - if someone out there is interested or finds this helpful, so much the better.  I find it beneficial to be held to some level of accountability with my art and as I have been struggling a little with some of my art and rushing (a big stumbling block for me) I thought it would be good to set my process down for all the eternal internet to see.

So first I start out with thumbnails.  Everyone starts out with thumbnails.  At least, I hope you do.  You should.  and if you don't and still come up with great art, do me a favor and don't tell me.  Please.  I don't need any more bad habits.

In all seriousness though.  Me, myself and I need to do thumbnails.  It helps to get all the ideas down on paper.  My professors at college encouraged us to do at least 50 thumbnails.  I really should do 50.  My goal is always to draw 50.  But reality usually looks more like 20.  Or 15.

As you can see, they are very loose.  Actually, no one really sees them at this point.  They're basically just ideas jotted down - I'm the only one who can really interpret them.

Next step is to pick the three or five best - in college that meant picking the ten strongest thumbnails, working them up a bit so more people could tell what was going on, and whatever three or five your prof thought were the strongest were the ones you went onto the next step with.  Through that you were supposed to learn which compositions worked and which ones didn't.  After college that means you kinda skip this step, pick the handful you like and hope for the best.

Then comes the fun part - the part where I really start to get excited about a piece.  Doodles become real ideas, you can start to see and feel the potential of a piece.  These are done without reference - usually still in my sketchbook but sometimes on the computer - I've been practicing.  These are ALWAYS little 2" or 3" VALUE sketches.  Value is important for me especially here at this stage because it helps create and drive the composition.  I'm always thinking in terms of value with pieces - where and how light will interact with shadow.

This is also where I decide how big the piece is going to be.  If I have a specific size I have to work with then the thumbnails at this point need to be in proportion to the final size or I run into HUGE problems later with composition.  If the composition works small here, it will work big later on, but only if it's the same proportions.

Next is the reference stage.  This is also a fun stage; I bring in people to photograph - usually I see the person I'm going to use as a model in my head and then bribe them with empty promises of fame and fortune.  Or prints of the final painting.  They never seem to believe me about the fame and fortune bit . . .

Anyway, I used to hate this stage; I hated asking people to model for me.  And then there was the whole photographing piece and I always felt so awkward.  But then I came home and I knew (kinda) all the people around and most of them either have changed my diapers, or I've changed theirs.  Or they're married to my siblings and I might potentially change their kids' diapers.  So with the common bond of diaper changing under my belt, I found my whole perspective towards photo reference doing a 180, and now the collaborative piece just adds so much life to the piece.  I find myself drawing and smiling as I work, remembering the person and or the interactions that happened while shooting the reference.  And it also helps that there's at least one person waiting with some level of bated breath for me to finish.

There's also some level of silliness that happens - especially if one or more of my brothers is involved.

The value sketches come into play at the reference hunting/gathering stage.  I try and set up the model with lighting as close to the sketch as I can.  Sometimes I find out that I really didn't want that lighting set-up that I thought I did and have to change my reference and sketch accordingly.  The Dragon Tamer piece is a good example of that.  I didn't really know what I wanted as far as lighting for it, and I didn't put as much effort into that stage of it as I usually do.  Needless to say, it's come back to bite me and I'm spending almost double the amount of time in the planning stage than normal.

Then there's the maquette stage - this is an "as needed" stage that I only recently added to my process . . . Not a huge fan, but it is going to be a huge help. 

After I've pieced together my reference and background comes the drawing stage.  I'm usually most comfortable here.  No color, just value and composition.  Sometimes I'll draw a specific aspect of the piece separate - the character, or their hands and piece the whole thing together in Photoshop.  It helps to focus attention on the character and really define details.  Learned that one from Justin Gerard, who apparently learned it from animators.  Which is brilliant.  And it's a huge help.

So once I have the background and the characters sketched out exactly the way I want them with the value stuff all settled so it looks pretty close to the two toned Little Red Riding Hood Steampunk piece up there, it's time for the color comp.

I have no strategy here. Really, I don't.  Sometimes I get some info from the reference, but otherwise I just throw color on a sketch until it's unusable or it gives me an idea and I move to a new one until I know exactly what I want.  Or at least I know mostly what I want.

Then the drawing goes on the board or paper.  I use either a light table or tracing paper to sketch in the rough shapes, but after that I do everything by hand.  And this is a tight drawing.  All the shadows, all the lines, no information is left out.  Eric Fortune and Rebecca Guay taught me this and it's been such a . . . I don't even know how to describe it.  Laying in color is easier because some of the value is already established.  I don't loose as much of my drawing - which is again what I love most about the piece at this point.

Then comes the first layers of color.  Nothing real fancy here, just establishing some of the overall color of the piece.  The first two or three layers are watered-down acrylic that I use like watercolor (but not with my watercolor brushes).  The benefit of this is that 1. I seal some of my drawing and 2. that those first initial colors don't get lifted out by the subsequent layers of watercolor.  I can get real wild with the first layer of watercolor because I know that I won't be lifting anything up that I put down first.  And by using watercolor for the rest of the piece, I get all those awesome watercolor-ish things that happend when you let watercolor do what it does.

By this point, I've usually lost myself in the painting and it's time to draw again.  So out come the colored pencils.

After that I go back and forth between the watercolors and the pencils, pushing or pulling as needed.  My biggest help at this point is the piece of scrap board or paper that I keep next to the piece to test all my colors or the strength and amount of my paint before I put them down on the actual painting.  

And then there's the part where you take the tape off and scan or photograph the work, put it into the computer and start editing it there for printing.  Ugh.  I never understood until recently how frustrating it is to see your work on the computer screen and think that it's just not as good as the real thing.