I don't really do much blogging here, but for awhile I've been doing random art process posts on another journal that can - as it turns out  - cross post to LJ.  So I'm going back through and slowly adding those, catching up for future cross posting.  For the benefit of whoever is listening here, or possibly to their annoyance - if they only made me a friend so I could see their magical private posts.  

Moving forward I'll try to remember to cross post more often, to keep this thing from seeming so empty and ignored.

Did a little picture thing last year, and so, here's a bigger picture thing to commemorate the passing of 2011.

ONWARDS to part two of the ...two part series 'art process'.  I hate finishing things.  I always have.  I don't like clean up on animation, I don't like the way the tight ink drawings look over the sketch, I just don't like the process of turning a nice dynamic active sketch drawing into a rendered static 'final' image.

Sometimes I run with whatever sketch I did first and just finish from there, and sometimes - usually with figures - I resketch a number of times until I have something almost as tight as the ink to work with.  For the Nautilus Cruise Lines poster I did a lot of sketch tightening on the figures, but left the rest mostly open.  Part way through the rendering I realized that my coral reef plan for the seascape wasn't going to work and so, sketched kelp at the last minute and ran with that for a strong vertical line.   I usually ink in flash or on paper, I find that photoshop tends to give to much digital 'wobble' or to much anti-aliasing for my taste, and Illustrator is just a complex little bitch.   In the case of limited color and flat color pieces I tend to do most of the work in Flash and then just do final touches in Photoshop.  Where as with painted or chalk looks I just start right in Photoshop.

When I start the coloring (after inking, if there's an outline style look to the piece.  Or right away as I'll get to in a moment with the second poster) - I make a little palette of colors based on my color thumbnail, to keep to the side for color selecting easily.  Usually I know mostly how to color will go, although there is some fiddling - the lines on the people's clothing shifted darkness a few times for example.
For the Nautilus poster the last thing I did was go into Photoshop and add a watercolor texture I keep around for such things (self made).  As you can see in the little detail images below, it adds some depth to the ocean areas especially while only barely showing up on lighter yellow areas.


NWith the Trenches poster the process was different, because I wasn't using any outlines.  I didn't do any sketch tightening, just blocked in the colored shapes in Flash right over the initial sketches I'd done.  Once I'd done that I went back in and tightened up the shapes where they needed it, and then rethought and remade the light areas on the image, because I felt they weren't working in the larger color blocks I'd started with.  Finally I went into Photoshop and with a chalk brush just barely softened some of the lines, to give the image a subtle painted look instead of the slightly too hard edges of vector images.


And there you go, finished illustrations!  I won't bore you with output and why I use vector and Flash and all that technical foolishness.  Unless you ask.  Then all bets are off.

Angler fish loves you!

The End.

Any suggestions for other process posts?

Silly list with obscure doodles made me think to do this.  Maybe shed some light on the great mystery of how I make big crazy pictures of stuff. How I angst over it, and plan, and over plan, and get hung up, and waste time and....well you know...if you want to keep thinking its magic instead of smoke and mirrors, just move along and skip this post ;-)

I start out with concepts and a mental image - sometimes very clear sometimes vague.  Don't be fooled - a lot of times the clear ones are the most frustrating to produce.  In this case, I knew I wanted to do two posters, and I wanted them to fit the theme for the show they would be in - which is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  I thought about it and sketched now and then to try to clarify the ideas - usually while I'm out doing something else so most of them end up in my pocket moleskin.

The second poster was one of those that came to me all at once, pretty clearly.  No prep work there, just one thumbnail and yes I know that's how it should be.  Now THAT poster is the cruise advert, and the first poster has become a national park style poster.  Still totally not sure about the robot diver, but the rest is pretty clear.

Now I need to tighten up the layouts, clarify what's actually going into the images, and because these are going to be big poster painted style posters, I wanted to work out limited color palettes.  So I jumped straight to the color thumbnails.  I used to do a whole lot of sketching before this step but honestly - I really just enjoy painting these little thumbnails so much that I jump right to them especially if I'm grumpy or stuck for any reason.

I am sure most anyone who ever followed this journal has noticed its sort of silent.  Mostly Other Places have taken over its purposes.  Art goes on blogger where it can be uploaded and added all at once, and Facebook has mostly taken over personal notes.  And lets be honest I've never been a very good journal-er anyway.  I've always liked the idea of it, writing down your thoughts every day, but I've never been very successful.  At least twice I've attempted to keep actual journals on paper with a pen, writing in them about each day before bed.  And of course after about two sentences I'd be sick of writing, and tired, and thinking I'd rather just put this down and sleep.

I mostly have this journal now so that I can keep up with Kyle Cassidy's journal and the 2xcreative community, and conveniently also read Neil Gaiman's blog feed without adding another website to my morning 'see how the internet has changed' routine.  But I'll try to keep saying something in it, now and again, just for the sake of amusement.

So todays topic:  Emma Bull is Super Awesome.

Why didn't anyone ever force me to read a book by Emma Bull before?  (Having said this to a few friends I have gotten a general reaction of 'but we must have, surely.  No?  Not ever?  Oh dear')  I was finally convinced that Emma Bull doesn't just sing, by my sister who said "there is a book called 'Territory' and you pretty much have to read it because its very probably your perfect book."  Why, I asked.  "It has cowboys, and magic, and Doc Holliday".  Oh, well yes then, probably my perfect book.

By the end of the first chapter I was completely and utterly sold on the whole thing.  So much so that I now owe the library $1.75 because I kept hold of it for too long rereading bits.  (And they have just sent me a kind warning, reminding me that I really should bring it back in the next week because 2 renewals is getting a bit extreme and maybe someone else would like to read it sometime)

Silly etching style version of the illustration for 'Stampede at Midnight' may be forthcoming...after I finish some Saturday Evening Post cover paintings with robots.

Its a rainy day, and mist keeps drifting in to cover the trees in grey, then fading away again leaving everything looking strangely bright. Damp oranges and greens from the evergreens and beech trees that fade away again with another wash of mist. And I'm thinking about Cade's Cove in the Spring, and about the Northern California coast in February, and about how I need to do something with this visual memory of bare trees and mist in an illustration sometime.

I'm prepared for adventure in 2011.   So prepared that I have new boots.  They were a Christmas present.  I don't think anyone in my family really quite understood why I would want them, but they were willing to indulge my fancy.  


I admit, I've been pretty down on a fair amount of 2010, and I'm not terribly sorry to see it over.  But there were some adventures that turned out better then others, and while taking pictures of my own feet and sorting through the camera memory card I pulled out a couple of travel photos.  To dwell on the positive.  And to even end on a double rainbow, from Maine in the fall.

For friends to spend thanksgiving with, and to bake pie for. For friends who offer inspiration and crazy schemes. For every person who enjoys something I've made, even a little. For finishing illustrations again finally. For every small kindness and every thank you.
And for kitties who get turkey every Thanksgiving and are now sleeping on my feet.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I will preface this entry with a note about crushed red pepper. If you think its clever to put a bunch of it into a pot of water for cooking rice in, then be careful how much you include because that boiling water sure does infuse the rice with all the pepper. Phew. Spicy.

So experiment 1:

Mixed brown and wild rice, with crushed red pepper.

- to much red pepper. So much antacid afterwards.

Sweet Italian sausage, chopped mixed peppers (white and purple ones), garlic (totally forgot to use the onion), salt, pepper, oregano, and a little chili/cumin/whatever mix. Cooked in olive oil.

- alas, the purple pepper did not stay purple when it was cooked. They were tasty peppers though. I wish I hadn't forgot the onion though. And the chili powder stuff was unnecessary.

Plum chutney - plum, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and a pinch of ground cloves.

- a little strange with rest of the food but really tasty. Would have been good with just the sausage I think. Will try it again with chicken and a little less rice vinegar ;-)

The great produce/cooking experiment has begun. Farm sends me a box of produce, I open it and go "how the hell do you cook an eggplant and what do purple peppers taste like?" And so it begins. This box:

Eggplant (once I figure out what to do with it) with chicken probably cooked in the last glass of white wine that's been in the fridge too long.

Onion and strange multi colored mystery peppers with sweet sausage over brown rice

Romaine lettuce (two heads of it, seriously guys overkill) with pears, walnuts, blue cheese and some kind of vinaigrette dressing

And then...plum pastry of some sort because otherwise how the heck does a person eat 8 plums before they start to go bad?

Progress and disaster alike will be reported.

1) "The Mysterious Affair of the Cursed Cameo" - combined from the collective pulp mystery title knowledge of my friends and family.

2) Robot riding real horse. Which I think I might have already decided on when I asked for opinions - sorry. It will be awesome though. Really.

The first 6 months of 2010 have kicked my ass. Disregarding frustrating things vs great things vs just really time consuming things - I'm suffering from a case of doing to much at one time burn out. Combine with the collect clutter accumulating from 6 months of paying to little attention to organizing things and its like sitting up and blinking and going "oh my lord is this MY HOUSE?! What have I done."
So thus begins the slow process of sorting and getting rid of stuff. The trick is to not throw anything away. There must be a way.
And of course, I would rather be drawing robots.