David Kassan - Free Webcast

Portrait painter David Kassan will be doing a free Holiday Sketchbook live webcast, tomorrow at 4pm EST, where he will discuss hi color palette and how he thinks through different skin tones.



Watch the webcast here: http://sketchbooklive.com/

Roman Legionnaires - It's All in the Reference

-By Donato

We all know that feeling - you have a brilliant idea for an image, can 'see' it coming together, and then watch in misery as it all falls apart when you try to make it real.  This was a common occurrence in the early part of my career as technical and artistic abilities could not match the level of excitement I felt for a given a project.  I wanted to make a masterpiece, but would fail more times than not.  Back then I thought this was typical of being an artist; producing two or three failures on the path to creating one worthy work of art.



Many times what I chalked up to as artistic and technical inexperience should have been placed in the category of insufficient planning.  I would bring my sketches up to a certain level, making sure  they were heading in the right general direction, and then launch into the next stage of development before fully working out all issues.  Both artistic arrogance and deadlines made me feel confident that I could pull it all together 'later' in the final stages of the work.  But what often occurred was that a shoddy foundation left incomplete in the early phases of image development undermined later decisions, leading to a cascading collapse of the unity and success of the art.



I am wiser now (actually just more experienced!)  I am willing to spend much more time up front in the early developments of a work to guarantee a higher rate of success and quality in the work overall.  I owe it all to planning; taking the time to research my subject, gather images to look at from life studies, find the right references, and acquire the right lighting, costumes and actors to bring life to the concept as much as possible before I get to paint.



It sounds like I may be more of a photographer or stage director than a painter, but I believe if you can step closer to the the thing you wish to paint, then the more clearly you will see it.  Observations from life will dance with your artist vision and produce a more complete and complex visual language.

El Greco   The Burial of Count Orgaz

Some of the most brilliant paintings from history are those images which are closely inspired by life.  My favorite works from El Greco are those which balance his quirky style with that of a restraint brought on by painting what was real, not totally imagined.  The Burial of Count Orgaz is one these which embodies these principles for me.  The lower figure group is stunning, a master piece, while the idealized forms of the kneeling man and Christ in the upper section lack emotional and conceptual weight betraying their source as too much from the mind, not enough from nature.



A similar assessment may be said of J.W. Waterhouse's paintings where his mid-career work delved deep into observations from life and surpassed in quality the body of his late career works where it was obvious that he began to over idealize his figures and the environmental situations within which they appeared.



Of course it is easy to level criticisms at others work.  But rather than just criticize, I attempt to learn from these examples and adjust my own approaches to creating art accordingly.  So much of the artistic field I have been apart of is grounded in imaginary creations, from worlds unseen, creatures from beyond, and cities of dreams which have allowed the artist a very broad license to interpret what these places and things may look like.  There is so much to make up, that you cannot fault an artist for taking short cuts.  Yet for me, the closer these worlds press to our own, the more powerful and compelling I find their creations.



Over the years I have reined in my renderings of the fantastic and attempted to distill my art to express the emotional weight of the human moment more than any other aspect.  One of the most important issues I have embraced to further these ideas is to spend more time preparing for the final rendering.  My preliminary drawings are more concise.  My modeling sessions are more thoughtful and planned.  And most importantly I am more emotionally connected to my imagery than ever before.



Below, I share with you the process of a recent book cover commission for Tor Books which hits home for me on these issues.  Here we have the trials of legionnaires in combat, battling an approaching horde of horse-headed mythological creatures.  Rather than honing in on the fantastic designs of the monsters, I preferred to concentrate my emotional focus upon the desperation of soldiers in conflict, struggling for their very lives against creatures from their nighmares -a viewpoint I think my viewers can more readily relate to as we have all battled our own demons in our dreams - catching glimpses of them out of the corner of our eye yet never see them fully formed...nor wanting to.



My thoughts on lighting, staging of the moment and acquisition of references are all focused upon bringing us to the edge of the nightmare, but not going too far into it.



Enjoy the progression of the painting as it unfolds!

Roman Legionnaires

cover for Monsters of the Earth by David Drake

20" x 48"

Oil on Panel

Rough studies     8" x 8"

Rough study  8" x 2"

photographic reference

preliminary drawing    25" x 10"

Roman Legionnaires     48" x 24"   Oil on Panel

How to Digitally Paint Hair

-By Serge Birault

I had a lot of requests for this tutorial, so let's go...



First, you have to know there's no magic trick; just time, patience and very small brushes. As always, organization is more important than anything else. It's not complicated, it's just long and it's not the same thing.



If you're not familiar with realistic hair, use photo references. This one is a little bit difficult because of the curls and the light, so try with straight and dark hair first.



Here's my method ... I try to do separated locks of hair, then I do a flat tint of color, then I do the hair one by one, with a basic soft or hard round brush (alaways use the same size of brush) with low opacity. The colors depend on the type of hair. Keep in mind your palette has to be influenced by all the lights, so you will probably need to do several ones.

As I said, very dark hair is quicker to paint. You just have to do a very dark area than add the reflections. Use your ambiant light and your dirst light colors. Start with big locks then paint all the hair on the edge.



Add the reflections on another layer. I use to work on a lot of layers, one for each color. Don't forget that hair cast shadows too, the separation beetween the hair and the other parts is sometimes hard to paint.

Very straight hair is quite easy to do. As a flat surface is more reflective, your reflections have to be stronger. On this one, I did several strokes with the soft round brush (with very low opacity, about 5%). I used the background color on the edge and white on the front (ambient and direct light).



The hair very close to the skin are more saturated so I did two different palette. You can emulate this transparency with an overlay type layer with the skin color.

Blond haircuts are usually a real nightmare, because it's more difficult to cheat. Think about your palette and your contrast first. The method is exactly the same but it usually takes more time. On this one, the hair was straight... Hopefully.

Dark red hair works like black one. Of course, you have to add more color to your palette. For bright red hair, I use to start with a flat area of middle tone, usually orange; I add the darkest and the brightest tones later. On the second one, I have another light on the left side but the palette and the gradients are still logical, from yellow to red/brown.

If you want to add some retro lights, you have to paint very saturated hair on the edge. Depending on the color of the light and the color of the hair, of course. Don't use overlay layers on the edge, it's not a good idea, you would need to merge those layers with the background.

If you really want to to impossible stuff, try curly blond hair with a strong light a retro light. It's just hell.

It's not the only way to paint hair but it's mine. I use to paint very detailed pictures so I have to paint hair accordingly. If you're looking for good references, try hairdressers websites or try to define the haircut's style you want to paint (retro, dark, long, curly, ...) and use google.



If you want to do more painty look like hair, a lot of pre-raphaelite did very convincing hair and could influence you. The idea is the same : Think about your palette first then add the light, think about the locks and the volumes, think about the reflections.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Frederick Sandys

Frederic Leighton 

John William Waterhouse

Binders Full of Women

-By Dan dos Santos

Everyone jokes about Romney's 'Binders full of women' comment. But creepily, I really DO have binders full of women... and men.



Whenever I hire a model, I always make it a point before they leave to shoot a 360˚ view of their head. Having these shots is really useful for lots of reasons. Firstly, it's just a wonderful opportunity to observe the inherent differences in proportions from one gender to the other, and even one person to another. Sometimes it's shocking just how much variance there is between faces.

Another reason I do this is for sketching. I usually don't use any reference when sketching concepts, but it's always nice to have something to fall back onto if I'm struggling. Since I do this with most of my models, I can actually refer to the exact model that I use for a particular job, and have a relatively good idea of what they are going to look like in my composition.



Last but not least, it's wonderful reference for background figures in paintings. Often times I overlook background characters, and don't shoot as much reference as I should have. If I'm in a jam, I can always course through my files, and find a head that fits decently well.



Of course the lighting will likely be a bit inconsistent, so I tend to shoot under a soft neutral light, or the common '3/4 portrait' light. This helps make the photos as versatile as possible.

To do these shots, all I do is sit my model in a swiveling chair. I start with a straight on portrait, and then slowly spin them 360˚ (It's much easier to spin your model than to spin the lights!). I then have them raise their chin, and do the process again. They then lower their chin, and do it yet again. This gives me virtually every useful angle possible.



The whole process only takes 5 minutes, and is money well spent. I've used the images more times than I can count. I highly recommend you try it yourself. After a few years, you will have a wonderful library of faces available to you.

Here Comes Santa Claws

Gahan Wilson's take on the holidays has always been...oh, you know. So here are some favorite Ghoulish Greetings over the years from one of the best cartoonists working today.

Sketching

-By Jesper Ejsing

When I was young and listened to older artist talk about art, telling me what was important, I was always told, that sketching was the most important thing in the world. I did, what I imagine everyone else would in my position: I bought sketchbooks and dutifully tried to fill them. I tried sketching people in the city bus, but the images sucked , since the bus was moving and the lines were...well; sketchy.



During the last 10 years I have bought so many sketching books, with the heartfelt intention of filling them. But no matter how hard I try or how “right” I know it is or would be, I just cannot seem to fill them. They keep sitting there on a shelf with only the first 10 pages or less decorated. I always felt bad or “less artistic” for not having the burning urge to sketch all the time.

A year or so ago I traveled to Santiago with the fantastic artist Steve Prescott and I saw to my horror that he had brought a sketchbook and I had not. What was even worse was that the sketches in there was all finished pencil drawings. I flipped through and saw none of the aggressively faceless doodles that resembles my sketches. Up until then I hadn't realised the enormous difference in the way of sketching. Some artist do an almost finished drawing and some stops right the moment the figure is almost recognizable...needless to say I am in the last section.



Anyway; Steves “sketches” are some of the best I ever saw. I bought a sketchbook when I got home and started sketching to make a book like Steves. I think there is almost 3 drawings in it now.

What I think I just have to swallow, is the fact that I am not a sketching artist. My “magic”, if you´´ call it that, happens when I start to paint. My roughs are exactly that. They are totally unfit for beeing called drawings. But what they lack in finish, they have in energy. What I aim for in sketching is dynamic shape and gesture. As soon as I got that down the rest starts to feel boring to me. I think it started when I had to transfer a sketch to board. I was transferring by smearing the back side with pencil and drawing on top of the line, thus pressing the graphite onto the board. The transfer was really messy and not very precise, so Ihad to go over it and draw up all the line one more time. Then I would ink it to keep the line from disappearing during the first layer of paint. If you count the numbers of times I went over the same lines in a sketch it comes down to 4. No wonder it gets boring. I have moved on to sketching only in thumb size and keeping all the details as face hands clothes and details for the board drawing. This way I keep it fresh and alive and interesting.



I think this is why the digital painting has seemed so appealing to me. The jump from rough, aggressive sketching to the time you start thinking of light and lay on color is really short. Sometimes not even a jump. I have experimented in drawing directly in color no sketch or anything. It seems like total free falling without parachute, when you come from a background of pencil and ink line and greytones and then color. But I like the new approach a lot. I needed a kick out of my comfort zone.

In digital painting I imagine I can get the full benefit of my erratic sketching style.

The Flip Side

-By Dan dos Santos

Gessoing a board properly really does take a full day, mostly due to drying time. But when a major deadline is approaching, one day can mean everything.



It's almost embarrassing to admit, because it shows just how extraordinarily lazy I can be. But sometimes, when I am running really late on a deadline, and I don't have a primed board ready to go, I will actually paint on the back side of another painting.



It doesn't seem too bad at first. But quite often the second painting turns out really well and I am forced to actually cut the previous painting in half in order to frame it. At this point, I always think, why didn't I just plan better?



This has happened to me more times than I like to admit.



For instance, on the flip side of my 'Fires of Heaven' painting... A cover for an Urban Fantasy novel that I did a particularly lackluster job on. I knew I would never sell the piece (or even display it), so why not get some use out of it?

On the flip side of my 'Dead Reign' painting... 3/4 of a Hellboy movie poster, which was abandoned due to some massive compositional revisions. After days of work, the AD decided to completely change the poses of the characters, and I was forced to start anew.

I've actually sold quite a few paintings like this, and often times the owner doesn't even know there is another painting hidden there (Mostly because I totally forgot it was there).



The board I paint on is Strathmore 500 series illustration board. It's the same paper on the front side as on the back side. So, I am able to paint on either side. But what happens when you really hate a painting, and it doesn't have a paintable back side (because you decided to mount a digital drawing to masonite, for instance)?



Well... you find other uses for it... like a cutting mat.