Kiddography

Micron Pen Drawings

2011-01-16T15:31:00.000-05:00

Find a quiet room, relax, let go, enter a dreamlike state, nothing matters. Close your eyes and look inside your mind, see the demons and the sprites dancing with your muses. Let your drawing hand dance with them and follow them wherever they lead you. They travel paths that exist only in your subconscious, in directions that don’t yet exist in our universe. It doesn’t matter where you go, only that you travel. Then have your tale your told with little ink drawings. Here are some of mine.

Brian Bowes (check out his art), when I wrote 'inkings' in a previous post, he read it as ‘inklings.’ It’s a very nice name for this type of drawing, better than anything I thought of but other clever people thought of it too. Still ‘inklings’ describe them well because they’re done in ink and also the beginning of ideas. By the way, there is a company called Inkling Entertainment. It’s Bob Camp’s. Bob lives only 15 minutes south of me but I've never met him. I rarely leave my studio.

Painting and doodling help balance an artist out. Doodling reminds you to loosen up and keeps you from becoming stodgy and self-important about your work. It's also fun to see pictures appear that you didn't expect, as if someone else is in control.

At some point I started thinking I'll use a few of these as remarques in my two how-to art books OtherWorlds and How to Draw and Paint Dragons, hence the paint brushes and palettes appearing.

I started drawing dragons but other animals popped up here and there. Some are dragon-like but the line between dragon and non-dragon is a fuzzy one. A dragonfly is distinctly un-dragon-like. They're really cool animals though that can withstand amazing g-forces but, sadly, have no ability to breath fire.

Some of my best ideas come from my doodles. They often end up somewhere else in a different form or become a greeting card of some kind. In the upper left of this one is Anna the Cavegirl and her friend Percival the Pachyderm painting hearts on each other. They love each other but I assure you that it's platonic. Inter-species affairs between sentient and consenting creatures don't offend me, this relationship will never be romantic so stop the speculating.

Here's a tiny remarque I did for a copy of Kiddography, my biographical art monograph. I usually draw bigger ones on the page previous to the title page but I never can stay with tradition.

My dragon book had several editions. This was drawn in the Barron's. I like including stuff around the page in my sketches. This drawing just gave me a neat idea.

This demon painter is based on one of my doodles. It's drawn in my OtherWorlds book. I typically initial my drawings and inscribe the book elsewhere. For all of the remarques I used a ballpoint pen. I like things that are easy to find to draw with. You can ask for a ballpoint pen anywhere and someone will lend it to you. Although people usually have pencils too, they smear (unless sprayed) when inside books and are rarely sharp or soft enough for me.

This was drawn in a Search Press edition of the dragon book. The book was published in many different languages as well. I like this dragon's puffed up hair. He's clearly a madman with a brush.

Another remarque for OtherWorlds: Which is mightier, the sword, the pen or the brush? Maybe it's the palette if it's big enough.

I've always thought that dragons and bats have a disadvantage to birds in that their wings are a bit stiffer when folded up. Bat wings don't seem like they'd be good insulators like feather covered bird wings are. I'll have to read up on this. Six-limbed (four legs, two wings) dragons can gallop and attack using their wing claws (thumbs) while standing sturdily on all fours. Birds can't do that!

This is the sort of thing that I think about as I draw my little pictures. Practical thought leads to many imaginative ideas. My new book: Unchain Your Brain with Drawing. The idea is an inkling.

This remarque fits the introduction to OtherWorlds well. In it I compare the importance of practice for warriors to practice for becoming an illustrator. This little guy is ready to paint anything that comes his way and kill anyone who tries to stop him from his artistic duties.

Christmas Card 2010

2010-12-24T17:55:00.007-05:00

This is, of course, my Christmas card this year and not a real book in this form. I borrowed a recent cover I did for Baen Books for this faux beat up copy of a thriller. The real book this cover is for is Grantville Gazette VI and it is a collection of stories around Eric Flint's 1633 series. Click here to learn about this very successful and very well done long-running series. Below is the inside of the card. The physical card is going out late for anyone expecting one.

Several Inks & A Pencil

2010-12-06T20:43:00.004-05:00

I have a bunch of pen & ink illustrations to do. To warm up for them I do little inkings. I really love the immediacy of the Pigma pens. You pick one up and you’re inking away. All of these pictures are small, doodles really (except the one above). The point is to get myself relaxed. Ink goes down and stays down. Paint isn’t harsh and unforgiving: make a mistake, wipe it away, do it over. A brush, works for me like a shock absorber, softening the unfortunate shake in my hand. So watch me ruin a couple of these. The one above is an illustration for a book by Orson Scott Card titled Hamlet’s Father. It’s not a test but a finish illustration included so I could have a picture at the top. It was done with Black Magic ink using a #1 W&N sable brush.

Above: These first three were taken from my transmogrifying sketchbook. I kind of draw from life and change it to something a little or a lot different. Most of these are drawn lightly with pencil and drawn over with a ballpoint pen. Starting at left is a balcony I was sitting on. I changed it quite a bit, mainly using the perspective. It’s both Pigma pen and ballpoint. Next is a doggy I saw running around. In this case I did a few drawings of the puppy separately and redrew it in the scene above. It’s pretty corny but sometimes I want simple, corny and cute. I need to learn how to draw dogs better from memory so this was a useful exercise. I used a Pigma pen on this one. The last one is a bank in town. I fancied it up some. It’s ballpoint.

I call the things above id creatures. They’re all over the place it you look carefully, in marble, in stained carpets and in lichen. All were all done with Pigma pens or brushes of one kind or another. The Pigma brushes don’t have the control of a sable dipped in ink but they’re useful when putting down heavy blacks and they don’t cause horrible spills. Some of these were done directly in ink without drawing. Often I get story ideas from these doodles.

Above: These first two sets are an exercise I call ‘keep inking till you ruin it.’ First I inked the three figures till I was satisfied, scanned the group and inked more. How better to know when you should’ve stopped than to go too far? The girl with her hand on her head is a mess in the second version but the girl holding her hand up still looks okay. I like how the hand stands out now. The mountain girl still looks okay too. It’s a matter of taste on this one. The story behind The Mountain Girl is that she’s a wild feral creature. What’s with the dress, you may ask? She “found” it, tried it on, liked it and is hoping to gain some sophistication by wearing it. Next is the fairy juggler who has charmed the clothes off of the lady he’s entertaining. I often do better with facial expressions when I draw small so after I got the big smile down right I felt I should try it up larger. My wife saw the basketball player with the stars in her eyes and said, hey, her arms are too long. Wrong! Her torso’s too short . . . and her legs a bit. Not to mention the massive hands, feet and head. Cartoons don’t care about their proportions and if they don’t why should I?

Above: As ugly as my friends think it is I love my World Fantasy Award. It was cast from a sculpture by Gahan Wilson after all. You can’t beat that thousand-mile stare from H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve done a couple of drawings of this and I’ll probably do a few more. The light on the slivery bust fascinates me as well. I did this directly in ink with a Pigma pen. I consider the self-portrait a failure. It’s not me. I look too friendly. There’s no hint of the bitter old man I’ve become. Also, my eyes should be a bit more crossed as I look at the mooring airship. People ask me sometimes if I have airships on my mind all the time. Nope, just look to the right of me. There are the flying naked ladies that haunt me with their terrible beauty and their lighter-than-air frolicking. I never quite finished this drawing before the wind caught it one day and it flew away, only to be found damaged under a couch. Now those lofty ladies will have to be kept here constantly nagging me to lighten my mood.

Agatha H. and the Airship City, A Navel History

2010-12-01T14:14:00.002-05:00

Above are a couple of quick character sketches of Agatha Heterodyne. She’s the main character in Girl Genius. Agatha's normal dress is modest but not always. I figured less was best for the cover.

Okay, I admit it I love airships (the picture above was for another book with airships). Give me a book with airships in it and I’m a happy guy. To tell you the truth it’s not that I like gas filled balloons so much it’s that I’ve done the research and I love putting my knowledge to use. Having read a great deal about airships I know that in our present time we underestimate and underutilize this wonderful technology. We seem blind to its potential. As I write this I shake my head in disappointment for us all. It’s shameful.

Now that I’ve finished proselytizing I can get to the main thing I’m posting about today. I did the cover to a very well written and entertaining book by Phil and Kaja Foglio. The title is Agatha H. and the Airship City. Above is that cover. It’s likely that you’re familiar with the graphic novel that the book is based on but if not go here.

Now to the story of the cover: the art director for Night Shade Books, David Palumbo, contacted me and asked me if I’d like to do the cover. First, the airships – all right! Next, the first book in the series by the Foglios – good deal! I know Phil and Kaja so the pleasure was all mine. It was a mystery to me that Phil wasn’t doing his own cover but that they’d trust me to do it made me feel pretty good. Above is the first stage of painting.

Phil invented some pretty cool machinery and mechanical men so I wanted them to be on the cover. It also had to be an action cover. Agatha had to be there and she had to be beautiful. I figured she should be sexy too. Hey, look at the comic, va-va-va-voom! Above is the next day of painting. As you can see things move fast but then they slow down quick because it took me several days to get to the finish. Note that I move the Wulfenbach troopers, the mechanical men, in closer. Agatha is the center of interest of course.

Above is the cover I first turned in. Here Agatha is dressed in her bedclothes with a coat around her. She makes clockwork men in her sleep and when awoken she is embarrassed to be found dressed skimpily.

The book is being directed at a general audience, and I believe very much that it will have a wide appeal. This is why I was asked to tone down the cover. My friend Photoshop allowed me to make this change without painting on the original. Although, sadly we've lost Agatha's midriff.

Here in this closeup you can see Agatha's well formed belly, bellybutton and all. This is why my subtitle is "A Navel History." It went away only digitally. Thanks to Photoshop what's gone doesn't have to stay gone. It's almost as if the cat's tail points to it.

PS: By the way, art director at Night Shade is David Palumbo, a fantastic artist himself. Here’s something I didn’t know about David until after I did the cover, he’s Julie Bell’s son (I feel stupid having not known this). I only knew he was a good artist. You probably already know this but Julie Bell is married to Boris Vallejo. Boris’ son is Dorian Vallejo whose work always amazes me. That’s not enough though, Julie has another son, Anthony Palumbo, and he’s an accomplished painter as well. Let’s just call them the fantastic five. The reason I think I don’t know much about other artists’ personal lives is because I’m a paint person and not a people person. I tend to be absorbed in the art and I forget to have curiosity about the artists I know.

Cover to How-To Book Becomes How-To

2010-11-13T19:56:00.003-05:00

Above is not the cover to the book with this title unless you're from an alternate world. In our world it's the cover to Starfinder, a nicely written book by John Marco.

I was planning to write this as a detailed explanation of how I work but I changed my mind and I decided to leave it open to question. If you want to know how the paint was applied, what paint I used, what mediums went into this or if there’s anything you wonder about ask me and I’ll answer. It’s likely that there’s a lot of things I don’t know I know and won’t till someone asks me.

This is a step-by-step for the cover I did for OtherWorlds: How to Imagine, Paint and Create Epic Scenes of Fantasy. That sure is a long title. I have to look it up every time I write it. The original title for the book was A Kama Sutra-Like Guide for the Fantasy Artist: With Detailed Step-By-Steps. Unfortunately, it got changed at the last minute. I don’t know why.

The reason the painting above couldn't be used for my book is that Starfinder is still in print so I couldn’t let them use it. We talked about other possibilities and they asked me if I’d paint a new cover for the book so I did that. Here are those steps with few comments:

Above: First is my initial idea, some idea drawings of sculptures and then examples of me trying to get everything to fit in a pleasantly aesthetic manner with the cover design they sent me. Photoshop is used as an arranging tool.

Above: Look ma, no pencil! The initial lay in is done directly with paint on pre-toned gessoed board.

Above: Close-up.

Above: A change to the design takes place. The dragon sculpture becomes a goddess instead.

Above: This is a close-up of the change.

Above: Color is added wet into wet.

Above: Details are added and color is shifted to cooler warms.

Above: The dam is changed and refined. I can never stick to a script.

Above: More refining, probably less than an hour's work. Note how the foreground dragon's wing changes but will change back. Can't make up my mind.

Above: So is this blog entry TMI, Too Much Information or TMI, That's Mighty Interesting?

Above: A close-up of an area of change.

Above: The other area of change.

Above: The background is concentrated on.

Above: Knoll becomes grassy with texture and drybrush work.

Above: Early versions of the dragons' coloration.

Above: It's hard to tell what I've done but it has been refined.

Above: You can barely see the lines but this is a perspective test. I've guessed it fairly well but adjustments are needed. Note that the spine of the book will line up with the column in the center. Type will go there.

Above: A close-up of refinements. People are added. Can you see the mermaid sculpture?

Above: A shot of the detail. You can see how I turned and moved one of the dragon sculpture drawing ideas over here.

Above: The finish without any type over it. I've Photoshopped in some extra space around it to make it easier for the designer to place because I try to make other people's jobs a bit easier when I can. Click here to see it as a cover. It feels kind of empty like this. Click here to see a lot more of the book. Google put up a large portion of the book. I'm guessing the publisher knows and is okay with this. To buy it click on the previous 'to buy.' Remember what I said about making other people's jobs easier? That 'to buy' link makes the promotions department at Impact happy.

Segrelles Tree: A Horror Story

2010-10-31T13:57:00.001-04:00

Below is a excerpt from my book Gnemo:

The lovely Casso beckoned me to sit next to her on a bench that circled a tree. As I sat she pulled out a piece of paper and she read me her terrible poem:

Gentle creatures come close to me
Take in the sweet musk of my tree
Her scent will make you float on air
and newly freed of any care
Limp and placid, without a fear
The end of you is very near
My love needs you inside of her
In you go with nary a stir
I give to you one final kiss
Your sacrifice releases bliss
My lovely tree will now release
A misty dust that gives me peace
Great euphoria envelops me
I love you my Segrelles Tree

A voice in the back of my head yelled run, and not from the bad poetry alone, but the intoxicant released by Casso’s beautiful Segrelles Tree held me in her charms. Lunch to this tree seemed to be my unavoidable destiny. Casso’s addiction required my sacrifice but her confidence in my love let her release me with the full expectation I’d return for dinner.

-- Gnemo

PS: If you haven't yet, please buy my most recent book OtherWorlds: How to Imagine, Paint and Create Epic Scenes of Fantasy.

The Pencil Ogre & The Stone Cold Artist

2010-10-18T21:07:00.004-04:00

Last night I was watching TV and I got an itch to do some art but I was mighty tired. I’d had a long hard day. Normally I like to sketch on nights like this but I decided I wanted to paint something I’d already drawn. Sometimes I reach for my watercolors but it’d been a long time since I’d used my little MacBook and Wacom together and I didn’t want to leave the couch. My main art computer is on a platform that’s meant for standing. I do most of my work standing up. It suits me. The laptop allows me to “watch” TV and draw or paint at the same time. Just don’t ask me anything about the plot of the show. It was Mad Men – someone’s pregnant, someone’s getting married, someone’s getting screwed (in all its forms of meaning) . . . something like that.

Above is the sketch. It appears in my new book OtherWorlds under the chapter “Sketching Your Ideas.” I think my title for this section was “The Mighty Pencil” but it was changed. The Giant Pencil Ogre is to remind us to start our idea sketches roughly because the sketchier we artists are the more ideas we’ll generate. The neater your initial drawings the more closed your mind will be.

(While I’m plugging my new book, click here to see a few pages from it. Once there, click on each picture to see the next. You’ll end with my web site open.)

* If you're not particularly familiar with Photoshop you should click on the picture above and take a look at the screen grab. Three of the pertinent areas are circled in red. I'd flattened the art for the Pencil Ogre but the Stone Cold Artist still had its layers seen in the palette on the right of the picture.

To start I opened my sketch in Photoshop and imported the painting texture and turned it into a “Multiply Layer.” Using the “Magic Wand” I selected the background of the drawing (the white around it) on its “Layer” and tweaked that by hitting the “Q” key to modify the selection then reversed it to select and mask the ogre. I kept that selection pretty loose though. Using the “Dodge” tool I lightened the texture behind the drawing, it being “Masked” and unaffected by any painting. Then I opened what I call ‘textures.’ These are scans of sections of paintings or interesting textural things I’ve photographed. Here are the two textures I used below. One is an underpainting and the other is a bunch of pebbles I saw and took a picture of. Each was changed a little in the process shifting the colors around for effect using Color Balance, Saturation and maybe a filter or two. Click on these two so you can see the textures better.

Using Photoshop’s “Rubber Stamp” (set to be pressure sensitive) I placed the cursor over each texture alternately and clicked. Once clicked, I switched to the drawing and “painted” my textures onto it wherever I touched my Wacom with its pen varying the pressure where it seemed wise. I think I used four or five layers alternating between “Normal” and “Multiply” layers – highlights where put down opaquely (Normal) while shadows went in transparently (Multiply). There are several ways you can set the “pen” but I used only Normal and Multiply. Mind you I was pretty tired when I did this so it’s possible I’m off in some of the details. After applying all of that I added a bit more shadows and highlights using the “Brush” tool. Below is the finished product, a pencil ogre splashed with color. Click on this fellow to better see his rough surface.

Well-trained, experienced digital artists may look at this and shake their heads at my lack of knowledge. Keep in mind I’m playing. It’s all in fun.

OtherWords: How to Imagine, Paint & Create Epic Scenes of Fantasy

2010-10-07T18:25:00.007-04:00

I wrote an instructional book. It's called OtherWorlds: How to Imagine, Paint and Create Epic Scenes of Fantasy. Click on this to see a video of it. The following step-by-step is of a book cover I did to give you an example of what will be in that book. However it's a new piece not in the aforementioned book. Next I'll do a step-by-step of the cover for OtherWorlds:

An anthology is a collection of stories. One way to represent this type of book is with cover featuring architecture and sculpture. It’s only a matter of placing the elements of the stories into a pleasing composition. The final painting should reflect an overall feeling of the book. In this case the feeling is of an ancient world of the future that is in decline. Feeling is important. As cold and static as architecture may seem as a subject it is very much a way to elicit an emotion and show drama.

Ideas (above): Start with a feeling and work towards refining it with thumbnail sketches done with a pencil. This will be a landscape populated with classical looking architecture of our future’s past. As such it will be difficult for us to fathom. It will be a bit of a mystery. You can come up with your own idea of its function but keep in mind that time has removed many of the clues as to what that is. Thinking all of this out will help you come up with an interesting final idea. Scan all your ideas and then feel free to modify them using your computer. You can move and resize the elements till you’re happy with the results. A bit of cross-pollination between ideas is desirable.

Throw on the Oil Paint . . . Figuratively (above): Once you’ve prepared a surface, in this case gessoed Masonite stained with a ground color, start laying in your shapes directly with paint. A large flat bristle brush is used to apply umbers (raw and burnt) but other colors like Mars violet are an excellent choice. If you’ve put down a very thin layer of linseed oil first on the surface it’ll make the applied paint a bit more fluid and allow you to easily wipe away to make your forms more intricate. Beyond getting your basic shapes down this should be a time to explore the idea further.

Throw on the Turpentine . . . Literally (above): While the basic lay in of umbers is still wet you can start adding opaque colors (Burnt sienna, Titanium white and Gold ochre) to represent the lit and shadow areas of the subject. This is supposed to be an aged structure. It’s not supposed to be a clean shiny new building. You want your paint to represent that and the paint is ready to do it if you give it a push. While the first two steps are still quiet wet dunk a brush in turpentine and splatter it on the painting. In that you already put down a thin layer of linseed oil as a start the turpentine will separate the paint and cause little veins and striations to appear as it runs down the painting.

The Nature of Liquid a Close-up (above): The effect of the dripping is both the start of a texture for you and some inspiration for a direction to go in as you paint. In this case I want the turpentine to reflect a quality of aging the way time and weather, in particular rain, changes a building. This is also a way to get immediate natural details into a painting. It’s left to dry overnight.

Sculpting out the Details as You Go: It’s perfectly okay not to have a completely detailed plan before you begin painting. Some elements are best left fairly rough till later. These two drawings are a refinement of what I want the sculptures to look like. They’re left mighty rough though because, once you have the basic idea in your head, you can work out the details as you paint letting the paint lead the way.

Making it Less Drippy (above): As you paint over the painting it’s best to maintain the drippy texture where it’s needed. You’ll certainly lose some but keep what you can. The key here is to make the structure feel more solid and give it form while keeping the texture. Using your paint thinly and sable brights as brushes at this point is a good choice. Start this process with large brushes and work down to smaller ones. At this point a few lines are added as guides for perspective that, until now, was guessed at. Notice how I changed my mind on changing my mind on the structure and I have now brought it back closer to the original plan.

A Note on Texture (above): If you find that you’re losing textural character as you paint there are ways to put it back. You can drag your brush across the surface to leave bits of paint, you can scumble, you can press anything with a texture into the paint to lift off or add paint, you can roll your brush on its edge or you can use a malformed brush that applies paint unevenly. All of these approaches are used here often on top of one another. This detail shows all of these approaches.

Define and Refine (above): A nice way of establishing your masses clearly is to take a painting only to a point you feel confident in them and then later refine them. Now some areas can be given greater attention and refinement. You can work out any area you’re not sure of first or an area you think will guide the rest of the painting. It’s still acceptable to experiment at this point. Touches of Viridian are glazed in areas to add color. The thinly applied green works well to simulate an aged copper roof because its translucency allows some of the underpainting show through. The inside of the structure, because it is largely composed of bounced light off of a warm surface is shifted towards orange more than the outside of the structure.

Light and Shadow (above): Light comes in from all three dimensions. This is easy to forget when you’re working on a flat surface. Although the light is clearly coming from the right side of the painting it’s also coming from a high angle from above as well. A change in the light’s axis will change the subject’s shadows, values and color so this all needs to be taken into account.
Once some of the smaller structural details are painted in additional shadows are added. Keep a keen eye on your architectural pieces for balance. Here the platform is widened to give balance. Even though you may have made up the figures for your sculptures you can study old outdoor sculptures (from life or from photographs) to imitate their textures and the way they reflect light. You’re mentally lifting a patina from them. It’s a bit tricky building the form and texture together because often one gets lost in another. You’ll need to find a equilibrium.

Back to the Drawing Board (above): Another sculpture is needed. You should try to paint it in directly but with a few quick thumbnails that take minutes you can test out your ideas and proceed with a bit more confidence. Notice how these are facing the wrong way. The sculpture was planned for another painting but it didn’t fit that one and flipped and place here instead.

Adding Details (above): The easiest way to add details like the center sculpture is to draw them in with paint. Thin down a neutral color with linseed oil and draw with it. You can easily wipe away your mistakes with a rag. Once the form is there you can add details to it. It’s best to always think ahead about what you’ll paint next in a painting. Some areas can be painted easily in one take but others are best laid in and then painted over again when it dries. Lush trees work best painted with dark leaves and shadows with highlights added later once they’re dry. That’s why they’re added in roughly before other details, to give them time to dry.

Inside Details (above): Any structure has an outside and an in. Here in this foreground structure you see a bit of both so you’ll need to picture both in your head even if all the details aren’t seen. Any imaginative painting requires that you mentally picture more than is seen. Typically it would make sense to paint all of the interior first and then the exterior. In that it’s mostly continuation of a repeating design it was left till now. Only the back wall had to be newly conceived. Because the large windows in the structure let in so much light the interior is aglow with warm light. Most of that light comes from what’s reflected off of the marble floor that can’t be seen at all. Your ability to imagine a scene logically comes into play here to give your picture verisimilitude.

Making Adjustments (above): It's difficult to imagine a solid structure like this so it’s likely you’ll find your mind has wandered and now you find something physically impossible in your painting especially if you did it somewhat on the fly as it was done here. Don’t worry, just make a few adjustments, add an overlap or two and it’s all fixed. Note also that the sculpture in the background has been flipped to keep the eye from running off the picture. Also, the straight edge of the roof is off putting so I added a rounded dormer over a balcony to break the line. To make the shadows uniform and have a nice color shift from the lit area towards a cooler color a light semi-opaque glaze is painted into the shadows using Transparent white, Manganese blue and Ultramarine blue (all of these are transparent colors except the white which, despite its name, is actually translucent, i.e. semi-opaque). At present the sky is warmer than it will ultimately be so some of the new anticipated blue from the sky would make it into these shadows. Unfortunately, this change causes nice details to be softened too much so they’ll be added back in the next step.

Save the Little Details for Last (above): Now that the larger areas are painted you can add small, complicated elements to the painting, more detail in the trees and to the structures and tiny people are adding giving the scene greater scale. All of these are important elements of the stories as well that work together to make an interesting picture. The background is pushed back a bit with Manganese blue and Flake white. An intermediary layer is added between the foreground trees and the background so there isn’t a sudden falloff to the background. Oil paint isn’t perfectly opaque so it will take a second layer of paint so the background doesn’t show through the dragon. Even though light shows through its wings you still shouldn’t see any of the objects behind it.

Blue-Skying (above):
It might seem odd to save the sky for last but the advantage here is that you can use the sky to cut into all the objects giving them carefully controlled edges. Notice how the sky is duller towards its bottom. This is to give the picture a dusty dirty feeling. You’ll see this often in polluted areas of the country. Whatever the case the sky usually does this to some degree anyway. It’s never a perfect blue. Now that the sky is in it became apparent that the background needed to be even bluer. For the final, tiniest, details a #1 sable round is used, like for example, in the details of the crowd of naked people.

Traditional Meets Digital (above): After a few more final details it’s time to go digital. This is a book cover and therefore needs a bit more space on top for type. If it’s not done with physical paint you can always add it later digitally using a rubber stamp tool available in Photoshop. And there it is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

Winter Wonderland

2009-12-24T15:11:00.008-05:00

This would be nicer as a printed card but time got away from me again this year. I hope there's a lot of it in 2010. Some years seem to have more in them than others.

These are the Thompson Ice Shelves with some holiday adornment. The thick ice shelves are left behind when the high tides recede. Then the ice slowly crumbles away without water underneath to support it. This is fun to watch especially during an aurora andrealis, or so Gnemo tells me. Here it is without the Christmas angels:

CSI Art

2009-04-15T10:08:00.007-04:00

This table of my art may appear briefly in an episode of CSI. It's on tomorrow on CBS, Thursday (4/16) at 9 PM EST. Here's the description of the show: CSI, A Space Oddity: Hodges and Wendy wind up investigating the death of a beloved artist when they run into each other at a science fiction convention for one of their favorite classic TV shows. That artist's name? -- Tom Kidd.

Okay, so I changed 'actor' to 'artist' and I lied about my untimely fictional death. I'm not the victim. Still, my art may be in it somewhere. I plan on making it a game, kind of like "Where's Waldo."

I don't know what those globes are. They're not mine. Maybe I'll find out tomorrow.

Oh, and I really should post more but work has me overwhelmed.

Happy Valentine's Day Andrea!

2009-02-14T20:21:00.005-05:00

I'm not one for public displays of affection but I'm making an exception today. It's seems to be the right time for it.

Regarding January 1, 2009:

2008-12-30T19:11:00.001-05:00

A Tardy Illuxcon Report

2008-11-26T15:37:00.005-05:00

I exhibited the painting above at Illuxcon. It’s a book cover for “Stonefather” by Orson Scott Card published by Subterranean Press. It’s a cleverly written story that has the feeling of a fable but with a gentle humor you wouldn’t expect. I got a chance to do a few pen & inks for this book as well. I looked it up and it seems the book is sold out already. Below is one of a few doodles I did at Illuxcon. I'm putting them between paragraphs:As far as I know I’ve always liked fantasy and science fiction. Over the years it has only gained in meaning for me. This is due to a greater appreciation for science and for literature. So at first when I heard of Illuxcon it seemed wrong to separate the art from the literature. After all I like keeping the science in the science fiction and I like to read.The thing that most appealed to me about Illuxcon was the chance to meet many artists I’ve never met before. And I did meet some but not as many as I would’ve liked to. Nonetheless, you can see a few pictures from that event on my photo-blog Shutterbuggy Kidd. I’m a bit strange in that it usually doesn’t occur to me to take a picture of someone unless they’re doing something interesting -- I need to be prompted.The idea of bringing artists and people interested in art together was a great success. Illuxcon was small in size but large in content and I think it will continue to grow in all directions.There were two highlights of the convention for me, one that I thought was funny and another that I thought was a lot of fun. The first night there was a small party and because so many people didn’t know each other the hosts suggested we write our names on stickers and wear them. Pretending to be an illiterate artist I drew an airship on mine. Well into the party a young woman was talking to my friend Omar Rayyan, looked at my name badge and exclaimed, “Are you Gnemo?!!” I felt a certain childish pride that I could be recognized by a drawing.The other thing I enjoyed greatly was doing demos with Michael Whelan, Bob Eggleton and Matt Stewart. That was a total blast. Above is a painting Michael started and I made something of a story around by making him or her embarrassed at being caught naked. Modesty does not become him. Below is a demon Michael started, Bob worked on and I turned into a painter I call “Bob.”And finally, below is a painting I call "Untamed Muse." I started this one and Michael worked on it.

Mater (an outsider's view)

2008-11-18T18:40:00.007-05:00

Picture credits (my wife's family): Starting from the left, Mom (Debbie), Dad, (Hugh, he was very tall), Aaron (brother #2), Harlan (brother #1), Mater (step-grandmother), Sean (brother #3), Andrea (the oldest and smallest in her family at present day and love of my life), Pater (Granddad) and Erica (sister).

This is the first time I'm not posting my own art to my blog. My post today is dedicated to a woman called Mater.

My wife, Andrea, and I are back from New Hampshire. We went up there for a memorial service for her step grandmother Audrey Logan. She had recently turned 92. It was a long life, a much longer life than Andrea’s mother or father who’ve been dead for a few years. Andrea called her step grandmother Mater and has always thought of her as her grandmother with no ‘step’ attached to it. Andrea’s maternal grandmother had died before she was old enough to know her. She told me that she saw her Mater as an excitingly exotic woman of great vitality who did things no other grandparent she knew ever did. For one, she went to jail, not just overnight, but for six weeks, for protesting the Viet Nam War. For many years she protected her daughter as she went underground to hide from the FBI. Most of my family would’ve found that scandalous, certainly my own grandparents would have.

I’d met and talked to Mater a few times and I knew a little about her but I really never got to know her well. The main thing I knew was that she treated Andrea and her siblings very well. She went well beyond what you could expect any grandparent to do especially for children that did not come from her own children. Andrea spoke very fondly of her visits to her grandparent’s farm. Anyone who is or was nice to Andrea is my instant friend so I already liked Mater before I met her. Almost all grandparents are nice to their grandkids but Mater was the type of person who changed lives for the better. At Mater’s well-attended memorial it was moving to hear testimonial after testimonial from people she had helped with her generosity of time and money, people of distant places and religions that held her in high regard. Beyond that I could see what she had instilled in the people there. Their memories of her were rich and fulfilling for them and I could sense her presence in them. They had learned from her. This was a Quaker service where people sit in a circle and stand to speak when they feel moved to. I liked this and I told Andrea that this is the service I want when I die, certainly not one with a minister giving a hackneyed sermon.

After the memorial, at a rather large family dinner I heard even more stories about Mater. My wife’s extended family was warm and generous just like their mother, grandmother, great grandmother and friend. The people there laughed and sang songs from their childhoods. It was a contrasting prelude to a cold Sunday burial, a sad time of letting go. And I remembered one of my rare conversations with Mater when I told her how happy I was to be a part of her extraordinary family.

The amazing thing I came away with from this trip was a picture of Andrea younger than 18 (she’s around 13 in the picture I think). Almost all her family photographs were destroyed in a basement flood. In the picture she’s with her entire family including her Mater and Pater. No other complete family picture exists. See above.

By the way, Andrea’s grandfather was no slouch either. He was a Rhodes Scholar, well-known editor at Look Magazine, vice president at General Foods and he was the Republican majority leader in the New Hampshire senate, but not all at once.

Pen & Ink for Songs of Dying Earth

2008-11-06T09:03:00.004-05:00

I'm rushing around today (as I have been all week) but I wanted to put up a quick new post. This is one of 19 pen & inks I did for "Songs of Dying Earth" an anthology of stories written around a world, a far future earth, created by Jack Vance. The book is sure to sell out.

Happy Halloween: Number Two of Two

2008-10-30T14:49:00.007-04:00

As promised, above is the book cover for the anthology "Witch Way to the Mall" edited by Esther Friesner. I like painting silly and grotesque stuff. The editor wanted a sexy soccer mom type witch though (a WMILF?). Can you find the Wizard of Oz allusion? I did it entirely subconsciously. (Hint: a means of propulsion, although not usually a desired one.)

Below is one of my initial thumbnail ideas and three bonus, more traditional, witches I painted for "Wyrd Sisters" by Terry Pratchett many years ago.

Now to go and eat the candy I bought for the Trick-or-Treaters. They're going to be egg-throwing angry with me.

Happy Halloween: Number One of Two

2008-10-26T16:11:00.008-04:00

The more I paint the more I want to draw. The more I draw the more I want to paint. Then there's inking. I love to work in pen & ink. You can get so much out of a line. It's spooky -- BOO!

I know that's pretty lame but that's what Halloween is all about, bad puns and being horrifically unfunny. The pen & ink above is a frontispiece for an anthology called "Witch Way to the Mall" edited by Esther Friesner. (See what I mean about puns). I'll post the cover for the book later, nearer to Halloween.

I've added a new blog to my blog links. It's The Bastion: Web Journal of Fantasy Author John Marco. He asked me to do a guest blog and doing it reminded me how much I liked doing my own blog. Thank you John. John has a new book coming out I did a wraparound cover to called "Starfinder." I'll post it here at some point but if you want to see it sooner you can click on the link to John's blog. You'll need to scroll down when you get to his blog though.

Long Shadows of Introspection

2008-10-20T15:14:00.002-04:00

Last week I completed several projects that kept me happily busy. Is work really its own reward or is it a way to escape unproductive pondering?

Quite often when I complete a great deal of work and the pressure of looming deadlines is lifted I like to sit in a dimly lit room and do nothing. This can last a couple of days. My wife finds my behavior unnerving. This time though I was filled with energy and I quickly went about doing all the little things that I couldn’t do when I was busy. That lasted about three days and then I started brooding so I went out for a long walk. I’m not sure how many miles I traveled but my walk lasted for hours. Heck, it’s two miles into town alone. I decided to look at homes for sale in town. If the right one presented itself I’d buy it and turn it into a studio. It’s a good time to buy. Prices are low. A few years ago I considered buying a small church. What a great studio that would’ve made with its vaulted ceiling. I’d have to have a contractor take off the giant white cross though. All these ideas are completely impractical yet I continue to entertain them. Maybe, just maybe . . . well, I wouldn’t want to miss a great opportunity, would I? (See how my brain works).

The long walk didn’t work though. Today was worse than yesterday. I dragged myself through the day. I did some organizing and some cleaning. It depressed me further. I kept running across disheartening things.

Around four o’clock I went for a run. It was colder than I expected so I had to change my usual path so I’d be running in the sun. As I saw my long shadow ahead of me I thought about what I wanted to do with my future and I decided to start my blog back up.

The picture above was done for Subterranean Press. It’s the cover to an anthology called "Songs of Dying Earth" and I did several pen & ink illustrations for it as well that I will someday post to this blog. I greatly enjoyed reading every story in the book. The reason I put it up on my blog today is that it fit my mood but that mood is gone. I ran away my long shadowy thoughts.

The Reindeer Express Corporation

2007-12-28T16:22:00.000-05:00

For legal porpoises, by which I do mean the sea mammal, I wasn’t able to release these phony stocks and their associated company bookmarks until after Christmas. Either that or I’m terribly behind. If all goes well, I’ll actually print all of this out and send it to the people on my list.

In the meantime, I’ll describe this new never-to-make-a-profit/non prophet (no sense of the future) company: Earlier this year we acquired the rights to Santa & Co., a poorly financed, frivolously managed and inefficiently performing sole proprietorship. We’ve spent the last year revamping and updating that system and today we’re announcing the launch of new company, Reindeer Express LLC. Reindeer Express is now the only company to ship exclusively on Christmas Eve. We use a multitude of airships, blimps, airplanes and, of course, winged reindeer (as seen in our official bookmark) all working in concert to accomplish this. Our management will take this company in a very positive re-architected direction. 2008 will mark our entry into this new technology platform and management is very optimistic that it will be a tremendous year of growth, even including increased elf size if not jolly-man girth.

The above is an authentic faux replica of a fake stock certificate. Feel free to print yourself out a copy.

And please take a look at "Don't Feed the Howndders" on Gnemo's Sketchbook.

Then and Now

2007-12-04T00:21:00.000-05:00

I like to imagine that the above picture was painted then time and progress happened and the scene below was painted. (Go over to Gnemo's Sketchbook for a new post too.

Here's the full story of Doré Volcanoes:

Living at the edge of instant death, but with limitless steam energy to run their factories, the Valcodians live every day knowing it could easily bring molten death. They work on a rotating schedule with half their life spent at serious toil, and the other half spent in hedonistic abandon. Hundreds of years may go by before one of the ring of volcanoes in their community erupts, and obliterates an outpost. However, they are all keenly aware of the dangerous business they are in. Constant monitoring of the volcano, and a quick escape route that takes the populous behind some distant rock has on occasion saved lives, but is usually futile.

Dumbstruck!

2007-11-11T23:36:00.000-05:00

Something very cool happened to me. This past weekend (Nov. 8-11) was The World Fantasy Convention. I attended it as an exhibitor.

The first fantastic thing to happen was that I met Moebius, that is the pseudonym for Jean Giraud the great French artist, concept designer and comic genius. We talked briefly but I didn't want to monopolize his time because everyone wanted to meet and talk to him. This was, after all, during the artists' reception at the art exhibit.

The next thing to happen was unbelievable and highly improbable. Mr. Giraud bought a painting of mine. He told me himself and I was dumbstruck. Truly speechless.

The painting above is now in Jean Giraud's house in Paris. I've posted it before but I thought I'd put up a newer larger scan of it.

I did the drawing above last Friday for fun and it came out looking a little like a female Arzach, one of Moebius' male characters, so I took it more in that direction. Clearly I was still thinking about that meeting. She's not wearing Arzach's archetypal hat. It's been replaced by hair of similar proportions, kind of Marge Simpson-esque. The last thing I added to this was Arzach's own winged transport to make the homage clear.

I wonder how much of a sycophant I'd be if I packed that picture up and sent it off to the artist that subconsciously then consciously inspired it?

Oh, and here is proof that I met him, a picture of me, Omar Rayyan, an artist friend you should see the work of, and Jean Giraud (Moebius) himself (below).

Picture by Sheila Rayyan (Also a spectacular artist. You can see her work on the Rayyan link as well).

Sorry For the Absence

2007-11-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

This blog has had some technical difficulties. It's been up, then down, then up . . . well you get the picture -- actually you haven't been getting pictures. Here's a new one. It's a book cover. The title is "Duainfey" and the book is by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

I'll have something interesting to say tomorrow, interesting to me at least.

REJECTED!!!

2007-09-13T09:55:00.000-04:00

I was working on a slideshow today and I decided that part of it might make for a nice blog entry. The above is from the original cover idea for what would become “Kiddography: The Art and Life of Tom Kidd.” It appeared in my bog before but without the cover flaps or back cover. This idea was, as the title indicates, firmly rejected. Even after the approach of the book was decided on I still had a second cover idea rejected and, if you’ve never seen it, here is a link to what the book actually looks like: KIDDOGRAPHY

I had two publishers interested in the book. One said the idea looked like an art book and they didn’t do art books; the other said it looked like an illustrated novel and they didn’t do illustrated novels. The book was to be a highly science fictionalized true story -- honest mendacity, and other contradictions. If you click on the pictures they should pop up big enough be able to read the text. For my own entertainment I'll finish "The Kidd Id" one day. Expect some more pages from this ill-fated book. Below is the back cover design:

After I show the two previous slides, this is the slide that follows (below):

If you've read this far down, please link over (at right) to Gnemo's Sketchbook and to my Photo blog for new stuff. Oh, and sorry to my blog friends for not being very friendly lately. I'm just about finished being overwhelmed and I'm now entering normalcy. It's been a tough summer.

Memory Lane

2007-08-26T09:34:00.000-04:00

I know that the ability to observe and analyze well is an important quality for a variety of professions. My belief is that it’s largely undervalued. However, for some people it can become an obsession. I am in constant danger of becoming one of those individuals.

When I work from life I tend to become deeply interested in fully understanding my subject matter and what better way to prove that you understand it than to render it perfectly. Understanding how the eye perceives and nature works is important to me but it’s more important to make a picture that communicates what I want it to. Sometimes I forget this. This goes back to my early days when I was first learning to draw.

When I was very young I wanted to draw well. Right away I felt limited with my number two pencil. As hard as I pushed it to the paper, it only got so dark. To reflect nature I needed something to create darker areas. Even with the pale drawings I did people told me that I drew well and they readily recognized the faces in my little portraits. It wasn’t till I was in high school that I learned about softer leads. As an adult I continue to be shocked by the things I don’t know, especially when it involves art and art making. I’m vastly ignorant and forgetful. Worst of all, I sometimes forget how little I know.

Recently a friend gave me a bunch of my art he’d been storing for me in his attic. I kept meaning to pick it up and in the meantime 25 years went by. That illustrates the level of procrastination I’m prone to. I’d also forgotten what he had. It was a lot of stuff and it went back to work I’d done in high school. Above is one of those drawings.

If you look closely, you can see that I made a mistake in this exercise to copy a picture from National Geographic. The hands are different proportions. At the time I drew from the top of the page to the bottom completing each section as I went. If you see the original (15 X 24”), the drawing nearly touches the top and the bottom of the page. It never occurred to me to leave some space for a mat and frame. I made some very nice observations with this drawing in terms of values though.

This drawing was in the portfolio of my work that was entered in the Florida State Fair art competition. I won that competition and a scholarship to Syracuse University. That was something of a miracle and it changed the direction of my life. Very sad days ensued so it has been quite painful to go through all that old art. Three boxes of it had been sitting in the guest room for months till I worked up the courage to go through it in a thorough way.

PS: My blog has been stuck in limbo. Sorry for that. I hope to post some vacations pictures on Shutterbuggy Kidd soon though. There’s plenty of new art to post too.

Can I Have a Three Way?

2007-07-14T15:51:00.000-04:00

That subject title is something that I asked my wife one day. Her response will come later but what I’m referring to here is that I’m posting to all three of my blogs today.

The title of the painting above is “Out On a Limb.” It is 12X15” and it is an oil painting. I’d planned to do a step-by-step for this but I can’t find the other shots of the painting in progress. That’s the way things have been going lately. Each day some new time-consuming costly surprise arrives. Combine those with problems I’ve been putting off, say like a visit to my dentist and some car repairs, and it’s been a troublesome few weeks.

The finished painting at top was started as a demo for the Society of Creative Arts of Newtown (SCAN). Below the painting is the drawing I loosely based the painting on. I wasn’t able to complete it there so I took it back to the studio. Below the drawing is the one step in the process I could find.

And below this is a close-up. I scanned it just to test out my new scanner. It’s a little off in color but not too bad. I usually don’t like how paintings scan. Digital photos are better because you can control the light.

Here are the other two blog links:

Gnemo’s Sketchbook

Shutterbuggy Kidd

Oh, and how did my wife respond when I asked her for a three-way? She handed me a light bulb of course. What did you expect, something out of Penthouse Forum? That story’s real fly-on-the-wall/slice-of-life from “Tales of the Kidd House.” You can file that under ‘the most boring of non-fiction.’

PS: Earlier today I made some small changes to the paining. I can never leave things alone.

Naked Lunch

2007-06-25T00:24:00.000-04:00

Does giving something a literary title make it anymore sophisticated? Nope.

Above is the version I drew in someone's copy of Kiddography. This was scanned from a photocopy. My scanner died the day before I had to ship that book off. I think that I like the cowgirl version better. You really shouldn't be trying to ride a Tyrannosaur naked. This creature's rough hide is bound to give you dino sores.

Yet another new Gnemo entry too: Gnemo's Sketchbook

Resurrection

2007-06-21T21:04:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back. Sorry for being away. It wasn't supposed to last this long.

I've begun one of those Moleskine Sketchbooks. In it I'll be drawing stuff that I stand in front of, draw and then transmogrify. I think that it'll be a nice way to learn by drawing from life and then to still exercise my imagination. The plan is to do it all in ballpoint pen. This was done across two pages but, for some crazy perceived need, I removed the gap from the two sides.

I did one for my Gnemo blog too, exact same approach: Gnemo's Sketchbook.

Big Big Mess & A Book Cover

2007-05-31T22:39:00.000-04:00

If you've been to my blog here recently you'll have noticed that you can't see pictures. That's partly fixed. I still have to upload all the old art going back to September. This may take a while. The server I use for this site burned out. Even my website was out of commission. Thanks to my brother-in-law it's fixed now. Thanks Sean.

In the meantime, rather than post some personal things I've been working on, here's an easy post of a book cover I did a few weeks ago. You may have seen the underpainting for this in an earlier post. This is the finish. It's for a book called "The Ring of Fire II" by Eric Flint. This book is part of a series that is quite popular.

Plein Air Cheat

2007-05-20T12:37:00.000-04:00

Above: Oil, 10 X 15 inches.

Above: Oil, 9 X 11 inches.

I'd been having some problems blogging lately. It seems to be solved now. I switched from Safari to Firefox and everything is fine. All this would've gone up sooner had I not run into these problems and some others.

The pictures above were done last weekend a short walk from my house. There's a lot of nature out there and I find that area an inspirational place to walk through. These paintings were done by climbing down into a ravine where the brook flows. I've been meaning to paint something down there for a while. Last weekend was the perfect time to do it.

I don't paint from life much although I see its value. For the most part the ideas in my head keep me pretty busy. Lately I've been inspired by a number of plein air painting blogs to get me out painting (some of those blogs have just been added to my links on the right). I cheated a little on these paintings because I worked on both of them a little once I got back to the studio. That's why I titled this "Plein Air Cheat."

BRAND NEW BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Coming back from plein airing I saw something very cool. The animal in these pictures on my brand new blog -- Shutterbuggy Kidd -- that I thought might be sick, turned out to be a fledgling. There's a little story you can read about it there too.

And finally here's the updated Microvision painting I did (below):

True Wind

2007-05-11T11:36:00.000-04:00

Above is the newest thing I’ve done. It’s here because I thought it was time to post something fresh off of the easel. I did this for the Microvisions Show that Irene Gallo (art director at Tor Books) and Dan Dos Santos is putting together for the Society of Illustrators’ auction to benefit student scholarships. The show runs from June 4th to June 22nd at the Society of Illustrators Gallery 3. There will be an eBay link coming. Irene is certain to have a list of the artists participating in this on her blog.

This painting is a tiny 5X7" oil on gessoed pressboard. It’s the smallest I’ve ever done and it gave me a neck ache in the process of painting it. I was honored when asked to be part of this and I continue to be so. My neck, however, has changed and is much better now.

In my previous post I put up a little sketch of what I thought I'd paint but I changed my mind so I did some sketches. See below.

I liked the basic idea of this but the gesture wasn't quite right (above).

Here I think that I've improved the gesture. She feels like she's balancing now as she leans forward to help propel the airship on its way.

I started this painting somewhat late in the day, around 6 pm. This represents a little over an hour of work before the dinner bell rang. There is no drawing underneath this. I like to work directly in paint.

Slap and Dash

2007-05-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

Above: Just for entertainment, although it'll come into use one day.

I have a long thing about my kid slideshow I want to post but I must keep my nose to the grindstone today. Here are a few quick initial-type sketches because people wanted to see less finished work. I've got a bunch more I have to scan. Also coming up will be my demo painting I did at the Society of Creative Arts of Newtown, SCAN.

More importantly today I want to alert you to a friend of mine's blog, Sergio Martinez. Keep an eye on this blog because you're going to see a lot of beautiful work here. I can't say enough good things about Sergio. He's one of the best. Go to his blog and let him know what you think.

Above: Trying slightly different ways to draw something. I don't have any favorites here.

Above: This will likely be painted as my submission for Microvisions. It'll be auctioned off with other 5X7 paintings for scholarships given out by the Society of Illustrators.

Above: Several drawings for various things, all on the same page, without regard to their relationships.

Above: I have no idea why I drew this. Truth is I'm always finding drawings around here I have little memory of. Sometimes I wonder if someone else did them.

Chinese Gnemo

2007-04-28T19:14:00.000-04:00

Wednesday I received several copies of Fantasy Art Magazine from Beijing, China that I did an interview for. They did an excellent job of printing my Gnemo paintings. I was pleasantly surprised to see a gatefold (fold out) for two paintings. Here are three pages from the magazine. You can, of course, see my Gnemo art on Gnemo's Art and Story but for the sake of novelty here they are with Chinese pictographs.

If you can read some of this feel free to tell me what it says. You're also welcome to make up something as long as it's clever. That's my real face there not the fake one I use for my blog. I like the way they used one of my airships as a bullet points.

I did a painting demo this week and on Friday I gave a talk and slideshow to a few hundred 4th and 5th graders -- oh, what a day that was. It exhausted me. I'm still tired. It's also possible that they infected me with their middle school germs. Cooties? More about this in my next installment.

Robot Close-Ups and Drawings

2007-04-24T13:40:00.000-04:00

These two gentlemen put up some very nice robots on their blogs: Ryan Wood and Mattias Adolfsson. And monkey see, monkey do. So . . .

Black Lines Two

2007-04-23T15:05:00.000-04:00

These Door Demons were all drawn on the same page. I separated them out for you. All of these drawings were all done with a Pigma Pen and they were all done for fun. Even though there’s not much of a market for me with this medium I still can’t resist the call of the pen. See my previous post: Black Lines (you'll have to scan down to it). Also, please go and take a look at my newest Gnemo posts: Gnemo's Sketchbook.

This one (above) is my favorite of the Door Demon group. I like that it is loosely organic.

I had to do a close-up of his face.

I often do things in reverse so this little thumbnail was the last thing I drew. My thinking is that once I know what I want I can step back and think about it in more graphic terms. This doesn't explain why in my normal life I often do things in reverse as well.

I keep meaning to post something to Illustration Friday. This would've been one if I didn't get distracted. It's called "Hide."

The above would've been my first post to Drawer Geeks. I think I'm approved but I haven't actually tried to post anything yet. With both art blogs it's easier to do the assignments than it is to post them. It's called "Grrr Face."

The War of the Worlds (click for Amazon link)

2007-04-18T14:23:00.000-04:00

There's plenty of new stuff to post but I got to thinking about my War of the Worlds stuff because I went to Andrew Glazebrook's Blog (scroll down to see his tripods). It made me want to post some little-seen images. Above: Cover for the book that came out in 2001. I did 17 paintings for the book.

Above: This was my alternate design for the cover. It's just a color sketch.

Above: How I imagine someone out in the field might have sketched the Martian war machines (tripods) from a distance.

Above: Design for a War of the Worlds chess set. It was never made. The Queen.

Above: Here's the rook from the chess set. I wrote a whole story to go with the chess set too. It was too 'weird' for the client.

Above: This is one of the earliest drawings I did for this book. It was done before I moved out of NYC so I must've been in my 20's when I drew it. The company that assigned me the book went out of business before I could get very far. Did you know that H.G. Wells' Martians were vampires?

Above: What does a zeppelin pin design have to do with this subject? I say stay tuned. One day it will be revealed.

Above: I'll be making the two designs above in wax to later be made into bronzes.

Quite a few of my War of the Worlds paintings and more sketches can be seen in my book Kiddography.

Battleship!

2007-04-15T19:24:00.000-04:00

Because I've done a few airship paintings people occasionally ask me to design some for them. My airships for Gnemo are based on what would be plausible for the level of technology of that world but with the expectations that that world, although obeying the same physics as ours, would still be different. For example they might have access to a strong lightweight material that is more difficult or too expensive to acquire on our planet.

However, when someone else ask me to design something they have their own rules. Sometimes the parameters are wider and sometimes they're narrower. Giant ironclad aircraft carrying battle-airships seem pretty impossible to me. I can't come up with a plausible explanation for it but then I avoid changing physical laws unless I call it magic. Because of that these airships could never fly in the world I invented. Actually, they won't fly anywhere because they weren't quite right. These were just quick sketches to see if I understood what was wanted. I didn't. (And that's why I can show them to you.) I was thinking too big.

Speaking of Gnemo, I've got a new post there. It's a bit more finished than this drawing: Gnemo's Sketchbook

Eyebrow Envy

2007-04-10T21:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm not through with elephant forms. Go to see this if you haven't yet: Gnemo's Sketchbook. This is just to let you know I'm still here painting, drawing and writing. Maybe I'll even have some sculpture in the near future.

My face only has half eyebrows. I think if I looked like the guy above I could be a real artist but then I wouldn't be able to see what I was painting.

The Elephant Form

2007-04-07T05:11:00.000-04:00

It took me a while but I put up a massive post to Gnemo's Sketchbook. I guess you could call it a small short story with illustrations. Please go there and look at that. The story was written around existing pictures. Now that I've written it though, I'm thinking I'll do a few more drawings on the subject. Above are just a few elephant forms. I may have posted these before. It's here just to get you to go see more over at my Gnemo blog.

Marsulephants

2007-03-26T22:02:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention in my previous elephant post that "Plein Air Pachyderm" is 8X11 inches. That's a pretty small painting for me. I plan to do more though.

This one is 11X14 inches and more properly belongs in my Gnemo's Sketchbook blog. I'm posting it here because I'm on the theme of elephant forms. The link for Gnemo's Sketchbook is to your right under the link to my website. In the next couple of days I'll post it there again with the full story of the marsulephants and a few marsulephant drawings. It's too late and I'm too tired to write about these creatures and the symbiotic relationship they have with booth trees they live in.

Why, someone might ask, do I have two blogs and who is this 'Gnemo' who signed this painting? I'm too tired to explain and just about everyone is tired of hearing it anyway.

Plein Air Pachyderm

2007-03-22T00:16:00.000-04:00

This elephant miniaturist is dedicated to my outdoor painting and drawing friends:

William Wray
Laurent Beauvallet
William K. Moore
Jennifer McChristian
Leslie Sealey

I'm still pretty busy but I hope to start posting again regularly. In the meantime you can check out the beautiful work of the artists I've provided links for. Please tell them I sent you.

Drawing with Paint

2007-03-04T18:30:00.000-05:00

It’s about time I made a new entry in my blog. I’ve had the new art for a while but, for many reasons (my recurring head pain for one: see earlier entry) I haven’t gotten around to putting it up.

Last week I had to get a couple of fairly finished looking cover sketches done so, just to make it more fun, I decided to do it in a different way than I’ve done in the past.

First I’ll explain how I typically work: rather than draw with a pencil or transfer a drawing over to my painting surface I just redraw it with paint. Paint is great to draw with. It has a great deal more flexibility than a pencil has. Typically I can block in the composition quickly with umber and begin painting in color. It helps to put a thin layer of medium on the surface before drawpainting (I’ve coined a word) because it helps the paint flow. If you want to erase a section you’ve painted a rag dampened with linseed oil works nicely.

The new thing I decided to do was take the drawpainting a little further than I normally do, take a digital photograph of it and tint it in Photoshop. I know illustrators who do entire oil paintings this way. My friend Abe Echevarria who studied with the famous illustrator Morton Roberts learned this glazing approach from him. At top is the first step of my umber/sienna drawing. Almost all of this will be obscured when I go to finish the painting. Normally I’d paint into it with color while it’s still wet. As long as the basic forms are there I don’t mind losing my drawing. Anything I drew once I can draw again.

Above is the second step done digitally. I cheated on the clouds by importing some clouds from an older painting I did.

Note: Not long ago I bought a nice digital camera just for taking pictures of my paintings. It allows me to take high-resolution pictures at a size publishers can use. Even when a publisher needs something a little larger I can shoot two halves of a painting and seam it together in Photoshop for a much larger file.

PS: Of minor interest, I’m posting this from a new computer, a MacBook. It’s a test to see if I can do this stuff on the road and to play with a new toy.

Can You Feel My Pain?

2007-02-21T18:18:00.000-05:00

This self-portrait’s purpose is to illustrate the last week or so. I’ve lost track of time. It has been hard to count the days since the Pain Demon came for an extended stay. The worst thing is that I’m now behind on work so my posts will be sparse. Fortunately it’s only been about a week. I’ve got the demon on the run now but I wish I knew what caused him to appear so I could avoid it in the future.

The drawing is a bit comical. I did a serious version but that one seemed to be soliciting pity a bit too much. Besides, now that I’m on the mend, I can laugh at it.

At the same time the evil little imp arrived a glacier moved across the land here. No, not snow, that’s not such a big deal. It was a rigid blanket of über-sleet. Before it could be shoveled it had to be broken up into movable chunks.

My wife says the character in the drawing doesn’t look like me but I told her it’s not that kind of portrait. It’s the inner me. Yuck!

Oh, how do I have time to draw this when I’ve gotten behind on paying work? I needed the catharsis. My pain put to paper.

Demon Painter

2007-02-11T16:32:00.000-05:00

I did this little ballpoint pen sketch for a friend who sent me a copy of my art book to sign. He's an artist too and I typically draw some kind of artist in the book then. The painting demon is a simple idea but I like it. I don't have to draw in these books but I've told myself I will and I have. The little exercise has given me some nice ideas that I've expanded on later. They're things I wouldn't have come up with had I'd not written the remargue-all-the-books rule for myself. Copies of those drawings are now in their own file and it has gotten pretty thick.

Me and My Big Ideas

2007-02-09T19:49:00.000-05:00

A while back a book company contacted me and asked me if I’d do covers for three books for them that would be a trilogy. I suggested I do one long painting and it would be turned into three covers. The editor said that that was a cool idea. I was going to do it all at once but the deadline got tight and I was only able to finish a little more than a third before the first cover was due. It’s been a few months now and the publisher hasn’t asked for the next cover. I’ve got a partially finished painting and someone who saw the cover now wants to buy it. Right now I’m doing other work with tighter deadlines. At some point I’ll have the time to finish it up. If I’d done just one painting for each book I’d have already sold one of them. Above is the third I have. Me and my big ideas!!

The title of the books is “Majestrum” and it is by Matthew Hughes.

Clouds

2007-02-06T16:13:00.000-05:00

Based on the "overwhelming response" to my drawing lecture I've decided to do things differently. This is why I'm not a teacher. I don't have a dynamic bone in my body -- I'm a yawn fest. It would've been better to post all those pictures one at a time. All at once they blend in with each other so I don't get individual comments.

As I've said before I like to study the visual properties of objects. On any airplane trip you'll find me staring out the window entranced by clouds. "Hey buddy, they're clouds! Once you've seen one, you've seen a million. What do you need to know other than that they're big puffy things and that rain snow and lightning come out of them?" Well, I have to know anyway. "Why don't you just get all of that from a book or go talk to a meteorologist?" No, I want to observe on my own and reach my own conclusions. Too often people miss important details when they observe and besides, my concern here is only what makes the clouds look the way they do.

When I was a kid a teacher asked me what color the sky was. I said gray with a purple tint. She said I was wrong, that it was blue but I could see out the classroom window differently -- it was an overcast day -- the visual proof was there. That’s one of many reasons I make my own observations and I don’t automatically accept what’s in books or comes from authority figures.

One day when I’ve got the energy I’ll write up my detailed and boring analysis of clouds. Till then I’ll tell you this: they’re pretty.

The Simple Minded Sketcher

2007-02-04T14:54:00.000-05:00

Note how the clipboard above has a number on it. That's how I keep track of them.

Writing this might actually lower the value of my little drawings. The reason is that it’s just too simple for words but I’ve still not spared you any.

Most of my drawings are done on 8.5X11 sheets of paper. I rarely use art paper. The paper I use now was chosen because it scans nicely. It’s Staple’s Heavyweight Printing Paper (acid free 97% white). I buy it by the ream.

I like drawing on loose sheets of paper. This way I can feel free to experiment and throw it away if it fails. I also like to file pictures by subject matter to return to later and you can’t do that with sketchbook drawings. When I travel I draw in a sketchbook and I photocopy those and file them by category.

Throughout the house I have clipboards loaded with paper and when I finish a drawing I move it to the back of the clipboard. Every so often I go through clipboards and pull out the sketches I like. I have a portable files with a few hundred unfinished drawings filed by subject matter. There’s a separate section for all of my Gnemo drawings that is also subdivided by Structures, Flora & Fauna, Landscapes, Scenes, People, Sculpture and so on.

More recently posted Gnemo drawings like the above are at: Gnemo's Sketchbook

(Here’s a fun hobby if you have a DVR, DVD player or digital freeze on your TV: Freeze facial expressions -- the kind that go by in a split second -- and draw them. I’ve got several pages of this stuff. It’s not something I usually refer back to but the memory of those drawings stay with me.)

I got into the habit of painting by day and drawing at night for concept jobs but I’m not doing them as much now. Almost all of my drawings these days are for my own entertainment but they’re also all plans for future paintings. Drawing for me is exploration. It’s simple relaxing way to try out a lot of ideas -- a test of merit.

There’s a bunch of stuff in my head clogging it up and this is my way of getting it out. I need to move around when I paint so I do that standing up but I like to sit when I draw. Here’s the thing you may find awful: I do a good portion of my drawing while I’m watching (listening to mostly) television. If I’m talking on the phone I’m usually drawing.

The above is a left over Christmas idea.

That’s my reasoning on my choice of paper and some of the psychology behind the process. Now pencils: I use five different pencils: a 4H, a 2B, a 6B, a .5 mm mechanical pencil with a 2B lead and a 2 mm lead holder with 6B lead. The last one I never sharpen. I just like the big blunt end. Typically I use all the wooden pencils on their flat edge to create broad areas and gradations. I like to roll the pencil around in my hand to make patterns and random textures. The .5 mm pencil is used to put in little sharp details. I’ll even create a bevel to it for a very sharp edge.

My hand doesn’t like to press down hard on things so for the most part I use the softer pencils. When I’m drawing from my imagination my beginning pencil lines are light and tentative but they’re all over the place. Sometime even I forget what they’re supposed to indicate. There’s a good chance you won’t even know what I have in mind doing in the first several minutes. I start the drawing with the big blunt ended mechanical pencil or the .5 mm pencil depending on how I feel.

If I’m drawing a person or creature I like to start with different parts each time or I’ll do a quick gesture sketch if I’m going for action. Part way into a drawing I’ll often realize I’ve lost my way and because of my do-everything-in-reverse brain, I’ll then do a few little thumbnails. Drawing tiny forces me to think about the whole. Then I start a new drawing based on the thumbnail.

You might say, why not do the thumbnail first? That makes sense to my conscious brain but not to my addled (literally brain-damaged as a youngster) artist’s brain. It’s not unusual for me to do a few separate drawings of things like facial expressions or I’ll do the opposite of what I do with the thumbnails and draw up large things like hand gestures so I can then draw them small for the finished piece. Another thing I like to do is loosely draw the same idea again without looking at the first drawing. The memory of the drawing is almost always an improvement.

I never stop myself from drawing anything silly that comes to mind. There's no governor on my thoughts as you can see from the picture below.

My habit with these drawings is to not erase much till I have a direction. Any one of the random lines might take me along a more interesting path. Towards the end of drawing I’ll go in and clean up lines and use my kneaded eraser for certain subtractive effects.

Too often I overdo architecture. I just want to see how complicated I can make it before I ruin it. Something that works well for me is to make a copy of the sketch and then continue working. I can always erase back to the previous version. Again see Gnemo's Sketchbook.

Almost all of my drawings are started with a blank piece of paper and sometimes a blank mind. I don’t draw or paint from nature as much as I draw the images in my head. There’s no clear purpose to it. More often than not I find one only when the drawing is done. A few, like the one below, clearly serve little real purpose.

Flame War

2007-02-01T14:54:00.000-05:00

This is something I did for the French publisher, Gallerie Daniel Maghen. They have done some stunningly beautiful high quality books. The dragon book this art is for will have the work of many illustrators. I've seen some of the art and it is all first class. If you think of dragons as a thoroughly explored subject, this book will change your mind.

At the bottom you'll see the sketch they chose for me to paint. I asked them if the wanted the dragon more malevolent. The art director said yes. The painting at the top is the result. Please don't tell me you like the sketch more than the painting -- it always hurts me when someone says that especially when it's true. At some point I'll come back to this basic idea and explore it further.

Tomorrow, if I have the time, I'm going to talk about how I do my pencil drawings. I expect you'll find it pretty boring. The approach is pretty straightforward. A bigger future project will be about painting tricks -- little things that can make a big difference. This will be highly theoretical and tediously tiresome. So you see, there's a lot to look forward to.

Percival the Puny Painting Pachyderm

2007-01-31T11:39:00.000-05:00

Anna and Percival are artists, explorers and natural scientists. Above we see Percival painting one of his tiny paintings. Anna, who is also a prolific inventor, ground the pigments for his paints. She also invented brushes, the easel, stretched canvas and the pallet that this hairless dwarf mastodon is using. Percival is known for his fine trunk/eye coordination, which is quite handy (actually, better than a hand) when doing miniature painting.

Below is a roughed out page from the graphic novel when Anna and Percival first meet. You should get a larger, more readable, version if you click on it.

Action Anna

2007-01-30T12:15:00.000-05:00

My plan today was to post some dragon art that I contributed to a book with many other artists but I've decided to put up some drawings of my character Anna the Cavegirl instead. She doesn't look much like a cave girl but that's because she's a mutation. As a result her own tribe shuns her. No one in her time quite looks like her and no one listens to her well thought out advice. She creates havoc though when she makes seemingly innocent jokes. The distant past she lives in is populated by a variety of comically stupid hominids -- stoogeo sapiens. Her only friend is a dwarf mastodon called Percival the Puny Pachyderm. These are little action character sketches I did of her while trying to figure out what she's going to do next. I still don't know. There are a few drawing of Anna and Percival in my book Kiddography.

Symbolic

2007-01-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

There’s a tribe in (I think) South America that has a different perspective from the rest of the world. They see the past as in front of them and the future as behind. Their thinking is that they cannot see the future but they can see the past as a memory. At a particular instant people cannot see what’s behind them but they can see what they’re facing. When the people in this tribe talk about the future they point backwards and they point forward when referring to the past. Once you understand their reasoning it makes sense.

If people can be so different, how can there be any universal useful symbolism? It seems to me that symbolism is entirely subjective. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like symbolic paintings. Symbolism just doesn’t add anything to the picture for me.

Emotions, however, are universal among humans. Nearly all of us experience the standard range of feelings and those can be brought forth with a well-done picture. I like art that does that. Emotions can bring forth deeper meanings to an individual when you have context. If you go by symbolism you could easily get things backwards.

In complete opposition to my own premise, I’ve done a symbolic picture. It’s not a well-done one partly because I don’t know what it means. Maybe it’s my statement on symbolism or some other fine art cock-and-bull. I leave this open to your interpretation.

Always Drawing

2007-01-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

Even when I'm not posting I'm still drawing. At some point soon I'll put some new drawings up for sale on my website (direct link to the drawing section above). New paintings are are their way to the blog too.

Lately I've found myself in a warming pot headed to a boil. The water was just fine when I got in. With just a tiny bit more work I'll swim my way out of it. I just have to will myself to get it done so I can get on to more pleasant stuff.

I call this goofy picture "Meeting God." We're supposed to be in His image so I made Him look like me. The bowler hat was added to Him so we wouldn't be confused with each other. I could easily be mistaken here with this characterization. If I am I will stand corrected -- on all of my six webbed feet.

Perfunctory

2007-01-09T15:27:00.000-05:00

Little thought went into this. It’s like riding a bicycle. There was the naked lady and I painted her. Perfunctory, is the word I would use to describe this painting but still it serves a purpose.

Years of training have made me see naked people as objects -- flesh, muscles and bone objects. Nope, not people at all, but something I can study and understand better. Even when they’re clothed, I undress them and then dissect them with my sharpened eyes. It’s a terrible thing to come under my scrutiny.

It’s good to understand these living machines and other machines like them whether they have skeletons, in or out, or not at all. How can you make up your own creatures unless you have a good understanding of the animal kingdom that includes the human beast?

Sometimes knowing too much can get in the way but, for the most part, I’d rather know something even if I decide to ignore it. Actually, the information that goes in my head always gets jumbled some before it comes out so I’m in little danger of knowing too much.

Caprice

2007-01-08T11:12:00.000-05:00

More and more I’m plagued by indecision. What should I put up here? Also, what will I do with the rest of my life? There are just too many options. So, when in doubt, do something. If it weren’t for sheer caprice, I get a lot less done.

For no reason at all, here’s a real plein air painting I did on location in Algonquin Park in Canada. I know that’s redundant but a lot of artists tell me that their ‘plein air’ paintings are done from photographs or are based on sketches done on location and finished in the studio.

All the paintings I do from life are exercises. That means I’m studying what I’m painting more than I’m trying to do a nice painting. I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just the way my mind works.

Every day when I’m not painting I’m studying why things look the way they do. I even have a number of theories on this subject that are different than I was taught and contrary to what I’ve read in books. In my, very arrogant sounding, opinion there’s a lot of bad observation going on and it’s repeated in text books but it’s still wrong. Knowing what I know may not make my paintings any better but I’d rather base my opinions on what I see rather than what’s written. Even if I’m wrong.

PS: I recently noticed that the author of “Petrogypies” (see post of same title) wrote a comment. Pretty funny. I wrote to him at his community blog called “eat our brains” and I’m looking for the sketch he was interested in seeing.

Porpoise-ful Lady

2007-01-02T00:48:00.000-05:00

I really don’t think about New Year’s resolutions much because I’m resolving to do stuff all year long that I don’t. My great fear is that I’m actually doing the best I can with my life.

That aside, I thought I’d try harder at something I’ve been working on and that is to look forward to things more. It’s very easy to get into a responsibility rut: the feeling that I’m going from one thing I’m obligated to do to the next. That isn’t really the case especially since it’s mostly things I’ve chosen to do.

Deadlines are part of the illustration business and they have to be met. That’s not a problem for me. My problem is that I give myself so much extra to do that I have anxiety over not doing one thing when I’m devoting time to another. I worry that I’m not being true to myself. That’s just stupid.

Behavior modification is hard. Wish me luck.

Oh, the drawing . . . I started it New Year’s Eve full of champaign and I finished it New Year’s Day full of sobriety and hope.

Does This Seem Too Dark to You?

2006-12-29T17:05:00.000-05:00

I did this book cover a few weeks ago but now seemed like a good time to post it. It's for a book called "When the People Fell." Just now I adjusted the color some and I think I like it better but maybe it's too dark now.

An odd thing happens to me when I do an illustration, as opposed to something for myself, I don't have much to say about it. The book was very good and very strange. If you've not read anything by Cordwainer Smith I'd pick it up but it probably won't be out for awhile.

Dead Santa with His Robot Helpers

2006-12-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

One last ghost. I went to Ryan Wood's blog and I saw his very nice Christmas robot so I felt I should put up some Christmas robots of my own. This pen & ink comes from a long, long time ago: college. Everyone will recognize it as a Rockwell pastiche. It's a bit different though, with Santa dead and all. The elves are all dead too and robots took over long ago. This is why they won't let me do children's books.

I did it for a class that assembled artists and authors to make a science fiction magazine. We got credit for doing what we wanted to. I did three of these takeoffs on Rockwell.

Cards of Christmas Past

2006-12-24T17:13:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd post some Christmas cards I've done in the past and one New Year's card. A few of these are in my book Kiddography but they're very small and all in one montage. My blog is a chance to travel back in time with these Christmas ghosts.

The above was actually used as a Christmas tag. It was pulled from a cover I did for a book titled "Unknown."

One year we sent out magnets. People seemed to like those a lot so, of course, we stopped doing it. (Above)

I was lazy the year I did this so I just modified a painting I did for figurine for Danbury Mint. (Above)

I'll have to find the poem we wrote about the tradition of the Christmas bookmark. (Above)

I think that the picture above is my first home printed card. It goes back a ways and this is a scan of a printout. (Above)

A lot of the time I send out multiple cards. This pen & ink was an insert inside another card and it had some bad poetry to go with it. (Above)

Christmas Card

2006-12-23T16:54:00.000-05:00

That Santa Claus stuff is a bunch of hooey. He’s long dead. How can anyone believe in idiotic fantasies like that?

What is there, like 6.5 billion people in the world? Okay, so not all of them will get Christmas presents but clearly, with a number like that, it’s impossible for one person to get all that stuff delivered. Also, how the hell do those reindeer fly without wings? This stuff is just not plausible.

After 35 years of legal maneuvers I finally got the F.B.I. to release the secret file that explains it all. I’ve got the documents here that’ll prove it. Snopes will back me up on this.

It’s all them elves. There’s about a hundred million of ‘em and a hundred million winged reindeer too. Each delivers between 200 to 350 presents. It’s all freeze-dried stuff too that expands on contact with any liquid. That’s why you got to leave a drink for “Santa.” Have you ever noticed how presents smell a little milky?

How could there be that many elves? Easy, they’re freeze-dried too. All the elves and reindeer are kept in a box about the size of a Volkswagen beetle the rest of the year.

Black Lines

2006-12-13T14:52:00.000-05:00

I only dabble in it. For me it’s a hobby. Pen & ink is rare today but it is not a forgotten art. Even though I’m writing about other artists all these pictures are mine. I’m sure you’ll see the influence. Links to the other artists’ works are in the text.

With all the options out there for making pictures why do anything with just black lines on a piece of paper? Heck, you can use your computer to make entire landscapes, people, machines and cityscapes all in 3D full color, animate it and put it to music.

In contrast, how can manually putting black ink on a surface be useful? Especially when you can turn any picture into a line drawing with a simple filter.

The answer to that is easy. Go look at the work of Orson Lowell, Charles Dana Gibson, Joseph Clement Coll, Daniel Vierge or Norman Lindsay but that’s just the tip of the crow quill – a drop in the inkwell.

There are a number of great books on pen & ink art. I recommend Jim Vadeboncoeur’s Black and White Images. Clearly low-tech in a skilled hand can accomplish true wonders.

A surprising thing about ink lines is how the various textures they create can take the place of color. Franklin Booth is the best example of the great range pen & ink has. Compare his work the wild lines of Heinrich Kley. It shows you power and versatility of the line.

I was thinking about all of this the other day when I was goofing off. For no reason I was pulling out little idea sketches and using a Pigma pen to ink them. I’m using them plus a few older things to illustrate this essay.

Every now and then I try to do a detailed pen & ink piece but it’s really just a pastime. A lot of the time I like to work directly in ink but I’m not a master at this either, so it’s a matter of keeping the ones that work and chucking the ones that don’t work.

Roy G. Krenkel did drawings directly in ink all the time. I have one of these little gems. It’s worth taking a look at his work. Most of what he did was for the fun of it and that’s the case with most of what you see here today.

Petrogypsies

2006-12-08T12:19:00.000-05:00

I got tired of seeing my face, especially when I leave a comment on another blog so I'm using this guy's face. All the other artists use art for their picture so who am I to buck the trend?

This book cover is one of the few paintings that I've always thought of as a success but has never been a fan favorite. It's old . . . 1987. Whenever anyone sees it they exclaim, "What the hell is that?!!!" referring to the worm creature. That's just the reaction I wanted.

Sadly, I got a lot of negative comments about it, like the pitchfork having too many tines. If you're going to make a comment about farm equipment I say you should put in the research and learn the difference between a pitchfork and a hey fork. Furthermore, I heard that the author of the book hated the cover. An editor later told me that the author imagined a different cover altogether that, to add to my frustration, matched exactly the one sketch I did that the art director hated. The art director wanted something much more silly and that's what I gave him. Maybe I pushed things too far with the sphincter-like quality to the worm's mouth. Hmm, maybe I should've used that for my picture; people sometimes tell me that I can be an ass.

Oh, and that giant black worm thing, it sucks oil from the ground. It's a living oil drill.

The Secret Door

2006-12-07T12:20:00.000-05:00

When I was a child, and this has continued into adulthood, I've had a recurring dream that I've opened a door, a cabinet, entered a tunnel or just turned a corner and discovered something remarkable that had always been there. You’d be surprised how often that’s happened for me in the real world.

That’s what I’ve found by putting up my Kiddography blog. By doing so I’ve discovered the work of a number of artists I’d not seen before. Most recently I’ve come across the work of Scott Altmann, Mark Reep and Todd Harris. When I went to these artists’ sites I found links to dozens of other artists whose art I greatly enjoy. This is just a start; in time I’ll have a long list of suggested viewings.

The digital work I saw this week inspired me to try one more pixel-only painting. Well, it started with a scanned drawing and I painted it in Photoshop. Typically I’ve done these mostly with multiply layers but I used semi-opaque layers this time. The background is a modified scan of a section of an oil painting I did long ago. My problem with working digitally is that it doesn’t have the nature reflecting aspects of a physical medium. Even though the basic principles of aesthetics will always apply, I miss the fortunate little accidents I find with watercolor or oil paint.

I wrote an essay for a book coming out next year from Nonstop Press called “Real vs. Virtual. My essay is likely the silliest thing I’ve ever written. I’m truly surprised it was accepted. It would be a terrible thing if I were ever taken too seriously.

Miniature Black Pearls

2006-12-06T00:21:00.000-05:00

Quite often I hear art directors say how important it is that an illustrator can draw and paint the human figure. Hey, we see humans all the time; why would it be difficult to paint them? The hard part is that, because we’re so familiar with what we look like, it’s fairly easy to see major mistakes in a figure. Typically I like to adjust or exaggerate the figure in a way to make it more interesting. It’s much harder to alter human features and gestures to help a picture than it is to just follow a model. Here I didn’t do that. I just made this mermaid up, depicting her in a very pedestrian/matter-of-fact kind of way. Nope, I didn’t use a scrap of reference on her, but when it came to drawing the shell and the foam on the beach, I felt I should take a look at those. I haven’t studied beaches and shells as much as I have naked women. All for the sake of art of course.

Like many of the idle drawings I’ve posted here, I found this one in a stack of other unfinished drawings I’d abandoned and decided to give it one more try. It’s a very lazy self-absorbed process -- pure free association. Even when I have an assignment, it’s usually best to approach it in a similar oblique manner.

PS: I'm adding stuff to my Gnemo Sketchbook blog now but in a different way than I'd originally intended. Link at right.

Helioderms 103: Deflated

2006-12-05T16:16:00.000-05:00

Call me the Walter Keane (actually, his wife Margaret is the real painter of those big-eyed kids) of fantasy if you like but the fact is that young mammals (even if they lay eggs) are cute. In this case, the eyes are even sad.

I guess we can all get deflated from time to time but for a blimpephants it’s literal. I’m thinking that there may be a children’s book here.

To balance out the cute I’m including a cross-section of a helioderm propeller. Whenever I create an animal I like to imagine it inside and out. Sometimes it helps my drawing but I do it mostly for the fun of it.

Helioderms 102 & Gnemo's Sketchbook

2006-12-04T19:22:00.000-05:00

First, I've updated my very clumsy website (I really don't know what I'm doing) with a Gnemo's Sketchbook section. There's a link to that above and I'll add a link to it on my Gnemo's Sketchbook blog soon.

Helioderms 102:

Besides being a form of pilot fish to the larger zepploderms, blimpoderms (pressure-shaped helioderms) also form a much more sophisticated type of symbiotic relationship with their massive cousins. This alliance is most similar to the bond between cecropia trees and azteca ants of Central America.

Like the cecropia trees the giant maconderms, also called carrier-phants, have evolved an environment that is especially conducive for smaller helioderms. The tops of their outer envelopes are largely hard and flat surfaces that the blimpoderms can land on, grapple to with their extendable toes and feed on the moss that grows on top. Removing the moss keeps the maconderm streamlined and adds variety to the blimpoderms diet. The maconderm (named after the Navy airship Macon, an internally rigid airship aircraft carrier used in the 1930’s) even provides little warm pockets for the blimpoderms to lay their eggs.

In exchange for this aerial nursery the blimpoderms defend the maconderm against all assailants, especially hungry dragon packs. Blimpoderms have a variety of weapons and battle techniques: they dive bomb to drop their own body waste on attackers, they have an internal ignitable gas that they use and they will also spurt out helium in small bursts to put out dragon fire. If enough helioderms are present they will work together to asphyxiate a dragon by releasing an inert gas mixture to envelope the dragon cutting off its air supply and ability to ignite its own gas.

The gargantuan maconderms troll the skies sucking up vast quantities of insects much like whales do with krill. One additional service the blimpoderms provide is fruit to the otherwise all-insect diet of the maconderm. Expectant parents fly to its lower trunk and hand off large fruit laden branches in exchange for the best nesting spots.

Helioderms 101

2006-12-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

These beautiful lighter-than-air creatures fly the skies of a world not too distant from ours called Deutro. Their multilayered expandable skin is virtually impermeable to any gas. It’s this skin that allows them to float high in the atmosphere and it’s the special pebbled texture of this animal’s epidermis that creates micro air swirls that greatly decreases the natural drag of the air that flows over them. Despite their great volumes the helioderms cut through the air like an arrow.

Their tusks might seem like an odd evolutionary adaptation for a flying creature but the “tusks” are actually extremely porous helium processors. They remove all heavier noble gasses and chemically active gasses. Helium, which is all that is left, is absorbed into the helioderm’s envelopes – internal lightweight gasbags.

This is a heavily forested planet with unusually massive and dense trees. Most helioderm species eat by grazing the tops of these trees using their long extendable trunks to reach deep within them.

Their only natural enemy is the fire-breathing dragon. The dragons are considerably smaller than the helioderms and will only attack the weak and the young. Typically the smaller blimpoderms live in a symbiotic relationship with larger zepploderms. More on that in my next installment.

Small Works Show & Helioderm

2006-11-19T16:30:00.000-05:00

You might want to skip over my rambling and go straight down the the pictures. I won't know if you do.

Where does it come from? I think that everything in the universe rolls around on giant wobbly wheel called time. There’s something about the crisscrossing pattern of all those unpredictable waves of tire tracks that cause a buildup of greater and greater complexity.

No, that analogy is too simplistic. There are likely 9 to 12 dimensions you have to include to have an appropriate matrix. That illustrates why it’s so difficult to predict what will happen next. Still, you can see a growth of overlaying interactions that generate new and increasingly intricate forms from the big bang up until the present.

We humans, as part of the universe, create new patterns every second of the day because of our varied interactions. We are the most complicated of creatures with our cultures, societies, arts and political systems. Sometimes we think we know the exact direction we’re going in but don’t be fooled, you’re not really in control so it’s best to see all the surprises as opportunities and see where they’ll lead you.

What the hell am I talking about? A week ago I didn’t know I’d do this painting. It didn’t have any life at all. Friends made it happen. I had to do a brand new painting for a miniature show scheduled for December at the Art Corner Gallery (click on the link above) in Salem, MA. All my smaller paintings are in a show at the Center for the Arts in Homer, New York. A million little ideas went through my head: what shall I paint, what shall I paint? I’ll decided to do something cute but weird. Then I remembered the drawings I posted here on my blog and that people liked them. Scroll down to “Silly Stuff” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Here’s a step by step in three little steps. This painting is 8X14” and it was done in oils.

I did this first texture layer with watered down acrylics using a rag and dabbing. Sadly much of this was obscured in the painting process. I’d hoped to see more showing through but if you saw the original you’d see more than you can see here. It was actually done over a year ago and was waiting for me to decide what I’d paint on it. I put down a thin layer of drying linseed oil and I began painting (below).

I study and photograph clouds all the time. They fascinate me because they are governed by simple principles, yet they make large convoluted things of tremendous beauty. One day I hope to write an elegant algorithm to explain it. It’s likely a vain hope but till then I can still admire and ponder them. This sky came from observation and many pictures I’ve taken. It went in quickly (below).

While the sky was still wet I painted in my helioderm – a creature of my own invention. I had put some alkyd white on my pallet so it would dry some and get gooey. That’s what I used for my ‘heavy’ whites that I used in the rim lighting. I didn’t add the birds till the next day when I also lightened the sky some. It actually looks darker here. I don’t know why (below).

Here’s a close-up of the face. It took a few tries to get the exact level of cuteness I wanted. I’ve worked out in my mind the internal anatomy of this creature but I’ll save that explanation for another day. If all goes well I’ll do and post more helioderms.

Poly Tician

2006-11-16T14:07:00.000-05:00

Just in case you think I only do sweet or cute stuff, here's a entry to dissuade you from that impression. During the recent election I was thinking about politicians and I drew this guy. I know he has a girl's name but I named him that because Polly is such a sweat name and I liked the contrast. A lot of the drawing I do become useful at some point. All I have to do is keep it in my mind in all dimensions, poses and permutations. Nothing goes to waste in my brain except the gray matter itself.

Unraveled

2006-11-15T16:49:00.000-05:00

For a while now I've been doing a series of drawings I call "Fabric Dancers." All of these begin with only a vague notion of what I want to do. The idea is to do the same thing over and over and still be different. I haven't grown tired of it yet. The people in all of these drawings are floating as if they weigh nothing. This picture works on its sides but not as well upside down. I can't explain that. This is the way I drew it though. Under my previous posts click on "The How, Why and Why Not?" to see another one of these dancers. You can see a couple more of these pictures by clicking the title link along with other drawings I've done.

This one is on conceptart.org in the Sketches & Works in Progress thread. I've been a member of that art community for a few years but I never posted. For some reason the site doesn't like me and kicks me off regularly.

Silly Stuff

2006-11-02T15:39:00.000-05:00

I cannot say enough nice things about The Center for the Arts in Homer, NY. It was incredible to see what they’ve done there since the place began only 15 months ago. They did an excellent job with the exhibit and my wife and I even got to see Richie Havens perform there. I did some ballpoint pen drawings of that I might post later.

Today, though, it's the silly stuff I'm putting up. I've been told by more than one illustrator friend that doing silly art diminishes the other more serious work I do. Poppycock! But I only say it because it's a silly word. My friends are probably right but if I didn't do the pure fun stuff I wouldn't have the energy to do the more serious paintings. Life and art needs balance.

These are Helioderms. Their skin conducts the sun's heat so well that the air inside a special belly envelope expands and gives them lift and allows them to float up very high. They have little spinning flippers for propulsion and can expel gas for a quick extra thrust if needed. They typically stay above the clouds as to always have sun on warming their epidermis. On cloudless days they fly low and poop on people they don't like. They have great memories (much like elephants) and keep a mental list of anyone they observe doing something mean to later dive bomb. Because of them the world is a better place.

Oh, what the hell, I'm including an on-site, done in the dark, drawing I did of Richie Havens strumming away. His left foot dances all by itself while he plays.

My Museum Show

2006-10-24T19:07:00.000-04:00

An exhibit of my work is coming up this weekend in Homer, NY at the Center for the Arts there in its Borg-Warner Morse TEC Art Gallery. Thirty-nine paintings will be on exhibit. The opening is on Friday Oct. 27th from 7pm to 9pm. I’ll be there. The paintings are split into four categories: book covers, illustrations for The War of the Worlds, illustrations for The Three Musketeers and illustrations for Gnemo. I wrote the explanations for each category. The title above is a link to the museum’s calendar of events, scroll down when you get there. You'll find directions are on the site as well.

Below is something a little different for me. I struggled with it quite a bit to get it to have the correct feel. Actually, it was a mess and I don’t understand exactly why I get lost sometimes on something that should be fairly simple to do. My excuse is that I hadn't done anything like this for a while. Here’s how it went down in pictures:

Above: Bad and I know it.

Above: It gets worse.

Above: Progress. It took a few extra drawings to discover my problem areas.

Better and there's no reason that can't continue.

Gnemo Update

2006-10-05T00:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I gave a slideshow and talk at Western Connecticut State University. A studious and pleasant group of artists attended and they all had very good questions. Later I critiqued the work of some of the students and I was impressed with their talent, skill and dedication. I put some of my Gnemo Sketchbook into my slideshow and I’m putting up some of those new pages on that blog today.

Below is one little piece that appears in color here but if you click the link above you’ll see it’s just a drawing on the Gnemo page. I’ve turned most of the Gnemo sketches into full color watercolors but I want my Gnemo blog to look like a drawn in only sketchbook. I’ve changed the first entry into this blog so that I can put the pages in order. It would’ve been confusing if I left as it was. Gnemo’s Sketchbook begins on page 3 so that I can add a title page and dedication page later assuming it’s ever printed. The printed version will be the full color watercolor version. "Dad's Medal" below:

My slideshow was mainly about the making of my book Kiddography. For fun, here is the title of that slideshow and its subtitles to intrigue you:

Successes and Failures but Mostly Failures

Failure is the new success?
How to make your own art book
Why you shouldn’t write and design your own art book
Fabrications, Tall Tales, Prevarications, Balderdash, Mendacity and Fibs
Exercises in frustration
How I brought down a corporate giant

And here is a bit of advice that occurred to me just before my slideshow. It’s something I’ve thought of before but I quite often forget to follow with all the distractions of life such as earning a living, the human desire for fame and deceptive nature of accolades:

Real success is filling your days with interesting/involving/challenging work and building a body of work that you can look back on and not be embarrassed by, maybe even feel some pride in. Having said that, accomplishing this for most people will require a strategy and some compromising. I haven’t worked out an exact route for myself yet but it’s good to have a direction if not a detailed map.

And, since we're on the subject of failure, here's a failed super hero (below). I've drawn quite a few of these in search of the most pitiful super being of them all:

Gnemo’s Sketchbook

2006-09-28T21:48:00.000-04:00

I can draw or paint anything that’s in my head. If it’s not that clear I’ll eventually work it out. Getting a particular tool, especially if that tool is a computer program, to make what’s in my head can be very difficult for me. I’m starting something today that’s not quite what I had in mind -- literally not quite the picture within my brain. This new web log is called ‘Gnemo’s Sketchbook.’ See link above.

My hope is that I’ll solve some technical problems as I go and determine an approach that I like best. Expect this to evolve. The art on this new blog is presumably all scanned from Gnemo’s sketchbooks. I want it to look like it has been carried around for many years. My other hope in doing this is that I’ll get some feedback on design and technical issues.

Presenting this story in this form is a way that I can develop it further in a manner that forces me to do regular updates. I have a problem with being regular, that is being consistent. All the work that will go up on this blog will be monochromatic but if it is ever printed it’ll be mostly in color in the form of watercolors. This will be just one form that I’ll present Gnemo in. There is also a version with full-scale oil paintings. I think that Gnemo is a sufficiently large story with enough depth to handle all these different forms.

The How, Why and Why Not?

2006-09-23T11:29:00.000-04:00

As a child I was always curious why things are the way they are. I’ve always been frustrated by people telling me that ‘that’s just the way it is’ or ‘that’s just how it’s done.’ ‘Don’t ask why,’ they insist, ‘just use the formula’ they say and ‘they’ too often are teachers. If a kid (or Kidd) wants to have a deeper understanding of something he or she should be allowed to explore it. Okay, when I’m under the gun, I need to know how to get something done and following the established method is the sure way but it’s not a good way to learn. If I know why something is a particular way and I know how a bit of knowledge was derived it is much more helpful in understanding the reason for something. This gives me the ability to expand on a concept. You have to be thinking, what does this have to do with art? It’s not so much about art as it is about how I make art.

My way to make pictures is to understand the world around me as well as I can. In particular I want to understand the pattern, the underlying force(s) that make(s) up the universe. I wander right into specialties that I’m told I have no business in. ‘Hey, this is our area of expertise,’ the experts tell me, ‘go back to your studio and make paintings.’ To see the world with greater accuracy you’ll need to know a great deal about it and you’ll need to use your imagination too. Two things artists and scientists have in common is that they both have to be very good observers and they both have to use their imaginations -- our senses don’t sense all. It’s a great thing to be able to picture things in your head well: to know the weight, to feel the density, to see the shape, to know the internal anatomy, to imagine the reflective property, to see something from many different perspectives, to feel the texture, to understand how your eyes take in light, to mentally adjust the light and all its qualities to fit your needs. This knowledge will give someone imaginative power on a grand scale. Omnipotence!

At the end of the day I still have to have done a nice painting though. I can’t have a career without that, well, not for long. A great number of artists seem to be able to create without having a deeper meaning, at least not consciously, of their subject. I’m sure I can to, but then the work would have less meaning for me. It’s also less fun that way.

Now, what does any of this have to do with the drawing I’ve posted today? Nothing. Not much of anything, that is unless you count the title of this piece, “Omnipotence.”

Maybe this picture is more about the next step after making light in creating the universe. The subtitle could be “Let there be art.”

Medium Matters

2006-09-21T18:36:00.000-04:00

The examples below show two approaches: one digital, one traditional. Because they’re the same subject matter I think it’s interesting to compare the two. I did a number of chapter headings last year using the multiply layers in Photoshop to make a color picture out of a drawing. It’s very similar to the way you’d work in watercolors. The layers are transparent so they work like glazes. I started out with a drawing I’d scanned, made a layer and started coloring on it. Then I made more layers, colored them, made more and so on.

My theory about working with Photoshop is that it reflects your character in a pure way. I can easily recognize the work of an artist whether he’s working traditional or digital. Mediums like watercolor, oil, acrylics, and tempera all have a personality of their own. When I work with Photoshop I’ve notice my work has no character. Thus, I can conclude that deep down in my soul I’m empty. That’s why I cheat. Over the years I’ve scanned the texture stage of my paintings. I’m just not that fond of smooth so I usually start my pictures out with some sort of visual/physical texture. It’s these textures I use to add faux character to my digital work. I’ve saved these textures using define pattern and I use the pattern stamp tool to paint with using a variety of saved textures. Pretty cool, eh?

Working like this was fun for a while, then I started pining for real paint. It had been a long time since I worked with watercolor so I asked my watercolor friends for advice. They were very helpful. Artists, for the most part, are quite open with information. It’s their time that they are more careful about giving away too freely. An artist’s time belongs to his or her studio. Being a timid fellow I decided to do my first watercolor in 25 years of something I’d already done digitally. The great thing about watercolor is that it has its own character. If you let it go its own way it does some neat tricks. Since this first watercolor I’ve done several more and I have plans for a great deal more. Watercolor has the soul I lack. It must be so because I’ve been told that eating the right colors, for example the cadmiums, will take you to heaven.

PS: An exhibit of my work is coming up. I'll have the information soon.

Life Price

2006-09-20T21:23:00.000-04:00

These last few days have been frustrating. I’ve been trying to resolve some technical problems and too much of my time has been eaten up. Why does improvement have to take a piece of your life? I didn’t expect a life price.

Thinking that all my problems were behind me I happily began painting at about four today. My job is easier and much more satisfying than every day life. I think that I’m bad at life. Sadly no one will run mine for me. I’m forced to do it myself. Here’s what’s irritating me -- I now feel a cold coming on and just when I was getting to the fun stuff. Thanks for sapping my energy Mr. Virus.

Here’s my lazy post for today. It’s a few drawings I did on two different vacations a few years ago. One was done in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral of the famous painter/sculptor, Lord Leighton’s monument, and the rest were done on a trip to Canada at a resort. All of these are ballpoint pen sketches. I like the amount of contrast you can get with this medium. It’s slow going when you try to capture values though. Sometimes it’s good to augment it with some watercolor for subtle tones. I’m a purist at heart so I don’t usually do that.

Nice People

2006-09-18T20:48:00.000-04:00

Most people are very nice to me. This may be because I abhor mean people so I don’t spend much time with them. In a somewhat self-centered way my brain on its own has put the people I know into either the good or bad column. The kindest people are those that care about me and express it by listening to my woes without complaint. Also included are those people who have helped me in some way, small or large, without me asking them to. Finally, the list includes people I see doing nice things for other people I know and like. All of this makes me indebted to a large number of people. I’ll never be able to return all the many kindnesses. Maybe I should try to cultivate lesser quality friends.

So when my book Kiddography came out I bought a substantial number of them with the intention of giving a lot of them away. This would be a small way to say thank you to some people. In each copy I gave away I did a unique drawing. Months later I’m still drawing in them. I also did drawings in a number of the books and sold them at a premium price. A few friends picked up the book and sent me their copies to sign but I’m doing a drawing for them too. As tiring at times as it has been, I’ve actually come up with a few ideas I like and am likely to turn into paintings or watercolors. The group I’m putting up today have been crammed together two to three on the page and the theme is fairy painters. All these were scanned from photocopies so they’re not the best quality.

Forgotten Sketch

2006-09-16T15:44:00.000-04:00

A lot fewer words. It's too nice a day to be blogging. I forgot to include this in my Thursday, September 14th post. It goes with everything else.

The Naked Change

2006-09-15T15:49:00.000-04:00

I promised in my previous day’s entry that I’d put up a painting that I’ve changed substantially. Here’s the before. It’s an illustration I did for “Realms of Fantasy Magazine” for a story by Tanith Lee called “En Forêt Noire.”

Once I turn in an illustration I can do what I like with it. It’s rarely in my plans to do anything with a finished illustration but once it sits around for a little while I start seeing more to it. Months went by on this one. During that time, as I always do, I did a lot of drawings to entertain myself. Even though I’m not really known for my nudes quite often I’m drawing naked people. It may be a habit left over from art school, it’s certainly a subject that artists should always be studious about or it may simply be that I like naked ladies.

All these pictures come out of my head and go onto the paper through a pencil that I have in my hand. Sometimes my hand seems to be the thing that really has the pictures in it because I don’t always know what I’m going to draw. It’s truly entertaining when I can surprise myself.

Finally getting to my point, I drew the picture below. It’s part of a series of drawings I’ve done of nude women with flowing forms around them. If you go to my website you can see several newer drawings I’ve done. Look in the ‘Drawings for Sale’ section for the newest stuff. They all have silly little captions.

I decided that it’d be nice to put the nude into the painting I’d done for Realms. It’s not that easy though to just insert something like that so I did a few more sketches till I felt I had something that worked well. Without drawing on the painting I painted in the nude directly. Oil paint is a bigger friend to you than the pencil is. It usually shows you the way and if you have a misstep it will happily forgive you. Love your paint and it’ll love you back. Never ever fight with it – you’ll lose.

Below you can see how the two pictures were squeezed together. The title of the new painting is “Stealing Blame.” I exhibited this painting in Anaheim at the World SF Convention and I sold it there.

Leave Well Enough Alone? Hardly!

2006-09-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

Back when I was working on my book “Kiddography” I decided I’d do a new painting just for the cover of the book. Each night, after a long day of writing and laying out the book as well as doing in my regular work, I sat down and did idea drawings for the cover. When I had a few of them I sent them out to friends with this question: Does this reflect my personality? My very nice friends kindly told me none of them were quintessentially me so I went back to the drawing board and did something I liked. I then went to painting it without further input. Trouble ensued. The Quark file for my book became corrupted and, without knowing it, I saved the corrupted version. I know ways to prevent this now, but I didn’t know it then so I had to redo 50 pages of work. This put me terribly behind. Paper Tiger wanted to see the painting and it wasn’t done. I sent it to them partially finished and I told them it was incomplete/in progress. About a week later they told me, after showing it around, that they were going with something different because that painting looked . . . “unfinished.” Pretty funny eh? Here’s what the cover to “Kiddography” would’ve looked like had they liked it.

Just for fun, here is another cover that was done with a very different concept for my book in mind. They rejected everything about this.

Yesterday I changed the painting. I’d been planning to for some time because of a trip to Montreal. There I saw a gold statue in the warm morning light. Looking at it I said, wow, that’s how it’s done. I could see how the gold picked up more of the ambient light from the sky than I’d expected and how much more orange the reflected light into shadow was than I’d thought it would be. At the time I originally did the painting that level of color contrast seemed garish but when I compared the painting to the photograph I took of gold statue at the right time of day I felt I had to make a change. Here’s a close-up of that with a before close-up. It’s not quite there yet; maybe I made a mistake; I hope that I learned something. Take my word for it, the original looks better than this little jepg.

Here’s another even closer shot of it to compare.

I also changed the entire painting in other little ways but probably nothing you can see here.

By the way, this is what the cover to Kiddography really looks like.

The next painting I put up that I’ve changed will be quite a bit different from the first version. Here I was just testing a principle, perhaps at the expense of a painting.

Evolution of an Idea

2006-09-13T19:35:00.000-04:00

I was going to put up a painting that I made some changes to today, but a couple of hours ago I received a copy of “Drawing & Painting Fantasy Landscapes & Cityscapes” by Rob Alexander. Rob did an excellent job with the book and it looks great. I love Rob’s work and I was honored that he asked me to contribute to his book. They chose two paintings of mine to do step-by-steps for. As always I went overboard with my text, and I can see that it really doesn’t fit the tone of the book. Of course, I couldn’t know the exact tone of the book. I tend to be me when I write and that would’ve been a sin – it would’ve been different. If you want to be successful don’t be different, unless you’re already real popular. (I’m paraphrasing Homer Simpson here.)

Because I have this very new thing -- new for me -- called a blog, I’m copying my original text for one of the paintings in this book, “Winsor McCay City.” I’m also putting in all the step-by-step illustrations in the book plus a couple more. Know that in the book the illustrations are much bigger, nicely reproduced and you really should buy it. Also, don’t tell Quarto I did this. They might not like it. Shhh!!

Evolution of an Idea:

I feel a tug of melancholy when I think about "Winsor McCay City" because it was done back in a past when it seemed I had plenty of time for my ambitious plans. It was made before computers were common in making art. Although my memory has faded some I’ve carefully retraced my steps. You’ll see how my ideas all came together. I don’t work this way anymore. Perhaps I should.

It all began (fill in mysterious music here, some blurring and fading around the corners, and picture me looking thoughtfully off into the distance) back one day in1986 when I went into New York City to deliver a book cover. I rode in on the bus, and as it went through the center of Manhattan I saw a 19th Century building called the Ansonia and I imagined an earlier New York and riding into the city, not in a bus, but an airship. When I got home I did what I call a mnemonic study. It didn’t look exactly like what I saw, but it was the germ of an idea (see ill. #1). It was one of many. You should know that all of this fits nicely into a story and a place that I’d imagined several years before. It’s called Gnemo and I’ve done hundreds of pictures for it now.

It’s not uncommon for me to start with a pretty small idea and expand and expand and expand. After this drawing I did several little thumbnails (small scribbles) and I ultimately came up with a composition I liked (see ill. #2). I believe that great illustrators are great because they make the right decisions as their work progresses. Here you will learn from my mistakes. As I did in those days I drew the entire picture to the full scale of the painting on tracing paper. This is a good way to work out the kinks in your drawing. Then I transferred the drawing to gessoed Masonite with carbon paper.

The full drawing in this case isn’t substantially different than my initial sketch, so I’m just showing a section of it (ill. # 3). Once I transferred over the drawing, I toned the surface with a wash of burnt sienna. This seals the drawing (doing this sometimes smears the drawing a little, but that’s not something to worry about; you can always refer back to the drawing on paper) and gives you a nice color to work over. Then I began painting. In short order I realized that I didn’t like it. It needed to be more spectacular. This painting should be an eighth wonder of the world experience.

I did a few thumbnails and chose one (see ill. #4). The basic idea was good. Like a castle I imagined that the main structure grew over time. My composition needed an even more important center of interest. It needed to be monumental, ridiculously so.

I pulled out a sheet of tracing paper and I put it over that drawing and I drew how I thought this structure would be added to and expand over time (see ill. #5). This painting would be my first real architectural piece, not to mention my second Gnemo painting. It took me a long time to work out just what I wanted. Once satisfied, I transferred over that drawing and started the painting anew.

From start to finish this painting took quite awhile. I did it between my regular illustration work and sometimes a couple of weeks went by before I could return to it. A friend of mine suggested I mix my colors ahead of time and submerge the pallet in water in-between to keep the paint wet. It worked, but I’ve never returned to that method. One advantage it gave me is that I basically laid in a texture, without form, into the shape of the buildings and added the shadows and form later in a series of translucent glazes. Then I could go back with the wet paint off my pallet to add, for example, the little filigrees in the windows. This also allowed me to skip doing a color sketch and work out the colors of the painting in a somewhat rough manner before proceeding to the time consuming details. I discovered that I could create a simple tonal shape and just keep building on that. These details should help illustrate a little of what I mean (ill. #6 thru #8). If you look very closely you can see how I first painted simple shapes and then added details on top of details.

Here is the finished painting (ill. #9). Note the difference between it and the next illustration (#10), you'll have to look real close. I decided the structure needed more wall on the left to balance out the building.

If I could go back and work on this painting I would put a sculpture in the foreground similar to the one you see in my sketch. I would also correct the design of the suspension bridge so that, if built, it would be a structurally stable design. Using my computer, one day I may just do all that.

Note: Illustrations #11 through #14 are just a few extra close-ups of my full drawing I traced over.

Four Dimensional Composition

2006-09-12T18:48:00.000-04:00

I was looking at a couple of paintings of mine that are hanging in my bedroom and I noticed a compositional similarity. They both have a V-Twist to them. I’m posting them here for you to see: “Theseus” (16X20, 2005) was done for a series of Greek mythology books for Carus Publishing by Geraldine McCaughrean. The next painting “Unicorn and Fairy” (21X27, 1999) was done for Franklin Mint for one of their plates. The plate was never made and I spent some extra time working on this painting and adding to it. That’s why it is no longer in a circular format. I’d planned from the beginning to do this, so I left space to expand.

Looking at them made me think that the way I compose has four dimensions. Of course there’s up, down, right and left, the two dimensions of the physical surface and then there’s the added illusion of three dimensions. So what’s the fourth dimension? It is movement. Time is thought of as the fourth dimension and without time there’s no movement. Suggested and implied movement is important in a composition. I know all of this, but I sometimes I don’t know I’ve done it till later. Another day I’ll put up some examples of paintings that have different types of visual layers, yet another important part of composition.

New, Old, Sold

2006-09-11T22:06:00.000-04:00

I’ve decided to post something as close to once a day as I can. Today I have three pictures that are not on my website. The category today is something new, something old and something sold.

The first I finished just last month. It was done for "1634: The Baltic War" by Eric Flint (16X24) 2006. I tried my best with this painting to be bold. At the very least it is quite thick with paint. The ironclads are the anachronistic element, important in all alternate history.

"Libris Mortis: The Book of the Undead" (16X24) 2004 is the only thing I think I’ve done for Wizards of the Coast. You can see a better copy of it in my book "Kiddography." People seem to be genuinely scared of this painting. To me it’s a bit too much of a caricature to be truly upsetting. The necromancer is a bit on the orgasmic side of happy.

Just today Irene Gallo, art director at Tor Books, asked to put up an illustration on her blog that I did for Realms of Fantasy for "Robin of the Green" (2006) by A. C. Wise. I painted this right after I saw an exhibit at the Dahesh Museum of the Kelley Collection called “Stories to Tell.” This exhibit was of work from the Golden Age of Illustration or of artists from around that time: Wyeth, Pyle, Schoonover, Dunn, Leyendecker, etc. As I worked on this painting I tried to channel those illustrators. I felt I fell a little short of my intentions and, I think, undervalued the painting – literally – selling it for a pittance.

Newer Paintings

2006-09-10T15:46:00.000-04:00

I did this painting originally for DAW Books as a cover to Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson. About three weeks ago I put it back on my easel and this is the result. The painting is 32 X 21 and it was done in oils. It's been retitled Abbey Air Race.

Last month I went to the World SF Convention in Anaheim. It was a good show for me. I met a lot of very nice friendly people, very few of whom I remember. These things are just too much for me to process. It's now all hazy. Before the show I promised myself I'd do a number of new watercolors. My plan is to put them in my book Gnemo to augment the oil paintings and drawings in that book or to make a series of 'sketchbooks' that would make up Gnemo's Journal. Here is the only one to come back from that show. The Great Blue Aeros (11X14).