Mark Brunet inspiration

Maybe another burst of video inspiration will break my stasis. Actually I think I screwed up the possibility though with terrible timing - it's way late and I need to crash - by tomorrow the inspiration will be stale. Or maybe not - I'll watch it again and/or maybe find more vid-insp.

Endlessly prolific - Katsuya Terada and Charles Ratteray

These are by Charles Ratteray (link to his concept art sketchbook). And the following are by Katsuya Terada (Bing image search).

 I've discovered both of them recently, and had the same reaction to both - amazement at the wealth of restless energy. Looking at just about any image either of them has created, I get the feeling they're always drawing. Their work seems to be an endless outpouring of creative energy.

They certainly don't fear detail or work - in fact there's the sense that they might fear having to stop working! Compulsive drawing is definitely a thing - trust me, I've experienced it at times. I wish I could turn it on at will, but it doesn't seem to work that way, there needs to be some source of anxiety that you're avoiding. I can't say if these guys are compulsive or not - they might just be really super productive or extremely driven. Whatever it is, I wish I could tap into it.

Ratteray does a lot of storyboard work for big Hollywood productions, he's done Riddick and the new TMNT movie, and Terada has a new book out - I believe it's his first in English, called Dragon Girl and Monkey King. A little ways down the page is a flip-through video that hooked me - I now own the book.

Ok, even I'm getting tired of seeing this one..

But I've been playing around, adding some special effects and just generally punching up contrast and color.

Newer, even more betterer Knockout - now with 27% more sparklies

I added it to the end of the Ronda - round 2 post for flipping-through awesomeness.

How I figured out constructive painting

I want to document this so I'll remember how it happened. It was really this image that made me understand how to paint constructively. And I know - at first glance, it looks like I did the cylinder as a guide for how to paint the more complex forms of the - um - dude-thing. But strangely that's not why - I was just getting frustrated because I was having trouble blending my tones. It was more about how to place stripes of graduated vales and blend them, and what I did on the cylinder was to lay down 4 or 5 stripes, then grab one and lay it down semi-transparently to create an in-between zone. I kept going, creating in-betweens between the in-betweens, and it was looking good. So that's more or less how I ended up painting the image next to it.

But it didn't occur to me to use the cylinder as a guide for placing zones of tones, or to paint a sphere for the same purpose that would give me more planes. I thought about that after finishing it, and thats what led to my next image.

Another key difference between this and Knockout is that here some of my strokes are pretty random - scribbling as it were. On the forehead in particular. I was still refusing to follow the forms, and was thinking more about creating a varied, interesting surface with lots of brush strokes all over.  But you can see that on some parts I was starting to follow the form (paint along the length of the form, rather than wrapping lines around it as in drawing). And those areas look the best. So finally I broke through my mental block and just did it that way on Knockout - well, after some initial attempts at other things.

I'm sure this post will be an embarrassment to me in the future, after I develop a better understanding of constructive painting and realize that all this is silly and mostly off track - but it serves now as an important step in figuring it out.

Oh, just remembered something else - wow, that little cylinder is actually very important in this! Another reason I put it there was to figure out what order to do things in - you need to paint certain things overtop of others to cover them - for instance I did the upright cylinder wall first and it had very ragged edges top and bottom, then I did the lid over it and cut the bottom edge (which I tried several times and never did very well, but good enough as a test). A big part of it is figuring out what order to work in - pretty much back to front, at least in the finishing stages (in the beginning I think you can do it however you want just to establish the forms).

Knockout

See previous post for lots of in progress shots - I've been adding them all night.

Ronda - round 2

Inspired by this:

Based on this:

I do this:

In some ways I always like figures better before they get faces. At that point they're abstract forms, once there's a face it's got a personality - it's somebody, you know? Not pure form anymore, it's mixed up with human life and emotions etc. Though in this case it has a nice personality and expression that makes it sparkle. I don't like the body work, done with a big soft round brush. It lacks the definite edges of the rectangular brush, and so looks too smooth and formless. I feel like I'm beginning to understand how constructive painting works.

Oh, and I understand now that the shadow behind her isn't hers - it's at odds with the light angle. Also, I think I understand the weird shadow on her torso but not her arms - it's some kind of big object right there in front of the scale that's pretty narrow (this shot was from a weigh-in). Even though it's real, I can't leave it like that because it's confusing and people will scratch their heads and think I suck. I think I;ll extend it to cover the arms and bring in some side light to pull out that arm on the right.

What I really like about the tutorial above is that it's done as a hybrid drawing/painting. I like that - it seems loose and free - I've been mostly very strict about pure painting, with no line except where it's needed for clarity. But I like seeing line in paintings - especially if it's somewhat loose and sketchy. It's the way Frazetta did the Kane painting I copied recently. It adds nice accents and defines edges strongly, it sort of becomes shadow along those edges that recede sharply away from the viewer. And at the same time it adds a slight element of the abstract that I like. Oh, plus drawing is a lot easier for me to do than painting! I've been doing that all my life..

Starting to look much better, and now I can clearly see a couple of things. First, hey look!! Colorful Grays! It's Jeff Jones' colorful grays, that he says should comprise much of the picture so where you use strong color it stands out.  It happened inadvertently from layering warms and cools semi-transparently. The other thing I noticed is that I missed a step - I should have developed the major forms - torso, rib cage etc, before doing abs. I suppose I can still do that working semi transparently. Each plane needs to respond properly to the light it receives, according to its angle relative to the light source. I'm not seeing a proper sense of roundness to the torso itself.

Damn - it looked like there was enough contrast on the torso until I put in the black clothes, now it looks pale and washed out. I recall somebody said you should put a big blob of black and white on the canvas right at the beginning to avoid this problem. Or maybe have a card you hold up against it from time to time. I still in that timid stage where I'm afraid of bold accents, both value and color.

Well I think it's clear I've found an excellent painting method. It seems to facilitate every step of the process, and the result looks like a painting, not a laboriously colored-in drawing or airbrush picture like I've done so often. Interestingly, this was done primarily with the oil brushes that have given me problems on a few images recently. I think they work better for a more painterly approach like this, plus I've learned not to use the Oil heavy flow dry edges for putting light colors down thinly over darker ones - for that you switch to its neighbor Oil medium wet flow. Which I almost never actually use come to think of it - should play around a bit.

I feels like it still needs more finishing touches, and I'm tempted to do another big session - maybe tomorrow.

I've hit that coveted stage now where my hand has improved beyond my eye, so I'm filled with confidence and optimism. Give it a few days though, and the eye will leapfrog right over the hand.

On the other hand, my older stuff looks pretty terrible to me now. Wow, is this the way it's always looked to everybody else and I just couldn't see it? They look malformed and somehow hard, like shiny little action figures. The sad part is, I'm quite sure when I make my next advance this one will look nearly as bad. I'm afraid this means I'm still on the wrong side of Dunning Kruger..

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