Tried some oil painting today...

Oh man, and suddenly it all comes back to me - just how scary and frustrating and messy and inasne oil painting is! Oh yeah, now I remember! Every bit as nerve-wracking as pastel drawing, but stinkier and stickier. Damn, and I swore off pastel drawing because the messiness and lack of control stresses me out..

Notes to myself :

Apparently first you want to get the canvas covered with paint - paint doesn't like to go down onto canvas, but it goes on much better onto paint. 

It's very important to pay attention to viscosity = if there's turps in some paint and it isn't dry, then going over it with fresh paint can easily disrupt the weaker thinner wash of paint and pull some of it up - irregularly to boot, making a huge mess of things. 

Often a little playing around will fix things - but it can screw things up so easily too.

Super-frustrating when you've worked really hard on an area and have it looking fantastic, and then acidentally swipe some dark-ass paint right through it. Crap!! 

I did a little kitchen still-life with the onion cannister and the garlic cannister and a ceramic pot sitting on the little cutting board (which now has some titanium white on the corner of it!). The first pot was total crap - all the wrong colors, paint went on too thick, lost control again and again and decidedd to just move on. 2nd pot worked much better - I put it on in a drawing sort of approach, putting paint down and then lifting it with a rag. Pretty nice underpainting approach. The ceramic pot looks good too - I started to find the right thickness of paint and the way to work with it - making sure to get enough on the brush but not too much etc. When you get these factors all right it works beautifully. 

Then before quitting I decided to scrub off the first one - the result actually looks excellent!! Similar to the scraping method, but you don't have to wait for it to dry. It reminds me of one of my heaily erased drawings - my favorite kind, only in color, and with a beautiful canvas texture. 

This is how I want to do underpainting - putting on color and then scrubbing it off. It could be done in local colors, or in some colors calculated to look good showing through overpainting here and there. 

Have PLENTY of clean rags on hand!! 5 or 6 at least. My rags got so messed up all over that every time I picked one up I got paint all over my hands. Not fun!

** about 10 hours later **

Did some more painting, nearly finished the 1st layer. I' actually astonished at how well it's going now - it seems I've got past my earlier clumsiness in handling the paint and found the right way to do it. Everything is going quite well now, and I seem capable of getting the colors where I want them now without much incident, and of fixing it when things go off a bit. More and more I began to put paint on and then scrub it off, resulting in a sort of additive/subtractive method that looks really good and doesn't leave too much paint on the canvas. Most of the painting has been done so far with straight paint, no medium at all except for when I tried to draw on the wire handle for the ceramic pot, which I ended up scrubbing off anyway. Detailed out all the pots and painted in a blue background and the cuting board, and the nicest touches are the holes in the terra cotta pots and the slot in the end of the utting board, all done with various shades of purple that looks almost black but isn't flat and dead like black. Even found a trick to paint a little turp on the edges of the holes and then wipe over it to remove a little paint and get a lighter edge showing. 

The composition looks a little oo simple and there's too much space left at the bottom, so I think I'll find something to add tomorrow. 

Oh, and I actually have pictures! Busted out the camera and took some progress pics:

Skull Study #2 - wow, I did the bad aspect ratio thing!!!

Used a big piece of green pastel paper this time and the square sticks of charcoal/white chalk that look like Conte crayons but aren't. A little ways in, after I was already well into the charcoal rendering stage, I noticed my skull structure s very squashed down and stretched out sideways - in fact just like a badly encoded youtube video in the wrong aspect ratio!! Then I realized it's becasue of the long landscape format of the paper - in fact I was concerned with making the drawing fit the proportions - that's why I removed the lower jaw and placed it beside the skull. But I must have unconsciously altered the proportions of the boxes I drew. Bizarre! The actual skull looks tall and stately, my drawing looks almost like an ape or something, all short and squat and long (in fact it reminds me in a way of the creature from Alien Resurrection).

But enough chalk (sticks or blocks) drawing for me!! God it's such messy stuff, it gets all over everything including your hands, and then smudges and fingerprints show up all over the clean paper part of the drawing. Yuck! Don't like it. The pastel pencils are alright though - not nearly as messy, and I believe the conte crayons will be nice too. 2 chalk drawings from the last 2 days, and I don't know where to keep them - don't want to put any other drawings on top of them or they'll get all messy on the back and then infect other drawings they come into contact with. Really need to try the skim milk thing (hope it works better than steam, which I tried long ago and was a total joke).

I do like the way I boxed everything up for this drawing - just had to do a little quick calculation to figure out how to box a skull without the lower jaw, and then I estimated a box for the jaw itself (was pretty far off though - had to correct significantly later). Many more skull drawings to come - but enough for now - time to move on.

The 1st skull study looks nicer, is more controlled because it was with chalk pencils - the 2nd though it's twice as big or more, looks sloppy (finished up with the pencils to tighten it a bit). But it is more accurate in some ways - the front of the cheekbones is more correct in particular - I had a revelation comparing my 1st study to the skull that the shape of that part of the cheekbones is very important to the look of the cheek in a very emaciated or ripped person - that tilted triangular plane that defines the upper limit of the soft cheek area.

Skull Study, black and white chalk -- right values, right places

Screw setting up the scanner - decided to snap some digital pics and refine them in Lightroom so I can post artwork for all relevant posts in here. This retroctive on dec. 6th.

Oh man it feels good to be able to write that! Sounds exactly like one of the old master drawings I've been poring over endlessly in Master Class in Figure Drawing (which I finished reading last night - need to draw from it some).

Did a skull study today from the skull replica I have just named Bucky (in reference to the teeth) (oh, and no, I didn't draw them that way - did a little artistic dental work on him). I love the way it looks - 3 important things I handled well thanks to my recent studies - blocked in the basic forms first, then shaded along the major plane breaks, and finally wrapped my chalk strokes around the form. Oh, also used the powerfully form-producing core shadow technique.

I love the way a chalk drawing looks on good toothy paper - it sparkles - little dots of white and black over the various shades of gray.

I thought about old skull studies I've done - all very weak because I wasn't well versed in the classical techniques I described above and didn't understand to keep shadow planes uniformly dark and light planes uniformly light aide from some detail shading that isn't far from the value of the plane itself.

Also thought about old drawings I tried in conte crayon or colored pencils on tinted paper - very weak as well, for similar reasons - though in this case it's also because I hadn't developed a strong sense of how to properly draw form. I just ordered a set of conte crayons and some pastel paper and can hardly wait - and I was right about one thing - the conte crayons are waxier than regular chalk sketch sticks and don't produce much dust.

Now I fully understand why you need to be able to draw like this before you can paint.

Some exercises I'd like to try soon - limited-palette, limited-value sketches on the tablet and with selected colors of various drawing media, like pastel or oil pastel.

Critique:

Should have used all the guide lines - the nose hold doesn't fall far enough down the face and that resulted inthe teeth being too big. 

The drawings I did yesterday and today both are very nice and very competently drawn, but they feel very pneumatic - closed off and stiff and generic. Need to open up the technique - let some air in, let the inside and outside mingle. Breaks in the lines - lines that describe outer perimiter but also dive inward. The dense solid black background on the skull study really looks heavy - need to leave backgrounds more open and suggest forms there. 

However, each of these drawings is also a first attempt at a technique/material I'm unfamiliar with (aside from some poor attempts long ago). I think as I go I'll develop more confidence and skall and be able to put more expressive qualities into the drawings. I also think as I do more bone studies for instance I'll become increasingly familiar with the basic forms and start being able to draw the subtler details much better. This is an amazing way to gradually develop your knowledge of anatomical forms as well as your drawing techniques. 

Remarkably resilient inks!

Today I got in my cream colored sketch pad and my 2 different brown inks (Pelikan Brilliant Brown  for the fountain pen which hasn't arrived yet, FW Acrylic Burnt Umber for dip pen and brush). It's dipped below freezing the last 2 nights, while they were languishing in unheated warehouses, and they felt like ice cubes when I opened them, but were still liquid. And remarkably enough, they don't seem adversely affected at all.

Also remarkable is the way I managed to salvage the drawing I put on the first page of my new pad. I really want this pad to look good - like Vilppu's Old Masters sketch pad. And as carefully as I drew the pencils for it, the wash was looking pretty bad - but I layered more washes over it several times and actually made it look better each time.

I also hit upon the idea of posing the Ahab armature for it - the world's most poseable artist's mannikin. It came out looking a bit stiff and awkward - drawn too tightly, like I used to do my comic book stuff inthe beginning before I loosened up. I think it'll help to copy some more Master sketches and try to figure out how to draw loose and flowing like that in wash - it tends to freak me out and intimidate me.

I also think my work will improve once I get bold enough to bust out the new $85 kolinsky sable wash brush that arrived complete in its little case with a little lint-free towel and a bar of perfumed soap for washing it with (!!)I wqs having trouble getting good edges with the cruddy old brushes I was using (but they blow away the super-crappy one I did the recent Tiepolo copy with!!)

Marvelous! And Fritz slips in past my guard

The Marvel Way

In response to my poorly-proportioned pectorals, I decided to beef up on proportioning, and started digging through my library for a good chart. I peeked into How to Draw Comics the Marvel way, which I hadn't looked at in ages and was a bit embarrassed about having. But Lo and Behold! It's actually an amazing book - basically the Hogarth technique boiled down to its essence and with the addition of composition, backgrounds, and layout for sequential comic pages. Except that they start with a gesture sketch in stick-man form, and then develop that with oval forms that can be given direction by adding the center lines - in other words, the best stuff from Vilppu and Hogarth thrown together into one tight system. Though they push for a bit too much dynamism - far more than will work in a fantasy painting.

Fritz slips in

Tonight I drew a wiry little theif/rogue who's caught an attacker's heavy axe on the haft of his rapier and is holding it with straining arm pointed straight overhead as he draws his dagger for the fatal thrust. Dammit - I realized a little ways in that it's a ripoff of Frank's John Carter painting. My only saving grace is that the legs are different - well, sort of. At least I was thinking about changing them so one points out more - but then I realized that's ripped off from a different Frankie. Crap!! I'm afraid I grew up on his stuff and the images are whirling through my head to rise unbidden when I'm trying to find a pose. I've really gotta watch that. 

My drawings are starting to tighten up though and the anatomy is starting to look a lot better, even though it took a lot of re-dos to accomplish it. Thanks to plate Strathmore, a kneaded eraser and 4B pencil (should use a lighter one for preliminary guidelines). 

What I mean by 'Painting like Frazetta' (not copying his style)

When I mention to people that I want to learn to paint like Frazetta I get a lot of panic reactions - people immediately assume I want to copy his style. But I don't.

What I mean is that I want to learn the techniques and methods he used. Thanks to the Fritz Frazetta website and the excellent notes by Doc Dave, I've discovered what those techniques are, and my suspicions from the very beginning are borne out. He blocks in directly in oil paint on the canvas after doing thumbnails, sketches and color treatments, does an umber underpainting and finishes in one sitting using the alla-prima wet-into-wet technique.

He also doesn't labor aanything - he's develped a sort of shorthand where he uses sweeping lines to draw in the figure and indicate all the prominent forms and shadows, then he does the shading (all part of the underpainting). This leaves nothing for followup aside from putting in some colors - by this point the 3 dimensional sense of solidity is already fully developed.

But knowing how he does it is not the same as learning the techniques - that requires a lot of practice until I eventually work out my own system and start to get good at it.

And now I believe I"ve come far enough in drawing alone to justify beginning the painting portion of my training. Time to start rendering basic forms in monochrome and discovering what colors I can mix from my limited palette.

Self-Critique and thoughts so far

Seems like a good time to evaluate this system and my work so far and to record some important thoughts.

Start with ovals rather than boxes

When I start by drawing boxes I don't know how to attach arms and legs. They just sort of float next to the body or drift right inside of it. I definitely need to start with ovals, which can then be placed in directional terms with centerlines and the rest of the guidelines. Then square u as I go in order to help find the plane breaks.

Plane breaks make all the difference

I went through a bunch of peoples' sketchbooks on Conceptart yesterday and noticed most people don't seem aware of the plane breaks, and those who do have much stronger drawings because of it. It really does impart a sense of solidity that's lacking in most amateur work.

Presentation

I also noticed that some artists who don't use plane breaks still have fantastic looking art because they pay particular attention to presentation - they just have a way of making even a simple scribble look fantastic. I need to work on my presentation - most of my work looks kind of rough and raw and crude, even though the figure drawing and anatomy are pretty good usually.

My consistent proportioni problems

I tend to make the ribcage too small. I see it even in my older drawings. Remember it's supposed to be 2 full head lengths highm with the 5th rib and base of the pectorals falling at the halfway mark. On the Anatomytools ecorche the pecs are about as tall as from just above the eyebrow ridge to the end of the chin. Hogarth shows one full head height from top of acromion process to 5th rib. Oh, oops! Ribcage isn't 2 heads high, it's one and a half! It's 2 heads from top of ribcage to navel. I've been making most of my ribcages only about 1 head high, and not deep enough. 

I really need to start measuring off the figure every time.