At least I get to do the cooking. See you on the other side.

r.

One is something I did last summer, and never really finished off. A competition I could have entered with a more sensible piece, prompted me to finish it off, or at least retouch it slightly..when is something actually finished? That’s a good topic to explore. Maybe something is finished when you give up hope (for it turning in anything good or better), or you don’t care any more (for it to turn in anything good or better). Or when you feel like doing something else. Or when you feel that adding anything else would just start ruining it. Who knows.

The other is a small sketch which became a illustration. That showed me another little hint in the big puzzle. Which I might solve by the time I’m 94.

Anyway, this is something I did very much in between things; the two characters were lazily sketched separately, then I though they’d go well “together” (having very opposite characteristics of the same part of the body), and the setting was something I’ve been wanting to do for a while,  therefore in London and with a detailed animation backdrop feel opposed to more cartoony characters. But as I said, it was very much something I did on off-hours, without giving much thought to it. But I did decide to do a screen capture every now and then.

Hence this series of work in progress pics: first of all the brush I used mainly for this, I tend to change the minimum diameter a lot as I go, depending on what I’m drawing (less diameter variation when drawing buildings or inanimate objects), and I prefer keeping a good angle variation to give it a more ragged look.

Since there was no real sketch for the background (or anything I’d could effectively use besides noting to myself what could go there), I did what I rarely do..I sketched directly in Photoshop. I rarely do so because although I’ve got better over the years, I’m still no way as precise and loose  with a tablet than I am when sketching with a pencil on paper. In short, I’m not “digital art native”, which in a way I don’t really mind. For the sketch I used basically the same brush, with a 20% gray, and freely sketched just to get the proportions and positions right (and some values). Then I “placed” the two characters scanned from the sketchbook.

After this I started working in grayscale, as I personally found that besides helping with values and finding the right lighting effects, it keeps me from worrying too much about colours, and getting the thing pretty much done before I address that aspect. It’s like cooking, get the mise-en-place done before getting the pots and pans on (but remember to heat the oven beforehand).

A lot of things in life are like cooking. But I digress.

After a cleaner outline (it’s really a shame that you can’t rotate freely the canvas in PS as you do in Painter or Sketchbook pro though), I start with the grayscale, and getting the different parts clearly defined. I do this because recently I’ve been going towards keeping separate what I do on a computer and what I do on canvas (or generally speaking by hand). Therefore not mimicking that oil painting process which sometimes makes a lot of things look the same. I’m not a precise person, therefore sometimes I feel the urge to spell out that what I do on a computer I would have never managed to do it on paper, AND viceversa (I’ll never get that random chaotic mess on computer…too many layers and undoes. The story is old, I know, and I digress again. And I quote, of course).

I do the same with the two characters, and then proceed with switching to RGB (no, not CMYK. CMYK is so 90′s). I know good sense should tell me to do things on lots of layers, but I couldn’t really be bothered. So I do a copy of the background layers – instead of having a colour one in overlay or similar above the grayscale one – and tweak the colour balance. After that I start playing around with the “replace colour”. I found recently that by using this tool you get more interesting results than with the colour balances, curves etc, as  within a certain section and colour range you can pick up different effects based on slight variations in value. Once I have a more or less balanced out the composition (without exaggerating with colour variation, I’ll leave that for later), I add a “full colour” layer. It’s the layer where I forget everything I’ve done before, and just colour freely as one would normally do. It’s where one adds the colours that stand out because of their own nature (eg. prints, sources of light etc), and tweaks all the things that didn’t really work out before. i.e. afterthoughts.

Pretty much the same happens with the characters. Actually the order of the last few pics doesn’t really follow the real workflow (it’s just the layers on/off), as I do flip more in between the various characters and background,  especially once on the “full colour” layers.

The last thing is the texture. Here I didn’t use much of a texture on the background (a slight paper one at the end I’ve been using since Angelskin times), as anyway it turned out quite rich as it is – adding texture here would be mixing flavours, that work on their own but don’t really work as a whole. Ok I admit, I’ve been watching quite a lot of Masterchef recently…. But I did with the characters, especially with her coat. Ah, btw, the thing that started it all (the picture) was a coat I saw in Camden a few weeks ago with a friend, in a kind of retro stylish shop in the Stables market. It just stuck out, therefore all the rest was actually drawn “around it”.

Including the noses.

r.

So I’ll post some stuff that is part of an ongoing stylistic study I have been doing over the last two years. And I took it a step further, making the “story” behind it a little bit obvious, and presenting it all as a retro-60′s style film poster. I’ll leave all the little references and easter eggs to anyone who would want to notice them.

So here you go with our feature films for today, both set in Paris:  “The Honeymoon “and “La Juliette”.

r.

Disclaimer : any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is not coincidental

For the next few posts I’ll upload some of the recent stuff, in no particular order. And I’ll keep the comments to a minimum, because unfortunately it’s what has been preventing me to post much.

Here I’ll be talking about my Ipad painting experiments…I’ve done a couple, and I’ll re-copy and paste my comments posted on a sketchbook thread I’ll probably be abandoning anyway (always for re-organization purposes).

” Some time ago I discovered that a Ipad painting application, Inspire pro, was on sale (79 eurocents, or 1 dollar, 69 pence etc), so I thought I would give it a go, or to be precise, I would give painting on Ipads another go, which in theory was a great idea, but I hadn’t really explored much (as I found it hard being comfortable on it..as I do generally with all digital media).
I was surprised to see how the feel is very similar to oil painting…although the stylus can feel a bit clunky (Griffin stylus), its limitations were less notable on inspire.
There is none of all the PS and similar software facilitation…i.e. no layers (!), no lasso to move things around (therefore if your left eye for instance is slightly badly aligned, you must do how you would do in traditional painting…paint over and re-do it), no colour adjustment etc etc.
And I found it strangely to be a good thing. It has less of that “perfection” incorporated, and more the serendipity real painting has. (the no-undo theory..although it DOES have undoes…but sometimes it messes up and you have to anyway paint over).”

Here are the two paintings (a couple of hours work each).

coming up: a couple of new no-undos and paintings, some bits and bobs from a commissioned project I’ve worked on and from the new GN collaboration I’ve started.
If you’re lucky.
If not see you in 5 months.

the other one is falls obviously in the lifestyle/fashion category of the portfolio….

back soon I hope

ciao

r.

Anyway, I’ve just realised that I didn’t post here one of the recent pieces (Everything must go) so I will now, and along with it the updated version of another (Scorso Autunno)…they’re part of what you could call the “melancholic leaf” series. Another on the way soon. And I thought that I might as well give here something different than in other forums and gallery, by posting the finished pics much larger, as I really “appreciate” when other people do so on their websites/journal.

Next new thing. I haven’t actually posted any real works in progress (well, just the pencils of the two page splash, but that was alongside the finished piece). These next two are actually works in progress, as they’re just at the first sketch/study phase.

One is for a Pinocchio contest (it was obvious I would  centre it on “La fata dai capelli turchini/Blue fairy”..but it’s not exactly Disney’s version)…and the other for a oil painting (back to traditional, once in a while).

cheers!

r.

No the answer is “It’s the time this Chinese artist whose name I can’t remember takes to complete his artworks”28 days!!! In fact they’re remarkable, huge and full of incredibile detail and minutiae.

But 28 days…I mean, It’s true that some painters in the past took months, if not years to complete their works.

The problem is that I hardly take 28 minutes. Which is way too little. There must be some happy medium somewhere. Try to work on things more, to get it really right maybe. But leave on the side some time for the quickies.

But most of all. Update, even if I have nothing to write about.

At least every 2.8 days.

Otherwise this bloggy thing is totally useless.

r.

Ah, I was forgetting…random pics for the moment, newer stuff (i.e. the pictures I actually take some time to do) soon