jhancock

Weekly Painter 2017_January-February

One of my goals for 2017 was to paint more. It’s often intimidating to get out my easel and a “precious” canvas and jump into a big project that I know will keep me preoccupied from my family for the next week (which is my normal experience). In other words, it doesn’t fit conveniently in my normal life.

So, I followed the design of James Gurney and created my own light and portable pochade easel.

Since then I’ve been trying to paint at least one small 5×7 gouache every week. I’ll try to post some more as I go, but below is a selection:

Week One: The Back Alley

Week Three: For Sale

Week Five: Dreams

Week Six: Appliances

Week Seven: Could this be Spring?

Week Eight: Winter Field

“The Pilgrim” Character Concept

Yesterday I posted an environment concept I painted. When I posted it on facebook I asked my friends what story they saw in the piece. A close friend and fellow artist Annie Lightsey suggested the following:

“[He] has embarked upon a pilgrimage that will take him far from home. Reverently and with gratitude he turns and looks, one last time, upon the opulent comforts of the home he leaves behind before he proceeds on his journey.”

I’m considering going on this journey with The Pilgrim, so I decided to do a character concept of him today.

Concept Art

I’ve been trying to challenge myself to create some wholly original work and find my voice as an artist, and this is what I found today.

I was inspired by watching a twitch stream of johnlestudio to just begin a drawing and figure out the story as I went. As John was drawing he would “feel” a shape or a line that looked/felt good to him and then he would figure out how to create it within the developing world of his piece.

Of course, if I’m attempting any kind of concept art, I should also mention the artists Sparth and Scott Robertson whose tutorials, both online and in book form, have been helpful to me along my journey.

Nathan Fowkes Charcoal Portrait Study

I’ve been following the work of Nathan Fowkes on his blog for awhile. He’s amazing and his work is amazing. A couple days ago he posted this great image showing his charcoal portraiture process since he just released a book on the topic.

So I decided to give it a try. In looking for an image to study I came across this iconic photograph of Marlene Dietrich from the film “Shanghai Express.”

I followed the same process as Fowkes and really enjoyed the journey.

Make art!

#inktober2016

I participated in inktober again this year, but this year (in contrast to last year) I was committed to see it through. I really appreciated the discipline it required of me. As you can see in these sketches, I went through a portraiture phase that I really enjoyed. It was reassuring to feel like I was seeing some growth in my observational drawing skills. None of these sketches had a pencil under drawing–I just went in directly with the pen and tried to cover over any “sins” with Copic marker value:)

The last sketch in this post was done with brush and ink washes from reference.

Golden Fields

I need to get back to doing some work and sketching is always the best way to ease back into the saddle.

I used this photo by Petritap as a reference.

Southern Bastards Panel Study

I’m still playing around with Manga Studio 5 as a digital coloring tool. I did this study of a few panels from Jason Latour’s art in the comic “Southern Bastards.” The comic is great by the way and you should read it if you’re in the mood for some good pulp eighties action movie style fiction. Below you can see a picture of my study on the monitor next to the actual comic page in digital form on an iPad.

Manga Studio Guillaume Singelin Study

I’ve finally started learning how to use Manga Studio 5 which I invested in to see how it would do as a Photoshop alternative. It was very intuitive and has everything a comic artist needs for coloring which is all I’ve attempted at this point.

The above images are studies of a Guillaume Singelin illustration from his “Southern Tales” series which I found in his excellent book of sketches Junky. Below is a poorly filtered image I took from the book itself. This was a lot of fun to do and it was a good way to start learning a new program.

Guillaume Singelin Lovin’

I fell in love with Guillaume Singelin last year when I came across some of his space drawings and I immediately began following his tumblr. I’ve experimented with his coloring style (not very successfully), and I just purchased my first of his books–“Junky.” It’s an amazing sketch journal packed with a lot of good insights into Singelin’s process. I would highly recommend it if you’re in the market for some stylized visual inspiration.

As I’ve been reading “Junky” I’ve been soaking in Singelin’s style with my own sketches of his work:

Silhouette Layered Forest

I wanted to play with using some simple layers to create some depth, so I did this study of a panel drawn by Jillian Tamaki in the graphic novel Skim.