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.
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.
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:
Ok, you may be wondering when I will start creating original work, but this is kind of the way I approach life in general. I research a lot before I write the paper. I shop around a lot before I purchase a product. In the case of my art, I like the idea of the Atelier model–a student should copy Master works, and hone their skills through repetition. That’s kind of where I’m at right now. On the other hand, this painting is the last one I plan to do with the aid of a video tutorial. My next works will be studies of paintings themselves. Can I take what I’ve learned and use it to recreate paintings in my own? We’ll see.
I enjoyed painting along with John Crump in this video today. We’ll see what happens next.
I’m just going to keep doing these and posting them here. I’m loving it. This was done with the iPad Procreate app following along with this video from the Watts Atelier.
Here’s another one:
Fitting art making into my life is a bit of a struggle folks. Three kids and a full time job means that by the time I’ve made it to “art time” (those precious 2 hours after the kids go to bed and before I pass out) I’m usually exhausted and spend all of my time staring at my phone like a zombie–just looking at other artists’ work. This is why I try to sketch a bit everyday. It’s something I can do in the midst of life that doesn’t involve setting up paint, or cleaning up paint, or scanning and coloring on Photoshop, etc. So, today I decided to download Procreate onto my oldish iPad. I immediately began using it to sketch and paint and I’m in love. I think that, just like sketching, I should be able to use this program to make art in the midst of my life. And in the process, over time, maybe even create some more “finished” pieces.
The sketch above is just a sketch, but it was the first thing I tried in Procreate. It was done as a study based on a tutorial for high-contrast painting studies on the blog of James Gurney. I found these quick sketches he was doing to be really inspiring and I’ve always been drawn to these chiaroscuro style paintings. It was fun and I can’t wait to explore more.
This morning during church I was sketching a guy in the pew in front of me. I enjoy sketching in church–it actually helps me concentrate, plus its a good opportunity to draw people who are sitting still:)
Now, these aren’t great sketches or anything, but I wanted to post them here because I wanted to share what I learned doing them (shout out to my 17 month old son Ethan for his wonderful coloring work, and my horrible misspelling of the word “palatable”). All three profile sketches are, again, of the same dude. The one on the top right and bottom left were done first. They were done quickly, and have the feel of caricatures. In both cases, the eyes are high up on the head and the upper lip is elongated. Both of them were drawn starting from the top: forehead line, nose line, upper lip line, lower lip line, chin, etc. This kind of drawing has a way of stretching things out for me because I’m not placing the features on any pre-existing form. I don’t mind these caricatures. I think they are fun, but honestly, this wasn’t the intention.
On the final drawing I didn’t slow down, but I simply decided to draw two major guidelines to help my profile–the line following the forehead down to the nose, and another line following the nose down to the chin. If you look closely you can see them. This simple step helped me to quickly place the features within this structure, thus ensuring the eyes are correctly placed, the upper lip, lower lip, and chin properly recede, etc. The result is clearly the most accurate drawing, and this process was a helpful reminder to me–not only in building a structured drawing, but also the importance of warming up. You need to get your brain and hand working together. You need to sketch a bit before you’re in the groove, or the flow.
So, in summary, 1) build a structure to put details on, 2) warm-up, and 3) sketch in church:)
The artistic journey has a lot of stops. The week started when I got Burton Silverman’s amazing watercolor book Breaking the Rules of Watercolor. It’s an invaluable book and I hope to get a watercolor or two done soon for this space inspired by his technique, but it became clear to me in looking at Silverman’s work how accomplished of a draftsman he was. Of course, painting and drawing are very interconnected, and in fact, watercolor has often been thought of as a drawing medium. Silverman’s brushwork is an extension of his ability to be able to draw what he sees. I knew that in order to paint like Silverman, I needed to be able to draw like him…so, as always, back to the drawing board.
I decided to do some sketches of Rembrandt portraits because the way he often lit the face created such wonderful shadow shapes. So much of what I see in Classical Atelier artist training involves rendering form by mastering these shadow shapes. I think of them kind of as a shorthand for form. If I can grasp the shadow shape, I think it will translate into my painting–or at least this is the theory. I’ve done about 8 or 9 of these now and they’re very gratifying. I would recommend it.
Apparently it’s Aquavember, which I’m not officially participating in, but that doesn’t keep me from joining in the fun by doing a study of one of my favorite artists–George Pratt. I came across George Pratt‘s work a few years ago while I was studying art in Kansas City, MO. Not only is George an amazing artist, but he is one of the most open artists about his process (at least on the internet) that I’ve come across making him a great resource for me as I’ve attempted to learn techniques and get art supply recommendations.
Pratt’s watercolor is in the style of Burton Silverman. He applies color washes and when they are about to stabilize he wipes away parts of the wash to create mid-tones. In this way, he’s able to build up a watercolor painting in a more loose style than the traditional way of structuring a watercolor painting.
The painting that this sketch is modeled after is posted in stages on his website here along with a lot of other in-process watercolors. If you’re interested in learning how to watercolor sketch I would recommend checking that link out.
As I mentioned in my previous post, part of the cool thing about doing Inktober this year was getting exposed to some amazing artist. Artur Sadlos‘ Inktober work blew me away for a number of reasons: 1) his sense of composition and design; 2) his creation of a sci-fi/fantasy world (which I’m always into); and 3) the simplicity of his quick sketches which had me believing I could actually try out his technique. His entire 2015 Inktober collection has been posted here on Artstation.
I’m definitely in the copying phase of learning right now. I’m trying to really build up my visual drawing vocabulary through live sketching and copying the work of others. Of course, I do venture away from these practices from time to time, but it’s scary:) I’m comfortable with it and I’m learning a lot. I think this is the quickest way for me to improve right now. So…I decided to try my hand at copying Sadlos’ Inktober work. Over the past few days I’ve done some sketches in my sketchbook and they’ve been hella fun–the kind of thing that keeps you going back to the sketchbook. I hope you enjoy checking them out as much as I enjoyed doing them and hopefully they can introduce you to this great artist.
