Of Mice and Monks

Folks have been asking about my process lately, which in some ways I gather is different from many other painters.

This is a pretty simple image I did for Maurice's Valises: The Muuha of Bang Bua:

DRAWING
I start with a really simple rough, but only do the bare minimum needed to give me a guide for painting.

As usual my rough sketch is pathetically simple

Lately I have been developing preliminary drawings a bit more

VALUE
The critical parts of an image like this are the value and color plans.  I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. If this work looks really solid and polished it's not because I spend a lot of time polishing - it's because I set up the basic value relationships via careful observation and adjustment.

Lately I've been setting up my images in value first, then adding color, then painting.

I do all this preliminary value work on a single layer with a big soft brush, because it needs to be very direct and spontaneous.

The basic value layout shown under the sketch

And without the sketch - if your image falls apart without the

drawing, you are likely not hitting a home run with your value relationships.

The second image (without the drawing) is the one I am really looking at.  It already has an almost photographic quality, a certain kind of poetry of authenticity and tangibility, despite having no detail whatsoever and certainly not based in any way on a photo or real scene.

Observe how it appears more finished the smaller it gets (this is a combination of the two, with the drawing being preserved for accents in a few spots such as the eyes):

The smaller it gets, the better it looks

CONTRAST
Contrast is typically fundamental for creating focus in a 2d picture, but NOT for creating the illusion of light.  I cannot stress that enough either - the illusion of light comes from value relationships in perfect harmony - which is often undermined by extreme contrast.

You don't need high contrast or even a very wide value range to create the illusion of light (if that were the case it'd be impossible to do this in a picture, since pictures have a very narrow range of value compared to the real world).

COLOR
If I could only say one thing about color it'd be this: color is relative.  We simply cannot judge colors in isolation.  The same is true of value.  

Color organization systems and other devices (such as color wheels) are necessary for industrial purposes, but for painters these only provide illusory comfort, typically serving merely to mislead and undermine your ability to see - to see what is actually happening right in front of your eyes in that unique one of a kind painting you are working on - which is all that matters.

Initial color plan

Working digitally it's a lot easier to adjust values and colors in context.  When oil painting I am constantly painting little swatches of paper and holding them up to the canvas. With digital work I can lay down any color and adjust it, then use that to paint.


PAINTING
With such a solid foundation nothing can go wrong now!  It's just a matter of continuing to subdivide the image into smaller and smaller value/color shapes.

Beginning to paint

 Developing the forms

I flip back and forth between painting detail, working out forms like the drapery, then doing bigger adjustments to realign what I've painted with the larger value and color shapes as necessary.  This is unique to digital painting (for me at least) because with digital work I can't paint everything when zoomed out. I need to do some detail work zoomed in, which unfortunately means I can't see the whole image at the same time (Photoshop's navigator panel helps, but its interpolation is somewhat coarse).

The finished painting!

Finding Pictures in the Clouds

You know that game where you lay on your back, look up at the clouds and try to spot things in their billowing forms? This process, is a sort of Rorschach "ink blot" test  - what the viewer "sees" may say more about him/her than about the ink blot, or cloud!  Really what we "see" is a combination of a) what humans tend to generally be concerned with (creatures, faces, other humans, maybe vehicles), b) the disposition of the individual viewer (insert psycho-babble here), and the nature of the visual (black ink is different from puffy clouds, etc.).

With art-making, though, it's a collaborative endeavor, because we (our conscious selves) can partially drive the process. We may simply be vaguely thinking "serpent" or "dragon" while our hand moves around seemingly randomly, unconsciously.   Is it moving randomly, and our eyes are seeing what we want to see?
Or is the hand responding to the semi-conscious direction?  Who knows? Who cares?!

On top of that, even if the amorphous image is not in any way contrived in advance (maybe it's found in nature, or even made by another artist), we can consciously seek to specifically find what we want to draw, for example, a creature, a person, etc.

Some artists when coming up with, say, a creature concept, will simply "draw 'S' curves." Some scribble and scribble, with only a vague notion of what they are intending to produce, while constantly looking for anything that sparks their IMAGE-ination.  That works!  Me, I like to paint big soft blobs.  Then I either let myself be hope to what comes, OR I decide in advance what I want to look for.

The first stage in this case was completely un-directed. Yet, like SOOO many people, for obvious reasons, I tend to see faces in everything. It doesn't take much. One thing that this process makes even more obvious is the PARAMOUNT ROLE OF VALUE IN SEEING AND PICTURE-MAKING.  When your unconscious mind is struggling to make sense of what it sees, or thinks it is seeing something, you'll find this has very little to do with color.  Yes, I am going to keep saying this in every post.
Anyway, now I seek to clarify what I see... or have decided to see... or think I see... just a bit...

The trick, though, is to keep the "cloud game" going.  I want to clarify what I think I'm seeing, without killing it. Without turning into "that same old arm that I always draw" or whatever. The good thing with digital media is you can constantly look back at a prior version and go, "whoops, I lost it somewhere along the line." I do that a lot.

That right arm (on the left side of the picture) - what's it doing exactly? Is it coming toward us? Is it parallel with the picture plane? It's amazing how easily you can destroy the illusion of naturalness.

When you work this way you will produce shapes and forms that you might NEVER come up with consciously. You may see wonderful little hand gestures or facial expressions that open up whole new dimensions of picture-making for you.  When working more consciously, we tend to produce the same kinds of faces, bodies, hands, poses, etc. I'm still not even sure to what extent "I" produced most of them. What it feels like is I SEE them, then very softly bring them out just enough so I'm sure others will see what I'm seeing.

Most artists when working this way (or similarly) tend to produce very similar imagery, over and over.  Poses and faces may vary, but maybe it's always a figure floating in space, or a straight on face, or whatever. This seems contradictory - on the one hand you're producing new imagery that's very different from your usual habits... but on the other hand, you still may find that you very quickly start repeating your (new) self.  The book Art and Fear postulates that maybe each artist has only a few stories to tell, maybe even only ONE story. So be it I guess.

Work like this has an organic and naturalistic quality that is very hard to achieve when consciously directing the work. But the fact that it can't be as easily consciously directed can limit its usefulness for certain kinds of commissioned work.

So, here's the "finished" piece. I call him "Warrior." He could be a lot more finished, I guess.

Try this yourself!  Use whatever medium allows you to quickly "see into" the picture, to see through and beyond the marks.  Then proceed very cautiously, and if possible check back against earlier versions and see if what initially sparked you is still there!

Painting a Snow Scene - working the whole

This is a picture I did for the second book in the Maurice's Valises series.

This picture needed to capture the excitement and promise of Maurice the mouse setting out on one of his most important adventures, in this case traveling by barge to the city of Moscow in deep winter.

Here's the rough sketch - as usual I don't develop the drawing very much before getting going with the paint. I really like to find my way through the picture with values and color, big shapes, vs. line.

Here I've laid in the basic values and colors for the picture. The compositional approach is fairly simple.

Here's the same picture with the drawing removed. You can see that even at this very, very early stage the value and color relationships are standing on their own. If you squint and look at this picture you might think it's finished.  When everything is in good balance your eyes will fill in the details (or not care that they're not there).

For a picture like this I won't do any precise perspective work. I just lay in some lines using Photoshop's line tool, color coded for left, right and top vanishing points. These are all I need as a guide to paint the buildings, wall and bridge in consistent perspective.

As I've said before, when it's time to start rendering, it really doesn't matter where you start, so long as you don't bring any area too far ahead of the image as a whole. I know some artists that don't work this way - they finish one small area and then move on to another. For the vast majority of them this has a generally negative effect on the whole, though I will say that for some it works really well. If that approach works for you - great!  For most artists, though, the way to ensure a consistent whole is to consistently work the whole. I started working the figure here.

I should also add that for some artists it does matter where they start. Where you start can have an effect on the final image, depending on how you work and how you see. For example, some artists start on the focal area, so the focal elements tend to achieve and remain at a more advanced level of finish and detail than the rest of the image. If you do this you may even find that the non-focal areas can remain really unfinished. I used to do the opposite - start on the non-focal areas and do the focal areas last, because at that point there was a really solid context for the critical focal areas, making them much more straightforward to render.

So I'll leave it this way: if you have a reason to start in a particular place, great! If not, don't let that cripple you - just start somewhere and dive in.

Here I'm moving to tighten up the bridge, and add some waves to the water.

And now moving onto the buildings in the background.

More refinement all over, and some snow on the buildings. I'm not loving the palette at this point, but it's actually easier for me to adjust it after rendering some of the elements a bit more. That way I have more information to inform the larger color and value adjustments.

I tried several different approaches with the snow. The scale of the snowflakes vs. the mouse was definitely a challenge. The relatively large flakes run the risk of becoming way too prominent in the picture. To address this I made them blurry, and a bit smaller than what would be perfectly realistic. The snow is built up in three layers.

Here I've lightened up the image a bit, modified the large cleat, and added more detail and texture to the mouse's coat and hat.

A tiny bit of tweaking on the snowflakes here and there to make the figure's silhouette a bit stronger.

Here I made a dramatic adjustment to the palette, bringing more reds and purples into the background. My typical process is: bring all elements up to the next level of detail in Painter > switch to Photoshop for big adjustments to color, value, and position of elements > back to Painter > repeat.

Lastly I lowered the entire background for what I felt was a stronger compositional relationship with the foreground elements, I lightened up the background behind the figure to make him stand out a bit more, and lightened the coat to allow the background to breathe into it a bit more, vs. having the whole foreground reading as sort of a big black blob.

With traditional media you really do need to do a lot of planning up front, because certain changes are really, really costly down the road. But with digital tools you can really work the whole, meaning you can make all manner of adjustments and changes at any stage of the process. For me it's not just that I can make these changes at a stage that might be considered late in traditional media processes, but it's actually more appropriate to do them once much of the image has been rendered, so I have some good tools to work with when it comes to making the big decisions.

Snow White and Rose Red - process

Here's a walk through of my process for creating my picture, Snow White and Rose Red. The piece was also featured in Spectrum a few years back.

Here's a detail of Red:

THUMBNAILS
You know the drill... just get your ideas down. Don't question them at this stage, just get them down and assess later. If one starts grabbing you, though, make sure to follow that lead.

It can be tough trying to turn that dreamlike image you get in your head into a tangible, viable real world space, while also retaining all its magic and abstract "oomph" - that is the challenge of realistic painting!

...starting to see an idea here... maybe if I have Snow White offset from the fire, against a dark background, with Rose Red darker, against the fire...

The basic value structure is starting to work, but I don't love the centered, one point perspective view.

This is more like it...

 Here's the value study...

And some quick color ideas, and the rough is done!

Before I get to work painting the final image, though, I need to really absorb my subject. I don't do a tight pencil drawing to guide (I say LIMIT) my painting. Instead, I do a lot of different drawings to get to know my subject, using real life, photos, imagination - anything - as a source. Here is me getting to know bears:

And kids...

And bears and kids...

and mom...

and sheep...

 

and stuff...

I've included all these so you can see that this stage of the process is more about training, which in turn is about quantity (time spent), not quality.

Here we go painting... where to begin? Doesn't really matter... I know some artists start on the focal point, others mix it up a bit. I tend to loosen up by working on non-focal areas, then sort of sneak up on the focal area and take it by surprise!  But I do generally work the WHOLE picture at once. Stapleton Kearns reckoned this something like herding all the sheep into the pen - you don't bring ONE to the pen, then go back for the next, then bring it into the pen, then go back for the third etc. - no, you corral them all at once, moving more slowly but bringing the whole herd along together. That's my approach.

 Starting to see some form and light here...

Continuing to add detail... like a photo coming into focus...

More detail... (I really need to do some videos of this process, I know)

 

Now adding a lot of stuff on the walls - this is where all those studies come in handy. No shortage of ideas, and all I need to think about now is where they fit...

 

So here's where artists that are just learning get upset with step by step demos("just keep adding details and refining and voila!") - they're like, "you make it seem so easy!! I never know what to do next!!" 

The truth is, I often don't either. I think Jason Manley once said, "think more, paint less" (could've been someone else, if so, apologies to you both). Anyway, believe me, I usually do not have a completely clear "vision" for the painting in terms of specific details - more like a specific feeling that I am roughly aiming for. Then I just follow the bread crumbs.

Making sure to maintain my simple value structure as I refine and add detail... all art is abstract - THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT ART!

This painting has a lot going on, but it's actually a very, very simple composition - basically just two values - a big dark area with a light spot in the middle. It's usually pretty straightforward to have large areas of the image kind of melt into darkness - but this is not always the obvious thing to do with light areas.

Check out the fireplace. Next time you're looking at a real fire in a real fireplace, you'll note that there are actually lots of darks in there, even if the fire is burning brightly. But if I did that here, say, brought some darks into the kettle and such, the fireplace would pop out like a yellow and black striped caution sign (they paint those things that way for a reason). The compression of the value range and overall monochromatic treatment of the fireplace interior is not just to give it a feeling of glowing warmth, it's also to create a flatter foil for the figures silhouetted against it.

Harvey Dunn would say, "it's ok if Rose decides to raise her hand, so long as YOU do not decide to raise it for her..."

At some point the picture has kind of arrived, and it's tempting to stop. You've done enough, it's all there, nothing left to do... then I ask myself, "well, if I WERE to do a little more, what might I do? maybe a little work here... the bear's fur could use a little more love..." and before I know it I've brought the painting to another level that I did not really foresee. That is one of the "secrets." All this little stuff adds up. For some painters, given their particular process, there are points at which the painting looks ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE, and they may not even have a clear picture of what it needs to end up looking like. What they do have is confidence that if they just keep going it'll get where it needs to be.

Everything in the picture has to contribute to what you're trying to do, or it will undoubtedly work against it. You need to think about it all - color, value, lighting, mood, viewpoint, content, facial expression, body language, costumes, things, stuff - everything! For "stuff", I like to think about what these folks do when I'm not looking at them. How do they scurry up that ladder when they go to bed at night? What is just slightly "off camera" that we may not be seeing? What's in that jug on the shelf? What kinds of visitors come and hang their coats on that coat rack by the door? Who winds that clock? What do the girls do during the day - I know, they pick cherries - there's a basket of them under the ladder...

Some final adjustments, and we're done.

 

The thing that's great about 2d still art is it takes just a fraction of a second for us to get inside the viewer's head. 

DETAIL

Here's the same progression, focusing on Red. 

She starts life as a blob... ok two blobs (don't we all?)

Working those values, starting to define her edges

Painters go on and on about values - and no one listens to us!!!!!
Look at Red here - you can easily differentiate her arm from her body, and see that the shoulder on her dress is probably a white material... but squint down and look at it again - everything within her form melts into a single almost black shape. Values in painting are sooooo much more limited compared to real life you've got to "stay within the lines."  For Red, in this picture, that means using an extremely narrow range of values to depict the entire range of "local" colors in her, from white to dark red.

 Value control is not just about depicting reality - it's about focal point and contrast. Notice how much darker the fireplace interior is to the right of Red's head vs. the left side, where it's in front of her face. I don't want that triangle of light behind her head to draw your attention... but I also of course staged the picture so the brightest part of the fire is where I want it - behind her face (I'm so clever).

Changing pose and costume at the last minute...

 

Here's a detail shot of the mantle. Red is more active and wild - she likes to catch butterflies, so there's a jar of butterflies above her. Snow likes to read, so there's a stack of books above her.

At one point in the story the girls are rescuing a dwarf whose beard has gotten stick in the split of a log. Snow whips out a little pair of scissors and cuts the beard, freeing him. There they are...

I hope this little walk through the making of Snow White and Rose Red has been helpful (and apologies for the delays in posting).