Sunday, November 16, 2014

My Monday Evening-Digital Painting with Tim Jessell

It's free. 
May learn something.
I like his work.

Commission rough. Going to stylize it along the lines of Shane Glines style.

9 comments:

Davis Chino said...

Elz--did you do this giant eagle in the snow painting?? That's pretty good for one night's work!

The bottom image is great--a commission?? Love it. If you want the Glines-y look, maybe use this as a guide and redraw it focusing on flow?? I do that all the time. With these girls I've been doing lately, I redraw them over and over in an attempt to find a nice flow with good proportions and contrasts...I will make some sketches, decide on the pose, redraw it a little cleaner, scan it, fine-tune it in the computer, then print a very faint version that I will then draw over once again for something closer to a final...and I might do the scan/refine/print/redraw a time or two more (I got stacks of iterations next to my desk!). Then I do my colored final--tho' I almost always rework the main female figure once I scan the final into the computer (I just can't get those girls right!).

Which is not to toot my own horn (the opposite--it takes me a lot of passes to get my proportions halfway correct, and to get my flow and balance working), it's just to say drawing those types of girls is hard!!

MrGoodson2 said...

This is like the Harvey Kutrzman lecture I went to back in the 80s. When I learned that Little Annie Fanny took about 16 different "re-dos" of tracing to arrive at the final.

Thanks for sharing that process Marty.

Tom Moon said...

Supergirl in pink? Is that how she dresses now? Love the Shane Glines-y stylization you have in it already Ellis.

How interesting that that is your working process Marty. You see, I've often looked at your drawings and, envying the look of confidence and flow in the line, thought to myself, "If I were to print out a faint copy of my drawing and draw boldly over it, I could fake having that ability to a certain degree."

For whatever reason, I have, in the end, decided not to do that extra step. But come to find out that you do that very thing. Interesting!

A while back I was looking at some of Rembrandt's quick ink sketches and was thinking, "How great to have such a sure hand."

Tom Moon said...

Kind of a cool demonstration of Tim Jessel's technique on his web site:
http://www.timjessell.com/process/index.html

MrGoodson2 said...

His lecture just about came off the rails because of using his portable lap top. Not having brush presets he was used to. But it was all good. I'm going to send him a few emails.

Big take away- The livelihood of the commercial illustrator has flipped.

Used to be
1. Advertising
2. Editorial
3> Publishing

Now Publishing is probably the best thing for the artist to get right.

Advertising is all about everything but illustration. Even storyboards are comped up from photos.

Editorial I guess stays in the middle but it's as dead as newspapers and magazines.

Leaving you to do that Adventure novel you've always meant to illustrate.

MrGoodson2 said...

Coincidentally, I posted the gryphon piece to the blog, and that happened to be the piece he used in his demo with all the problems with glitched presets.
That process animated GIF or swf is exactly what he was showing. He tones the canvas like what he would do if he was still painting traditionally. The drawing is on top and he multiplies it. Lots of stuff instantly recognizable to good game texture artists how to get noise and texture layers to work without being too photoshop.

His big hero is N C Wyeth.

Davis Chino said...

Very cool and interesting, Elz....And Tommy, you should totally print out a faint version of yr drawing and go over the top of it!!

Of course it depends what you're going after...I'm trying to catch that organic flow and anatomical believability. But I love how a Tom Moon character manages to simultaneously embody the two opposing poles of figure drawing, namely, unstudied urgency and cool calculation. It captures some of what's best about "primitive" art, but without the self-consciousness of most (or nearly all) that's done these days. Like Fletcher Hanks, but without trying to ape Fletcher Hanks.

Really I'm saying you've got a style that doesn't fall into the tar-pit of announcing itself as a "STYLE" in bold letters. It's authentic.

Elliz, post an update of this Supergirl!

MrGoodson2 said...

I'll be working on the Super girl today. The fellow I'm doing it for calls her a friend. I have no idea how intimate the relationship is. So I'd better run roughs by him. See how comfortable he is if I make perky breast and sexy posing. Kinda what I had in mind, hence the Shane Glines notion.

Extra info on the Jessell demo.

Big thing as an illustrator is going to print with CMYK being in the bag. So he has a palette that is totally cmyk gamut happy. I'll ask hime for it. He encouraged us to do that. I'll share it here. That entire Gryphon ( I thought it was an eagle too- note the really low focus lion legs partially obscured at the back) is CMYK compatible. He did the photoshop out of gamut process on the painting while he had painted into it with an illegal color- only the new color got the alarm.

Also- probably a must have for everyone that wants their art going to print looking like what you have on the monitor.

i1 monitor calibration hardware


I may have to have that if I get at all serious about digital painting.

MrGoodson2 said...

The monitor calibration hardware. The point of it isn't color- it's getting the gray right. Makes sense.