Interiors Workshop

This week i am taking a one-week intensive workshop painting Interiors with Peter Van Dyke at school. I needed an extra painting credit and I had hear a lot of good things about this class from fellow students so i decided to sign up. So far its been quite enjoyable and I did this little painting. It's basically done except for maybe a few touches and then I'll move onto another painting tomorrow. The class runs till Saturday and when I'm done I'll go into more detail about the class and Peter's thoughts on painting.

1 Million Hits!

I just noted that I passed my millionth hit on my blog sometime this week...wow!! I know many site, like porn and news sites do that in a day probably--but my little blog is all grown up now. hurray for me!

Low Tide Delaware River

Yesterday the Dirty Palette Club had our second weekly meeting of the summer at a nice park along the Delaware River in Philly. This time it was just me and the gals as the other male members were busy or away. It was a nice day, hot, but I found a great spot under a nice tree and got to relax the old mental muscle from the stress of the weekly commercial grind in my studio.

I picked up a few landscape proportioned panels at the last sale at Dick Blick and tried out one of them. I packed a pic-nic lunch and just enjoyed painting as the tide rolled out and the ships rolled past.

Now its back into the studio for another long weeks drawing session. This is 10 x 20 in oil.

27th Street Park Plien Air

Thursday I went out and spent a few hours in a local park with the Dirty Palette Club to kick off our summer painting session. It was really a wonderful day full of that silvery philadelphia light. this was a great little park on 27th street , the Markward Recreation Center. There was a lot of great views but you know the time is a wasting when you paint out doors so you need to get to work quick. I looked about and found a view I felt with good depth and contrast and where the shadows would work to make an interesting contrast and shape and went at it.

I had an old canvas that somebody left at school and had pre-primed which still left it chunky in spots, which added an extra sense of texture in spots which I think worked. I loaded a bunch more pictures up over on the official Dirty Palette Blog

Here is my rough into set the composition.

It was great to de-stress from all the commercial work for a few hours to release the brain drain of the past few weeks. I look forward to going back to this spot and doing a lot more painting in general in a few weeks when the commercial work slows a bit.

JUDGE PARKER PROCESS

Here is this week's Sunday strip and the rough for it. I ended up changing the first panel to get a wider shot of the room for the set-up. I do my roughs small then blow them up on my copy machine and draw the final page on my lightbox, using the enlarged layout underneath. I'm constantly adjusting things as I do my pencils and pencil only tight enough to get the drawing where i need it to go to ink.
This week's strip have a nice opportunity to do a cool long shot in the last panel, and get some blacks spotted to make it more dynamic.

Semester Done!

The final class drawing in Sidney Goodman's class, Sidney loves these crazy set-ups!


Cue Alice Cooper--Schools out!

My second year as a student in the Certificate Program at The Pennsylvania Academy has finally come to an end. I am now halfway through my journey to my certificate degree and then my next step to my MFA.

It feels great to be done, really, I couldn't wait for it to be done so I can move into my painting studio in preparation to my third year--and a summer full of painting. Looking back at this year I feel both proud and a sense of urgency, the desire to push on and over the next hill and mountain. I feel I grew a lot as a painter this year and I am hungry, famished to dig into this summer and paint as much as possible--too re-apply myself to the series of paintings like the commuter paintings and the Super-sad paintings as well as new ideas.
The final one shot drawing in Al Gury's class, about an hours work.

I feel I still need to work on my observational skills and to get better at drawing in service of the ideals of form and light. Also during the year you have to juggle so much else while a sudent/professional artist/ and teacher i ned to catch my breath a bit. I was happiest with the last big pastel drawing and really want to keep at that over the summer as I think its a great but very demanding medium. One thing I will not miss is drawing from teachers set-ups or hauling all my shit around with only what at times seemed the smallest locker in the world for storage. I enjoy all of my classes to a degree, and my teachers are swell, but I just want to do my own ideas now--the idea of drawing another person on a box just makes my teeth grind.

Overall the semester was really a big save for me, it started out with the real possibility of me not even being able to get back after the meltdown of a commercial project--the Martian Comic, which really tossed a hand grenade into my life, but through family and friends I was really able to get past maybe the darkest financial part of my adult life. The classes I really wanted didn't happens but I made the best of it.

I think the school is going through a big change as well with the BFA program, and not all to the good which is unfortunate, but my job is to keep focused and drain every drop I can get out of my time there.

My friends, my DPC crew also make my experience there fantastic and I think without them it would have been really, really tough in spots, having a great group of motivated-like-minded artists and friends is essential I think-, not just in school, but in life.

So with the sun setting on year year two and the new moon about to rise i look forward to mooning everybody in my third year!

week 15 Done!

Wekk that's it, all she wrote, next week is crit week, which means maybe we draw a bit and have an hour crit in each class--but the spring sememster is really done. While many friends in the BFA nash, moan and tearr at themselves getting ready for the ASE, i can look forward to a few brews and a BBQ.

These are the last two pieces I've been working on this semester and I am basically finished with the painting but have one more class to "pick-at-it". The pastel, which I am calling "sleepers' was finished yesterday, I stayed after class to finish up the skeleton. Monday is the day we drop off our paintings and drawings for Spring prizes at the school. I have many pieces I will be entering this year from my last several months of drawing and painting and who knows, one might even make it in--though I don't hold my breath over these things as it all depends on who judges what.

This semester was frankly a bit mixed bag for me at school. Due to a financial crisis I ended up taking less classes than intended, but I think what that did was allow me to concentrate more on each piece of work as I had no liberal arts classes to take. I also feel I was able to build on what I started last summer but doing the plein-air and commuter paintings as well as the Super Sad paintings. In short, I feel I could focus more on what I wanted to bring to the canvas and not feel like I was serving the teacher or assignment--I reversed that i think to make it all serve me--which is as it should be. For the first time in my life I will also be renting a studio for just painting and separating my work spaces--and head spaces. I'll be renting a group studio with friends at school, my Dirty Palette amigos and amiga.

I can safely say I am so gaoddamed ready to be in my third year and my studio doing what I really want as a painter and look forward to the summer to spin it up and get my "paint on".

Susan MacDowell Eakins--final

Here is the final painting--or I should say the state of the painting as I left it when the clock signaled the end if the session and the two-day competition.

Congrats to the winners. It was a mad rush it seemed but thems the breaks at the end. We got free pizza as the judges Carolyn Pyfrom and Peter Van Dyke went in and choose the winners and honorable mentions. It was fun and I don't really dig what i did in the end as much, but it's way better than my painting last year. I should have changed things up more, maybe been less literal as my spot didn't have the best view of elements in the background---but I'll do this next year for sure.

Susan MacDowell Eakins

Here is a slightly doctored pic from my cell phone of the first pass of my painting during the two-day Susan MacDowell Eakins painting contest I'm in this weekend at school. We have two models and two rooms with 15 painters in each room who paint the model from a position chosen by lottery.

I'll post more tomorrow including the winner...

Week 13 Done!

Two weeks left till we roll out to the summer hours and I can't wait. As much as I enjoy being in school I am soooooo looking forward to this summer and not being on as much of a grind.

I'm posting my second pass at the large pastel drawing I have going on in Life Drawing and a quicker, one session drawing from life drawing with Sidney Goodman this morning. I was much happier with this quicker study done in pastel on Ingres paper.

It seems this semester I had a lot more male models than any previous semester which was a different challenge in some aspects.i think the male models were less graceful that the females and this makes doing an interesting drawing a bit more of a challenge at times. I'd want more dynamic poses than dudes standing or sitting.

I plan on working more from private models this summer and trying some more interesting poses.

More Parker Progress

I thought I would upload some more process on the Judge Parker strip. This is the Sunday from the this past week. below you can see my inks and then the pencils. I am using a lot of brush on this and seeing the strips in print, and how dismally small they are has caused me to boost up line weights in upcoming weeks strips. Things really close up and get lost in the repro in the papers, but look so much better on-line.

Here are my pencils for the Sunday, if I can find my rough I'll post that as well. I'm working into the June strips now trying to build up more time and feeling more at home with the characters as the weeks roll on.

Week 12 Done!

Week 12 draws to a close here for the Spring semester and everybody is anxious for the end which tastes soooo close now. Our minds are also turning to the annual Spring Prizes at the school which allow students from all levels to compete for prizes in all areas of study, some include a nice amount of $$ as well.

The drawing above of John is the last pose for my drawing class with Al Gury. I'll have three more sessions, including the last day of class to continue to work on it, Its 24 x 30 on Rives BFK in pastel.

Week 12 Spring 2010

This week all 3rd year students had to put in one drawing and two oil paintings in application for their studio, along with a written request explaining what type of studio you'd like and why. The drawing above was done in Al Gury's Life Drawing class that I have on Thursday and it was the drawing I submitted along with the painting of my friend Alina and one of my Super Sad paintings.The drawing above is in charcoal on Rives BFK.

In my Escroche class we are slowly working our way along the figure week by week. I doubt we'll get a chance to even really begin to finish the figure but I will try and finish it up over the summer.
This painting I am moving along pretty fast on, I think I might be finished with it in the next week or so and then I might have some time to do another quick one before the class ends.

Week 11 Spring 2010

the great little portrait of me was done this morning by Al Gury, the head of the painting dept at PAFA. I sat for Al's portrait class so he could do a demo for the first year students. Al is great at being able to do these fast-fun and juicy little portraits. And he was kind enough to give it to me as a gift!
Here is another step in the painting I had going on in Al's life painting, I'll get a chance to finish this up soon.
This is the last painting we have going in Al's life painting class, I have 3 many 4 more weeks on this so i'll likely finish it up and even start another one. This is on an oil primes surface over an old painting which somebody abandoned and I sanded it down and covered it with oil primer so the surface has a slickness but lots of texture which is interesting. Monday is the studio evaluation for our fall studios, i have my two paintings and a drawing picked out and already filled out and dropped off my application. I will be happy the semester is over so I can get into my new studio at school over the summer and do lots of painting.

More Parker Progress

I thought I'd share some more of my working process on Judge parker for some of the dailies that are out this week. Above is my pencils for the Monday and Tuesday strips running this week which features the return of Neddy and the introduction of her French boyfriend, Jules. This was a big weeks as Neddy has been off in Europe and out of the strip for a while. So I get to basically re-establish her in the strip, which is nice.

You can see where I hand write in the script to place the word balloons, which at this point I was still doing by hand, I have now moved to doing them in photoshop, which makes it easier. I would prefer the whole thing done by hand, but I don't have a letterer on staff and it saves a lot of time to do them in photoshop--and time is of the essence as I am still close to King's deadlines on the strip. With my busy schedule now, school, etc., plus the strip--every hour counts--I might even get to use it to sleep. Woody Wilson, the writer wanted Neddy dressed in a sexy little black number, to show she's grown up a bit since she 'went away".




Here are the two dailies inked up and I added some zip as well. Upon seeing the strips printed I am not sure if I'll keep adding zip as the strip is now often printed so small I don't know if it really looks good. every week I feel I get a little looser and the strip is a little more my own take, I "Feel" the characters more, they become actors in my mind, not just drawings or symbols.

I wish the strips were run bigger and I wish I could work bigger as well, but I need to keep things able to fit on my scanner and with the size of the strips being run today drawing more into them would make it much harder to read and reproduce well. Luckily all my years in storyboards helped me work smaller.

Week 10 Spring 2010 --4 weeks to go!

I thought I'd post a few things that are done and are being worked on at school.

This is a painting underway or rather was underway in my Life Painting class. I have some pics of the models so I can still work on it. I have taken it further than I have here.
This is a drawing I've been working on in my Life Drawing class, I posted an earlier version of it, I still have a ways to go with it. There are just 4 short weeks left now till school is out for the summer break, and one crit week, which really means there is not much going on for me, though all the 3rd and 4th year students as well as the 2nd year MFA students will be stressed for their wall in the ASE (Annual Student Exhibition). next year this time I'll get to show my work and have my wall. I look forward to it.

JUDGE PARKER PROCESS

I thought I'd cover my process for some of the Judge parker strip starting with the Sunday for 3/28 this past Sunday's strip. Above is my rough layout for the strip, i did it pretty loose and quick and then took a marker and tightened it up a bit. This was a hit the ground running type of situation as I was still in the "fill-in" category and I had to try and back-search the JP archive to find ref for Abbey's house, the kitchen, etc. It wasn't easy on short notice. I've since gotten a whole bunch of ref that will make this easier in the future. next step i blew this up on my copy machine and then took my lightbox out and transfered the layout to the final strip size. I tightened the pencils up, and then went straight to inks, which you can see below.
I was trying here to keep the style closer to Barreto and used a lot of brush to keep it bold and add little accents with the brush. the hardest things was trying to create in my mind a real stage for the characters when I only had slivers of what that space looks like. I really like to have a complete stage for my characters to act on and that gets cut on a strip pretty easy to to the fact that they are reproduced so small now. I inked using mostly a #4 sable and a hunt 108 pen nib, and i was using some Dick Blick Black Cat ink I bought. Its good for the pen but a little think for the brush as I like the ink to be a little denser for the brush.
Here is the final colored strip. I put the lettering on in photoshop as well. I would prefer the lettering to be on the original but that really isn't possible for right now and I guess it's my "old school" esthetics showing through as I like it to be on the original. King Features gave me a coloring guideline to follow technically but other than coloring so that no combination of colors over-saturates more than 160% I am pretty good.I felt a little better on this strip and it was the first time I got to draw Abbey which I know many people were looking to see how I'd handle her. I was think very much of leonard Starr and John Romita on this strip, both artists were fantastic at this type of strip and work. I recently ordered a bunch of the reprints of On Stage which reprints the first several years of the strip--amazing, amazing stuff. I think Starr is one of the most underrated classic strip artists, I wonder if its because most think of On Stage as a melodrama and not an action strip?

ROBIN HOOD King of Sherwood

I am now free to cover the process of my painting of the Robin Hood book cover I recently finished for Airship 27 publishing. I had to hold off talking about doing this painting until the publisher had the book for sale, and you can order a copy if it here.

When Ron Fortier, the editor asked me about doing a cover for their new book on a young Robin Hood I said--heck yah! This was to be a updated version, a younger Robin, not the Errol Flynn version, which is a favorite of mine. I'm also a huge fan of NC Wyeth's paintings from his adaption of the hero and his work was a big inspiration for this.

The first thing I did was to do up a sketch and then get my friend Will to come over and model for me. I shot a lot of picks and then settles on a few and went to work on a tighter sketch which you can see below.

I used the photos in what I feel was the best way possible, to get the anatomical and lighting info, but I didn't want to be a slave to them either and have the drawing go lifeless. I just bought the new book on Normal Rockwell and his use of Photos, Rockwell Behind the Camera, and you can really see how much Rockwell altered the photos to his needs--so I was keeping this in my mind the whole time.

Here are a few photos of Will that took, Will even had a cool costume and props to use which really helped.


Next I bought some Cresent Illustration Board and gave it 4 coats of gesso on each side to prevent warping. Then I blew up my skecth on my copy machine and taped it together, flipped it over and using a 6B pencil coated the back. I wanted to do this piece fairly large, 20 x 30 approx. Using a harder pencil I taped the copt to the board and transfered the drawing onto the illustration board.


Then I set about painting away, refering to my pictures of Will and some pics i found on the web use as a guide toe Sherwood Forest. Even though I used the pictures I would say I mostly painted this from imagination, I changed many thinsg to get the "feel" I wanted. The tree and background are made up-- did have some pics, but i used them mostly to suggest details and textures--the main thing is I didn't want to loose the energy of my sketch.
This pic I snapped with my iphone right after I started, you can see the drawing that was traced down.
Here is the painting after one long evenings work, I was really moving fast and I have to say-having lots of fun. The only medium I was using was odorless terps, and just a little 50/50 liquid fine detail and linseed in a few spots in my second sitting, for the hands, etc. My thinking was to also pull the foreground forward and then soften everything as it went back, trying to keep the areas of biggest contrast and detail with the center of interest. All of the plein air painting I've been doing recently has really helped here I think in keeping the painting 'fresh".

Here a closer shot of the painting after the first day's work.
In the end the painting took one long evening and the next day, morning into the afternoon, so maybe 12 -14 hours tops. This is the first full illustration in oil I've done in a long time as I mostly just do pen and ink, but I hope to do a lot more of these as it was great fun and a challenge.

Week 8 Spring 2010 and other things

Last night was the annual Draw-A-Thon at school. Its the annual student run-all night, drawing and painting marathon. The school provides us with several models for each studio and the students set up and run the poses and then the school provides lots of free pizza, coffee and drinks. The poses last from 3-6 hours. My buddy dave and I monitored and ran one of the sessions and this is the painting that resulted from it. This was about 4 1/2 hours of painting time. I think we had the best pose and lighting set up of any of the sessions running. the way we figured it is why make the set-up the same as our daily classes, so we made this fun little narrative of a death figure and her thrall of victim. Everybody seemed to have a great time and liked the pose.
After when we broke down the pose there were a few other poses running, but they were not interesting to me so we DPC members too turns posing for each other to do quickie portraits, this portrait of my friend Lexi, is maybe 90 minutes or so.
This is a quickie one session drawing from my class with Sidney Goodman this week. I've been loving drawing on Rives BFK with charcoal, its a lot better surface to draw on than regular charcoal paper. Sidney seems to change his mind every week, he says we'll have a 2 week pose but then the next week he sets up a new one, so far the models have mostly been draped. the semester is into its final decent and spring is upon us and the tempo at school picks up in anticipation of the ASE and final critiques.

On top of all of this I keep churning away on old Judge Parker, I'm starting my 7th week on the strip as well as keeping on with the TRON project for Disney. Sleep was at a premium this week, but next week things should settle down a bit.

Week 7 Spring 2010 and other things

Well we are flying past the halfway point in the semester into the final decent to summer break. I am probably looking forward to that more this year than last. I have soooo much I need to do over the summer before the fall semester starts and I enter my 3rd year at PAFA and my teaching might start again at Uarts. I will have the summer packed to the gills with painting and drawing and of course my weekly dose of Judge Parker. The blog has been light lately due to the fact that a lot of what I'm working on I from am not at liberty to show yet. I'm working on some Tron material for Disney, a few comic jobs, Judge Parker and the recently finished painting for Robin Hood Kind of Sherwood for Cornerstone Books.

I'll be able to post the painting and my process in the next week or so once the book is for sale. People always ask me how I do so much work, well there is no real trick to it except to just sit and work 16-18 hours a day some days, some days even more. I had a few 2-3 hours of sleep days last week, its the nature of the beast and freelancing. the nature of the world today also forces you to really overbook yourself as counting on any one source for work is a pretty bad business model-and I got stung last year pretty bad on a project that threw my whole financial world in a tizzy, It was really the first time in my career I had something this bad happen and thanks to family and friends I was able to get through the stormy financial winter well.

The other factor is I've always cross trained in my career, i've always had a broad interest in art and cartooning, etc. I think the fact I do and that I also like to try and do everything I can has really helped me be a more versatile artist, not only stylistically--but mentally. There are some great artists out there, but you run a big risk in my book if you are really only good at one thing. If that one thing pays super-well, enough that if it went awy you'd be fine--ok, but also I think that is a quick way to stagnation.

I'm working on the 6th and 7th weeks of Judge Parker, and each week I feel like I'm getting more in sync with what I want to do. I'm still dickering around with lettering and now that I'm getting proofs back from the syndicate I will be making certain adjustments--but one really is always doing that to some degree. So far feedback has been good on what I've done on the first week, which is not my best work on the strip--that was like a cold start in winter on a car I'd never driven. If it was, say, Spider-man, or Corrigan I know those characters well so it would be a very familiar assignment. Again, this is the nature of being a freelance artist and needing to have the best drawing skills and to keep working on them all the time as they will serve you well on those cold starts and unfamiliar worlds.

And So It Begins

Today officially begins my run as the new artist on Judge Parker, here is my first strip. I'm trying to build several weeks ahead on the schedule now. The writer Woody Wilson, editor Brendan Burford and the entire King-Hearst staff been so helpful and welcoming to me in these first hectic weeks and my best wishes go out to Edwardo for his recovery and health, he set a high water mark on the strip, really revitalizing it visually.

I know many people are anxious to see what I'll do on the strip, me too! As the weeks have passed I feel more and more confident and comfortable with the cast, pace and style--and look forward myself to what I hope will be a nice long run.

****UPDATE*** There is a nice interview with me in the Washington Post's Comic Riffss column about taking over the strip.

Week 6 Spring 2010--Final ( Spring Break)

Here is where I stopped with the drawing from Al Gury's figure drawing class and so ends my 6th week of the semester. This is charcoal on rives BFK paper. i had never tried charcoal on the Rives before, just pastel--and I really liked it. I think I'm going to explore drawing a lot more with charcoal on it and I wish I had another 2-3 poses to work on this drawing--but alas, this is what always happens in school, you just never get the time you'd like to finish something. It's really like doing drills. But I guess doing many more starts leads to hopefully in the long run better finishes.

Next week, or rather starting today is my Spring Break, unfortunately I won't have time to show off my beach body next week as I'll have my ass firmly planted in the studio chair between the Judge Parker strips and the other freelance I have going. But I love the word SPRING very much this year as this has really been a tough winter here in Philly. I don't know if I am suffering a little SADS or not, but Goddamn I can't wait till 70 degree weather!!

I'm working on week 4 of Judge Parker right now and I feel I'm getting more and more confident each weeks worth of strips, last week went the smoothest and I'm sorta' anxious for people to see them, and that's only a week away from next Monday.

WEEK 6 Spring 2010

Well most of the snow has melted and the raging deadlines are raging less, though my freelance plate is of course still full these days--but I am back in school this week on my regular schedule. I had to back track in my sculpture class and rebuild the pelvis from scratch this week, as last week it fell apart as I was trying to adjust it. So I tore it off and put it away and this week went back to work on it. I'll have to do some double duty one day next week to try and catch up.


This is the oil-on-paper study I did in my life painting class, next week I'll jump right in on the big painting--but as we only have two weeks left on this pose I think I'll go smaller than the last painting.