It's been a while, but hey, I'm back!

I just picked up on this piece, lastly known as Together, though that may change again  :-)

I started work with a fresh eye and I'm eager to continue. It feels like my brain continued to develop my drawing skill without the need to actually practice. Didn't I hear that your piano skills can improve that way too?

Anyway, it's almost like I'm having more success in controlling my color application on this sanded paper now. Who knows, maybe I'm delusional, but it feels good. Here is the progress shot.

I'm thinking I'll call this Sam and Dean portrait  "Together" instead of "Follow Me". I'm thinking I shouldn't name a piece until I finish it.

I've been slowly building up the color on Dean's face. I finally got close to the intensity that I wanted to see in the third picture.  In the close up, you can also see that the color looks smoother. I was able to find a little more information on how to use a brush to blend the colors on this sanded surface.

I remember first hearing about using a brush to blend colored pencils from a Linda Lucas Hardy workshop I attended. She had developed a method called painting with a dry medium and gave workshops to teach the technique, though unfortunately it was not the workshop I took. Still she talked a bit about it and gave me some ideas.

I found some more pointers on her blog about the type of brush to use, mainly small, flat, inexpensive, hog bristle brushes trimmed down to 1/4 to 1/2 inch lengths. I bought myself some more brushes and tried it out. It worked great.

I had been using some round stencil brushes on the previous portrait I did, which was of Dean on Colourfix paper. I was able to get some good darks with the stencil brushes, but I think you get much better control with the small, flat (or "bright" ) style brushes. I found that you can really blend the colors together for a smooth, rich, more painterly look. Brush in hand, it does almost feel like you are really painting.

I started layering colors on Dean's face last Saturday. I'm going at it slowly and probably being way too tentative, but I'm not sure how to work the layers yet. I do know that there has to be enough colors deposited on the paper before you can blend with added layers, with brushes or with your fingers.

The part of Dean's face I started on is not really a good place to test this out because I want it to remain as one of the lightest spots in the whole piece. I really can't add too many other colors into the mix apart from the pale pinks, yellows and creams here.

As a side note, I found a great new color to use in the highlights for skin tones. The color is Buff Titanium from a trial batch of Caran d'ache Luminance pencils I bought a few weeks ago. I had been using white to try to blend into the pinks and yellows to get bright skin tones, but the white just made the color too cool. That's fine if the effect you want is silvery or cool light, but for a warmer bright like the one I want for this piece, it just wasn't working.

I want the colors in this portrait to be as if the figures were in bright daylight, the skin tones tan and maybe a bit golden. Titanium buff is an off white ivory color, warmer than stark white, but not as yellow as the Prismacolor cream color.



I have a whole lot of Buff Titanium on the right side of Dean's face now, which did blend nicely with the underlying colors. Of course from a distance, it looks just like the color of the paper. :-)

In the close-up you can appreciate the blended color a little better.




In the next shot, I have layered a little more color into the shadow areas of Dean's face, added darker colors in the bit of background on the right and also put some color in his hair. I probably should have done this before and not got so caught up working the brights on his face.

Applying colors to the surrounding areas gives you a better idea of how everything is going to work together eventually.  I realized I needed to see some of the dark areas to judge the lights better. Now that I think of it, I'm sure I stumbled to this conclusion previously, but it must not have impressed itself sufficiently on my brain. Hopefully it will take better now.




It was hard to tear myself away from working on Deans features, especially his nose and lips. I would be trying to work on the shadows when before I knew it I would be back to tweaking his top lip or eyelid.  I indulged myself a bit more by seeing if I could put a few freckles  on his nose before firmly turning my attention to other areas.



I did some more on the weekend, but I will write about it in another post.

I thought I would write a little about how I take pictures of my artwork for use in making my own prints. None of this is very profound, just some practical tips gathered from my own experiences and experiments. If this is of interest to you please read on.

( behind the cut )

Busy, busy, busy. With work and with some new projects! I recently ordered a new type of sanded paper called Fisher 400. I heard some good things about it and decided to try it out.

I received two 20 x 28 and two 14x 20 sheets a couple of weeks ago and  started two large new drawings, one in pastel and another in colored pencil. Having dabbled in both mediums now on this paper I have to agree that it is quite wonderful.

The pastel is a non Supernatural piece, so I will just talk about the colored pencil piece here, which is a Sam and Dean drawing which I 'm calling "Follow Me". I worked out this sketch over the weekend.



The Fisher 400 paper looks just like a fine gauge sandpaper, though it is manufactured solely as art paper. I had to order it from England, since the artist who created it does not have any US distributors yet. I sure hope that it becomes available more locally soon.

I discovered that this paper is translucent enough to allow me to use my light box to transfer the sketch to it. This is good news because I already had the dubious pleasure of copying a sketch on to this paper using transfer paper. It was a pain. Here I am working away at it.



It took me a few hours to finish transferring all the little lines, but I've learned patience. The more details you capture the easier it is later to draw later.


Here is a bad picture of the transferred drawing. I have to get a better set up next time. My daylight source was off to one side and when I tried to add light with my fluorescent drawing table lamp, it just added another color cast, which I was unable to remove.




Still it gives a good idea of how it looked. I used a couple of different colored pencil to transfer the lines, blue ones for the clouds, some grey for part of Deans shirt, white for the circle around the figures and a brownish ochre for all the rest. Mostly it was just experimenting. I also varied the pressure. I think the right side is probably a little too faint, though I finished off at a pretty good line thickness on the left.

I almost forgot to take a picture at this stage.That is why Dean's face actually shows some shadowing which I had started to block in. Fortunately I still captured the mostly un-worked line drawing.

All the brainstorming for the composition, drawing the sketch and getting it transferred took most of my weekend. I finally got it to to the point of starting to draw this evening, and I was able to get this far.



I got a better picture this time, though it is still shadowed on the right.

I think this paper is going to hook me completely. It takes color incredibly well. I have barely gotten started but I can tell I will be able to layer lots and lots of color on it.

I'm also going to get hooked on working at this large size paper. The 20x28 inch size gives me such control over the drawing of details on the face. One thing though, this paper is going to eat my pencils by the bushel.

Here is a close up of my start.



The layering has just begun, but I couldn't resist  working his eye more,  to catch a glimpse of what this paper might yield.

Now a little on what was in my head when I came up with this new project. I wanted to do Sam and Dean together, but show a little of the challenges they are facing in their TV lives this season. I wanted a background that would reflect some of forces that are helping and hindering them. A little of heaven on the right and some touches of hell on the left.

Looking for inspiration I looked at countryside landscapes reference images and came across a picture of a beautiful valley and it just seemed to click in my mind. And a phrase from the 23rd Psalm came to mind:

Here a few photos from Sunday at the LA Supernatural Con. Since we weren't allowed to leave our seats during the panels, these zoom shots were the best I could do.

In this first picture, Jensen is having a laugh attack over a question for Jared. Someone asked if Jared had ever had pickles stuffed with fried rice and if he liked it. Jensen laughed so long and hard that tears came to his eyes.



Something else that amused Jensen to no end was looking at a copy of that picture roaming the internet of a shirtless Jared kissing a stuffed pheasant. I think he added a few years to his life that night with all the laughing.



The last picture is just after their joint panel came to an end and they are headed to the side banners to autograph them.




Enjoy!

I spent the day decompressing today. I felt pretty wrung out. Maybe because the two full days at the LA Supernatural Con offered some pretty intense highs, lots of entertainment punctuated by long waits and standing in long lines.  By Sunday evening we were feeling pretty wilted., but we hung in there until the photo op pictures were processed and set out for us to pick up at about 10:00 pm on Sunday night.  I certainly wasn't leaving until I had this picture in my hot little hands :-)



I finally have my Jared and Jensen picture, I've joined the Supernatural Photo Op club. I see these beautiful photos all around on personal fan sites, as icons, as Xmas cards, and now I have mine! I love it!

Yes, I left prints of my Dean and Sam artwork for them. We were not allowed to hand them over personally. At the autograph session, I had them sign prints for me. In the brief interaction at the autograph tables, Jensen signed his print and said "Very cool", Jared looked his over and called over his bodyguard(?) and showed him the print. He asked if  I had drawn it and I said yes. He said "You are very talented". I smiled and said thank you to both of them, I did not fall over dead, I did not lose my ability to speak, I actually accomplished what I wanted to do. I am very  happy.

I'm getting everything in order to get myself to the LA Supernatural Con this Friday. I don't want go crazy at the last moment of rushing out the door and forget something important. So I made a checklist:  camara, pictures for autographs, prints, tickets (don't forget the TICKETS!!), art portfolio... maybe, photo op ticket, fill the gas tank before Friday, silver markers, notebook, yadda, yadda...


Speaking of prints, I did the proofs on the art paper and got great results, finally! I have been trying to do something like this for years. It all finally came together, right camera, monitor, printer, paper and a better understanding of icc profiles :-)

Here is a look at my bulletin board when I was doing the proofs.



I'm excited!

I did a little more work on this piece, which I have decided to call Shadowed. I'm thinking of taking some of  the background and foreground really dark. I think I want to reflect on the outside some of what Sam might be feeling on the inside, dark and moody. It's definitely a 4th season portrait of Sam. 




I tried to define the light source some more, as if it were a single shaft of light hitting his face and left shoulder obliquely and then reflecting a bit off of his other shoulder.  I defined the shadows in his hair a bit more too. Not really a whole lot more progress but another  small step in the process. I'm trying to remember to take pictures more often.

I had fun this last weekend taking high resolution pictures of the Dean portrait so I could try the proofing for prints. It went well. Our newest camera is the Canon 5D Mark II. If 21 megapixels isn't enough for a good print, I don't what is. I played around with my monitor and printer profiles so I could do some soft proofing from within Photoshop. I did a few printed proofs and I'm thrilled to see that it is the best results I've ever had  for reproducing good detail and color. Now all I have to do is get the right paper. I ordered a pack of 13" x 19" Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper for the next phase of proofing.

It's a cold rainy morning in Los Angeles and since I have the good luck to be home today it seemed the perfect day for a little drawing in my warm and comfy art room. And I thought I 'd talk a little about a techniques I'm using on this Sam drawing.



I've darkened the shadows since the last post. I also warmed up the skin toned a bit. But mostly at this stage, I want to pass on something  I learned in an art class some years ago on how to easily get dark tones on this type of paper. As I mentioned  before, the paper is an 12 x 18  sheet of Canson mi-tienes. I'm not 100% positive but I'm pretty sure the color is Moonstone and I'm working on the smooth side which I much prefer over the textured side. 

The trick is to use graded grey toned art markers to put in varying dark shades before applying the colored pencil. This is what I did for the dark shadow behind his right shoulder.  I am using an assortment of warm grey colors in 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% intensities with the warm black color as the darkest tone.





These Prismacolor markers have two tips, one broad and one fine. The broad tip is the only one I use here since the idea is to lay down covering color in fairly large areas.




I started with the warm black in the lowest portion and then graduated to the lightest markers toward the top. The idea is to work quickly laying down the darker color and then using the next lighter color to blend the edges and continue laying color while the first application is not dry yet. This gets you a fairly smooth transition of color with no obvious banding. The good thing is that even if your application of color is not so even (like mine) you can totally smooth it out when you apply the colored pencil on top.

In the above picture I have already applied black pencil over the bottom area and evened out the color here. If I was really confident I could have gone through the whole image and made a grisaille rendering with the just the markers first, but that would mean I had to have a lot of things figured out already, like where exactly the light source is coming from and how dark the whole thing is going to get. For now I would rather do it bit by bit and try to figure things out as I go.

I haven't really used the markers on his face, just a few strokes here and there in the shadows of the hair. Again it's mostly because I'm not sure how dark I'm going to go on his face. One more thing to mention is that I'm using the warm greys and black here because the paper color is a warm grey tone so it's a good match. Prismacolor also has markers of graduated cool grey tones and a cool black that might match other paper tones better.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to many relaxing hours of working on this. One thing about working with colored pencil is that you can almost get this zen thing going once you're in the flow. With your favorite music playing in  the background, building up the color with your barely-there pencil strokes, not really dwelling on fact that you need to do about a million and one more before you finish. There is not really anything else  I'd rather be doing on a rainy Monday.

Here is a new distraction to keep me from finishing the Dean portrait . Not really, I'm just tired of Dean's face and needed a Sammy break. Actually Dean is almost done. I'm just working on adding a few more highlights to the million that are already on his jacket and then I'll be ready to sign it. Then I can put it in the closet and not look at it in six months. Just kidding, what I actually want to do is finish it and make prints in time for the LA Supernatural con next month. That way I can get one autographed and give some away to people who would like a copy.

But back to Sam. I was thinking it would be nice to try something on plain old canson paper and so started looking through my Sam photos for something to spark my imagination. I found a great close up shot of his face, very dark and moody and thought it would be great to try it on a darker toned paper.  I lined up some other reference photos and came up with digital collage of body parts and faces that allowed me to create the sketch for this.




It's coming out better than expected even though I broke one of my own rules by embarking on this project without having a good reference image for his face. The picture that captured my imagination is great, but unfortunately rather low res and missing some vital information like where exactly his right eye is situated and where the top of his head ends. But being forever optimistic I figured my own version could just reproduce those dark shadows and extrapolate (i.e., make a wild guess about) everything else.




I took another picture from my files that I liked for the body,.......






......... did some cutting and pasting in Photoshop, stretched and distorted things a bit and came up with my sketch.





You will quickly notice he does not have a right eye. My powers of extrapolation failed me. I was able to complete the head contour but every attempt to draw in an eye were pretty ghastly. I resolved to put in a big old dark shadow there.

The funny thing was when I started putting in the colors on the paper and working the shadows  I was able to get a much better feel for where the eye should be. I took my Sam reference and adjusted the levels down in Photoshop until I was at least able to discern some eye shaped blobs down deep in the bigger shadowy blob. This helped me feel my way to drawing in a more believable eye shape there. Who knows, if I am able to get the whole drawing as dark as I would like to, I may end up darkening the left eye out just like in the reference. But at least I now have the option to have a semi believable shadowy eye there in case I don't.





The paper is an 18 x 12  brownish grey toned Canson paper. Since it is 12 inches wide I was able to print my sketch directly onto the paper with my large format Epson printer. I printed the line drawing in draft mode, and with the opacity down to 30% in Photoshop. It gave me a line I could clearly see but that won't be too difficult to cover up with the colored pencils.

I have been working on Dean's jacket. Here are a few pictures that capture that progress, mostly filling in the right side, though I've been fiddling with the left side of the jacket too.

I applied  the first layer of color, brushing it into the paper with my stencil brush. I used indanthrone blue even though I remember using indigo for the first layers on the left side. Indanthrone is a slightly darker and cooler shade of blue than the indigo, but it was a conscious decision to start off a little darker on the right since this shoulder is more in shadow.



Unfortunately after rubbing the color into the paper with the stencil brush and and spreading it thin, it combined with the yellow background to end up looking pretty similar to the indigo shade. So much for starting off darker.

Stepping back at this point to look at the whole jacket and shirt color scheme in general, I had to admit that it bothered me that these blues were still so similar. I had tried greying down the jacket before but as I looked at it now, I realized it needed more work.

I went back to darken the left side of the jacket and to lighten the shirt, until it looked like the picture below. Yay, blue shirt stands out much more now!



I applied black over the blue hoping that I could darken it enough to make it look like a black jacket, but it just wasn't possible to cover up all that blue underneath. I knew that if I really wanted to, I could erase off  all the layers of color and do it over in black.  I thought about that for about 2 seconds and then decided that dark blue wasn't that bad at all.

I now could continue on with the right side. Here is the picture after I applied much more color, indanthrone, ultramarine, black and white for the highlights. I even threw in some black  raspberry to give more depth and richness to the color. I was sure to add the black raspberry to the left side too.



At this stage I've applied many layers of colors and used the stencil brush to blend all the the colors together and down into the paper, but you can still see the yellow of the paper showing through. That is what gives it the rough looking texture. Also the colors look blotchy. It just means that it needs more blending and many more layers of color.

At some point I stop using the stencil brush  and just continue applying layer after layer of color with a lighter touch and  very sharp points on the pencils. I use white for the highlights and black and dark blues for the shadows. The next picture shows the cumulative effect.




My idea was to reinforce the effect of a light coming from the upper left corner of the image so I intensified the highlights on the top of the left shoulder and tops of the folds. On the right side I highlighted some of the edges of the jacket and left a lot of dark areas that would be created by the shadow of his head. Here I also completely covered up the plaid lining that peeked out before from his jacket front. I just thought it looked better.

It's not done yet. Completing the jacket and darkening it have made me think that his face looks too pale again. I'm not sure yet if I will try to add color and shadows to his face or lighten up the jacket a bit, especially around his left ear.

Also, working the two sides of the jacket separately and and at widely different dates have made for slightly different resulting colors. I don't remember all of the colors I used on the first side and certainly don't remember the sequence I applied them in. So now I pay the price for not doing all the similar colored areas at the same time.  I know the reason I didn't work both sides at the same time was that I wanted to keep the right side free of color to avoid smearing, but in hindsight, I should just learn to use a sheet of paper to protect the work and avoid having to work at matching colors later.

These two close up shots show the different navy blues on the two sides of the jacket.

Also the right side still needs more blending and smoothing of colors to match the left even more.
 

I almost made it, but I didn't finish this before the end of my Christmas holiday. It's back to work tomorrow. Still, I'm pretty happy, most of it is done now. I just need to think over a few things and then finish off those last details. This is me happy......:-D

I've been fine tuning Dean's face and I think I'm finally satisfied. I'm putting this side-by-side comparison up to show the changes I've  made. They are all pretty subtle, but I think they all add up to a better likeness. Left is before, right is after tweaking.