Patreon

I've decided to start up a Patreon account as a supplement to my long running blog, where I write about my art process, experiences, and share images and other information regarding art. 

https://www.patreon.com/julialundman

Since 2006, I have been writing and sharing on this blog while also working full time. These days I am taking time off from work in order to develop my personal art more fully, work that is a departure from my commercial portfolio. At the same time, I would like to continue to share and expand my art process with time lapses, video demos, materials recommendations, notes, concept development, book recommendations, class recommendations, and sharing of ideas. 

Patreon is a place where I can do more, share more, and get a little support while doing so.

https://www.patreon.com/julialundman

Throughout 2019 I will offer ONE monthly tier: 

• thank you for your support @ $2 per month 
• with that you get all of my tutorial videos, time lapse, and monthly downloadable sketchbook. 

The sketchbook will be a PDF each month and will include sketchbook studies and paintings, thoughts about sketching, materials, how-to sketchbook practice, and other material that will only be offered in the e-sketchbook. I will continue to share my sketches on social media, but the e-sketchbook will be for patrons to keep, plus the bonus patreon only material.

Thank you!

Sea Witch Concept Exploration

I have a few narrative ideas that I am finally working on in earnest, now that I am on hiatus from studio jobs and focusing on my personal work. One of my ideas involves a reinvention and extended version of the classic, "The Little Mermaid", focusing on the story of the Sea Witch.

For this story, I wanted to fully explore who or what the Sea Witch might look like in the aesthetic I want to create. My story has a few evolutionary versions of this character, but to start I wanted to focus on what she might have looked like during the classic tale when she meets the little mermaid.

Since I haven't done a lot of creature work in my career, I thought I might dive into an online course to see where it might take me. I found a summer online course at CGMA with Bobby Rebholz  that seemed to fit the bill for a general overview of creature invention. I'm so glad I took the course. 

The first thing we focused on was iterating. We put together pages of references for research and then had to come up with as many variations as we could, anything that came to mind immediately. This stage was really amusing; I could have gone on forever!

After submitting the sketches, we focused on picking out a couple of thumbnails that worked best. I had a hard time choosing and in the end regretted not choosing a few different thumbnails. However, going through the process was entirely worth it no matter what the result. 

This sketch, above, for instance, seems less threatening and more benign than I would have liked to express. The design is based on a manatee, who are pretty gentle creatures, and a lion fish, which are quite poisonous.

I really like the idea of a fish that has fins that come up towards it's face when wishing to appear threatening. This variation was based on salamanders and flying fish.

After we submitted ideas for a few basic designs, we focused on iterating the head. This was the class I think I got the most out of since the head is really what the characters interact with and is so memorable and impactful in dialog scenes.

These versions (above) were really fun to draw. I looked at everything from giant squid to walruses to even bats. In the end, I decided they were too derivative of Cthulu for the sea witch I wanted for my story. In my story there is another creature of the deep that I want to be reminiscent of Chtulu, so I decided to save any mouth/head tentacles for that creature instead of this one.

^^^ this page is just me messing around, to be honest. lol

Next class we focused on a few poses for the few variants. At this point I knew the manatee like creature was not really cutting it for my story, but it was still fun to draw.

While I am not entirely sure of this ^^^ design, I do like the slinky quality it offers. I also like wispy hair and head lures that might throw off unsuspecting prey in the dark. I like bioluminescence, in general, for a Sea Witch, and tentacles of some sort for arms seem creepy. When I drew this version I was thinking about moray eels, as well, which have such great faces. 

For our last class, we had to do a few studies of the final animals that we were studying as a basis of our design. I landed on the Hellbender Salamander and the Bamboo Shark as most of my inspiration points, but there were definitely some other ideas in there, too. 

And the final painting of my final design for the Sea Witch.

And a few detailed head studies and a version of the witch in full light.

Although I am most likely going to edit and revise this character to fit with my story, I am glad I went through the process of taking a creature course. There were a lot of great discussions about considerations, acting, and posing that I hadn't thought about and I learned a great process for coming up with an entirely new animal. 

I am unsure when I will be able to finish my story in full since I am pretty deeply in the process of creating a huge series of paintings, drawings and sketches around a fairy/dryad/seasons story at the moment. But I will keep picking away little by little on my Sea Witch story, as much as I can. 

Follow me on instagram and twitter, where I post every couple of days.

https://www.instagram.com/paintkatt/

https://twitter.com/PaintKatt

Thanks for reading!

"Earth", "Sun", "Moon" Mini Series/ Process

For quite awhile I've been kicking around the idea of a series of paintings having to do with our solar system in relation to earth. Although I have a lot of ideas, I wanted to start off with a really small series that included either animals or insects each relating to the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. After a lot of sketching and thinking, I landed on a cicada, a bee, and a moth. I chose these insects because cicadas hibernate in the earth for many years, bees are active in sunlight hours, and moths are nocturnal.

I also wanted these to be illustrations rather than scientific studies of any specific species. It was really a challenge...I messed around with embellishing each insect with symbols and landed on a few, but then altered those in the final paintings. 

All of these are drawn on heavy weight duralar vellum, a surface I really like for graphite studies. The warm tone you see underneath is a table top.

I gilded each 6x6 panel in three metal leafs, copper to represent the Earth, Gold to represent the Sun, and Silver to represent the moon. (I ended up double gilding the copper panel to remove the seams you see in the photo)

I should note here that these panels are all oil gilded rather than water gilded. Oil gilding involves applying oil size and allowing it to dry for a specific time before adhering the metal leaf. Water gilding is a different process that yields great results, too, and is often used for making very slick and shiny surfaces, which I wasn't necessarily interested in for these little pieces. Also, I gilded the panels straight onto a white gessoed surface instead of applying a base color (typically called a "bole"). 

I scanned my drawings, made line drawings in photoshop, then printed out the designs to the specific size I needed, and then transferred them to the gilded panels. This time I used white graphite transfer paper so that the line work could show up against the metal leaf. 

I painted a closed grisaille underpainting first so that paint adhered to the surface before adding color. I'm glad I did because the metal leaf was slick to paint on, requiring some layers of paint as a base before adding color.

One really cool thing about the metal surface is that it reflects light even in the middle of the night with all of the lights turned off. I tried to capture this a bit. (Sorry for the shaky cam!)

After the grisaille under paintings were finished, I moved to detail color work. I found with each one that balancing the transparency of the wings for "Earth" and "Sun" against the metal leaf was quite difficult. I probably spent more time working on the wings than any other aspect of each painting. It was also difficult to gauge the color structure while painting because the shimmery metal leaf would change during the day and change the nature of the color. In some cases I repainted the color layer twice in order to adjust.

Varnishing these paintings took a few tries, as well. I ended up reapplying the varnish and stripping it a few times. I think a matte varnish works really well with these. The metal leaf still looks shimmery and the painted surfaces end up having a nice matted quality that contrasts well.

The finished paintings, "Earth", "Sun", "Moon".

I plan to continue this series with larger pieces later this year, which I am very excited about... For the mean time, I am in the midst of two more gothic themed paintings, one of which you can follow along with on instagram and twitter:

twitter

instagram

Thank you for reading!

Inktober 2018

Once again I decided to challenge myself and try out Inktober 2018 to see if I could improve my inking ability. 

I have always admired ink drawings more than other kinds of drawing because of the boldness and confidence immediately indicated by committing line to paper and using two values to define any given subject. A particular favorite inking artist is Italian artist Dino Battaglia, who worked primarily in the 1940's-1970's illustrating comics and graphic novels. I love his use of texture and negative shapes, and his compositions are pretty incredible, too.

You can find more of his work online, but there doesn't seem to be a lot, unfortunately. Someone needs to put a book together!

With Battaglia's work in mind, I started out inktober trying to figure out where and how I could include texture. It was not at all easy. Not only did I have to draw the composition, but then had to figure out some sort of value pattern where I could commit a texture as a third value. I found texture in general worked best with a small bit of reindeer moss or gauze and a somewhat dry stamp pad. The texture didn't come across as clearly if the ink was too wet. 

My materials were mainly: Platinum Carbon ink, an inking pad and reindeer moss for textures, sometimes gauze, Dip pens and small brushes. I used some pro-white occasionally to clean up extra lines I didn't want. I inked everything on Strathmore bristol board 4 ply plate surface. I also used masking film.

I also experimented with a dark background, white paint and a roller with white paint to get additional texture. I had to mask out the area, which was really time consuming.

I really like that dark background texture a lot - will probably find ways to use it for other pieces in the future. I may also redesign this piece since I think it's too top heavy and not as clear as I would like it.

However, as inktober progressed, I decided that perhaps it would be better to get a feel for how dip pens worked and how I could indicate value with cross hatching and line work. I ended up using texture as an accent rather than feature.

In the piece below, I primed the paper with a thin wash of acrylic titanium buff, a technique I've used for a long time in my sketchbooks, usually if I want to paint on top of the sketchbook paper. It makes a nice gessoed surface that accepts watermedia. Also, it turns out, makes a great surface for inking.

Another artist I really love is Arthur Rackham. He did a lovely series of illustrations all in silhouette, which I've always admired. I wanted to try at least one silhouette. I toned the paper with a light grey wash of acrylic, let dry, then a few touches of textures, and then painted the forms with a brush. The hardest part I think is the clear design. I'd love to try a whole series of these.

And this one has the same general idea, but with some modeling in the silhouette. 

Towards the end of inktober I was inking and re-inking at least 2-3 times. I think it's good practice to re-ink pieces because it gives you a chance to not only warm up, but also loosen up and see if you can push the subject further. Each time I re-inked a piece I did not regret it. I'd post my original inks for these here, but I cringe every time I look at them, sorry. :)

I think I inked this one over 3 times...finding reference of a pelvis bone was really tough. I also was unsure about the composition, so I tried out a few ideas before finalizing this one.

For the very last piece, I switched from using a dip pen to rapidiograph pens. What a relief! I had more control over the thickness of the lines, which I generally wanted fairly small. I also started working larger, which I think helped a great deal in getting the kind of detail I wanted. 

The drawing alone took a full day to complete and edit at a larger size.

 Inking took about a day to complete, with a few extra hours the next day to make some final edits and additions. 

I put a warm filter on the drawing for the final shot. Is that cheating? I don't know. I like it better, though. Toned paper always has a nice feel to it that I like.

NOTE: You may be wondering about why all these fairies are messing around with old bones in the forest. There is an answer, but I am not finished telling the story. I like the idea a lot and will continue adding to it over the next couple of months in between painting work. 

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In all, I ended up creating nine pieces, which falls far short of the intended 31 days of ink drawings. However, the intent is to improve, and I feel like I worked pretty hard during the month. I experimented with ideas and compositions as well as story telling, acting, and overall value design. While I wasn't able to finish the mini story I am telling in these pieces, I am still left feeling like I made a journey that has left me in a better place than where I was last inktober. 

If you've read this far, thank you! 

Follow me on twitter and instagram for more updates: @paintkatt

Cheers!

Star Wars "Forces of Destiny" Animated Shorts

I recently painted several key backgrounds for the animated series
Star Wars "Forces of Destiny". The shorts were produced by Lucasfilm and directed and animated at Ghostbot. I thought I would share a few of the backgrounds I was lucky to paint! 

The rest of the bg's are on my art station site:  here

The shorts are available on Disney.com and also youtube.