iPad Sketching

This was a rough week at Disney Interactive. 700 of my coworkers, many of them talented and accomplished artists, were subject to a massive layoff and restructure. Over half of my office, which is Disney Social/Mobile, a division within Disney Interactive, was let go. The fact is that we all knew lay offs were coming for at least three months now, making our lives incredibly stressful. What none of us knew was how drastic the cuts would be. 

I am deeply sorry to lose so many wonderful artists at Disney Interactive, ones that really should be employed at companies so they can continue to contribute to the way in which we encounter Art in our everyday lives, in games, online entertainment, mobile devices, television, and film. 

Surviving in the entertainment industry as a professional artist is difficult no matter how you cut it. If you work as an artist in games, television or film, you are constantly subject to the whims of the market and where it decides to spend money, or new technologies, or shifts in the philosophy or ownership of the company. In the 20 years I have been working, I have had to refocus my portfolio and career numerous times, first working in traditional animation, then in cd rom games, print illustration, book illustration, then web cartoons, to various platform games, to online games and now mobile gaming. I can't say that I ever feel secure. As a way to cope with that, I've found that constant study keeps me motivated and feeling in control of my artistic interests, regardless of what happens at work. Even so, it does not take away the sting I feel when fellow artists lose their jobs, as I've seen happen a lot over the years, including myself at times. I feel fortunate to survive, and also sad for Art.  

****************************************

iPad Sketching

I recently got an iPad air over the holidays. In addition to my tree studies, for some time now I've wanted to study the lighting and staging of various live action shows that I admire. So I thought I'd start with a few shows, freeze frame the shot I like and do an observational study. 

I like to use two styluses, the Intuos Creative Stylus, which has a bluetooth connection with the iPad (although I can't really tell what the difference is between when its on and when its off) and the Nomad brush stylus. I like to use them together as each has a different feel, much like I would brushes of any real life painting.

I've also played around with various apps. There are so many out there, and I'm pretty sure I've tested them all at this point. The app I like the most is Procreate. It feels like photoshop, but has the basic stripped down interface that I need for painting, and adjusts that interface to work well on a touch screen. Other apps are clunky for various reasons, but Procreate has gotten it right.

Violet Crawley, The Dowager Countess of Grantham in "Downton Abbey". 


My first few attempts were frustrating because it seems that I cannot get the brush size or shape working well enough for me. Also, there is a slight lag between touching the screen and the brush stroke that is a little distracting. Other problems include the color palette; so often the color I thought I chose in the palette is not actually the right value. 

Worf from Star Trek Next Generation. 

The above painting of Worf was a little frustrating too because I felt like I was fighting the pen controls the entire time. Also, when I exported it to my photo stream, the painting became darker. 


I then tried a bigger scene to see how it works for capturing an entire shot, not just a portrait. I found the brush controls really difficult in that case. The city in the distance for instance is really rough, not all how I was attempting to paint it, but an ok study of the general set up and lighting. 

 Game of Thrones, Season 3, episode 2. Daenerys Stormborn on her newly acquired ship headed to Astapor.

Game of Thrones Season 3, episode 3. Daenerys Stormborn after she unleashes her dragon Drogon on the leaders of Astapor. (that must have been supremely satisfying!)

I love the lighting in this shot. I struggled with the styluses in this painting, trying to use the brushes to obtain a likeness in the eyes, nose and mouth, but finally decided that I need to think of these studies as just that, color studies. 

I plan to continue on to study shots and lighting. Its so far been a pretty enjoyable exercise overall. My hope over time is to build up some color script studies from sequences in shows I like. It will be cool to put them all together to see a progression. I have a massive list of shows and films I'd like to analyze…I'll need to chip away at them a little at a time.

Thanks for reading! My next post will be about the flemish still life I am working on - lots of progress on that!

Latest Tree Studies

These days my life is pretty busy. While I have a few long term projects I'd love to finish (my unfinished/unpainted animation collaborative assignments mostly), they have been put on hold for a few months. At work I am concepting on a new game in development, which is a lot of fun, but also often means a 24 hour turn around on visualizing an idea. I've worked late nights and weekends for about a month now, leaving very little time for any personal projects. So for now its back to my very long term and much more slow paced relaxing art project, tree studies.

All of these I usually create in about 1-2 hours. They are all in places about town, usually areas where my boyfriend Jamie Baker and I can sit comfortably away from too many people. We've been to Golden Gate park, the Presidio, Stern Grove and Lake Merced. We even went on a trip down to Palo Alto where I work and did a tree study in the parking lot one Saturday. Fun times!

Here is my latest batch.

Palm trees in the Presidio. It was a bright sunny day. We set up camp right across from the Disney Family Museum - a great place!

Ok, so this is not exactly a tree study. I painted this in oil, a medium I haven't used outside for awhile. I think the darks in this are too rich. I'm working on keeping them a little more luminous.

pastel study of some redwoods in Stern Grove. 

Another oil study of some buildings in the Presidio. If you aren't familiar, it is a former military base located right next to the Golden Gate bridge. Quite a spectacular base, certainly gives West Point a run for its money!

Little palm right next to the DeYoung museum in Golden Gate park. Pastel study.

A quick oil study of a huge palm on the manicured lawn of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. 

This is a grouping of trees in the parking lot where I work, Disney Interactive, in Palo Alto. I think the red tree might be a Japanese Maple, but I'm not certain. It was difficult to paint since I only have a couple of red pastels in my kit. Probably will get a few more soon.

I am also working on Sundays on a long term more tightly rendered still life painting, which I posted about below. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be far enough along to post some progress shots. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Character Design Course at Animation Collaborative

I recently took a really great character design course at the Animation Collaborative with Pixar Character Designer Dan Holland. 

During the last several sessions of the class we worked with the Story Class team and their teacher/director Louis Gonzales to develop character designs for their story. I focused on the satan character, "Booker", who is a voodoo supernatural otherworldly creature. 

I first started with a lot of research on voodoo both in the Caribbean and in Africa. I found some amazing reference and riffed on the designs keeping in mind that the creature underneath was supernatural.

These are my first pass very rough 5 minute sketches meant for exploration:

I also explored some ideas with incorporating alligator features in his face, since alligators are a common animal in the New Orleans region. These were super quick, like 5 minutes each - just gut reaction sketches.

After creating lots and lots of quick "gut reaction" sketches like the above, I started seeing if I could combine the two ideas into one. I gravitated toward a black gown, a skull with alligator like teeth embellishments as well as possibly gold filigrees, and necklaces that have lots of jewels and charms. I wanted the hands to suggest that the guy under there was not a human but some other being. I wanted the eyes to look like alligator eyes.

I narrowed in on the historical concept of satan: a former man who then became an angel, who then fell from grace and became the devil. I thought about what he looked like as a man, then an angel, and then the devil. I wanted to incorporate some evidence of that story into his design.





I wondered what he looked like without his mask - a demon with alligator teeth and eyes, alligator skin and maybe even snakes crawling all over him. Perhaps the mask he wears is the skull of his former human being self.



The Booker/devil character in the story presents the main character, Lou, with a magical trumpet that can play anything he wants with the expertise of a seasoned artist.



I thought he might also sit on a throne of sorts made of animal skins, horns and imagery that symbolized fate. I didn't have time to explore the throne more than this - I would like to go back and do a much more thorough exploration.



After presenting these to the director Louis and the story team, Louis felt that the Booker character was even more of a human being than I depicted him rather than a demon like creature. I went back to the drawing board and did some more sketching. The story team really liked the quick sketches I did of the character in a zoot suit with charms and a head dress but wanted a human face.

So I worked up some exploration of variants of the head dress, all based on the alligator motif with feathers, shells and sometimes horns. I also like incorporating charms which seem common in voodoo art. 

The one I liked the best is in the middle. His design is derived from african mask animal designs. I thought his beard might be dread locks with some charms worked in. I looked at patterns of fabrics from African voodoo culture and tried to think about how I might incorporate those designs into the zoot suit. I also tried adding some pins like you would see in a voodoo doll.

I think I could probably come up with many, many more concepts for this character, but I want to make some final decisions now that the class has ended. I'd like to paint these up and also put them into some compositions. 

Over the next few blog posts I'll post my progress. I realize this is very different than the painting work I've been posting. Who says an artist has to be interested in one kind of thing? Character design is a fascinating subject with lots of rich opportunities for research - and oh how I love research! I am still painting on the weekends working away on my diorama-flower painting, still working on my tree studies 2x a week and working away on Art Directing a new game. In the mean time when I have some moments I chip away at trying to compete these Booker/Devil ideas. I find it fun, interesting, and full of things that keep me artistically motivated.

*****************************************************

I recently updated my website. I am still figuring out how to add a few quicktime videos and add more work, but probably won't get the chance to update again until the late spring.

julialundman.com

New Studio Painting In Progress

A few years back, I started taking classes at the fantastic crafting store in Berkley, Castle in the Air, where I met the most wonderful artist, Ulla Milbrath. Up until then I had mostly been working as an illustrator in games in the bay area, and was feeling quite isolated in my home office. After I was divorced in 2007, I told myself enough was enough; I decided to step out into the world again and start making connections back to the things that I truly love - not for the sake of my career or becoming anyone important in the arts, but for myself, my soul, and my own love of crafting fine things that bring me joy. 

When I was growing up my mother was always making something or other. One of my earliest memories is of my mom crocheting snowflake ornaments for our Christmas tree. If she wasn't making new ornaments for our tree, she was sewing my and my sister's wardrobes, making dolls and doll clothes for us, making all sorts of decorations and whimsical creations for the many houses we moved into as a nomadic military family. Almost every toy and piece of clothing that I wore growing up was made by my mom. 

So I started taking crafting classes and eventually stumbled into Ulla Milbrath's classes where I learned to make paper flowers. Ulla is one of the most wonderful and inspiring artists I know! She is incredibly inventive and creative, and stitches the most lovely things you can possibly imagine. She even paints on porcelain! You must check out her blog and be sure especially to follow her Pinterest account where she posts the most amazing reference material. 

Some of the flowers I made in her classes. I've since become quite obsessed with paper flower making. They are also a fantastic way to study botanical subjects.

Paper flower making was a popular past time in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. Botany at the time was all the rage as people became interested in plants from around the world and learned about classification of various species.  

Having lots of flowers around the house I had been wondering if it might be possible to compose them in a still life. I was thinking however that I wouldn't want them to be merely props for real flowers, but intentionally composed so that it is understood that they are crafted flowers. I played around a lot with this set up. I even included lots of other things at one point like scissors and glue, but took them out in the end because I preferred the look to be a little more subtle, kind of like a diorama.

The above monochrome is the open grisaille, the first pass underpainting. Below is the start of the closed grisaille, which ended up a terrible disaster...

I started this grisaille with a new tube of Michael Harding Titanium White no. 1. While I was painting I noticed the quality of the paint seemed thin and somewhat odd. I got as far as I could in one day. When I came back one full week later I found that 100% of all of the white areas of the painting were still very wet AND several of the half tones in the gradients were far darker and patchy than I painted them. On close inspection, I narrowed down that it was the white paint I'd purchased which was ground in safflower oil as opposed to linseed oil. When the manufacturer was contacted, he assured me there was nothing faulty in the paint and that it must be something wrong with my process… 

I decided to make the tough decision to wipe off all of the white paint that I could, feeling that it was obviously unstable paint. I did not want to risk this paint pulling up subsequent layers in the future layers.

I wiped off all the paint and found strange patchy areas underneath. 

So then I decided to sand to make sure there was no white paint left and a more even surface.

I waited a little more than a week, came back and found my painting was dry enough to repaint the grisaille again, this time using my old classic Vasari titanium white (along with burnt umber and a tiny bit of ult blue). 

The next stage will be COLOR. For this little painting I'm going to do a one day alla prima color study so that I can work out the subtle whites and reflected light in the composition. After that I will move forward with the final.

This year has been my 20th year of working as a professional artist. I am in the midst of completely redesigning my website, updating it with new art from this entire past year and a half at my job as Art Director at Disney Interactive. I have a lot of new work to share and will do so as soon as I can! I also have quite a few more tree studies to share soon.

Thanks for visiting! 

Tree Studies

For the longest time I've wanted to do an entire series of studies focusing on trees - just trees... single trees, groups of trees, macro views of bark, tree trunks, tree roots, various leaves and how the light falls on groups of leaves. Some trees seem to shimmer in the light while others have a distinctly light absorbing quality. I've always loved the various shapes, colors, and sizes but I can't say I understand them very well, at least from the perspective of an artist. Being primarily interested in botanical subjects in general, I've felt for some time that I need to do a serious study of trees and get to know a variety of species.

So I've just started my tree studies. Here are a few. I have been painting in the mornings before work in Palo Alto with a couple of really talented and passionate coworkers - kindred spirits in the brotherhood of paint. I've also been painting on Saturday mornings, early, and usually in the late evening on Saturdays on my nightly walk. 

These days my medium of choice for plein air is pastel, a medium I've fallen in love with over and over again. Painting with pastels feels so natural, like playing with crayons or colored pencils until I get something close to what I want. I can't say I ever feel that way with oil. There is also something really neat about seeing a giant box of pastel colors together that makes me feel good. It feels like harmony.

Hilly bank in Palo Alto, pastel on toned paper. I think I spent about 3 hours on this.

A little tree, maybe an aspen, in the parking lot where I work, Disney Interactive. Pastel, about 1.5 hours.

Tree on the bank of Lake Merced in the late afternoon, just off the side of the path near the parking lot on Sloat. Pastel, about 2 hours.

This was a majestic evergreen variety that I was looking up at from the parking lot at work. Not the best perspective to be painting at. I tried to compensate for the foreshortening but I'm not sure it worked. I also painted this on sanded pastel paper. I don't like sanded paper at all. It just grabs up a ton of the pastel pigment and is difficult to blend soft edges. 

Pastel, about 2 hours

Lake Merced in the evening. Another pastel on sanded paper. I started to get the hang of the paper here a little more than the previous pastel, however it occurred to me that if what I want is thick texture as the paper seems to provide, I may as well just paint in oil. I enjoyed the light in this one a lot. The San Francisco Zoo and Ocean Beach are just beyond those far trees, one of my favorite places in the city.

 As I painted this scene a giant raccoon creeped around my blanket looking for food. Dogs would smell something but not see the raccoon near my set up and would snarl and bark while their owners yanked them on chains. I felt like the raccoon and I were enjoying this little hidden view together. A unique experience. Usually I'm swatting flies and flicking ants off of my pants and hoping ticks haven't crawled down my back for a nice cool drink of O-. 

 Hopefully in a few weeks I will have more than a few more studies. I've also realized this year that 2013 is my 20th year of working as a professional artist and illustrator. I'd like to commemorate that that soon and share some of the early work I did painting backgrounds in animation - a great job that I owe just about everything to in regards to landscape painting and just being an adult. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Sierra Pack Trip!

Earlier this month, I went on a fantastic six day painting adventure with artist friends Bill Cone, Paul Kratter, Ernesto Nemesio, Michele DeBraganca, Jeff Horn, Eric Merrell and Sergio Lopez to the Eastern Sierras - John Muir-Edgar Payne country. It was precisely the kind of uninterrupted painting time I so yearn for but don't very often get. 

Lake Ediza was our destination, a steep hike up from about 7,000 feet to around 10,000 at the lake. As we hiked up from the Agnew Meadows pack station where we dropped off our gear for the mules to carry up, I was floored by the incredible views along the rocky trail as I breathlessly made my way up slower than my group, despite the conditioning/training I did a few months before the trip.



Our mule train arriving after a long hike up to Lake Ediza. Eric Merrell on the far right on top of a boulder.



I set up my tent just under a tree, situated rather close to our cook's food storage/prep area due to the view of the Minarets from my tent. Given that we had a 4:00 am bear visit to the camp site, I think in the future I'd place my tent much farther away from the food source. I'm sure the view was just as magnificent a little further away.



Zipping down the front flap to my tent each morning gave me the most amazing view! I did a few little pencil sketches from my tent in the mornings but mostly sipped coffee while staring at the mountains and feeling like all was right with the world. Probably not the most efficient use of my painting time, but deeply enjoyable nonetheless.

Before I went on the trip I planned out how I would approach the week of painting. I intended to sketch out a couple of long shots, a few medium and a couple of close up intimate scenes so that I could create a portrait of the area from large scale to the very small.

What I hadn't counted on though was how much the altitude seemed to factor into my experience within the first 24-48 hours. After we got up to Lake Ediza from a long and difficult climb up to almost 10,000 feet elevation, I found that even after a long rest and some water that my heart was beating quite fast. I tried my best to ignore it, but my worry distracted me and I didn't paint very well the first day.



After the first 24 or so hours, my heart slowed to it's usual pace and I felt pretty comfortable. Still, I decided to stay close to camp to further acclimate to the elevation. While my camp mates were hiking up steep terrain in pursuit of painting gargantuan landscapes, I crawled along a stream bed close by looking for miniature wildflower compositions.



I attempted several minute scenes, but these two are my favorites of the lot. Most of these tiny compositions were along stream banks underneath tree growth bathed in beautiful cool sunlight with reflected light bouncing in and deep warm shadows. The pastel set I brought did not have a yellow that was as bright and pure as the yellow I saw in the light, so I tried my best to layer a few colors together and tried adding some transition color along the edges in order to brighten the color.



I also had some fun playing with the outside edges of the compositions, layering blue and accenting the edges with an emerald green. These little compositions reminded me a lot of the kind of watercolor paintings I did a lot of in my 20's. I would really like to get some hot press watercolor paper and do some more of these little flower studies. 

In keeping my goals, I decided to venture further away from camp in order to attempt a long shot landscape. I found a bank of trees at the opposite end of Ediza near to where we hiked in and made myself comfortable by the lake shore in a shady spot. I always enjoy large view paintings but do find them daunting at times. Part of the reason for this is probably technical on my part; I feel the need to hang out in one area until I get the entire area correct in terms of value, hue, and saturation before moving on to anything else. This I am sure is due in part to the lessons I learned early on at the Palette and Chisel via Richard Schmid, who often lectured about the importance of getting everything correct within the focal point first. It is entirely possible that I misunderstood his point, but still, there it is, imprinted on my art mind forever and the way I've approached painting since I was 19.

Bill must have wondered what the heck was going on because at one point he came up to me and said, "Commit Julia! Commit!" I had to laugh because I knew exactly what he meant. From that point on I told myself over and over, "stop the bullshit and lay in some more color!!!" I did find it helpful to stop lingering as much as I was in my focal point and get some more color down.





What attracted to me to this grouping of trees was the deep shadow within the bank of trees at the bottom. I liked the way the shape looked and liked how it was juxtaposed against warm and cool greens in the light. I'm not sure this photograph picked up the variety of color in the shadow very well, unfortunately.

Also, while I painted the mountain in the far distance behind the bank of evergreens, I noticed that the colors were muted variations of reds and greens, a color scheme I saw near the foothills of Zion National Park in Southern Utah. I wondered if these mountains have some of the same elements.

Switching to oil, I wanted to make a few studies of the light on rocks down by the water. I was attracted to the color in the shadows on the rocks - just jam packed with rich color that made it really fun to paint.



However, this simple study was more challenging than it might look. I'd look down to mix up some color, look up, and all of the sudden the temperature in the light was completely different! I decided it was probably due in part to the reflection of the shimmering light coming off of the water from Lake Ediza. This one is also on Arches oil paper. I layered the paint thicker in this study to compensate for the absorbency of the paper which seemed to make my values at least a full value darker about ten minutes after I laid down the paint. I did another few studies of the Minarets but became frustrated with the oil paper. I think I'll switch back to my usual L219 new traditions panels for oil studies. 



Switching back to pastels, I decided to turn around, move down the beach and paint a close up study of this rock face and shadow. The rock had a blue-grey local color and in the shadow side had some oxidization that made rich brown patterns along the cracks. The entire time I was painting the main deep shadow of the rock I could barely wait to paint in those wisps of grass in the light. When I finally put those little lights in, it was like going to the circus! 



I tried a longer view from across the lake. I had to work very quickly on this one since the shadow and reflected light was changing by the minute, it seemed. The triangle of shadow at the bottom was filled with cool deep greens while the shadows above had warm light bouncing into cool shadows.

The amazing thing about the Sierras, at least the Minarets and Lake Ediza, is the reflected light. I found it quite difficult to paint such bright bounce light in the shadows, always thinking to myself that no one would  believe my painting if I painted what I saw in front of me. It was challenging to keep the reflected light within a value range that was in keeping within the shadow while also trying to define form. I've always found rocks and boulders challenging more so than other subjects for this reason.



I am so fortunate to have spent time amongst the Minarets with this band of talented mountain loving artists. What made it so deeply enjoyable was the kinship with fellow artists who were all equally enthusiastic about painting. As we sat around the dinner table while Kelly cooked we all talked about what we painted that day, the places we explored and the light we saw.



 The light at dusk was just stunning, absolutely my favorite lighting of all, the time of day when all of the color is blanketed in a blue grey bath. Apparently I wasn't the only one interested in this; right after dinner each night, Eric Merrell would begin to set up his pochade box for some nocturne sketching. He had an excellent night time set up with little led lights on his palette that were perfect for illumination and did not blow out the light when you looked up at the dark scene in the distance.



Eric painting around 9:00. Although you can't see it in this photo, the moon was quite bright, illuminating the landscape and flooding it with warm and cool grey light.

I attempted a nocturne, but quickly learned that in order to do it well I needed a much better lighting set up. Every time I looked down at my palette with my headlamp to locate a color I wanted, I would look up and find my eyes completely unadjusted to the light making everything in sight a giant silhouette. I tried using a dim book light on my palette instead which was an improvement, but then had problems locating the colors I wanted to use. Below is my result, for better or worse. 

However, I did indeed learn A LOT by making the attempt. Not only would I come with tiny LED lights like Eric's, but I'd lay out a limited palette ahead of time full of cool blues, neutral greys, and even warm greys and a few rich violets too. 

The sky was so rich, full of violet and ult blue. I also vividly remember a thin sliver of very warm yellow value 2 light on the outer lighted edge of the moon - very surprising since the rest of the moon looked cooler in the light. 



Besides developing a nocturnal lighting obsession, I became completely enamored by the lighting around waterfalls that were close to our camp. These areas were typically surrounded by rocks that when wet became a deep brownish color, almost black in some areas. This looked really stunning against the white water washing down around them and the green patches of vegetation nearby.



I felt like one day's time was not enough to study this waterfall area. I really want to go back and spend a full week exploring the light and color of this incredible dynamic.

There is something about the mountains. When I was a little girl, my father, a Captain in the Army, was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. It was just outside of Fort Carson that I spent every weekend learning to ride horses, became obsessed with wildlife, the mountains, the air, the snow, the birds, horses, and hiking.

I am so fortunate to have spent such sacred time with fellow artists and friends in the Sierras. I really could do this forever! 

****************************

Searle in America Auction, "Reminiscing"

Since starting my new job last year at Disney Media Group/Playdom, I've spent a lot of time sketching and thinking about classic Disney characters. It seemed a natural fit when the Searle in America Art Auction came around that I might try a theme with one of the villains. 

The auction is taking place on EBAY. Pieces from animation industry professionals will be auctioned off HERE. Check it out!

***update: my painting on this post SOLD today! There are a number of new pieces by other artists that have been added and more coming - be sure to check the auction page!

After sketching a few ideas out of Searle's birds and cats, I just kept coming back to the concept of Cruella de Vil relaxing in her home office... I did a little research on wikipedia, and what do you know?!! Cruella did indeed go to school in England! Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

In the original story, Cruella is a pampered and glamorous London heiress who knows the owner of the Dalmatian puppies through school, though it is mentioned that they were not friends. Her net wealth as mentioned in The One Hundred and One Dalmatians is £6 million. She was a menacing student with black and white plaits. She was later expelled for drinking ink. 

Of course that school was St. Trinians. 

"Reminiscing", 10 x 12", gouache on board

************************************************
PROCESS NOTES

It's been awhile since I've painted something cartoony without a computer. These days at my job the characters, props and backgrounds I draw and paint are for pre-production concepts, so I don't often get to finish the art myself. I enjoyed researching Searle and his interesting line work and making an attempt at it myself, although I was light on the line work and more heavy on the values.

 I thought I'd share a little bit of my process on this piece. 

When I first thought of the concept of Cruella in her home office or study, I pictured lots of books, framed diploma on the wall, books on the floor as well as photos and other paraphernalia from her early days at St. Trinians. After sketching out several ideas, moving things around, and thinking about it, I decided that it was better to go simple with this idea. Since Cruella's face is looking down and so clearly the center of interest, I thought it better to have her looking into her yearbook. All else in the concept is support at that point, so I eliminated as much detail as possible, feeling the idea is stronger with less.

After I finished sketching, I found some good photoshop brushes and experimented with palettes. I looked at some of Searle's work and found that he often used an interesting blend of warm grey and cool blacks. I love the look, so I dug out some materials from my art closet to see if I could match his look in terms of color first. 

I thought a base layer of tan acrylic wash would work well with cool and neutral grey gouache tones and a cool dark grey line.

After I transferred the printed out drawing to a lightweight cold press illustration board, I painted a thin acrylic wash using the tan acrylic. This at first can be jarring because it tends to make the whole piece look dark and smears the lines a little, but when it dries the lines are in tact and the wash fairly clean.

After the acrylic wash was dry, I simply began to paint in flat values using the various grey gouaches mixed with a little titanium white gouache at times. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the layers, being careful to not let the gouache get too thick.

After I painted the grey tones I painted in the line work. This took longer than any other part of the rendering process, but was probably the most fun of all. In fact, I am now thinking about seeing what I can do with this technique on more Disney villains - just for fun!

Please stay tuned if you have been following my posts on studying the Flemish Method with Sadie. I have finally finished the piece and will post about that VERY SOON! 

Thanks for reading!

Little Museum Drawings and a Hiatus

I've been on a short hiatus from this blog and painting since December. I traveled in December to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to see to the spectacular Alphonse Mucha show at the Czech & Slovak Museum, a rare showing of his works in the US, then a quick trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. After that, the holidays were upon us. During that time a family medical emergency took place, which I have been immersed in since. 

I am now back at my Sunday studio workshop with Sadie Valeri, starting again today. In April I will resume posting about the painting I have been working on for about a year now. I have about 8-10 Sunday sessions to go before I finish this elaborate work. After that, on to the next one, which I think will be considerably smaller. I am eager to move on to new works. I have sketched out quite a few ideas around some themes I have been thinking about for a number of years now.

It was an incredible experience to see Alphonse Mucha's works in person. Seeing a lot of his large format paintings and lithographs was absolutely worth the trip. His palette was far richer and varied than is conveyed in reproductions of his work. There were also a large number of sketches, many in mixed media, some in oil, and some in pencil and watercolor. All were amazing. Really amazing.

I sat and did a quick sketch of this painting. (There is a copy of the painting HERE.) I didn't quite capture it - I was a little distracted by the hawkish curators who were on the look out for picture taking and eyeing me cautiously even though I was only drawing.

Next we spent a day in Chicago to visit the Art Institute. Going back to downtown Chicago brought back warm memories of being a 20 year old art student, slogging my way in between the American Academy of Art on Michigan Avenue and the Palette and Chisel across town, sometimes stopping off at the Terra Museum to check out the fantastic Winslow Homer paintings in between or the Sargent paintings at the Art Institute, one of which I did a museum study of while I was a student.

On this visit, I found this odd little sculpture that had an expression that intrigued me because of  the intensity and the strangely slightly inwardness of his eyes. It made for an arresting sculpture that I quite enjoyed drawing. 

Earlier this year Jamie and I were in Paris, where we visited the Musee D'Orsay. The museum is packed with incredible paintings and sculptures, but also fantastic decorative Art Nouveau pieces as well. While I didn't have enough time to sketch this piece in person, I took some photos and pieced them together later so that I could do this study of a gate by Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard. 

I have been collecting all of my little museum drawings on this magnetic chalkboard I have on my desk. They all remind me of some of the most magical times I have had with Jamie sketching together, probably some of the best times I've ever had with another human being. 

 I look forward to more adventures together.

-Julia

Advanced Open Studio with Sadie/Part Five B

As a continuation on my blog post series from the Advanced Open Studio I am taking with Sadie J. Valeri, this post is part two on the next stage, Color. These are my notes for my in progress painting. I hope you can glean some useful information from them. Enjoy!

********************************

Oiling Out

Before we paint, Sadie instructs us to always oil out the area we will be working on with a very small amount of painting medium.

Sometimes, when the oil is applied, it will bead up, which then requires wet sanding with very fine sand paper. It always makes me super nervous to sand my painting, but after having done it a few times now, I have found it actually great. The grain the sandpaper helps rid the surface of too many ridges (in Flemish painting an unwanted effect), dust, lint, odd streaks, and makes a really nice surface for the new layer paint to adhere to.

 After I applied my "fat" painting medium on a portion of the surface, I used 1500 grit sand paper, moving in a circular motion. The reason for not oiling out the entire surface of the painting is because not only is it unneeded if only working on a small area for the day, but because over time those layers of oil, if put on too thickly, will slowly start to drip.

It also takes a few tries to figure out the thickness of the oil you like on your surface. It can't be too thin or too thick - somewhere in between that simply allows sanding and good flow of the paint.



Usually when sanding, some of the grisaille, especially in the white areas, comes up. I learned it is important to work more gently on the opaque white areas. Some paint will come up, and thus don't be alarmed as long as it doesn't ALL come up.

Once the sanding is completed, there will be a pasty texture. I wipe this off using a blue shop cloth (which has less lint than other brands) so it does not interfere with the layers of paint.



It is really important to sand only the area planned for that day. I had an experience during one of these sessions where I did not sand the entire area well enough. When I got to the un-sanded area, the paint would not adhere properly. I needed to wipe that paint off and re-sand.

Speaking of sandpaper, I recently bought several grades at an auto supply store. I bought 1000, 1500, 2000, and 3000 grade. From this point on (after my color block in layer), I will be experiment with these grades whenever I oil out, hoping to rid some texture and get a nice, smooth surface to paint on. I haven't yet tried these but I imagine they will help get of that maddening lint and small bits of dust that accumulate on the surface.

I also recently placed my mediums into "source" bottles so that I only use what I need for that particular day, pouring small amounts of clean underpainting medium and painting medium into small palette cups. Sadie does this as well. Having been taught to paint in the Alla Prima fashion, I had never explored mediums to this degree - hard to believe now that I know how useful and important mediums are.



I bought both the bottles and palette cups at Michaels Craft supply store. I am unsure how well these will stand up over time. If I notice any deterioration of the plastic bottles I will update this blog post and switch to glass.

 ********************************

Color Palette

 

The palette we use in Sadie's class is the standard basic palette of colors. I have used these colors most of my career, regardless of the medium, oil, gouache, watercolor, colored pencils, and pastels (and it has informed my choices when painting digitally in Photoshop at my job). Once an understanding of how these colors work together (see previous post) it is easier to expand, limit or even add color to this set up.

For most painting purposes, these colors work very well in replicating just about any color and value. Painters always have strong opinions about what the best palette is, so you will find a lot of varied advice. I've tried quite a few of those variations but always come back to this basic set up. However, because I am familiar with the scope of the palette and have a ton of Rembrandt paints in my home studio, I've departed from the color palette slightly that Sadie recommends for class and added a couple of colors, specifically Transparent Oxide Brown, Transparent Oxide Red, and Pthalo Green.

Pthalo Green has always been a color I disliked for it's extreme staining power, but for some reason had a few tubes. I decided that since I would be painting a deep dark background for a still life subject that is mostly organic, Pthalo Green might be a good rich, powerful color when combined with Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Umber. So far I haven't been disappointed.

The palette I am using is as follows (a slight departure from Sadie's recommendations):

White: Titanium (Vasari)

Cadmium Yellow (Rembrandt)
Yellow Ochre Light (Rembrandt)
Cadmium Orange (Windsor Newton)
Cadmium Red (Rembrandt)
Alizarin Crimson Permanent (Gamblin)
Terra Rosa (Windsor Newton)
Transparent Oxide Brown (Rembrandt)

Burnt Umber (Rembrandt)

Raw Umber (Rembrandt)

Cobalt Blue Light (Rembrandt)

Ultramarine Blue (Vasari)

Viridian Green (Vasari)
Pthalo Green (Rembrandt)

I have added a couple of Windsor Newton color simply because I had them. Otherwise I do not prefer WN brand oils, finding them mostly filler. Rembrandt makes nice colors that I like, however I am annoyed beyond end by the tubes being too difficult to open.

Sadie recommends using Holbein brand or Old Holland, although I am using a combination of Vasari and Rembrandt oil paint because I have traditionally used them and have several tubes of these colors. At times I also add Cadmium Lemon, Mars Red, Transparent Oxide Red and Transparent Oxide Brown.

After I use up a little more of my paint stock, I plan to drop Rembrandt paints and replace them with Natural Pigments, finding the pigments far superior. (I will probably write about this at a later date.)

The main idea is to have good quality oil color. Specific brands are recommended because other brands are either inferior or do not match the specific palette needed. For instance, never use paint that has "hue" in the name because the color is only lightly tinted with pigment and has far too much filler, meaning that it practically requires an entire tube of this type of paint to make any influence in your mixtures. It is more practical to buy the expensive colors, which are powerful enough to influence mixtures with smaller amounts of paint. Paint is expensive, but you will be wasting your time with cheaper hue colors, unfortunately.

********************************

Color Strings

In all the years I've painted, whether it be in gouache, watercolor or oil, I have never made color strings. If you are unfamiliar with the term, a color string is simply mixtures of the main colors that you can identify in the set up. Color strings for me have been a "why didn't I think of this sooner" sort of an idea, so obvious!

Sadie always instructs us to mix up color strings of the basic colors from light and dark in the area we are working on that day. This helps to focus on a specific area without having to spend too much time figuring out color on the fly. Part of what interested me in this subject was the close chroma range between the pine cones, the wood base, and the twigs. Mixing up the color strings on this subject has been fun and challenging.

I spent some time trying to mix up two almost black colors: one for the background and one for the interior areas of the pinecone (the one at the top), that would look different from one another if seen in good lighting.

On the palette (below) you can see the slight difference between the cool dark (lower left) and the warmer, more reddish dark (upper right). Although both are a close to a value 10, the vibrancy of the color is very apparent on the painting next to one another. If I had made these two colors the same, the painting would far less depth in the final result, especially after a final coat of varnish.

**note: notice how the red and alizarin colors are bleeding on the palette. This is because I hadn't opened those tubes of paint for some time and the oil separated from the pigment. To compensate for this, lay your colors straight from the tube on to a paper towel for 10 minutes to soak up the excess oil and then transfer the color to your palette. it's worth it especially since the extra oil makes a mess when color mixing.

I then  began on the upper pinecone and worked my way down the painting, blocking in large areas of color without worrying about minute details, painting all edges softly.

 Once I finished this area, I thought I might move over to the lower left corner so that I could incorporate more color in the still life, especially because this set up is a study in very low chroma.

After I painted the green of the cloth in the lower left and part of the tree base, It was easier to judge color in more difficult areas like the glass and the bright greens of the lichen on the sticks behind the pine cones.



Sadie instructed me to paint difficult and detailed areas "blurry". The reason for this is because in later stages I can decide how detailed or non-detailed to make these areas. If I had painted these areas too finely in this stage, they would be more difficult to soften later.



Most of the chroma in this stage, the color block in, errs on the side of higher, warmer chroma rather than lower, cooler chroma. Sadie said that it is far easier to later bring the chroma down than to bring it up from a cooler state. Therefore this entire color block in is warmer than it appears in reality.



One of the most interesting things about this process is how Sadie stresses how soft and blurry everything should be. The reason is because at the next stages, the finish, we will work on selective focus, what areas to choose to emphasize, and what to let fall away.



The two above photos demonstrate how blurry and out of focus to treat very detailed areas like this twig that is covered in lichen. Sadie said it was better to paint these areas as larger swatches of paint in one pass rather than focus in on the minute nuances of each string of lichen. Once the main color of the lichen is established, I can later go in and define detail.



The finished first color pass.

Note that the highlights on the glass are treated generally rather than specifically and are much larger than they are in life. These will become closer to reality in subsequent stages.



The color block in took me about 24-30 hours total. I am only painting on Sundays, so this is over the course of a few months.

Please stay tuned for the final stages of this painting. For the finish, I will be posting more often and adding to an album I have created on Facebook. 

I hope that by sharing my progress and class notes, you can find some new information for your own paintings that helps.

Thank you for reading! :)