"Meditating", fairy series

For a few years I've been sketching fairies in my sketchbook. Here is the latest, painted.

Fall Picnic

Sometimes I just have to draw things that make me happy and are fun to think about. This was one of those pieces. I was originally going to render this entirely in ink for inktober, but I just never had the time during the entire month of October. I finally got a few free moments this past week, so I picked away here and there until it was finished. 

Happy Fall! 

2016

Being a Capricorn, I have always been driven to succeed. It is frustrating to me that even with all my heart and intentions, I have yet to complete some of the many goals I set out to complete way back in my 20's. There are, of course, many complicated life reasons for this. 

This year I've decided that no matter what, I will accomplish a few of my big art goals, no matter what. 

Seven times fall, eight times stand up. 

I did an alternate, darker version of this painting as well. I can't decide which I like better. 

If you aren't familiar with a Japanese Daruma doll, you can read about them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daruma_doll

Happy New Year

2016

Disney's Palace Pets "Whisker Haven Tales"/Environment Designs and Color Keys

I recently had the honor of working with Ghostbot and Disney Publishing on ten 3:30 minute episodes of Disney Junior's "Whisker Haven Tales with the Palace Pets", directed by Alan Lau.

Episodes can be seen here: 

www.DisneyPalacePets.com

My primary role was to develop background "key" environments working from the approved animatics. If you aren't familiar with animation, a color key is an environment design that establishes a location, color palette, and lighting. It is then referred to by other artists on the  the team that need to create various points of view surrounding that piece of the film in the sequence. 

Elements like water that animate were tricky, especially bubbles. We had to take a close look at how bubbles looked under the water and out of the water. 

Time of day was a major consideration in many episodes. I created guides for blocks of 2-3 hours for each time of day so that the color remained consistent throughout the episodes. 

More episodes will be available soon via the Disney Junior Watch app on iTunes! The show is doing very well. It was a pleasure to work with Ghostbot and Disney on this exciting new show!

More of my work can be seen on my website as well, julialundman.com

Thanks for reading!

Disney's Palace Pets, "Tales From Whisker Haven"/Color Scripts!

I recently worked on ten 3:30 animated episodes for Disney's Palace Pets, a new show on Disney Junior. There is also a new Palace Pets Website (!!!) which can be found at www.DisneyPalacePets.com. The show was developed and produced at Ghostbot, directed by the talented Alan Lau. It was such a fun project for me personally as I served as Art Director on environments, props and color design. The show was definitely challenging as the Palace Pets have been a successful toy line for Disney for a while now and have a multicolored pastel palette. For this reason, color scripting was necessary on several of the episodes for either a full episode or portions of sequences that were particularly tricky to work out.

Below is my color script for my favorite episode, "The Knight Night Guard". (available to watch on the Disney Junior app now!) Color scripts, if you aren't familiar with them, are a way to get a big picture take on the color design for an entire episode or sequence. It is important to focus on the storytelling as scenes move from shot to shot and sequence to sequence, and make sure the planning for the lighting and effects is consistent logistically from one scene to another. They also are very helpful for animators so they can get a big picture idea of what it is we are shooting for, and also are very helpful for the compositor when piecing together all of the various elements into one shot. Additionally, I enjoy designing color scripts since they give me a chance to think globally about how I want to approach the design of specific environments and how much work I will need to do for specific areas of a sequence, and the work load we are facing in terms of environments and props for a particular episode or sequence.

Below are some stills from Episode 3. They translated pretty closely to the color script - good planning is worth it!

Below is a partial color script for Episode 4, "Throwing a Ball". I didn't have time to do a color script for the entire episode so I focused instead on a tricky sequence that takes place with a time of day change.

Below are a few shots for the final. (Additional characters were added after I did this initial color script.)

I actually did a few more of these but those episodes are not yet released. 

Please check back for updates and be sure to watch Palace Pets "Tales of Whisker Haven" on Disney Junior! Next week I will post about some of the environments and props I designed.

Thanks for reading!

Monterey Bay Aquarium/Color Studies & Sketches

Jamie and I recently went on a trip down the coast to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of my very favorite places in the world. We both brought our drawing, sketching, and painting supplies, including my new samsung tablet. Because most of my color sketching was going to be done inside the aquarium, I carried around my tablet in my messenger bag and took it out when I saw something I wanted to study.

As mentioned in my previous post, the primary reason I purchased the tablet was so that I could do a lot more color studies of interior lighting in situations where it would be difficult to take out my usual paints or pastels, places like restaurants, cafes, aquariums, museums, unusual interior lighting situations. Boy am I glad I did. Each time I would sketch from life in the aquarium, I would take a photo before I left. When I would look at the photo later, I noticed a HUGE difference - the camera most of the time did not capture the lighting effects I observed, and if it did, the spirit of that light was completely lost, subdued, or just not there. What an amazing learning experience!

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Below are a few of my digital studies. I also did numerous pencil and watercolor studies of the animals in the aquarium, and a few pastels from up the coast. I will post those next week.

 The Kelp Forest. So glad I brought my noise canceling headphones for this one. There were deafening crowds of pre-teens on a field trip with their school. You never know what will confront you when plein air sketching - I highly recommend headphones if you sketch in public places. 

I liked the presentation of this display so much. The blue light spilling from the water and the  yellow-green reflections of the kelp were gorgeous. I felt the design stood well on it's own.

The sketch above is downstairs looking into the Sea Otter display, sea otters mostly spending their time up above water and only occasionally diving below. I noticed this perch watching people as they went by and thought it was funny...

Some sketches went faster than others. This one in the Deep Sea Exhibit was done in about 30 minutes. It was at the end of the day and just seemed to flow. I figured out a composition and story as it evolved in front of me. 

Of all the subjects I studied in the aquarium, this jellyfish display was absolutely the most difficult. I sat across from the display on the floor against a wall in almost total darkness. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, but when I looked down into the bright computer screen of my tablet, my eyes would adjust to that brightness, so that when I looked back up again at the jellies, I had to give my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness again. VERY tough! I spent a good two hours trying to capture the light of the tank. Wow, what a learning experience this sketch was! 

One sketch that I did not have time for that I saw over and over was the selfie in front of any given tank. Maybe next time.

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I am going to start posting every Monday, as best I can, over the next four months. I have a lot of work to share from my latest projects, videos, sketches, paintings, progress on a few personal projects and the occasional workshop experience to share. 

Next week:

puffin studies, rockfish, jellyfish studies and schools of sardines studies. 

Thanks for visiting!

Digital Sketching | Leveling Up my Tablet

For a while now I've been sketching around town using my iPad. I like using a tablet for sketching when I am in situations where I cannot bring my usual pastel kit or oil painting kit for plein air studies. The iPad is light weight, fits in my bag, and can be whipped out without questions or funny looks just about anywhere.

Sketching at the Art Institute of Chicago

Until now I've been making good use of my iPad. I use the Wacom Stylus 1 (not 2) and the fantastic Procreate app. My only on-going frustration was the sometimes lag of the stylus and inaccuracy of the pen tip, as well as brush sizes and other issues that have often felt like painting with a giant crayon that I don't have complete control over. 

Frankly, I have been frustrated with Apple's lack of support and indifference for third party vendors who make styluses to use with their sketching, writing and painting apps. (Having worked in mobile games I know quite well Apple has rigorous internal checks before any app can be launched in the App Store - so why not rigorous checks for 3rd party devices intended to use with their products?!!) Additionally, it seems, I've been waiting forever for Apple to upgrade the iPad to run OS X so that it can run Photoshop or Painter, and - dare I dream - have it's own digitizer stylus. The iPad is cool, I suppose, but a tablet that can actually run Adobe software and be brought along in a bag is powerful stuff. 

Jamie painting in Golden Gate Park

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 Here's The Skinny

Since about 2013, rumors have swirled around the internet about the secret development of the iPad Pro, which would run OS X and have a custom stylus. 

Most recently, rumors were that the iPad Pro would be announced this March, but the iWatch trumped that as Apple leaps into the wearables market. Still, rumors continue to swirl that the impending launch of the iPad Pro will be announced later this year, fall 2015. Still others are skeptical of a launch this year or even next. Ugh - I am tired of waiting. There are already several tablets on market available right now with a few being relatively inexpensive. Whenever the rumored iPad Pro does launch, one thing is certain, it will be an expensive version of the current iPads. Most likely more than I really want to spend for sketching around town. Even my plein air oil and pastel gear each came in around $500-$600 for the equipment.

Given my quest and budget, I identified what I'd like in a tablet and then set out to find one. 
I wanted these attributes:

between $300 - $600 max
light weight and slim
good battery life 
can run Photoshop
stylus with a thin and more precise tip, and good response with no lagging

Best Options:
Wacom's Cintiq Companion, $2000
Microsoft Surface Pro, starting at $800
Samsung Slate, a retired line which can be purchased new or refurbished around $450-550 on Amazon Marketplace. (I've seen it even cheaper on eBay and B&H Photo)

I know there are other tablets, but many of them get poor reviews, so I narrowed my choices down to the three listed above. After a lot of research & recommendations from friends, I opted for the Samsung Slate. 

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Samsung Slate 

Out of the box I spent an evening fumbling around the Windows 7 OS, which I am not accustomed to. After I watched the on-screen tutorial for a few minutes, I was able to navigate around the desktop with the excellent digitized stylus. After I connected to my wireless account and accessed the internet, Windows promptly updated. 

I was then able to load the Creative Cloud app at $10 a month to run Photoshop. Since the Slate also has a usb port, an older version of PS can be loaded if you prefer. 

While I was researching the tablet, I found a great plug-in for Photoshop that enables two handed use in order to use the hot keys without a keyboard. This plug in, Art Dock, is also customizable and can be configured for either right or left handed use. 

When loaded, Art Dock allows you to work with one hand using your stylus for painting/sketching/drawing while the other hand hits hot keys - a very nice workflow compared to the iPad/Procreate model, where the stylus alone must choose everything from brushes, layers, colors, brush size in addition to painting.

The link for the Art Dock plug in and instructions for left and right handed docking is HERE.

For saving art, you can, of course, keep your files on the desk top (not recommended), upload your files to Dropbox (or another cloud based service) or save everything on a thumb drive using the USB port. Incidentally, I found the cover on the USB port difficult to remove and ended up using a sharp knife tip to remove it. Seems to work just fine now.

I also like the size of the Samsung slate. It's longer than the iPad, closer to the 16:9 ratio, which I like for studies, especially when studying film shots. The tablet also comes with a Sim Card slot and a camera, though not capable of video. That's ok with me as I usually carry my iPhone or a camera with me that can record when I need to.

Side by Side size comparison

Because the on-screen keyboard is awkward to use, you can also get a bluetooth keyboard and also a docking station if you'd like to use it as a casual computer.  I haven't purchased either of these yet and probably won't since I don't plan to do a lot of typing on the machine other than saving files.

When I finally got down to painting I felt like I was in HEAVEN! Using the Art Dock plug in plus sketching directly on-screen using PHOTOSHOP and my own custom brushes (uploaded from Dropbox) felt like I had been liberated from all the clunkiness that I was trying my best to be patient with. Pressure sensitivity is not that of a full blown Cintiq, but frankly, it is good enough for me to complete this sketch, below, without any complaints, lag time, or inaccurate brush calibration. The only noticeable oddness was that the screen sometimes changed brightness when the light changed, but that was due to the extreme changes in brightness of the television screen that was also in the room. This might be an issue later; if it is I will surely update this post. 

A quick process video using Flipagram

The final piece. I worked in my bedroom at night in three 45 minute sessions was able to finish this sketch. 

I don't know what your needs are for tablet sketching, but you might want to consider these options. If you have a budget, the Cintiq Companion 2 looks amazing. If you are like me with a pretty limited budget (this was already a splurge!), you might want to look into a refurbished tablet or take the Microsoft tablet for a whirl. Whatever you choose, I hope you enjoy a new avenue for plein air sketching practice. Please leave comments if you have additional info, good or bad experiences or questions.

Thanks for reading!