Erik Tiemens Watercolor & Gouache Painting Workshop

Over the past weekend, I attended the Erik Tiemens' Watercolor & Gouache painting workshop in Mendocino, California. Erik Tiemans, for those who are unfamiliar, is a concept artist in the film industry. A few times a year he teaches a workshop at the Mendocino Art Center. Overall, as a working illustrator, I found this workshop technically useful; as a painter I found this workshop inspiring.

Tiemens' palette is largely composed of the familiar colors many painters use, but with a slightly blue and gray emphasis with brown undertones. The influence of the Dutch Masters' painting is evident in his work, which he talked about to some degree on the first day.


Tiemens' approach to painting outdoors is similar to pre-impressionist painters, who would spend time in the countryside sketching from life (usually with sepia ink or watercolor), bringing the sketches back to the studio for further development. Here is a sketch he had hanging on the wall in class (a better photo can be found on his blog):


And here is a beautiful finished painting he brought to class:

Although Erik Tiemens works in the film industry as a well established concept artist with a great deal of respect, apart from that field he is just a really damn good painter with a lot of interesting work. It is difficult not to be inspired by his enthusiasm for the craft and history of painting.

But since this was a workshop, what did I take away from it?

Here are some of the field sketches I did during the workshop:

and small studies, experiments worked up from memory:

I love the idea of sketching out in the field, 'gathering data' as he referred to it, taking those sketches and experiences back into the studio to come up with something entirely new: a composed impression based on what was learned from life. To pull this off well, a certain amount of craft and skill is involved that one must, in the end, feel as though the landscape has not been slavishly copied, but rather pulled from a well of knowledge and creativity. In the end, the artist must arrive feeling completely personally immersed in self expression. Isn't that what it's all about? I left the workshop and the beautiful town of Mendocino completely inspired and looking in a more complete direction for my own work. I highly recommend this workshop for any working illustrator or fine artist who simply loves to paint.

Lucky Charms cereal box illustration. I painted the far background, hands, and small panel illustrations. Lucky was prepainted and dropped in later. I don't have a sample yet of the entire printed box with text. Hope to get a sample soon!

Prudent Publishing/Greeting Card comps

Here are a few watercolor comps I did for Prudent Publishing Company, a greeting card company. I enjoyed working on these. I don't believe they were used in their greeting card line, but it was fun nonetheless to help out. All comps are owned by Prudent Publishing.

Prudent Publishing/More Greeting Card comps

(All comps are copyright Prudent Publishing Company.)

ninja girl

i posted this to my Pogo Art Team blog a while ago. I forgot to post it here until just now.

I'd like to develop these further, but I'm currently swimming with seahorses and other fancies of the deep. I'm also taking the Eric Tiemans gouache painting workshop this weekend. Looking forward to it. I'll post the results next week!

Leafy

She's a little bit of this, little bit of that, and little bit of color as I would like to see it. Or maybe she's a he. Hmmmmm...

Hummingbird Goes to the Aquarium

I am working on some illustrations for a character I envisioned many months ago named Hummingbird. At this time, she is a ten year old girl, although that may change down the road. In these illustrations, I am thinking about putting her in various scenarios in an aquarium, where she is thinking about the real creatures she is seeing and the fantasy creatures she encounters in books (mermaids, seahorses, underwater titans, etc).

Here are a few sketches. I will be working on these in the fall, bringing them to full color along with several other sketches. There is no real endpoint here; simply a bunch of fun illustrations that challenge me with various scenarios and lighting situations and a slight storyline for my character.

Well, it's not that great, but there you are. It was a really happy day with Jamie painting and picnicking on the beach. I might have been more than a little distracted. :)

I enjoyed this reclining pose. No armature was needed underneath; it was approached like a bas relief, lay the clay down and carve out the figure. Although this is unfinished, I am happy with the progress I made. Usually by the end of two sessions, I am still fussing over minute details on the torso. This time I was able to block in a gesture of the figure, not over thinking anatomy.

I am grateful to be a part of the sculpting group. The benefits have been like a magic two way mirror; when drawing, i can see images of sculptures I've been working on, and when sculpting I envision drawings with volume.

I ran out of time and was not able to finish the hands, feet and face.
I also ran into a problem on this particular pose: bending the underlying armature in the right place. As you can see by the silver wire coming through the knee areas, I overestimated where the legs should bend. I thought I'd estimated correctly, but apparently not!

Hummingbird

I had this idea for a character a while ago. I haven't developed it further than this. She started out as a spunky kid and somehow in the witching hours of my sketchbook morphed into a punkier kid. I plan to revisit her soon and develop a few more sketches and paintings. I call her Hummingbird.

Monday Evening Drawing Workshop

5 minutes:

10 minutes:

20 minutes:

Lines

because i am a painter, i usually work tonally on figure drawings. the eye does not see contours around forms; the eye sees masses of shadow and light. for this reason, when drawing from life, many painters choose the tonal approach to drawing over the linear approach. while i agree that learning to see the light as opposed to delineation of separate objects is helpful for painting, after many years of working tonally, i have begun to feel that my work overall has a certain emotional disconnect. ultimately, what the artist is creating is work that expresses his or her own uniqueness, so do i really need to continue along a path in perfecting accuracy?

American Artist Magazine on the subject:

As prevalent as it has been historically, the contour remains an artificial construction. We don’t see in lines, no matter how accustomed we are to delineating objects with them. When I look out the window and see the edge of a building against the sky, I do not see a line, per se. I see a mass of dark tone juxtaposed against a mass of much lighter tone, and the point at which they meet creates an edge. This edge relationship might be described in an abbreviated fashion with a line, but it might also be more fully described by re-creating the tonal relationship between the two masses whose congruence makes the edge. In tonal drawing, there are edges to masses, rather than lines between them. To substitute a line for the edge of a value relationship is to substitute something that is not there for something that is. That is why linear drawing seems more abstract and intellectual. A line seems intellectual not because it lacks feeling—for what could be more emotive than a Leonardo silverpoint line—but because we don’t actually see in lines and therefore they have to be decoded or interpreted. Juxtaposed tones, being so much closer to vision, seem much more immediate.

i actually like a combination of the two, lines and tone. i hope to develop my drawings much further with the hope of emphasizing expressiveness; less literal, more experimental.

my lines are brown china marker and white conte pencil on pastel paper

Tribal Masks of the Pacific Northwest, as seen in the Legacy Gallery in Seattle this weekend. I love the shapes and simplification of forms in these masks.

Monday night drawing workshop. The model is Shawnwa - a fantastic dancer/model through the Bay Area Model's Guild.

A Personal Retrospective

For a few years now, I have desired to depart from the personal work I have engaged in since leaving art school, which tends to mirror my mentor and fellow students, who were no doubt a large influence on my painting. I put together a few paintings I have finished during this period for comparison. They all seem to lack the design and cleanliness of style I have been going for, and the subject matter is not coming through the way I'd like. They feel...... stalled, controlled, tense, and, interestingly, dark (which is odd for floral still lifes, I think). And do I really want to paint only still lifes? I think I find more joy in other areas, like figure painting/drawing and sculpting.