So Flickr didn't like my gifs, and after talking with Lindsay she said I should just upload these shots now just in case we can't get said gifs to work in class. So here you go.The green bit is my earliest version of the Lovecraft portrait. It looks like shit. So I decided to remake it.
So H.P Lovecraft (the guy who wrote Call of Cthulhu) was made with dry medium, mostly in the form of pastels, blenders and a couple oil pencils. I laid down almost all the colors with the chunky oil pastel, then used excessive amounts of blending between traditional blenders, Blending Brushes, and Just Add Water to mix the tones and get some consistency. For precision I used some Oil Pencils which actually interacted quite nicely with said oil pastels, both for line drawing and for even more blending.
Isaac Asimov (the guy who wrote I, Robot- NOT THE SHITTY MOVIE HE DIED BEFORE THAT- the book) was my wet medium and I had a lot of fun with him. I've always seen what people can do with airbrushes but could never afford one. So when I saw there were airbushes I knew I wanted to use them. So I chose a paper tone I could work into the portrait itself and did the basic line drawing with an oil brush.
Then for his skin tone (and later the robot) I laid down lots of layers of airbrushed skin tones with the paper as the midtone. When I was happy with his skin, hair, suit and robot, I set to work with using oil paints, playing around with their transparency so the thicker, mottled spray underneath would serve as a texture for the suit and metal surface. Once I was happy with the blending and thicker colors, I went over them with some carefully selected highlight colors with some oil brushes for some nice gradients in the lines.
Then finally I went back with the airbrush one last time for some more dominant shading effects and you have Isaac Asimov.
Overall I really enjoyed using Painter!I love being able to use the tactile traits of real materials without any of the art store trips, price tags or excruciating mess it leaves. I can see myself using it plenty more in the future!
These are cool Carl! You incorporated peripheral elements to who they were really well. Watch out though for a few of the strokes that are happening here (the eldritch script and Asimov's hair) that seem to sit on top of the canvas rather than feeling incorporated in the piece.
ReplyDeleteMan does Lovecraft have a big chin. You can really tell the love you have for these subjects and also how they've influenced you, and both look really solid. I haven't seen you draw a ton of humans, so it's cool to see your style translated in these portraits. Also, the elements you added to them really speak to their character and make the illustrations much more interesting.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you decided to move away from linework! I know you mentioned sticking to lines can be an issue. It's definitely a natural instinct to a lot of us and it's great to see more exploration with painting going on here. Lovecraft's skin is awesome, and the background has a really cool bleeding effect going on with the reds. The other guy has some really gorgeous hair that pops from the lines after you decided to go over them! It's really fun to see your transition through the process. Wonderful paint work.
ReplyDeleteGotta say, I really like the Lovecraft one with the color scheme and nods to the Eldritch stuff. Both of these pieces are pretty well done, too. One thing I see in the Asimov picture that I would've like to see repeated is the solid lines of color like in his hair and on the robot's highlighting. I think you blended a lot of colors really well, but seeing that standalone painterly mark I think would really be cool in these pieces.
ReplyDeletei really like the one with the robot head. it turned out soooo good. i also agree i think straying away from line work was a good idea. your use of color is really nice in both of these. the only thing that bothers me is the left side of the guy with a books face is too dark for my liking. for whatever reason it doesnt look right to me but that would be an easy fix. great job man!
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of impressed that you managed to get the same quality of painting in your dry media portrait in your wet media one with subtle differences. Both paintings have moments where they are sometimes a little bit too close to the color/tone of the background, especially in your second portrait (in your first, the left side of Lovecraft's face is starting to get lost in that dark red), but the darker orange block of color is a nice breakup between that similarity and I would love to see that worked into your portraits a bit more.
ReplyDeleteIsaac Asimov looks awesome the way that the orange is coming through his skin tone. I wrote a couple comments on other people's posts earlier about how it's nice to see the colors harmonized when the color peeks out beneath the painting - and in this case it really does. I could see you treating the background with one more layer - maybe doing the same kind of technique that you used on his face -- but with another secondary background color. That way you'll have the orange still showing up, but sort of as this tying element, instead of only the single bright color. The likenesses are really fun and energetic. I think that the Lovecraft one really gets the mood of his works - my husband, Chris, has a bunch of the games with the Lovecraft twist to them -- and the lore is super fun and creepy. I think the red background is really awesome - kind of mystical - I'd try to also work in a bit of warmth into the color of his face if you can, just to make it not so single-hued, maybe just a tiny bit more red for his cheeks, or blue/green underlying where his stubble would be underneath his face skin... you know what I mean? I think that would make the transitions in his face really rich!
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