What do I paint second?

Michael asks:

Thanks so much for posting your technique, I am currently working on my first painting and have been doing exactly what you’ve done here. i think i did do something wrong though, a friend of mine said to do a light wash over the entire piece ,but I think it just confused me. Anyhow , why do you not put more detail in the underpainting, are you modeling further with your glazes?

I’m not sure what the light wash is for, either.  I’m assuming you’re using acrylic paints, which dry to a hard finish and so allow you to paint a wash on top of them.  I use gouache, and a wash would scrub off whatever was painted underneath.  So, I start my paintings with washes and build up to opaque brushstrokes. A wash is paint made transparent by adding water.  A glaze is paint made transparent by adding a medium—for acrylic, glazing medium; for oil paint, linseed oil and varnish—or glazing medium.

I do an underpainting to block in and organize big areas of light and dark.  I long ago found out it’s too complicated for me to figure out light and dark and color all at the same time.  There’s no point in me putting lots of detail in the underpainting, because I’m only going to paint the same details on top with opaque paint.  In fact, to discourage myself from getting into details while underpainting, I use an oversized brush.

Here’s a step-by-step example of how I build up from an underpainting.  This is a continuation of a previous post, What do I paint first?

A wee spot

Here’s a fun little spot illustration I did for the Renaissance & Baroque Society of Pittsburgh, this time to promote a concert of ancient Scottish and Irish music—both sacred (church liturgy) and profane (drinking songs).  The costume is from a painting of a highland aristocrat wearing his hunting clothes.

It’s never too late

Here’s a wonderful story about some overdue library books, and how the anonymous borrower redeemed his/her honor 50 years later.

The Mayflower

Another spread from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This is the big splashy first glimpse of the Mayflower.

Here is the thumbnail sketch:

Everything’s there that needs to be, but I was concerned that the direction of the drawing didn’t show the Billingtons being rowed toward the Mayflower in the background.

In the tight sketch, I turned the foreground boat around so we’re looking at its stern as it rows away from us. I had to scan this in two pieces—sorry.

When I drew the tight sketch, I worked half-size, so it was fairly easy to freehand the lines of the ship.  When I inked the scene, I worked at 125%, which is pretty big.  I don’t have enough control with a brush to competently ink in those lines at the larger size.  I wound up ruling them with a rapidograph, and used a homemade french curve—I traced the ship’s line onto a piece of watercolor board and cut along the line with a razor blade.  It gave me a nice smooth template to rule the lines with.

Here’s the inked and colorized image:

Colorization by Vince Dorse.  Click on the picture to embiggen.

Update—Vince has some more on the colorization process over here.

Bring me the head of Johann Sebastian Bach

Awhile back, Ann Mason—then-exec-director of the Renaissance & Baroque Society of Pittsburgh—and I thought it would be screamingly funny to create a promotional bobblehead of the august Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.  And, by George, we were right—it is funny!

Here’s what I envisioned:

One of the rbsp board members, Joy Troetschel, has some expertise in getting merchandise manufactured, and knew of a bobblehead factory in China who could produce our little statuette.  What follows are some images from the correspondence I shared with the talented sculptors who created a brilliant little 3D clay caricature of Bach from the sketches I sent.

And here’s the prototype.  They even airbrushed a nice 5 o’clock shadow onto JSB’s cheeks!

If you’d like one of these timeless treasures, visit the rbsp website—they’re modestly priced and benefit the Society.

Five not-too-bad cover ideas

People do judge a book by its cover.  Or at least, it’s the cover that gets people to pick up the book in the bookstore and see whether they like it.  Here are rough cover ideas for Two Bad Pilgrims.

Art Director Jim Hoover liked Idea A  I did tight sketches of the boys, the New Worlde mappe and the title type, which Jim put together as a comp.

The boys and the map are painted as a single image.  One last request: show the boys having burst through the map.  The compass rose is a separate piece of art.  The type I inked in as separate black & white art.  Jim Hoover combined these elements into one cover image and added the credits at the bottom.

Samoset

The costume color indication for Samoset, for Two Bad Pilgrims.  Not that there’s much costume.  Samoset walked into Plymouth Plantation in the middle of March wearing hardly anything at all.  He was showing the pilgrims he had no concealed weapons.  He was being theatrical and used symbolism to communicate: as ambassador from Chief Massasoit, he wanted to express goodwill to the pilgrims and he mustn’t have trusted his broken English.  The Wampanoags wanted to know whether the pilgrims were peaceful, so Samoset carried two arrows, one with an arrowhead and the other blunt.

How would you walk into a potential enemy’s camp and ask about their intentions—while not knowing their language?

 

Master of the Mayflower

Here’s my costume color indication for Master Jones for Two Bad Pilgrims.  ‘Master’ was what they called the ship’s captain back in the 1600s. I couldn’t find a contemporary picture of him, like an engraving—so I made him up.  I tried to give him a salty swashbuckling air with the plumed hat, sash and of course, earring.

Plymouth Plantation

It’s November—time to start thinking about Thanksgiving and pilgrims!  Here’s another scene from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This one shows the pilgrims beginning construction of Plymouth Plantation.  The first thing they built was the common house/fort.  This is my thumbnail sketch, 2 inches tall.

One of the great things about being an illustrator is that you’re always learning something.  F’rinstance, to draw this scene of 17th century building construction, I had to find out how those buildings were framed; how a block and tackle works; how an ox yoke is harnessed.  I made several trips to the library and spent some time on the internet.

I show the pilgrims hauling cannon to the upper storey of the fort. 

Art director Jim Hoover and editor Kendra Levin had a team of crack historians fact-checking my sketches.  Turns out the pilgrims didn’t bring any oxen with them on the Mayflower, so I replaced the ox with a group of men when I inked in the drawing.  Too bad; I kind of liked the ox.  The timbers are shaped to form mortise and tenon joints.  That’s an adz lying in the foreground. 

Color indication—

—and colorized final art.

Colorization by Mr Vince Dorse.

Joyeux anniversaire, Asterix!

By Toutatis!  The French comic strip Asterix le Gaulois debuted 50 years ago today in Pilote magazine.