I went to the Getty Center yesterday with a friend. I apologize about the quality of the photos; I took them with my phone camera. I am looking for a few things: Real paintings with real paint strokes. Particularly interested in how painters dealt with several figures in a picture to tell a story and having the story still read clearly. I have been painting several figures in a background (digitally) for a client and am learning how to simplify the story in terms of light, or warm and cool colors. I am also looking at the paintings as abstract colors.

Threw away my black, my earth colors and went for the primaries and secondaries. This one is a little bigger than the rest, about 8.5 x 6' acrylic on canvas paper. This was a lion bronze, a part of a bigger sculpt at the Huntington Gardens.

Having a love affair with thalo blue, diox purple and cad red light and magenta and violets.

I have been taking a lot of thumbnail pics from my phone and using them to practice with color mixing in acrylic on canvas paper. I was trying to do a small painting a day, but there is no way I can find time to do this.

Got rid of black and earth colors from my palette for now.

Quickies
Some quick color studies. This one roughly 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. Focusing on warm cool color relationships. This will help me color mix in digital. Acrylic on canvas paper.

Dawn!
This is the second fantasy illustration in a story telling series. This is the second full illustration I have done in Photoshop and yes, you can say I bit off more than I could chew..

Self critique:

What did I learn?

I need to work on:
-Overall consistency. I think that is true for most digital illustrators because the tools are so varied and there are so many choices.

-Getting better at color mixing, badly, badly needed here, too much black over all!

-Better management of files, organizing, layering, etc

-Push for better lighting

-Getting to know my digital brushes, picking my favorite ones and using them for better overall consistency

-Work more abstractly first, before the form

It was only towards the very end I felt I was finally painting a little in Photoshop. When I first began the color/value lay out on this, looking back on it I should have layed everything out in pure color-not a gray scale layout. Color should have been addressed first, because there is too much black, not enough warms and cools playing off each other. I learned this while painting the small plein aire color sketches in Tahoe (see earlier posts)

Last Day at Eagle Falls, Tahoe
I got up at 4 am to get to Eagle Falls by 6 to see the sun rise. What a morning. I couldn't decide on whether to climb the falls down to Emerald Bay or paint. I did a little of both.

Eagle Falls is one of my favorite places period. Nothing compares to it's beauty, so casual and abundant. No one was there that morning. I decided to paint small, simplify, getting better on using a system of brushstrokes, brights and filberts, getting to know them better and of course being more abstract.

Top upper left was the first and I nailed it.

Top upper right was the second one and I was on a narrow bridge at about 8 when tourists started to stagger in. I do not like people behind me and got real jumpy since this bridge is a very high traffic tourist area. I lost concentration and left.

Bottom left had an incredible example of a wonderful blue reflective light at the big boulder's base. I was intent on capturing that. I was getting tired about now, at 10 am. Decided not to paint anymore. A woman dropped by looking over my shoulder and started talking so much I thought she was going to tell me her life story.

Bottom Right. Then hiked all the way up to Eagle Lake carrying about 15 pounds of paints, water and lunch in high elevation, sweating and panting for breath up broken granite and an incredible path, found this lovely little composition at Eagle Lake. Had to paint it, by then it was 12. Wanted to describe the shadows with blobs of blues using a limited palette.

The Palette:
Greens: Thalo green, Chromium Oxide Green, Hansa yellow (my new favorite yellow. Ugly right out of the tube, but mixes great to get cool highlights in greens as well as wonderful warm neutrals for rock)
Sky: Colbalt turquoise (teal), cerulean blue, tit.white
Rock: Raw Sienna, Hansa yellow (like 2%), black, tit. white, chromium oxide green (like 1%) or cerulean blue (1%)

Small acrylic color sketches on 8 1/2 by 11 canvas paper

This is from Bliss Park which is right before Eagle Falls. I've always wanted to get to Bliss but always ran out of time. It's paradise here, incredibly blue, turquoise water up to blunt rocky cliffs~cliffs small enough that the local teenagers were leaping off the boulders into the icy water. My nine year old daughter took her turn and as a mom, it was hard to watch.

Acrylic on canvas paper. Taken from cell phone.

The last one I did yesterday-a real quickie, as Greg and Sienna were tapping their feet by this time. I hated to leave.

I did not bring a scanner so these are all taken on my cell phone.

This is on the trail of Eagle Falls on the opposite side of the highway across from the Lake. We always mean to follow the trail, exquistely beautiful as well, but my daughter gets caught up here all afternoon. A very popular spot, esp. for children, it's water is icy cold and sports shades of blues to greens. I love it here. I really wrestled with this composition because my weakness is simplifying anything. I got a lot more loose on the right side of the painting, then looked up to see Greg and Sienna wanting to leave.

I am on vacation in Lake Tahoe. My very favorite place in all the world is Eagle Falls on the lake side of the highway. This is the first acrylic painting in a long time. This is actually the setting which has inspired the home of LeoPardine. Very limited pallette, on canvas paper.

Updates while on vacation. When i can, I try to work on my file while on my laptop. Dragons filling out nicely. Top head textures are from the King Cheetah, neck and cheek textures from a mackerel.

At 6:23. It's blistering here. I took a break to jump in the pool with Greg and Sienna. Running off to Mission Viejo for a birthday party....

Updates for Archer Illustration

Drawings of the neighbor's dogs. It's hard being an artist and a parent at the same time. I find that I am never fully focused anymore. It's not that I can't, it's either exhaustion or Sienna screaming "Mommie! Lookit! Lookit!" Or just screaming in general; sometimes I think she's being eaten by a bear, then I think, wait a minute, there are no bears in Brad's backyard. And I just have one. I don't know how parents with multiple children handle life. In this case, as soon as I saw a good pose on the dog(s), Sienna would call them over and there goes a great pose. Sigh....

Normally I draw with my favorite prisma color pencil, Tuscan Red. Since taking Paul Wee's class on figure sketching, I have reluctantly switched to pen. These are done on a teeny little sketchbook, 4" x5", almost the size of a package of cigarettes, only big enough to make thumbnail sketches.

Completely reworking the Archer illustration. Went back to the drawing board, creating better silohuettes, balancing values, telling the story with light. This is the underpainting.

Drawing. Greg posed for the bad guy.

Tuff Girl

This was an assignment done for Bryan Mon who is self publishing his own comic called Tuff Girl. He asked a few of his friends for their own interpretation of his character. I made her more youthful, leaner, possibly in her early twenties and put the dragon embossing on her costume and more feminine accents. This is the first real illustration with a solid background for me. More to come in this vein. I did this in a more airbrushed style. In the future, I will try to get more painterly-more like I paint traditionally.

Bryan suggested I turn the background a little cattywampus and Greg helped me with a second eye-and the props. Thanks, Guys!

Finishing up with a Comic book character, will post soon. In the meantime, I redrew the Archer since I was not happy with it. Face needed more intensity, more appeal. Greg helped me work this difficult pose out.

It's been awhile. I have been taking a figure drawing class at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art on Tuesday nights. I have not drawn the nude in nearly 9+ years. The teacher is Paul Wee and he does not remember but I had taken his class and Mark Westermo's class almost 12 years ago. These are all 5 minute poses and the back pose was drawn for my husband who loves this type of body-tiny waist and big hips.

Close up, back from Hart Park.

I don't usually post anything with my daughter, but I love the way these pics came out. I am always looking for examples of flesh tones for future reference and I love the colors on Sienna. She had just came out of a hot tub last weekend and her skin was so dewy and fresh-skin tones were so beautiful, she appeared to be made from something else.

This is the painting I finished for Black History Month for Hart Park. It will only be up one more day.

The rest are quick pics I have been taking from my cell phone. They are taken with abstract compositions in mind. A few years ago, I was taken back by some of the abstract work I saw in Dorota's house. I have never been interested in abstract work before, but I loved what she has painted in her home. I have been since taking small snapshots just for color and composition, thinking in a way I never have.

Union station, my dear Lilliana's kitchen counter top, William S. Hart's mansion (dinner table) and a wonderful chicken meal that Greg prepared.

These were done near the Canyon Theatre. We did not have models but these musicians played for us and I set up. I'm not used to "sketching" with the colors; I mean I am really quick, but it was unnerving at first to paint people moving around alot with acrylics. Great exercise, tho. I was channeling John Quinn, who is used to drawing a lot of people moving around in his meetings or when he is traveling.

The first one I did is the woman, then I painted Manak, the guitar player, and he turned out much better since I was "warmed up" by the time I got to him. Actually, I kinda painted them together, since the singer would get up, then I would switch to Manak, he would get up and then I would switch back to her when she got back...I used to do this with watercolor in Bob Kato's class at Disney. I would bring 2-3 drawing pads, and while one watercolor was drying, throw it down on the floor, grab another pad, work that one, throw that one down and let it dry, grab the pad that was dry and on and on. I would end up with several filled pads of figures very quickly and get lots of practice in.

Working on:

I've been asked to do an original painting for a local show coming up. It will be for Black History Month. This is 11 3/4" x 24" on canvas. I actually gessoed this twice and sanded it in between gesso coats, thanks for the instructional, John Quinn. Not quite finished yet, need a few more tweaks. Not used to working on such a smooth surface-and it's acrylic, which lends itself to such a hard and graphic look. Can't blend or smooth. This one will actually be done before the Chinese warrior horse (see below)

Acrylic painting on canvas in progress. Underpainting. Taken from my cell phone.

Scant offerings: This was done last night in Santa Clarita. Not the best I've done, but the model did not show up and Olga graciously stepped in to model.

Concepts for Hart Park. I did these pretty fast and I think went over the top a little. It was too energetic for a conservative bunch but I had a blast working them. Some day I will paint them digitally for my portfolio.