Quickie out at Stoney Point. I've always wanted to paint here. Good values, but no focal point.

Gotta dang cold!

Sergio Lobato, my old art director and fellow painter in crime, suggested that I start painting on masonite for fantasy pieces. As soon as I got off the phone, I rummaged thru the garage and found masonite-you people of the animation background might recognize the substrate-these are the dividers which separate the drawings in a scene stacker! I have several, and now I know what to do with them!

After painting on canvas paper for several months now, it is a little tricky to adjust to the hard surface of masonite. Whereas I was getting used to trying to get the values on with just one sweep of the brush; masonite, because of this smooth surface allows me to get more detail in; several brushstrokes. Colors tend to be much brighter.

This new direction is a big leap for me.

Moritorium!

With regret, I am sad to announce that computer game company, Stormfront Studios has closed it doors after 20 years in the gaming industry. It was at this studio, I entered my first professional art job and my first project was a PC game called Stronghold for EA. I did several fantasy portraits; this is one, and the others are in the garage somewhere-when I find them again I will post them.

It was a blast for the first two years when the company was still young; the fun things that went on and the personalities! Uday from India who was an amazing artist with such a bad, rude disposition that I never spoke to him again; Ken Berry, who would talk about the babes he had once dated (all day), Tracy Grellinger who was so tough, she jumped off her motorcycle to punch a guy thru his car window in SF; and a lot of stories and gossip I can't write about publicly! In those days, I would wear cute clothes, go to work, rattle the fence and get the dogs barking! Sarah did one better; she came to work in a tiny skirt on moving day (moving day!) and Ken and I sat back and laughed in our chairs as we watched the moving guys' eyes pop out of their sockets whenever she bent over to unplug something or other. Then there was the time when I came in to work on a Saturday and caught the maintenance guys rummaging thru Don's beautiful office. "Say," I said casually, "What are you guys looking for?" "Uh...we dropped a joint in Don's office and we just gotta find it before Monday!" Don held some of this meetings privately in his office with some bigwigs on Mondays. We were very close in those days, I don't think I had more fun or laughed as much in one job as I did at Stormfront. It was the people and talent that made it a terrific experience.

Goodluck to the few oldtimers that were left: Jim Larson, Bill Boyer, and John Kiester, and those who were before and came after I left for Disney. Also, so sorry, for you, Don Daglow, who was so proud of your company and who was always kind and so afraid of bad publicity and lawsuits. Don was one of those rare bosses who you could actually go and talk to if there was a concern. He was always welcoming, approachable and a good listener. You truly deserve so much more than this ending to your baby.

Speed painting 101: I did a real quickie portrait of Beth in period costume; then had to race home to help little Sienna with her homework. I'd say maybe about no more than 15 mins.

I would have liked to take my time on this one. All in all it was a fantastic two days of throwing the paints around.

I usually do a quick pencil sketch to solidify structures before jumping off into paint.

Okay-I really bit off more than I could chew on this one! So much going on here-many lights and shadows and midtones. I was looking for a scene that had: perspective, objects in the foreground and background and objects relating to each other; foreground shadow and sunlight. Object: to simplify the shapes.

I got up to go pee; came back, and someone had put the white lawn chairs infront of the pond. Awesome! I could not have planned it better! Then I had lunch, finished early, and someone was in one of the lawn chairs! Even more better!

In hindsight, I went a little el nutso on the color palette-shoulda really limited myself on just greens for awhile. Should just painted the shadows and lights in greens, (value study) then loaded in a selected palette.

I just did this this morning with the Santa Clarita Artists Assoc. I am working on getting more perspective in my work these days; even tho the perspective is atrocious here. Will work on that.

There is another paint out tomorrow at Rancho Camolus on the 126 tomorrow all day. There will be costumed period models there to paint, if anyone can get a sick day.

Threw some quick color on.

Quick gestural.

Statue:

I'm going to call this done. I'm actually tired of looking at it. It was painted entirely without burnt umber because I ran out. I had finished most of it before I left for Hawaii and forgot to post it. Today I just threw a few more highlights on it and glazed it.

I usually struggle with reds, but am pleased as the way the reds turned out this time.

Lots of diaxozine purple with cad med red and cad orange hue which gave me the inspiration to paint the squid-which I need to finish also! Acrylic on canvas board with several glazes inbetween paint layers. This would look terrific with a gold gilt frame.

Golden Dragon

I'm still not very good at color correcting these...

Hopefully I will be done with this on the next pass.

Getting in the mood

Greg's away for a few hours, my baby's asleep, so it is unusually peaceful here. Comic Con is just around the corner so maybe I can sneak in a few fantasy pieces to show?

Establishing the values, planes, using big and thick brushes--this is my favorite part of a painting. This stage is pure inspiration and bliss--the next parts are pure work.

This is taken from a ball point pen scribble (see below). This is approximately 45 min. of work; acrylic on canvas paper.

Brain and Ball point pen aways moving:

Back from Hawaii. I went for my cousin's wedding, so I wasn't able to sit much and sketch, but I did get these.

I started to sketch a lot with a ball point pen, which I have not done in years. It was the most handy tool available, and if I got the pages wet, I knew the pen would not run. The dragon drawings were done in the car as we drove around Honolulu! Without husband and child with me, I could really jam with the creativity. The turtles drawings were done after snorkeling with them off the shore of Waikiki-the one day I got to roam on my own.

Celaphod
This will be my last post for awhile. I am leaving for Hawaii tomorrow.

This is just a quick color, brush exercise. I wanted to paint something optimistic and happy. I love the salmon pink color and was finally able to reproduce that type of color on canvas. I don't know if I will ever finish this; I just needed to loosen up.

I love octopuses; they are so weird and beautiful. A lot of people know that many of the celaphod family can squirt ink in the shape of itself to fool an enemy, but did you know that at the same time it can turn completely transparent in the ocean afterwards and "disappear"? I just learned this reading books to my daughter...

I need to finish the gold statue and the painting of Jim Zamlich but I will be flying to Hawaii on Thursday and just needed a visual break from these.

New Blogger! This is a person to watch! Dorota paints and draws traditionally and apparently is just now taking to the digital paint world. I can't wait for her to gain confidence and momentum because I know she is going to show us more great stuff in the future!

Another Update. I've been doing more freelance with a tightdeadline, otherwise, I would have finished this by now. As it were, I've only been able to throw down a few brushstrokes here and there. I've also moved the left eye up a little.

I've really had fun "organizing" the brushstrokes on the face and practicing with saturated colors and desaturated colors. The statue is a gold but I've thrown in reds, greens, blues, purples to make it more rich. I also ran completely out of burnt umber so I've been mixing raw umber with dioxazine purple and 'thalo blue to get the dark darks.

An update. At the last minute, I thru the red in.

A few hours later...

Our bigger image scanner is not compatible with our new iMac, so I am using the little scanner and cannot get the entire image.

Just a few weeks ago, I hit a wall creatively, but am on fire now. It goes to prove that once you hit that block and you stick with it and get thru it, artistic growth is just around the corner. So! Blocks are opportunities to grow! So get your brushes and/or pencils out!

Exercise on the planes of the face