Hello. This has been the longest time I have not posted..ever. My apologies...There has been a reason...I have filed for a divorce after 12 years of marriage. So I've been packing and moving stuff out, hunting down all the companies I owe payments to, to switch to my name only and let them know where the new bank account is; which has taken hours and hours and hours as I wait on hold for each dept., (I'll post some of the pencil sketches later), and at the same time was blessedly given a deluge of freelance which has ended. So, between handling all the financial changes, the scary workload and fighting late into the night, I took this afternoon off to go back home~to the place that has not been turned upside down~the mighty creativity that I have stayed with, fought for and which gives me some of my super powers back~my paints. Not my best; I had actually started this one before all this happened and lost my footing somewhat; but there are some nice moments here. This may be one of the last in this series, as I've been giving it a lot of thought since this earthquake and have my eye on digital painting and also bringing what I have been studying to canvas. So, thanks for your patience; I will post when I can since the storm is not yet over.

THUMBS, THUMBS THUMBS: Been so busy, have not had time to paint! So! Late night, in order to get away from the computer, I sketch. What would LePardine look like? She is a tense savage so I was playing with body calligraphy and attitude. Years ago, when I worked at Disney Feature Film as a clean up artist, I would stay late on Fridays to see the pencil tests on the Scene Machine and study the drawings and animation. When I first came into Animation, I was trained as an Illustrator, pushed to give a fine line, a finished illustration; I loved the clean line. After cleaning up rough lines from the animators, I really fell in love with the rough line. So much energy and emotion come from the rough; in a good rough, everything should be there: the attitude, the personality, and of course the action. A bad clean up artist will suck the life out of a drawing, a really good clean up artist will "plus" it out. A black and white animated scene is just gorgeous to look at. With Glen Keane's drawings, he would search for the right line, playing, experimenting and it would be the clean up artist to pick the line that would read the best. Lots of energy in his drawings. With an animator like Sergio Pablos, his lines were so clean, when I would do the clean up on Delbert Doppler, most of the drawings were so perfect, I felt like a 5th wheel~this guy knew exactly what he wanted and left no room for anyone's intepretation. Some of the most amazing figure work I saw was when I studied the animation tests for Tarzan. Incredible exaggeration with anatomy with the figure. And color~color will kill a small percentage of how the character reads as opposed to how the rough black and white drawings reads. I was on the big crew of Milo from the film Atlantis. There was a scene where Milo figures out how to get a floating vehicle to work. In the black and white pencil test, Kita was in the background, having just explained how she had tried everything to get it to work, and the subtle expression on her face when Milo casually got it to work was just amazing. The look of being stunned, just blown away was somewhat covered up with the color. Didn't read as much as the test. Animator Randy Haycock did a superb job of an emotion that was so understated with just the right timed pause, it took my breath away. It all starts with the Thumbnails, do lots of them. It will increase your speed, make you think, give you varieties of drawings for the same concept pose.

Working on a project for my daughter. She has to make 15 animals for a "Web Environment". I told her I would help with the 4 legged deer like animals. Here are sketches of a Yak and a Turkmenian Markhor (a hairy looking goat). I've wired wrapped the frame and will apply with sculpey. I suck at wire frames, so I decided this is my grand opportunity to get better at it! These will be tiny; no more than an inch and a half high. Here, I am having great fun with the shapes. These sketches are drawn with reference.

Lots of freelance in the last week and a half...no time to work on my own things, BUT I can doodle inbetween times. Here's a page of quick sketches of the big cats~my goal here is to capture the "calligraphy" of the body design. With the big cats, there is lots of opportunity for squash and stretch~you can squash the hind quarters and stretch the front areas or vice a versa. You can twist the body in mid air. Big cats are animals with a flexible spine, which makes it fun to come up with many varieties of shapes. Make sure you get a flow in these animals, from the tip of the tail to the length of the body. My tool? Hello Kitty makes the best ball point pens! You can't beat the Japanese, these cheap pens have a fluid ink flow that goes and goes. This was all done without reference.

Took a quick trip to the L A Zoo during Spring Break with neighbors and kids. Did not have much time to draw animals, but spent the most time with the Rhinoceros, about 15 mins. If I want to learn how to draw dragons, I come here. But with kids, it's look and dash. I feel sorry for most of the kids; they are accustomed to being entertained every minute on new technology, who have to walk to look at the animals, and who are sorely disappointed when the animals don't have the energy or passion to perform as they do in Madagascar. As I quietly observe and sketch, admiring the forms, shapes and anatomy, kids were banging against the fence, screaming at the animals to do something, parents are ignoring their behavior or just looking away, some kids were shoving me to see the animals while I tried to draw; and to my horror and disgust, I saw one girl chuck an object into the Black Bear's enclosure. As a nation, we are raising scores of kids who have no appreciation for the natural world before us, nor know how to be still and know how to just be. The sense of wonder has been robbed by immediate gratification of being entertained...

Update

Rare footage: Dean Cornwell paints! Posted by James Gurney on Facebook. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs7VY16nTA0

Check out the work of Jose Prats: http://joseprats0.carbonmade.com/ Lovely, charming stories!

Taking my time, got a few licks in. Also upgraded to CS6!

Not a lot of time this week: Ok I'm going on a rant...freelancing is great but it is a fight to protect my time. I work from home and sometimes the phone will ring every 40 minutes. I don't answer my phone anymore..I kinda live the life of a recluse, hiding out from neighbors and solicitors. People don't realize that a deadline job is very different then a more conventional job; I will work weekends, holidays, weeknights if I promised that I will have the job done at a certain time. I have an unshakeable focus, one which must have driven my mother crazy when she raised me. Sometimes I will lie awake and wonder: How could I have done that better? If I could do it again, what would I do differently? More efficiently? I have an 11 year old daughter, who will sometimes continue to talk to me, loudly, in my ear, as I frantically rush to finish a job. Then I have to pause, make dinner, do laundry between "breaks" and juggle, juggle, juggle. But I would rather have all this then face an LA commute! ~Thanks for listening...

Remember this, Sergio? Ha, ha ~Years ago, when I worked at Stormfront Studios in Marin County, my Art Director was Sergio Lobato. This was at a magical time when there were no mortgages or children and we would work crazy hours to meet deadlines, but the artists there were some of the most talented group of people you could ever wish for, and just really fun to boot. Sergio's wit and sharp thinking always had us on the floor laughing! It was the first time I had ever felt that I had come home. Artists are a wacky group to begin with but we all understood each other and very much liked to hang out...There were times we would work long hours, then go out to dinner and laugh it all off... I must have been on a private rant about someone not pulling their weight and he probably quietly left this drawing on my computer when I got back from a lunch break, ha, ha. Serge is now a full time painter! Here is his website: http://www.sergiolobato.com/index.php

Some thumb concepts for a series about Rebirth and Renewal. I actually did some of these on the plane while flying home after Dad died. It just happened to be his birthday: Ground Hog's Day. I plan to do these on canvas this year, taking everything I've learned while painting the screen shots to a bigger playground. Fun. Just pure fun.

Rare that I am alone. Even more rare that I am up this late! So quiet and peaceful, what a gift..so I did this little sketch for the fun of it; the next screen shot I am working on...

Been watching a lot of Cesar Milan on Youtube. This is a drawing of his favorite Pitbull, Daddy. Been really busy with work, and sometimes ya just have to sketch for yourself..keep the hand loose...this one was done in less than 5 mins.

WOW! Finally got a few moments to finish this! I've permanently added two new colors to a very small palette: Quinacridone Blue Violet and my new favorite: Light Blue Violet. Light Blue Violet is a very versatile color because what it really is is a cool neutral grey; and can be mixed with flesh tones and does not overwhelm warm fleshtones, just cools it. Manganese Blue can often turn the fleshtones too cool too fast. Also the Blue Violet is excellent for shadows on white (early morning).

WIP: People ask me if I use a pencil to sketch in the figure before starting. I do not. I paint in guidelines very quickly first, making sure that those simple few lines carry the composition and emote what there is to emote. Then I block in the shadows, either warm or cool, depending, then put a light wash of sepia over the whole thing. I can tell you this, that this painting will be the best I've done yet.

A snippet of part of the color pallette; I really liked these color harmonies. I bought a colored rock at the swap meet a few weeks ago and was inspired by the colors and came up with this pallette. This is what I used for the last painting post. Painting sketch is acrylic on bristol vellum bound in a sketchbook. Ron Velasco suggested that I mix my paints on a neutral gray wax paper and it has made all the difference in my color mixing choices and I'll never paint without it again.

A rough start and a weird pallette. Had to go back and saturate the flesh tones a little more to bring the figure out a little more. Happy Valentine's Day!