Gorgeous painting from Art Director and traditional fine art painter Sergio Lobato.  Sergio was one of my first art directors in Marin County.  Back in my early thirties he was head of a fantasy role playing game called Stronghold which was an EA title.  It was my first commercial art job and it was a time when computer games were being birthed, startup game companies literally multiplied overnight, and  energy exploded onto the never before seen digital realm; employing many artists in an otherwise dead industry.  It was so much fun.  We'd have these hilarious art parties at Sergio and Sarah's place in Marin, dancing and some drinking (I can't drink but I loved to dance!), hang out in the city to connect with some of the Art Academy crowd, have meals in North Beach.  No kids, no mortgages, many of us on the cusp of committed relationships and hanging out to draw the figure and explore museums.  It was the first time I felt I belonged anywhere and had finally found my tribe.  I saw many changes in the four years I was there.  We quickly went from low rez to high rez games in a matter of months.  First person shooter game in which people could play against each other was a break out low rez game called Doom.  The programmers rigged it up so that we could play against each other.  This game revolutionized the gaming industry and was the model for the quick actioned first person perspective~soon after that, the Star Wars game came out.  The breath taking game Myst was being played all over the office.  Lara Croft, Tomb Raider made her first appearance.  I had never seen a female for a lead character in a game before.  One of my first games at Stormfront Studios was Eagle Eye Detectives, art directed by Sergio, which was a terrific educational game and too bad it is no longer available; as it was fun to play and well written (by Sarah Stocker, who married Serge, and co written with Ken Eklund).  Sergio was, and still is, one of my favorite people to work with.  He has no ego.  He can effortlessly lead a team and encourage the best out of the artists and has one of the greatest senses of humor of anyone I've known.  Stormfront Studios hired some of the best talent in the Bay Area at the time; and I just got off the phone with Serge and we laughed about the nuts that we worked with.  Great artists, wacky people; it goes hand in hand.  Here is his link:  http://thebadgersholt.blogspot.com/

HOMESTRETCH!  Gonna try to finish this up by the weekend~

Pencil sketches, traditional Blackwing

Morning quick sketches.  Been doing so much digital, need to move a real pencil.  This is the best time for me, first thing in the morning after breakfast and a little coffee-pencil springs energetically with confidence.  It fades as the day gets longer and I get older, ha ha.  Listening to George.  Ezra, that is

Update on Shoten Zenjin:  Correction on face.  Mo better.  The shadow shapes and face now better match the drawing.  This is what I struggle with:  keeping the painting faithful to the pencil~esp. the face.  It's here that's the money maker.  Other elements can be a bit loose, but the face is the center of the illustration and be the first thing that reads.  I do have to come back and adjust the values since it is much too light for the over all painting.

Burbank Equestrian Center:  Tried to get to Griffith Park Observatory but there was just too much traffic.  Opted for the horses instead.  The Clydesdales were in the "show" stable, fresh from the Rose Bowl, I'm assuming and caught them in the 4 o:clock shadow.  Acrylic in sketchbook; extreme limited palette: maybe five colors and white.

Equestrian Center

Traditional paints exercise

Exercise with greys

Catalyst brushes

Playing with brushes exercise:  This holiday season I treated myself to a purchase of Creature Art Teacher, Aaron Blaise's texture brushes.  They were on sale.  Amazing brushes.  They mimic brush on canvas.  They are also pressure sensitive and he sets up a ready to go file with a canvas texture on the bottom layer (PS), a toned layer, a drawing layer and a canvas layer on the top that is multiplied.  I bought the canvas texture brushes as well as the watercolor brushes.  Have not gotten to these yet.  The link is:  https://creatureartteacher.com/product-category/tutorials-lessons/brush-texture-sets/

Shoten Zenjin update color

Inch by inch, trying to get this done, in between freelance, house chores, personal projects, raising a teenager, taking turns driving rabbit, then dog to the vet, then dog and rabbit to the vet again for a series of shots, each animal a series of shots every 14 days on different days, trying to prep a room to rent, cooking, laundry, driving daughter to school, fundraisers, etc, and so much more... sigh.  I'm liking the impact, altho I just hate the face; can't stand the face; need to retool the face...

Inch by inch, been trying to work on this.  I like the drawing.  Been working on a tonal translation; establishing the light source and the shadow shapes.   First cleaning up the drawing and sizing elements and making sure they flow with the figure. Then putting some tones underneath the drawing (on multiply). At this point, I am separating elements and organizing layers. Figure is on one layer, dragons on another layer, etc.; paying attention to the hierarchy of the layers. Tones will be on it's on separate layer; there is a reason for this. If the tones are on a separate layer, I can now easily change the color of the shadows to correspond to the colors which will be added later. Then I turn off the line drawings to check and see if the shadows tell the story. I have created a drawing which will give me ample opportunity for pleasing design with the shadow shapes.

INKTOBER!
Been so busy with work and life it's hard to carve out time for sketch exercises.  And I'm really feeling it.  It's truly important to keep that hand loose and even more importantly, the mind engaged in observing.  Most people think that the hand eye coordination is the utmost important aspect in practicing drawing but as I get older, it's more the mind.  Draw it in your head first.  The hand and pencil are just the tools~like using a computer.  Be deliberate.  What do you want to say?  What's the story?  What is the attitude?  What is the mood?  Many young artists agonize over finding a "style" but it comes from this type of practice and asking these questions.  With these I am drawing from vintage black and white photos of actors, stage and theatre from the past.  I love the costumes and the tonal gradations.  Here I study the shadow shapes and how they set a mood, describing an era in history, to design the character.  These exercises will prep me for paintings, traditional or digital.  In an illustration, I will start with a thumbnail concept (several), then a rough drawing, then a final "tight" pencil ("tp", not toilet paper, ha, ha) and then start the painting with the shadow shapes, as I learned from Sean Cheatham.  I have to know that the shadow shapes (choosing a light source and it's caste shadows, soft edges and hard edges) work from the get go.  If the tonal exercise has strong presence, and it must, then the illustration will be sure to have power when color is applied.

INKTOBER!  Drawn with my favorite trusty tools~Tombow and Faber Castell brushpens and my Blackwing pencil on a  Strathmore sketchpad, 6"x8".  These pads are great for travel~they are lightweight, can handle paint and take a pencil line nicely, a bit of texture.

San Juan Capistrano

Check out the rich palette, color harmonies and perspective.

Taken at the Mission

San Juan Capistrano

Took a drive south, headed to San Diego, but there was bumper to bumper traffic.  The consolation prize was ending up in beautiful Doheny beach and visiting the Mission at San Juan, first time.  Was struck by the partial remains of the basilica near the gift shop.  Beautiful warm and cool shadow shapes and textures on the fascade.  20-25 mins here, heat wave, hotter then Hades.  If I stayed on this exercise, would've missed the rest of the Mission

Progression:  1.  Sketching in the flying dragons.  At this point, I can see that many are the same size, which normally would not happen in Nature.  I scan them into Photoshop to size and will rotate a few and resize a few.  The ones lower on the picture plane will be larger, the ones flying up to the character's hip will be the smallest.  All the while, I imagine what they might sound like.  Something like loud shrieking Amazons (parrots) in the Rain Forest.  A spiky noise.  I'm taking great care in the negative spaces between the parrots, I mean dragons, so that some are grouped and some overlap.  I'm also repeating a subtle pattern of diagonals in the wings that repeat the diagonals in the human sprite.
2.  I redraw the Sprite to make sure she flows, looks natural because the previous drawings lost the thrust of the original thumbnail sketch, which has so much more dynamics (doodled on Steve Irwin's thank you letter of a donation of $20).  I take even greater care to make sure the final drawing will have what the energy of the thumbnail began.
3.  Putting it together to check to see if the Sprite and dragons mesh.  Looking good, but I will  have to lower the dragons (cluster of dragons?  Flock of dragons?  Gaggle of dragons?)  away from fur vest for a better read.
4.  I spray a little atmosphere into the background, because at this age, the bright contrast of line work against sheer white is killing me and giving me a headache.  I higher that arm a bit  (cut and paste and reposition) and add a flying dragon about to roost on that outstretched arm.  Plus I ad a ghosting hint of a background, but not too much now.
5.  Tightening it up.  Going over lines with a more definitive line, "making it real", giving it volumne on trace paper.  Drawing with a blue Col Erase pencil which is unwittingly, 2 inches long.  Whoops.  Really short now that I keep sharpening it.   Praying and searching that I have another blue Col Erase pencil to draw in the characters.  Another small problem:  Paper is too small, so I tape and piece another paper to extend drawing surface.  Ok.  So I'm tired...

Getty sketches

Had a rare moment to step away from the computer and get out into some sunshine.  These were done at the Getty on the 405.  To my dismay, they have discontinued the water fountains which run down the steps and the big center rock fountain in the Plaza.  It's for "perceived water waste" I'm told, even tho the water is circulated.  Maybe it will be filled if we get the down pour of El Nino, which is supposed to hit this season.  Anyway, I feel like a cetacean finally coming up for a breath of air before diving deep, deep back down into the dark abyss of work and creativity.  Drawn with my favorite pencil, a Blackwing.  "Painting" with the pencil.

Getty sketches

Flow

Getty on the 405