Some quick doodles.  They are a combination of male human anatomy and animal anatomy.  These are so much fun because they have a wonderful flow; from the head to the tail and lots of ellipses thrown in.  Lately I tend to draw them a lot because of the opportunity of "gestural calligraphy" of which I had learned from Mark Westermoe and Paul Wee many years ago. 

Been so busy with work, personal projects, kid home from school (summer break), and getting rid of lots of stuff to Goodwill and Salvation Army; cleansing my home and continuing the fight of keeping my landscape alive thru this horrible heat.  Only been to the beach once.  No time to paint (traditionally) but I am making progress with the most gorgeous business card and hopefully will have it done soon~and printed.  Then I can finally do a bang up job on doing the final pencil on Shoten Zenjin now that I have the printer up and running~YAY!

How has your summer progressed?

Another side project~I've been also making some incredible jewelry to sell; combing the local Swap Meet for tiny vintage pieces and beads and wire wrapping them into petite and unique necklaces and bracelets.  Everywhere I go, women want to know where I bought my jewelry and once they find out that I make them want to know if I will be selling.  Currently I've made about 10 beautiful and precious pieces and will be selling them in Ojai~dat's the plan and then have some available on the internet.  But not ready yet.  Will be creating another blog to feature these remarkable pieces inspired from the past that you can wear but not just yet.  I'll keep ya posted.  It is just another extension of how to create color harmonies from vintage and antique pieces while paying attention to silohuettes and materials~based upon my understanding and experience with painting and illustration.  It's inspired by the Victorian and Edwardian Age, of which I've just fallen in love with~KMZ

Also been playing around with some Photoshop brushes that I found free online.  I've heard some really good digital paint artists say that the brushes do not matter, but I beg to differ.  I have been so frustrated with the brushes that I have and maybe it's because I like to paint traditionally and know this method intimately and expect more from digital brushes.  But switching from traditional paint methods to digital is really like learning a new language, at least, for me.  This is a re do for my new business card.

Just a quick little lunch acrylic sketch.  Honestly, I have had no time to do anything traditional these days, but you have to keep the hand loose and the mind engaged.  Bought some "rounds" (brushes for sketch) online from Utretch for Mother's Day gift to self and just now am playing with them.  This is done on a sketch tablet (real paper here, people) Strathmore Drawing Medium pad which I use as my traveling sketch book for now.  These are great; I carry a few 6"x8" tablets because they are light and don't get the attention a bigger sketch tablet might for discreet sketching in public.  The late Barbara Bradley of The Art Academy had encouraged me to use these instead of a heavier bound sketch book.  They can handle sketches as well as paint, altho paint colors are muddy because the paper is not the best quality.  I still like my Bristol Vellum papers which help to capture the colors in the fibers instead of dulling them out like the Strathmore sketchpads.

Working out the composition for "Shoten Zenjin".  Face is hand drawn and scanned; the rest is drawn from the Wacom; a first for me.  Printer is out of temporarily out of commission; usually I will do a really nice pencil first, scan, size, and paint from that.  I am just winging it now.  Making sure there is a flow and the figure has a great silohuette.  Choosing elements that tell the story; anything that does not support the story gets axed.  If you want a good illustration and a terrific start, the time most spent is here; getting the drawing right.  Stay tuned.  More to come

Easter Day, took off for a walk with dog to Placerita Canyon.  Trying to warm up to Plein Aire exercises.  Sat on the side of the path like an Indian, silently painting.  You observe things when you exist like a monk.  Like the 2 girls wildly screaming down the path, terrified that "there was a snake crossing the path" and to "beware".  I said the only snake that we should be wary about is a rattler.  Was it a rattler?  "No", they said between gulps of air.  Or the two overweight teenagers, one with a speaker glued to her ear, blasting terrible "music" that you could hear half a mile away; obliterating any songs the birds were singing on the trail.  Really?  Why go hiking at all?  Why make the rest of us Nature lovers feel like we are in a video game?  Or the Hispanic guy struggling to hold on to his enormous charcoal colored pit bull at the end of a thick tire chain who wanted to attack any small animal on the trail.  He was accompanied by about 6 little ones, one who was bragging how he was going to kill any living creature that happened in front of them.  Have we as a society, gotten that far away from Nature?
Anyways, the Plein Aire approach is a big departure from my comfort zone:  the figure.  But I find it liberating in that there are a lot of technically creative things you can do here that you are restricted somewhat with anatomy.  I am approaching it more in an abstract kind of way, focusing on that aspect before form and structure; which has been drilled into me from drawing figure.  Getting "abstracty" is what I call it.  It's going to teach me how to paint with much more impact in Photoshop and with the figure.

Inspired by a post from John Quinn who visited Descano Gardens in March and raved about how nice it was; lots of flowers blooming, I finally got a chance to sneak out there for a few hours to see for myself.  He was right.  I rarely get a chance to paint plein aire.  My weakness is to trust myself and simplify the forms~it's a challenge for me.  Years ago, I met Greg Manchess at ComicCon and asked him about this.  He said you "mass the forms".  I feel much more comfortable with figure because it is harder.  But I would like to get away from figure to explore more "abstract" opportunities found in Nature.  Get away from the academics and work more purely with color compositions.  It will help me in Photoshop.

Some sketches for "Shoten Zenjin" in my sketchbook, 6" x 8" Strathmore drawing pad with Blackwing pencil (Palomino) and some Faber-Catell grey pens.  Studies for gesture, light and shadow.  Still undecided...

I went to New York during the holiday season.  Made it to the American Museum of Natural History which has the most bizarre collection of "Advanced Mammals" I'd ever seen.  My favorite set of bones (or one of my favorites) was a giant sloth which, I'm not kidding, had a muzzle that looked like a dustbuster.  The museum was packed and unfortunately, the sloth was in an exhibit around the corner, right in the middle of traffic, where I could not plunk myself down and annoy the other tourists.  Just sitting somewhere out of the way and still having people trip over me was hard enough.  Then I made it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I must of stood under Sargent's giant painting, called The Wyndam Sisters and studied the brushwork and overall effect.  I managed to do some sketches of some of the bronze figures, but all in all did more looking in New York then drawing.  I used my favorite tools, my Blackwing pencils and some brushpens.  Museums have gotten more and more strict about what you can draw with and what you can't; I was not even supposed to use pens, but from a difference a Faber Castel looks like a pencil.  Had a blast.  The food in New York is fantastic and everyone was so helpful and friendly.  I do love big cities.  I grew up near San Francisco and used to go to Golden Gate Park and sketch at the museums there but have not been back since they remodeled the Steinhardt Aquarium.

A long time ago, the best drawing I did was when I drew animals.  It took several years before my figure drawing caught up with the animal drawing.  Drawing animals really helped me get better at drawing the figure and vice versa.  Then it's taken me a few years before my acrylic painting skills caught up with the figure drawing.  And now we come to digital.  The only thing which really makes this illustration is my drawing and design skills.  I paint digitally like a Neanderthal.  So many things that could have done better; but I am just not there yet..  The next one will be much better; I predict, and I will get onto some concepts and hopefully post them soon.  I've really missed good old fashioned pencil sketching and during the winter break, came up with some fresh idears...

A few years ago, some friends from Disney (Disney Consumer Products and Publishing) gave me some art brushes to use.  I just got around to taking them out for a spin.  Yeah, I paint like a neanderthal.  It's going to take some time getting used to digital painting; (that is, to feel comfortable painting and comfort will turn into confidence); maybe I can sneak in some exercises next year.  There are a lot of things I can do with traditional paints that I can't do in digital (at least not yet), but I am enjoying the effects of some of the most unlikeliest of brushes (digitally).  And you just can't beat the vibrancy of the digital palette or the ease in which you can work.  If I paint traditionally, I know I have to have at least 20 to 30 minutes space of time to work, plus 5-10 mins of setting up, mixing a palette, taping off the edges, etc.  I love being able to jump right into the digital painting and not worrying about all that.  As it is, I've had a good amount of work from Disney and sometimes have managed to sneak in 5-10 mins on this during a lunch break or before going to bed.

Good news is that my internet has been working consistently again; altho I don't know why.  But I'll take it.  Merry Christmas to all of you working hard creatives,  talk to you again in the New Year.

It's been awhile.  Oh so frustrating.  Have not been connected to the internet in quite awhile.  Had a brand new hard drive installed, brought all files back onto this new hard drive, then internet connection died once again, coming back on mysteriously after a week, for a glorious ten minutes.  Been on the phone with Apple Support, now 2 months after installing Mavericks, again, erasing the hard drive, (2nd time), hard ware and hard drive acting totally illogical; getting internet connection in Safety mode, but not in regular mode, then computer would not start up.  Driving Apple support tech nutz; "Truly, my team and I can figure out almost anything...had not had a case this nutty in a long time; a total erase and install should have done the trick, esp. on the second try," he said.  Took it to Apple Store today, where they checked everything out and of course my computer fired right up, took the internet connection like white on rice.  "Hard ware is great; hard drive is superb".  What??  He told me to plug in the computer and keyboard only and start adding all the other stuff while checking internet connection.  Working still.  But I'm afraid to shut it off.  So, I will do some freelance stuff, get it in and then consider turning it off.  Big shout out there for the ever so patient Scott Barnes of Apple; still miffed because internet is working and we don't know why.  Don't know if the problem is fixed; Scott does expect another call from me at some point in the future...Missed you all.  Happy Holidays~KMZ

Hard drive shut down.  Bringing it to a friend to install a new one.  Traumatic..."Good bye.  Take care.  Please come back to me.."

More like it...I started adding some pinks and fuschias, colors that I have never worked with before.  (On my last trip to Europe, I was in Prague and went to the Alphonse Mucha Museum and bought this chocolate bar with his print on it.  The predominate color was reds and tones of reds and that inspired the color choice of this illustration).  This illustration is about the splendor of Spring, in all it's breath taking and long awaited metamorphisis.  I am in the midst of a divorce and this illustration...well...it's a gift to myself.  The Buddhist saying is "There was never a Winter without a Spring" and now, it's my Spring.  Enough of that...
You can see how well the colors are mixing now that all that black is gone.  And that's how it would really be in Nature.  I love the color of the background.  I love grey.  My friends probably think I'm crazy because, yes, I do wear a lot of neutral colors.  But you see, pure saturated colors pop off a neutral gray; when I paint traditionally, I mix my colors against a grey palette.  I'll never paint without that.  It's a tablet of small sheets of grey called Grey Matters Paper Palette (Jack Richeson & Co. Inc) and what works with traditional will work with digital.
Now that I've already worked out a drawing I really like, have a "schematic" for my lights and darks (which I refer to all the time to make sure I capture the original intent of the black and white and I do have that version up all the time to reference when I apply the color), all I have to do is choose my saturated color shadows and continue to render everything in color.  I know better what to expect and the illustration does not "run away from me" because I am wrestling with everything all at once.

It's been a ride in the last two weeks.  I unwittingly downloaded OS X Mavericks onto my big Mac and POOF! it killed my connection to the internet, Photoshop and disabled my Wacom tablet.  And hey!  Was re acquainting myself with this file last night and discovered my favorite brushes are gone as well!  Been on the phone with Apple for days now; each step making it worse.  And the moment I clicked that "install" button, my contact at Disney sent me a text letting me know that a lot of work was on the way!  My only option at this point, Scott the Apple guy said, was to pray we could still back up on an external hard drive, then erase my entire hard drive.  Back up took 3-4 days; I was praying I did not crash.  My regular back up decided to call it quits too so I might have lost those files.  Then my car refuses to start in this hot weather; it's like Russian Roulette; sometimes it starts, and sometimes it leaves my daughter and I stranded.  So, been on the phone with my friends, begging rides to pick her up and drop her off at school, to buy groceries, etc.  Will be on the phone again with Apple this morning because I'm not out of the woods yet.  Got internet, got my Adobe programs re installed~and what a hassle that was.  Adobe sucks with technical support.  You can no longer get a live technician on the phone anymore; if you have a problem, you are screwed.  I had to have Scott walk me thru a series of convoluted steps to get access to a program I bought for a lot of money...

Okay, now for the business at hand here.  I am teaching myself the process of digital painting, which, I am finding out is VERY different from traditional painting.  First stab at digital is to establish tonal values and tell the story and mood with light, seen in an earlier post.  I then took that black and white and added color.  Mmmm....the results are, as you seen at the top, drab, drained, dead.  Ick.  Yuck.  So I decided to do a completely different tonal value start, this time with my beloved sepias, the way I would with my acrylics.  In traditional shadow; I use Burnt Umber and Alizarine Crimson with either Cad Red Light (for warmer shadows) and Manganese Blue (for cooler shadows); but for this illustration I chose a brown in more of a yellow range, not red.  Yeah, I painted it again, but in Photoshop, it did not take very long.  The steps and knowledge were already rehearsed.  And now I know why many of you, when you paint your illustrations, the color is like it was for me; dead.  Start with sepia tones, not black and white.

Deepening the darks, setting up for opportunities of light and shadow shapes, telling the story with mood.  I look for areas of opportunities..how the flowers flatten on the shoulder and caste a shadow over the shoulder which describe that volumne as round...how the light on those flowers creates a curve which repeats the curves around the silohuette.  Repeated fractal curves, shapes moving in and out of the light, sharp shadows and soft caste shadows which give the figure interest and texture with values.  Almost done before moving into color, but want to do a few more things before that leap into hyperspace...I can see where I have been influenced by the way a sculpture is lit at the museums, and all the sketching I've done in museums overseas (Europe:  France, Spain, Eastern Europe).

The latest screen shot.  Working in values and light source, mood.

Been working on this for a few months now... I've busy with freelance for awhile now and get my licks in when I can.  This is a  drawing from the concept sketch from Saturday, May 24th.

Dragon studies

Been busy with work, with life.  Even tho I have not posted in awhile does not mean I am not drawing..  A blend of male figure drawing  and animal anatomy.  These are studies for a drawing I am working on