Process

Hey all! I've got a little something different to share this time. I was talking to my buddy Caleb last week and he mentioned something about sharing techniques. I have some non-quickie-doodle pieces actually in the works, and whilst painting this evening it occurred to me to do a little article thingy on how I'm going about them.

Now generally, I do not have a set process for art per se, it is always in flux. New techniques are born and fused together based on a number of factors, from "ooh, I just learned about this so let's test it out" to "ooh, I bet if I did this and this together it might be better/faster/more interesting" to just trying to convey a particular style or other aspect that suits the piece in question. Ask me in a few months and I will probably be painting a completely different way. This is just how I'm going about it right here and now with my current works.


First, here are the pieces as they are at this moment:

Alrighty then! So before I start a piece, I usually have a basic concept or premise when doing personal work, often from life happenings or feelings searching for an outlet via canvas, but most anything I see or hear might give me something to work with. Generally I then look up some reference and pick out a Pandora station to put on, usually something befitting the feel of the idea, but not necessarily. The original idea I had came from a little lizard outside my window, and how I'd hoped it would "guard my castle," so to speak, from bugs that tend to invade in the warmer months. So, I made a dragon on a castle thing based on that species of lizard. Quite a bit into the painting, though, I thought it'd be neat to give the piece a pair (I do love dualities). The lizard in question (a Green/Carolina Anole) is a common sight in the eastern US, so I decided to pick a lizard from the west (the Northern Desert Iguana) to guard a tower of its own. Another thing I did was reverse the figure/ground values, to further emphasize the whole duality/opposite idea, as well as have them facing their respective cardinal direction (if the viewer is looking more or less north).

Now, in terms of actually starting a piece, usually I start with a vaguely medium gray canvas and just sketch something out on a separate layer. Sometimes I mix sketching with blobbing in forms, which I did with the east dragon; sometimes I only sketch, as with the west dragon. In either case, I then do a flat tone layer underneath to make everything more solid and ready for refinement. Sometimes I do different bits on different layers, it just depends on the piece. When I have that, I then start rouging out the shading of the forms. Once it reads well enough, I then go into the refinement stage, where I go through different sections and gradually start polishing everything on the tone layer and adding some detail, while erasing the sketch layer as I go. You can see that process kind of in action with these pieces. I'm kind of all over the place when I paint. Once the overall composition and shapes are down I don't really have a particular order for doing things.

One thing you might notice is that these are in grayscale. That is something I've taken to very recently - working purely in value and then using adjustment layers or color layers with different blend modes to get color. It's a great method really. I forget where exactly I picked it up from but really I just see it at work in a lot of pro stuff so I don't think I saw it in any one place so much as like everywhere. Aside from just the general simplicity of worrying about value first then color, when you do get to color, having the hues blend and bleed together naturally is just so much easier, since that's all you're working with at that point.

Really, I think that's about it for how I do things these days. I actually have another unrelated piece that has been in progress longer than these that I've actually been just painting straight color like I used to (though checking value occasionally as I go), but it's kind of just taken a back seat to other stuff for now. Anywho, I hope you all enjoyed/got something out of this mass of (hopefully not too many) words. Sharing things like this is something I notice a lot of artists I look up to doing. I hope I have enough know-how and experience to do the same. Feel free to ask me stuff/offer your thoughts if you want, or critique these pieces. I'd quite appreciate it!