The City Scene

Discovery is the best way to fuel your imagination. If you see something new or the same old things in a new light you propel yourself forward. Change happens in you and then innovation!

Daily I put this into practice in some aspect of my art. Sometimes its a process, a technique, an area of study, or a tool. 

The City Scene 3 represents a  still life practice that I use often. I need to learn perspective, so I set up a scenario that allows me to see it with my own eyes instead of guessing. When I set up these scenes I try to do something alien and unique with similar objects that  you could find around the house. I chose the China Marker because of its proximity to pastel and charcoal. It can bear some semblance to a black and white photo if used the right way. In particular, value was very important to this drawing. 

Be bold and try a different media, process, or subject matter. Be brazen and open to change. I guarantee you will see something new.

My Enchanted Sketchpad

Gangly Tree

My sketchpad is enchanted. It permits me to see into the window of the past or into a window of the future. Sometimes both simultaneously. I have talked about the pleasure I get out of documenting my experiences in the past, but I consider any thing that retains the nature of reality to be mystic in a sense.


Even the prophet Isaiah reinforces this:

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
   or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
   or weighed the mountains on the scales
   and the hills in a balance... Isaiah 40:12


Anything that is the product of the Creator (God) is truly supernatural. Can we explain the awe and wonder that nature gives us. How light and darkness interplay to give us forms we cannot perfectly duplicate. Use what you see around you to inspire your work. Because we cannot create anything new, everything is open to be reinterpreted and learned from.

Next week, find out why watercolor is the king of painting materials.

Chunky Paint

Chunky paint is the medium that bridges the gap between india ink and regular water media such as acrylic, gouache, and water color. If you paint with these media with any regularity you would understand the commonality and therefore the benefits of bouncing from one to the other from time to time. The learning curve is immense and there is almost always something new to learn.

In Little Tree I tested illustration board for its ability to hold watercolor. This is in fact a value study in burnt sienna, but it is also a finished piece. I will boldly proclaim that because it can handle no more detail and it is unnecessary because everything will get lost. Follow the Little Tree link to my Deviant Art page to see the full painting.

On a cloudy day I sought out nature to inspire me to spring board me into my comic drawing stage of the day I came up with this painting and three blind drawings before it. The first 2 of the Painted Flowers series are held in my Experimental Art page.

Blind drawing is an interesting process. It is not blind in the sense that you use only your hearing and feeling senses to detect shape and form. But for the artist it is the opposite. You see with your eyes, but feel the paper/board with your pencil or brush. In effect, you let media feel the contours of the physical object without actually seeing the the page. It always has surprising results and pushes the artist to the next level.

Value Composition

Part of the process of producing a comic page is laying it out. Almost all professional comic book artists use some method of figuring out where all of their dark and light areas go on the page before applying any ink or drawing it up.

After realizing that I had not planned my inking out very well a friend suggested this method of blocking in the dark and light values before going to ink. I have chosen the traditional inking method entailing brush and dip pens, because the blacks are much more potent, permanent, and versatile than using technical pens, ball point pens, and Adobe programs.

My method of blocking in value is to scan in the page in its penciled state, scale it down to the actual page size, print it on gray paper, then use black and white pastel to find the best possible scenario for the values of the page. I have to seriously consider the light source when I do this. Typically when you are working with just lines it is more difficult to consider some of these things ahead of time. Back tracking with this method has helped me think ahead on future pages.