Feedback Part 3

Paul Carrick came to my school as a guest lecturer during my second semester. He was there to share his experience as an illustrator with my class, to show us one of our options. It was the only thing that happened as far as my schooling went that taught me anything about illustration. In fact up to this point I wasn't even really aware of illustration being it's own field, or that you could be an illustrator.

One of the original paintings he brought in that stuck with me long after he left.

Hearing Paul and seeing his work solidified in me what I wanted to do. I had always been interested in fantasy and science fiction. Looking at the artwork of book covers, RPG rule manuals and Magic: the Gathering trading cards had made me want to become an artist but I never realized that these people were illustrators. It seems weird to say that now but I just didn't know back then that there was a difference let alone such a dichotomy between so called 'fine art' and 'illustration'. I just thought they were all artists and that these particular artists painted fantasy or science fiction. I could get into my opinions about the break between fine art and illustration but that seems like it belongs in a future post...


Paul Carrick helped to open my eyes to illustration as a business. All of a sudden I realized that if I wanted to be a serious professional illustrator that I had to learn to make a living at it, and that it wasn't going to be easy. This was something that I wasn't going to learn in school. I immediately started to search for any book, blog, podcast or video that might help me learn, not only to draw and paint, but how to run this business I was getting into. I was determined to know all that I could about the field so I would fully understand what I was getting into.

I stayed along after Paul's lecture to talk more about the field and exchanged emails with him, asking him if I could keep in touch and send him my work every so often. This ended up being one of the best things for me. Every so often we would exchange emails and he would direct me along giving me much needed feedback. He made me realize the importance of reference, showed me where it was and wasn't working for me. He helped me with lighting and focusing the viewer's attention, using visual clues in the image to make things more or less apparent or even staged. He was always encouraging me along the way, letting me know how far I had come from when he first saw my work.

This kind of encouragement is key to a young student and indeed will be present with one's teachers and peers but it is always helpful to have the opinion of someone out in the business who isn't always nearby. An outside mentor who can lend a fresh set of eyes to your work. They may see something and say something that hasn't been said, something that perhaps you're working towards slowly but haven't yet realized for yourself. This kind of feedback can help you on your way by leaps and bounds and I am very grateful to have that with Paul Carrick.

For those of you who don't know Paul's work the link to his website can be found again HERE. He specializes in all things Lovecraft and has worked on many projects including Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu line. Below are some of my favorites...

 

Feedback Part 2

While they were all encouraging and they all held some bits of information that would help guide me in the coming years there was one email I received back in 2008 that would do more to influence my growth than all of the others.

It came from Todd Lockwood.

For those of you who don't know of Lockwood's work, please go check it out. He is an amazing painter and in many's eyes his is the last word when it comes to dragons.

Following are some excerpts from his email...

"Use good reference when you draw. Drawing out of your head can be fun, but if you want to learn and draw well, life-drawing is a must. It's an invaluable way to learn the subtleties of the human form (something that few can ever really master entirely), so have a regular place to draw. At home, if you have a camera, take photos from which to draw. A digital camera can be a wondrous asset if you have access to a computer and printer. I also strongly recommend a book called 'Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards. It contains some amazing exercises for stimulating the part of your brain that sees things as they really are, and can help you break some bad habits that you have taught yourself when you were learning the standard, over-simplified symbols of How Things Look. Every first grader knows that a nose is an L-shape, or upside-down 7, for example. It's not true, obviously, but even talented artists will have set routines that they run when they are drawing an ear, say, or an eye, that may contain inaccuracies that escape the casual observer. The result is a face or figure that is drawn according to a list of symbols rather than a detailed observation of the reality, complete with light effects, shadows, perspective, and so on. Accurate observation is essential to a good drawing. If you always draw from your head, you will not exorcise those flawed routines."

"Art is far more about knowing what things look like and why than it is about media, but digital media offer too many temptations that can blunt your learning ability. I recommend highly that you draw with a pencil, kneaded eraser, and a paper blending stick or stomp and concentrate on making the best black & white images that you can for now."

"There is a good resource available online: you can view the art texts of Andrew Loomis, for FREE, here: http://www.fineart.sk/photo-references/andrew-loomis-anatomy-books. Loomis was an illustrator and teacher of art in the forties and fifties. What most distinguishes his career is the legacy in these books. He was a master teacher, and covers all the basics thoroughly, with terrific illustrations to boot. He's an amazing teacher"

He then gave me a mini lesson on light and shadow. These points as well as some others that Todd touches upon in his class at the SmART School can be found in his recent blog post on Muddy Colors here: http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2014/01/narrative-illustration.html

LIGHT & SHADOW

"Here's a tip for shading: light acts like ping-pong balls. A particle of light hits a surface and bounces off at a predictable angle, like a billiard ball banking off of a side-rail. I'm attaching some little jpegs that demonstrate this..."

"I'm showing you two things: the light that bounces directly into your eye, as a highlight (solid lines), and the light that doesn't, which is the ambient light (dashed lines). You can think of ANY surface as a mirror which throws light back. That's easy with a flat surface, because mirrors are flat. Round surfaces are otherwise no different. Light strikes the surface and bounces off most powerfully at an IDENTICAL, but OPPOSING angle. Just like a billiard ball. So, the light bouncing toward your eye- the only light you will see, obviously- will be strongest where it is coming off of that kind of bounce. It's relative to the placement of the light source and the location of your eye, in space. A highlight IS NOT strongest where the surface is closest to the light source. It is strongest where the angle of that surface is MOST LIKELY to bounce the light straight toward your eye. That is the red lines. The ambient light is the light that is bouncing off of irregularities in the surface, and it goes in every direction. There is light bouncing everywhere, all the time. We only perceive the light that happens to be bouncing to the exact spot where our pupils are. Some of it will bounce back toward another surface, then off of that second (or third) surface and into our eyes. That's reflected light, or fill light (the solid purple line)."

There will be a tendency for a surface to appear brighter toward the light source, but that is different than the actual highlight. Look at the drawing of the brick to see what I mean. There is a point of demarcation on the corner edge of the brick where the highlight is most likely, but the light that strikes the face of the brick as it falls away from the light is doing so at an ever increasing angle. This will be especially true where the light source is close. The more extreme that angle becomes, the less likely it is that the surface irregularities will bounce some of that ambient light toward your eye, thus the light appears to "fall away".

"If you think of a surface as a mirror, the highlight will appear wherever that spot is that would have been a reflection of the light, were it an actual mirror. Make sense? Some surfaces are great at reflecting, like mirrors. Some aren't, like walls. But walls are still flat enough that there will be a 'hot spot'. Look at the walls where you are sitting right now and find the hot spot"

"That's all you need to know about how light works to start studying it. Everything you draw or paint is either a flat or curved surface, and the rules will apply. Even water works that way, though transparency is another issue. Your job as you draw is to see the light bouncing. The better you know the volume and construction of the forms of the objects, the better you will understand how light bounces off of and onto those objects, so that is important too."

While I never did read Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain, the books by Andrew Loomis (especially Figure Drawing for All it's Worth) and Todd's excellent mini lesson jump started me on my quest. Thank you Todd.

UP NEXT: Paul Carrick

Feedback Part 1

As a young artist just getting into art school you live and die by the feedback of your teachers and peers. Some is good, but most is bad. It is up to you to weed through the endless critiques and comments to find those choice moments that strike a chord with you. This three part series will highlight some of my own choice moments. I hope some of this may resonate with you like it did with me.

After my first year of art school I was stricken by something a professor had said to me. At my final critique he asked me what it was I wanted to do after I graduated to which I replied fantasy and science fiction illustration. He asked me to look out at what the fine art seniors had done for their thesis show that year and said to me that you should just leave and go to a different school because no one is doing the type of work that interests you here.

I was a fine art major at a very small school and there really wasn't anyone doing the type of work I wanted to get into. He was absolutely right and maybe I should have taken his advice, but I stayed for a multitude of reasons, not least is the caliber of teachers I had and would come to have. I was there first and foremost to learn how to draw and paint but what he said stuck with me throughout, and in conjunction with meeting Paul Carrick (I'll get to that meeting later in this series), made me hungry for knowledge outside of my schooling.

Thank you Steve Novick for giving me that initial push to learn what I needed to learn.


My first big step came in 2008 during my first summer break. I felt that the feedback of my professors wasn't enough and that what I really needed was the opinions of the people whose work I admired and followed closely. Professionals in the field of illustration, the very people who drew me to it in the first place. I compiled a list of my favorites and sent out my portfolio in a shotgun blast of emails hoping for the best. Surprisingly enough I got several responses within the next few weeks and they were invaluable to me in my artistic growth over the next few years. To the artists both named here and not, that took time out of their day to send me these, I am extremely grateful. You encouraged and continue to encourage a young artist finding his way in this business. Below is a selection of quotes from those emails...


 RANDY GALLEGOS
"Drawing is the blueprint of painting--without great drawing, color can't do its job."

MATT WILSON

"Focus your portfolio. Pick the genre of artwork you're going to focus on and do lots of that. A good portfolio should have 8-12 pieces demonstrating different subject matter within the same basic genre. No more, no less, and no weird, out of left field stuff. If you want to do fantasy book covers or Magic cards, don't show your prospective clients celebrity portraits. The reverse applies as well, naturally. You don't send a picture of a dragon to Time Magazine in order to score editorial art gigs. And of course, ditch the school work. People know it when they see it, and they won't hire you if they think you're a student or don't have professional experience. It's your job to create the illusion that you are the consummate professional...until you are."

 MARK ZUG

"You never outgrow the need to learn. The MAIN thing is to get your hand very much at home with the language, and the only thing for that is gobs and gobs of practice."

DAVE KENDALL

"When you paint, really concentrate on the textures and feel of the different materials in the image. Skin, metal etc. The best way I found was to imagine the feel of each material as you paint it. It's tricky but you'll know when you get it. it's really like a light turning on in your head."

"Post your work on a site like conceptart.org in their sketchbook section. You will get a lot of honest critiques from professional and amateur artists alike. Many artists have made huge leaps through this site. Be humble and take constructive criticism to heart."

"In the end you just have to practice and make each piece of work better than your last. be aware of your weaknesses more than your strengths and work on them. Recognize what makes other artist's images work and try and introduce it to your compositions."

UP NEXT: Todd Lockwood gives me my first lesson on light and shadow...

Style

Style is in my opinion an awful nightmare that is constantly looming over any artist who wants to "make it" in the art world. It is ever present and I am sure everyone has felt that they needed to find their own unique style or else they would surely fail before they ever really started.

As a student I wasn't so focused on it until I started to become comfortable with my chosen medium. The more comfortable I got with the materials it seemed the more uncomfortable I got with the result.

I spent a large part of my time in school poring over my favorite artist's work. Reading books and watching videos about their processes, trying to find that elusive secret that somehow unlocked their 'style'. I learned a great deal about their working methods and I unlocked quite a bit in my own mind about conceptually painting but I was still no where closer to finding their, let alone my own, style. My knowledge of painting then became so much greater than my technical skill which was entirely backwards. I found myself painting more in my head than on the canvas which is definitely a start, but not when one hampers the other.

The fact is that there is no covetous secret that anyone possesses that will suddenly let you inherit a style, or all of a sudden develop your own.

The only real secret behind developing a personal style is hiding in plain sight...

WORK.

DRAW.

PAINT.

Just do what it is you do.

You will discover it for yourself.

Borrow from the masters. Draw from your inspirations, but make sure you draw from ALL of your inspirations. Keep what works for YOU in the way that YOU interpret it (it will never be like the source material, nor should it). Play around and invent your own methods for things but don't try too hard to achieve originality, strive instead for authenticity. Be true to what feels right for YOU.

The goal here is to see a unique style shining through your work. You may only see glimpses at a time but the more you train yourself and recognize the good from the bad from the blatant copies, you will see those glimpses more and more. The key is to keep any singular vision from outshining the rest, unless of course it is your own.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF STYLE...

Part of one's training as an artist should be to expect, endure, and react to change. This includes your personal style. Expect your style to change because it will, frequently; especially in the beginning of your education and career.

As your technical skill develops and matures, your style will react and adapt. As in my case, I felt my conceptual knowledge lapped my technical skill which then caused my technical skills to develop that much faster as I put into practice the concepts I had learned. This inherently caused the style and look of my painting and drawing to change within a very short time. It is still changing.

This change however has to occur naturally. The more you try to force the change early on the more you will probably end up just copying someone else.

It wasn't meant to be easy to find your unique voice when it comes to style. Take your time and it will pay off in the end.

The most beautiful thing about personal style and in fact art in general is that there is never an end to this grand journey we're on. Change is inevitable, so recognize and embrace it.

Better Things

Just downloaded Maria Cabardo's new film, Better Things: The Life & Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones. The download at $14.95 (discounted for this month from $19.95) is a must see. DVD goes on sale in February followed by the Blu-ray with plenty of extras.

Jeffrey Jones was a force in the field of illustration and his story is fascinating. His effortless style and the almost abstract simplicity of his forms are just stunning. Check out the trailer and a sampling of work below...