This is just over an hour of sketching, drawing, and painting, condensed down to two minutes. From sketch to finished work created digitally using a Wacom Cintiq 24HD display and Photoshop CC. While the majority of my editorial cartoons are sketched on paper first and then scanned, this is pretty much the whole process I go through for each cartoon. This is best viewed at full screen in HD. To learn how this is done, you can purchase my cartooning DVD at PhotoshopCAFE.
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Another Meerkat Sketch Painting
Finding that I’m really enjoying sketching and painting these little guys. The fact that I’ve amassed so many reference photos from the Calgary Zoo meerkat enclosure means there will likely be more on the way. This was painted in Photoshop CC on the Wacom Cintiq 24HD display
iPad Painting with the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus
As anyone who creates digital art for a living will tell you, it’s difficult to do without a Wacom tablet or display. Beginning with the Graphire and the first generation Intuos tablets in the late nineties, I’ve used almost all versions and evolutions of Wacom products. Currently, the one I use on a daily basis is the Cintiq 24HD display. When I want to get out of the office, which usually just means moving to other parts of the house, I’m drawing and painting on the Cintiq 13HD.
Many people have asked me if I’ll be getting one of the new Cintiq Companion displays, but having just purchased a top of the line laptop to supplement my desktop PC, I don’t need another computer. I make my living with my artwork and have daily editorial cartoon deadlines. I can’t afford any downtime, so having another full system that I can work on if my main computer needs repair is very important to me. As I work at home and spend 90 percent of my time here, a fully functional portable Cintiq Companion would be wasted on me, so the 13HD and a laptop suits me just fine.
From time to time, however, I do enjoy the portability of drawing and painting on my iPad. I bought my first gen iPad about three months after it came out in 2010 and I used it almost every day. I began with finger painting, and then I probably spent a couple of hundred dollars in the first year, trying to find a stylus that would work well for drawing and painting. Eventually, I settled on the Wacom Bamboo Stylus and it worked very well for its intended use. Having tried many different drawing apps, I found that the ProCreate app suited my drawing style best and it’s the one I use above all others to this day.
I like to rest my hand on the screen, so I cut the thumb, index, and middle fingers from a light glove and wear that while drawing and painting on the iPad. I worked around the lack of pressure sensitivity by manually varying the opacity in the app. A similar method is to add a new layer and vary the opacity of that as well. A little awkward, but I managed to create some iPad drawings and paintings that I was pleased with, even if they took longer than they would have on my PC with a drawing tablet or display.
Recently, Wacom introduced their Intuos Creative Stylus for the iPad and I was intrigued. It connects via Bluetooth, has pressure sensitivity, programmable buttons like their other tablet and display pens, and palm rejection capability, which means you can rest your hand on the screen without your palm creating any digital pen marks. The key word here is ‘capability.’
As my first gen iPad had been proving unreliable and twitchy over the last year, I finally retired it and bought the new iPad Mini with Retina display, preferring the smaller size to the iPad Air. The Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus arrived last week and I was eager to put it through its paces.
The first thing I was impressed with is that it comes in a very nice case. With space for five spare nibs (it comes with two spares) and battery included, you feel you’ve purchased quality. My Cintiq 13HD came with a very nice case for the stylus as well and it gives me peace of mind that these portable styli are well protected while they’re being carted around.
Through trial and error and a little research, I found out some important technical info that will make your life a lot easier when using this pen.
First, the stylus takes an AAAA battery (that’s 4 As). It comes with one of them, so it’s ready to use. But I happened to be out running errands the day mine arrived so I wanted to see how hard it was to find replacements. Fortunately I found a set of two at The Source, a small franchised electronics store. A package of two batteries set me back $12. Our grocery store battery display didn’t have AAAA batteries, so you might have to look to find them. The Wacom site says a battery will last you 150 hours. I spent a few hours painting with the stylus and the battery still reads 100% in the ProCreate app, so I’ve no reason to doubt the claim.
Second, I have a wireless keyboard that connects to my iPad via Bluetooth and you connect it in the iOS settings. You can’t do that with the Intuos Creative Stylus, since it doesn’t even show up there. The stylus connects to your iPad inside of the supported apps (click here and scroll down for the list). In ProCreate for example, there’s a dropdown menu that shows a device option and sure enough, the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus is one of the choices. The connection was very stable and putting it away in the case seems to shut the pen off so it doesn’t waste the battery.
I didn’t bother to try any of the other drawing apps, so let’s just talk about ProCreate and this stylus. I haven’t done any iPad painting in a while so I was very impressed with the recent updates ProCreate has made to their app. They’ve got great blend mode options for layers, adjustments for color, sharpness, blur, multiple transformation tools and their brush engine allows for a LOT of customization. ProCreate is a very robust app and I see no reason to change my preference. It didn’t crash once while painting my funny looking rat, so it’s very stable.
I was disappointed that I couldn’t get the palm rejection to work well in ProCreate, so I ended up wearing the makeshift glove again which doesn’t really bug me. It was only later that I found out that it isn’t the stylus that doesn’t support palm rejection, it’s the app. Again, refer to the list of which features work with which apps.
The pressure sensitivity on this stylus works like a dream! With the programmable buttons, ProCreate allows you to choose which task you want each button to perform. I set one button to activate the color picker, and the other button to Undo. You don’t even need to have the pen in contact with the tablet to get these to work, either.
Bottom line, this stylus works as advertised. While the price may seem steep to some ($99.95 from Wacom), I’m a big believer that you get what you pay for and my experience with Wacom devices is that they last and work well for a long time. I’m being careful not to drop this stylus, though, as it’s still a precise electronic device.
A couple of final thoughts. It would be unreasonable to expect this stylus to perform as well as a Cintiq display. I can make quicker brush strokes, enjoy much more precise pressure sensitivity and paint with larger documents with higher resolution on my professional displays than I would expect to on the iPad. This stylus does not turn your iPad into a Cintiq Companion display. Also, keep in mind that Wacom created the stylus, not the apps with which it is used, so if there’s something that doesn’t work the way you might expect it to, it’s likely the app, not the pen.
I’m very pleased with the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus and I expect to use it often for sketching and rougher paintings. Beginning the rat painting you see at the top on the iPad was quite enjoyable and the image will eventually become a much larger, much more detailed rendering using Photoshop and my Cintiq 24HD display.
I would recommend both the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus and the ProCreate app without reservation, but as always, the tools are only as good as the artist using them. For best results with your artwork, keep learning, follow the work of other artists, and draw and paint as often as you can.
Meerkat Painting Sketch
One of my favorite stops when I visit The Calgary Zoo is the meerkat enclosure. A colony will always have one meerkat standing guard, which puts him or her at the highest point in the area, keeping a lookout for predators. It’s an instinctual trait as it occurs even with meerkats who are born in captivity. They just take turns. While they have nothing to fear from predators at the zoo, this behaviour is fantastic for taking reference photos. You couldn’t ask for a better subject as one will turn this way and that, remaining as still and posed as a fashion model in a photo shoot.
This painting is still pretty rough but it was a lot of fun. I will probably be painting more of these little critters in the near future.
Gorilla Sketch Painting (sort of)
In my continuing efforts to paint more, I decided to do another rough painting sketch of a gorilla this afternoon. I just couldn’t stop, however, so I took it further than I had intended. I was having fun, dammit! While I think I might compose it a little differently, maybe show a little more of the body, this may end up a Totem painting.
Parrot Sketch
Woke up earlier than I wanted to this morning on the first day of the year. As I’m usually an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ type, the cat is used to me getting up at 5AM. Creatures of habit and routine, she was pawing at my legs at 5:30, clearly not concerned that I had stayed up late last night. As I’m not one who is able to get up for a half hour and then go back to bed, it was a good excuse to do something creative first thing. With hot coffee and tunes in the headphones, I decided to do a sketch painting of this parrot. With no intention of it becoming a finished painting, it was nice to just work on it without any expectations and you can never get enough practice. I plan to do a lot more of these this year as I quite enjoyed it.
Happy New Year!
Raccoon Totem
Here’s the last painting of the year and another addition to my Totem series. At present, I’ve got about eight to ten animals waiting in the wings to be painted. I’ve had the reference photos for a number of them for quite some time and even though I don’t have an order in mind, it just seems that each gets their turn whenever it feels right. I had not expected to be painting the Raccoon Totem this year, but when choosing which would be my last painting of 2013, I went through the different folders and reference images, and it just seemed the right time to paint this one.
Whenever I try to manipulate which Totem I’ll paint, whether it’s for commercial reasons or a request from the gallery, I never feel completely good about it. I learned a while ago to just paint whichever one feels right for the time I’m ready to start a new one and my best work will come through. This time, it was the raccoon, and (say it with me)…I had a lot of fun with this one.
There appear to be new challenges with each Totem, whether it’s features or fur and for this one, the fur and hair was different. It wasn’t particularly difficult, but the wiry raccoon hair is unlike any of the animals I’ve painted before. Just as the Bison and Otter Totems required me to paint hair a little differently, the Raccoon required me to paint on more layers than I normally would, in order to get that deeper layered look I achieved with the hair in this painting. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.
This was painted on both the Wacom Cintiq 24HD and Wacom Cintiq 13HD displays, using Photoshop CC. No photos or overlaid textures were used in this image, it was all done with brush work. I don’t keep track of how long it takes to paint these anymore, because I usually spend an hour or two here and there over a two or three weeks when my other deadlines allow it. As always, I relied on a few reference photos for this painting and would like to thank my friend Susan Koppel who provided me my main reference for this Totem. Susan takes wonderful pet portraits, and also donates her time to her local Humane Society in Nevada and you can’t help but want to adopt all of the pets she photographs as she makes them look their absolute best. Rather than me ramble on about her skill and talent as a photographer, check out her website and you’ll see for yourself. You can find her at susankoppel.com
Happy to end the year with a Totem painting and looking forward to painting a lot more of them in 2014.
Commission – Duke
My latest commission, this is Duke, painted in my Totem style. While I often like to post work-in-progress shots online with paintings I’m working on, the first look at this one is the final image. As it was a birthday gift for the client’s wife, and the client is also a friend, there was a slim chance that she might see it online and recognize it as her dog. Let’s face it, ruining a surprise is just bad for business. This was completed at the end of last month then sent off to my printer in Calgary. The final print was a giclée on canvas, 18″X24″ with a shadowbox frame. Shipped to Dallas, it arrived yesterday and thanks to the magic of online video, I was able to see the reaction when it was opened. That’s just icing on the cake.
I know I say this a lot about paintings, but this was a lot of fun. I had a number of reference photos to work from and the client chose my exaggerated caricature Totem style of painting over my portrait style and I really enjoyed painting Duke with his happy goof expression. It’s true that I enjoy both painting styles in which I work and I allow clients to choose which one they prefer for their image, but the Totem style is my favorite. I laughed out loud a few times while painting this image and am glad I finally get to share it.
For those who like the tech details, I painted this digitally in Photoshop CC using both a Wacom Cintiq 13HD and a Wacom Cintiq 24HD display.
The Highlights of 2013
All things considered, I’m pretty happy with the work I accomplished in 2013. I wanted to focus more on painting, so I turned down more illustration gigs than I accepted this year and about that, I have no regrets. Along with the daily editorial cartoons, I worked on a number of pet portrait commissions, added more Totem paintings to my portfolio and managed to squeeze in a couple of portraits of people, too. Regardless of subject, each painting was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and as soon as I finished one, I was itching to start another.
If I were to choose the top three personal highlights of this year, they would be two portraits and one Totem.
At the very end of 2012, my painting of Martin Sheen as Tom from the movie, The Way, had come to the attention of his son, Emilio Estevez, who wrote and directed the movie. I had tagged him on Twitter, but didn’t really expect anything from it. Much to my surprise, he contacted me the same morning asking about buying a print, then the original. He said, “…the image is gorgeous and you have captured my father in a way that few have.”
Over the next few weeks of back and forth and having the canvas produced, it was delivered to Estevez at the beginning of February and he gave it to his father as a gift. I had asked them both to sign a paper print for me as well, which I’ve now framed and have hanging in my office. I was pleasantly surprised to later receive a copy of their co-written book ‘Along the Way,’ personally signed by both of them and a ‘Thank You’ note from Estevez. The card is still tacked to my bulletin board. What can I say, I’m a fan.
While the story received some attention in a number of media outlets, that sort of thing is fleeting and in the long run, just another blip in a rapidly changing entertainment news cycle. But, what I enjoy most about the experience is that each time I come up the stairs into my office, the first thing I see is the signed painting and it frequently makes me smile. It is still one of my favorite pieces both for the enjoyment I had painting it and the story that goes with it. And I still love that movie.
In the Spring of this year, astronaut Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to command the International Space Station. With his daily tweets and seemingly endless supply of jaw dropping photos taken from a place few have ever been, he captured the imagination and excitement of the world, including me. I was inspired to paint his portrait and was thrilled when I received a complimentary tweet from space from Hadfield himself. If that weren’t enough, I drew an editorial cartoon about his taking command and in the toon, I mentioned Flin Flon, Manitoba. This prompted an interview from that town’s local paper which again caught the attention of Hadfield and I received a second short message from the I.S.S.. Apparently all it takes to make a 43 year old man feel like a ten year old kid again is getting messages from an astronaut in space. That was just cool.
Finally my favorite painting from this year was the Coyote Totem, because it’s one that’s been waiting to be painted for 20 years, even before I knew how to paint. For reasons I don’t wish to share publicly, and couldn’t even explain if I did, this is the most personal of all of the Totems I’ve painted and the only one I’ve had printed on canvas and framed for myself. It hangs in my office on the wall to my right, where I can easily see it. I look at it often and it reminds me how fortunate I am and how I got from there to here.
I just wasn’t skilled enough to do it justice until this year, but of any image I’ve created, it’s the painting I love most. And I’m grateful that the personality showed up.
I would like to give honourable mention to my most recent portrait of Anthony Hopkins as Bill Parrish from ‘Meet Joe Black.’ This was another personal painting because I did it just for me. I started the year focused on a painting of a character and actor I admire, an image that got a lot of attention and ended the year with a painting of a character and actor I admire, an image that got very little. And yet, I loved working on both portraits equally, the work itself brought me the most joy.
That’s the lesson I learned this year and the one I’m taking into the next.
Artistic Freedom
The greatest freedom in being self-employed is that you get to choose where you want to go. It’s one of the reasons so many creatives work for themselves and yet we too often forget that simple fact.
I’ve always felt a need to catch up, especially since I operated for a long time under the assumption that I started late. While I doodled as a kid and teenager, I never really started drawing with any intent or wanting to learn to be a better artist until my late twenties. That was when the Banff Crag and Canyon newspaper needed a weekly cartoonist and nobody else applied. It didn’t matter that I didn’t draw well or know much about politics or current events. They weren’t paying much and nobody was looking to the Crag’s editorial cartoon to set the standard. I already had a full-time tourism job and no ambition to do anything art related past this one thing. Draw one small town editorial cartoon each week for some extra beer money. Let’s face it, I was 27 years old, I had never gone to art school, and I didn’t draw very well. I never expected this to go anywhere.
Fast forward to today, I’m now 43, I’ve been doing this art gig full-time for almost 8 years and am very happy drawing and colouring for a living. It has thankfully been more than a few years since I would consider it a struggle to make ends meet. I’ve tried a number of different art related tangents, discarded the ones I didn’t like or that didn’t work, sought to become better at the ones I felt passionate about, and year after year, my focus has become sharper.
One of the best things I did this year was to begin removing myself from a few imaginary races I’ve been running. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype today that an artist’s value is entirely dependent on how many people follow you on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and that the incremental rise and fall of your Klout score will determine whether or not your business survives the end of the week. I know, because for a long time, I worried about that very thing. It’s exhausting and it’s an illusion.
Social media has been great for my business, don’t get me wrong, but it just never worked for me when I was trying too hard to get it to work for me. The scramble to be noticed by Company A, to be retweeted by Company B, and to have your site address posted by Company C becomes like an addiction. When it happens once, you try to make it happen again. When it doesn’t happen, or it happens but not as well as you wanted it to, and fails to pay the street-cred dividends you expected, you wish you’d never had the initial boost to your profile in the first place. You start to question your own value when the person who was happy to hear from you last year suddenly isn’t returning your calls anymore.
Then you end up looking to other people in your industry that you view as more successful and try to copy what they’re doing. Person A is writing articles, so I guess I need to write articles. But Person B is teaching, so I guess I should be teaching. Person C is traveling all over the place doing demonstrations at trade shows, so maybe I should be doing that, too. And I don’t know what Person D is doing but everybody is talking about them so I need to find out why.
All of that scrambling leaves little time for anything creative. While it’s true that I’m drawing editorial cartoons every day to meet my deadlines, last year I didn’t paint nearly as much as I had expected to, and not even close to how much I wanted to. The one thing I enjoy most about my work, I shoved aside so that I could promote myself. But what exactly was I promoting if there wasn’t any work?
This year, I’ve realized that the growth of my business is not tied to my connection to movers and shakers, nor is it tied to blogging freelancing tips and tricks or spending hours writing yet another tutorial on how to use brushes in Photoshop. While people may value that contribution, it has rarely translated to income or led me in a direction in which I wanted to go. I found myself looking forward and thinking, why do I feel like I’m voluntarily walking into a trap? It also left me little time to paint or draw anything outside of my deadlines.
The greatest gains I’ve seen in my business, both financially and in my public profile, have been when I produce the work I enjoy creating. The connection I make with the people who enjoy and buy my work doesn’t happen when I talk about being creative, it happens when I AM creative.
Therein lies the simple plan for the next year. Pay the bills, learn to be a better artist, and chart my own course. Spend a lot more time producing artwork and a lot less time talking about it.