Category: Digital Painting

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So you’re thinking about commissioning a pet portrait…

Don Diego

Last May, I posted a blog entry which outlined all of the details of commissioning a portrait of a pet.  I’ve found that so many people are reluctant to ask about pricing for fear that it will be too high and they’ll be embarrassed about having to say, “I can’t afford that right now.”  On the other side of that coin, so many artists are afraid of revealing their prices because they fear that it will turn people off or that other artists will adopt their rates and practices.  That’s a lot of fear going around for no reason.

To address the first part, I’d love to have an office full of Drew Struzan originals, but I can’t afford the $100,000+ that each one of those costs.  There’s no shame in that.  Many years ago, Drew himself had little money, but now, people are willing to pay that amount for his work.  And there’s only one original.  To address the second part, I decided to post my rates for commissions because time is money.  I don’t want to waste my time playing negotiating games only to find out the client isn’t willing to go ahead just yet.  I also don’t want to make it awkward for potential clients or waste their time, either.   As for copying rates, I can freely admit that this came about because I recently saw another artist’s pet portrait commission work and was asked for advice by a friend of hers about pricing.  Her work was stunning and I thought, “yes, she deserves to charge that fee.”  Then again, so do I and I never want to be seen as the cheaper alternative.  I ended up learning more from her.  And because our styles and mediums are very different, I wouldn’t consider her competition.

Also, I’ve become very busy lately.  I’m currently working on three different commissions, with one pending.  In addition to my editorial cartoon and illustration work, I’ve kind of swamped.  In the art world, that often signals that it’s time to raise the rates, so I’m doing that.  With my upcoming booth at the Calgary Expo, I expect even more pet portrait commission inquiries and I want to be prepared in advance of that.  In the interest of pulling back the curtain,  I posted some standard commission information in May and it has worked very well.  Having something to link to for client inquiries saves everybody a lot of time.

This short post is a segue to that post, one that outlines what I need in order to allow me to deliver the best possible portrait I can, and the prices have been updated.  All rates currently quoted to existing clients or ones who’ve already made recent inquiries still stand.  Here’s the link to the NEW pet portrait commission post.

 

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Chris Hadfield Portrait – “Here Comes Home.”

ChrisHadfield

If you don’t know who Chris Hadfield is by now, especially if you’re Canadian, then you’ve probably been studying in a monastery somewhere, cut off from the rest of the world.  Currently aboard the International Space Station on his third mission in space, Hadfield has become the face and voice of the Canadian Space Program.  With his multiple daily tweets and photos from orbit, his now frequent Q&A communications to schools and media, and his high profile life high above the Earth, Hadfield has Canadians and people around the world excited about space travel again.  I’m 42 and often kind of cynical about our species, largely due to the editorial cartoon portion of my career, but when I see the images and video being sent back from the I.S.S. each day, I feel like a 10 year old kid again, excited about the possibilities, if we can only keep moving forward.

Hadfield seems to have that charismatic personality that so few possess, able to speak to world leaders and grade school children in a way that puts both at ease and allows them to understand what he’s saying, while still being the same guy with both audiences.  Because of his obvious passion for his work, his willingness to share so much of his rare experience with the world, and his ability to be a scientist, engineer, artist and humanist all at the same time, I couldn’t help but be inspired to paint his portrait, especially after seeing the video of the musical event featuring Hadfield, Barenaked Ladies, and the Wexford Gleeks.  The reference and title for this painting came from that video and song.

There is no better legacy than to inspire those around you and the next generation to believe in the possibilities before them.  I can’t imagine how many children are now considering futures in the space program because of Hadfield’s example.  Whether they’ll remain on the ground as part of the team that sends us further into space or actually get to be one of the few who go, will be up to them.

If all goes to plan, Chris Hadfield will take command of the International Space Station on March 13th, the first Canadian to do so.  Just recently, the Canadian Space Agency posted a video where Hadfield demonstrated how he controlled the Canadarm2 from the cupola.  In it he said, “Canada built the Canadarm2.  And Canadarm2 built this space station.  Everybody should be proud of that.”

We are, indeed.

CloseupFor the artists who are always interested in the tech specs.  This was painted in Photoshop CS6 Extended with a Wacom Cintiq 24HD.  Final file dimensions are 32″X24″ at 300ppi.  It’s a big file!  Reference was a screen capture from the YouTube video mentioned above, which meant the quality wasn’t great, but I muddled through.  Photos are never used as part of the painting, all was painted from scratch.  I wanted desperately to put stars in those windows, but they just wouldn’t be visible in real life, so I kept that urge in check.

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Working for Free and Clearing the Air

This topic seems to be floating around a fair bit lately and that’s a great thing.  Too many artists are doing work for free because many companies expect them to.  While I could write a long post about this, and I have in the past, Stephen Silver says it best in this video below.  If you are a freelance artist and aren’t yet aware of Stephen’s work, I would suggest you follow him.  He is respected for good reason.  He has great advice, is very inspirational and has been working in the animation and design business for a long time.  I’ve even taken an online character design course from him years ago and learned a lot.  While I don’t consider myself as accomplished a cartoonist or character designer as he is, my work is definitely better from having learned from him.  Now this video below is an angry rant, and this is out of character for Stephen, but he’s passionate about protecting artists from being taken advantage of, and you can see that in the video.  If you’re easily offended…well you wouldn’t be here, so never mind.

Before I get to the video, however, I’d like to address something I’ve been taking a bit of flack for the past couple of months, something that has direct bearing on this topic, and that’s the fact that I gave Emilio Estevez the painting of his father for free.  While I could easily dismiss the criticism as ‘some people are just angry at everything,’ I feel it’s important to address this because it’s not just me being slighted in the criticism, it’s Estevez as well.  While I’m sure he has thick skin and is used to being criticized for anything and everything in his profession, it bothers me that some think he got the painting for free because he expected it for free, simply because he’s a celebrity.  That’s not the case.

Throughout our correspondence, he was always offering to buy the painting.  He never expected me to give it to him.  When I explained that I couldn’t sell it because of why I painted it (you can read about that here), he then offered me other incentives from which I could make money from the print and I still declined.  My decision to give the painting was always mine.   I make a good living as a commercial artist, I do not do commission work for free, and nobody is taking advantage of me.  I wasn’t asked to do the painting.  That would have been something entirely different and I would have charged appropriately for my time and effort, just as I would have if the painting was going to be used commercially.

Let’s say that I had been in the same head space I was in when I painted that image of Martin Sheen, but had instead been inspired to paint somebody on the street in Calgary.  Let’s say I took a photo, and painted that person for my own enjoyment.   Let’s also say that person’s son or daughter saw the image and wanted to give that image to their father, the subject of the painting.   I can honestly say that I would have done the same thing, charged them only the printing and shipping and given them the painting, the same arrangement I made with Estevez.  The decision was not about celebrity.  It was about me, where I was at a couple of months ago, and what my instinct told me at the time.  The difference was that the inspiration came from a film, so the painting ended up being a character played by a well known actor.

Estevez was nothing but gracious and genuine throughout the experience and in addition to the signed prints I requested, and paying for the shipping and printing,  he even gave me a copy of the memoir written by him and his father, signed personally to me by both.  Some have suggested I should have gone for the big money grab because he was a celebrity.  That’s just not me.  While the story did get a fair bit of press in Canada and a little bit in the U.S., the experience doesn’t mean anything in the long run to anybody but me and the recipients of the painting.   It’s already long over, as most stories of this nature so quickly are.  To do it all again, I would change nothing.  While I have some very nice souvenirs of the experience,  I’m back to doing what I do best, drawing cartoons, illustrations, and painting funny looking animals for a living.  Throw in the odd portrait for fun and inspiration and that’s where I want to be.

Hopefully that clears a few things up for a few angry people out there.  If not, feel free to continue to wallow in it.  It’s your problem.  For the rest of you, take a look at this video by Stephen Silver.  If you’re an artist, it might inspire you to believe in your own worth.  If you’re not an artist, but someone who might hire one, perhaps this will enlighten you as to the struggles being faced in the industry.  We’re all building our own individual careers, but we also need to look out for one another as well.

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Painting Choices and Challenges

I’m currently working on a portrait of Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield.  The reference that I’m using is from a Youtube video, so even in web HD, the quality isn’t great.  I’m used to working with poor quality reference from time to time, and it’s actually a good thing when it comes to portraits, as long as the quality isn’t too bad.  If the quality were perfect, I might rely too much on the photo and there wouldn’t be enough art in it, just replication.

A common practice in painting from photos is using the grid method.  The short explanation is that you divide your reference photo into grids, then you divide your canvas into equally proportioned grids.  This helps a person establish where the major landmarks fall on the reference photo and suggests that those same landmarks should fall in the same place on the canvas grid.  Here’s a very basic explanation of The Gridding Method if mine doesn’t do a decent job of it.

Norman Rockwell, Leonardo da Vinci and many other artists of note would use the grid method in their work.  Some artists consider it cheating, but then again, I’ve met artists who say I’m not a real artist because I sell my work commercially.  Art for a living is not a profession for anybody with thin skin and there is often no harsher critic than another artist.  I don’t have the rare skill to paint a person’s likeness from memory, so I need photo reference, as do most portrait artists.  My take on the grid method is that it is a tool that has its place, but I wouldn’t rely on it completely.  Photoshop has the ability to apply grids in any configuration over your image.  It’s under Preferences > Guides, Grids, and Slices.  When I do use it, I choose percentages, but you can choose more precise methods of measurement as well.  7 percent is pretty small, but you’ll see why I chose that at the end of the post.

Preferences I never use the grid at all when I’m painting my Totem paintings because they’re not supposed to look like the reference photos.  Nor would I use grids when doing caricature work, because exact proportions would defeat the whole purpose.

Just to prove that I can paint without the grid method, this is a portrait of James Whitmore that I did on the iPad, where grids weren’t possible.  I had a photo, the iPad, and nothing but time.  It did take quite awhile, and a big challenge was the low resolution possible with the first gen iPad,  but I’m pleased with the likeness I was able to achieve.

James Whitmore - iPad painting

I try to only use the grid method when I’m stuck on something in a realistic portrait of a person or know that something is wrong and just can’t quite see it.  For example, when I’m working on a likeness of a person, I may know that there’s something wrong with the eyes, but can’t figure it out.  I’ll flip the canvas horizontally, vertically, try all of my tricks and still be stuck.  By using the grids, I’ll see that it could be something as simple as the corner of the eye is in the wrong place or the iris doesn’t have the correct curve.  I only use the grids when a painting is in the middle stages.  Once the likeness is there, I don’t use them anymore, because I find that relying on it too much makes the subject of a portrait look wooden.  I pride myself in the personality and life in my images and that doesn’t come from accurate placement of features, but from artistic impression of the subject.  This is also the reason I paint people that inspire me or characters I feel a connection with, because that helps me with the feeling of the work.  Having the tools is easy, knowing when to use them comes from experience.

Here’s a challenge I faced this morning on the current painting of Chris Hadfield.  In the reference image I’m using, his mission patch is clearly visible on his shirt.  Because I’m trying to capture a moment, I want to include that in the painting.  I went back and forth on how to do it.  That mission patch is readily available online in pristine condition, just as the designer would have finished it.  One way to do it was just paste the perfect image in position, use the distort and warp tools, maybe rough it up a bit with a texture brush, add a little blur and it’s done, quick and easy.  Another way I could do it, was do a vector trace of the graphic, basically just using the pen tool, trace over the coloured elements, convert them to paths, fill with colour, distort, warp, place, texture, blur, done.

So why didn’t I do either of those?  With a logo in an editorial cartoon, I do that all the time, and I’m fine with it.  Usually on a tight deadline, it’s a satirical commentary, and an accurate logo that I’ve recreated with the pen tool by tracing over it is something I’m comfortable doing because of the context.  It’s part of the job and spending 20 hours on each editorial cartoon would be career suicide.  With the painting, however,  it felt like cheating.  To somebody else, it might not have, and that’s OK.  Everybody needs to make their own choices.  I just know that had I done either of those,  I’d finish the painting, would probably like the end result, but every time I look at that patch, it’s going to bother me.

HadfieldWIP04

So I decided that for the patch, I would use the grid method to help with the accuracy of the pieces in the patch, but paint it as I see it in the reference image.  It’s going to take me quite awhile longer to paint the patch, but I’ll be happier with it in the end.  As you can see from the above reference image on the left and painting on the right, I’ve got a long way to go to get it right, but it’s not like it’s wasted time because I’m still learning from every painting I do.  In the end, I’ll be happier with the painting, so it’s time well spent.

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Martin, Emilio, and Tom’s Road.

PromoSheenFinalSometime around the middle of December, I finished painting a portrait of Martin Sheen.  More accurately, the portrait was of his character, Tom, from the movie The Way, written for the screen and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez.  While the painting was done purely for my own enjoyment, sometimes a seemingly innocent pursuit will take on a life of its own.  Since the movie inspired me to paint the portrait, as did their father/son memoir ‘Along the Way,’ I wrote about that when I posted the painting.  Click here, if you’d like to read it.

As is my practice, I posted the link on social media and also tagged Estevez’s account on Twitter, especially since he has used that vehicle to promote the film.  I thought that if he saw it, he might like what I wrote and painted, but didn’t actually expect anything to come of it.  Twitter is a busy place and it’s impossible to keep up, so a lot more gets missed than noticed.

Imagine my surprise when just a couple of hours later on that same Saturday, an email arrived from Estevez via my website.  He thanked me for my support of the film and then asked about buying a print, with the intent of giving it to his father for Christmas.  With just five business days remaining, I had to tell him that even a rush job would have been impossible by the 25th, especially considering that I’d want to be meticulous about the proofing, given the recipient.   I told him I’d be happy to set things in motion in January, if he was willing to wait.  He was very gracious, completely understood, and we began talking about it again after the holidays.

In the meantime, his mother had seen the painting and wanted him to inquire about buying the original.  Here’s the technology hiccup when you start talking originals and digital painting.  A digital painting exists only on a hard drive and screen until it’s printed, so there really is no original in the traditional sense.  One solution is to supply documentation that certifies a specific print to be the original.  Mine are always printed on canvas and I gave Emilio the option of choosing the size.  After a month of proofing, printing, signing, and packaging, the original 18″X24″ stretched canvas shipped last Friday.  I also certified the canvas itself by writing the title of the piece and an additional signature on the back.  Incidentally, until all of this occurred, I hadn’t titled this painting, but decided it needed one before it shipped.  Yesterday, “Tom’s Road”  arrived at Martin’s home.

MartinSheenThe reason for this piece in the first place was to take a small break from the commercial work, as every image I’ve created lately has been a product.  The whole point was to get away from everything being about money and marketing, if only for a moment.  I wanted to paint my best portrait work, for no other reason than that.  I am a commercial artist, no doubt about it, and I make a good living at it.   This is my business, my livelihood, and my career.  But this piece was special, inspired by a movie I loved, which was, in a way, a light at the end of a tunnel.  My gut instinct told me that to try and make money from this would have tainted the whole experience, something that was worth much more to me than a paycheque.  So, when Emilio asked to buy the original, I chose not to put a price on the work, but still offered the painting, charging only my printing and shipping costs.

Sometime in the near future, I’ll be receiving a paper print that I’ve asked them to sign.  I’ll have it framed for my office, a souvenir of the experience, and a constant reminder that I must make time for personal work.  I’ve also asked Emilio to have Martin sign one more print, something I can reserve for a charity auction sometime in the future.  He was happy to oblige, and you can bet that I’m going to be very picky about which cause benefits from this unique item.

There is no doubt in my mind that had I attempted to orchestrate any of this, had I painted the portrait with the intention of bringing about these events, none of it would have happened.  I created this portrait for me, to remind myself why I paint, and since I truly enjoyed working on it, that was enough.   But to have it appreciated by his family, was a wonderful and unexpected bonus, not to mention a validation of my recent choices.

If all that weren’t enough, the greatest compliment I received was something offered by Estevez in one of his e-mails this past month.  He said, “…the image is gorgeous and you have captured my father in a way that few have.”

It just doesn’t get much better than that.

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Another iPad Painting

JeffTamagini

My  buddy, Jeff Tamagini, is a photographer and architect who lives in Boston.  While we keep in touch online during the year, we only see each other in Vegas at Photoshop World.  This past September, he and I were having lunch at The House of Blues in Mandalay Bay.  The place has kind of low lighting, like a lot of bars, so when Jeff was checking something on his iPad, the screen lit up his face from underneath and I thought it looked pretty cool.  So I asked him to hold the pose, and I took a few shots with my phone.  As the only real light was the iPad and I couldn’t use a flash, the photo didn’t end up being all that sharp for detail, but I thought it would make a good practice piece for an iPad painting.

For the tech details, I was using a Wacom Bamboo Stylus, alternating between the regular version and the newer Pocket Bamboo Stylus.  I wanted to use the very expensive Jaja stylus I just bought for close to $100 with shipping, but turns out the damn thing is a huge disappointment.  It’s supposed to be pressure sensitive by way of a triple A battery and an ultrasonic speaker that communicates with the iPad microphone.  You can adjust the volume of the pen to better communicate with the iPad, but I when I turned the volume up (because it wasn’t working right), I could actually hear it, which was annoying, and the battery life is ridiculously short.  The manufacturers recommend you don’t use rechargeable batteries.  Not exactly the most environmentally friendly device.  It was pressure sensitive, sure, but the lines weren’t smooth, the performance was twitchy, basically I used it for a half hour and then went back to the Bamboo.  You  shouldn’t have to think about your hardware while painting.  The Wacom Bamboo Stylus is still the best one I’ve used.

I’m still using the first generation iPad, bought it a few months after the initial release.  While I’ve got a lot of use out of it, and my money’s worth, it’s starting to show it’s age and it’s beginning to have performance issues.  Apps crash often enough to be annoying, despite my turning off location services, running only one or two apps at the same time, and doing everything else that’s been suggested to streamline operations.  The fact is, every time Apple releases a new iOS. it has a harder time running on the old hardware.  Pretty smart…force your consumers to buy the new tech by rendering the old tech useless.  My next tablet might not be an iPad as I’ve become aware of better options out there for a more reasonable price.  For example, the new Wacom Bamboo Stylus feel technology exists in some newer tablets, rendering them truly pressure sensitive out of the box.  The usability will depend on what apps I can get for painting on another device.

The app I use to paint on the iPad is procreate.  I’ve tried a number of them and that’s been my favorite for awhile.  It just has a great interface.  To get around the lack of pressure sensitivity, I just manually adjust the opacity of the brush with my thumb via a convenient slider on the left of the screen, and I’ll also adjust the opacity of different layers.  Anybody who is expecting their tablet to perform like a Cintiq is kidding themselves, so you make do with what you have.  Limiting your options can actually make you a better artist.  The work I’ve seen done with this app on the newer iPads that have better resolution is very impressive.

Which brings me to WHY I paint on the iPad.  The simple answer is that it’s a challenge.  With only low-resolution options, especially with the first-gen iPad, I have to work with what sometimes feels like a blunt instrument to get the likeness down.  There’s no way of painting in details later, because I’m stuck with one size.  The best I can manage is to brush in some speckled texture to suggest detail.  Also, the iPad is portable, just like a sketch book.  This painting was done almost entirely while sitting on the couch watching TV.  I started it in the Fall, but haven’t done anything on it in quite awhile.  Finally picked it up again last week and finished it yesterday morning, working on it in my spare time.  No deadline, no expectations, just practice.  I’m reasonably happy with it, but I think I could have done better if I’d had a better reference photo.

Finally, because I don’t like working with the iPad at full brightness, I always seem to paint darker than I’d like the end result to be.  My eyes get used to it, so I don’t see just how much brightness I’m missing.  Once a painting is done, I bring it into the Snapseed app, make some very harsh brightness and contrast adjustments, then bring it back into procreate on a new layer.  By adjusting the layer opacity, I get the right mix of what I like.  My iPad paintings lack the finesse of the work I do in Photoshop, they’re rougher looking and lack detail, but I find they’re still worth doing.  And it’s fun.

 

 

 

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Miss Moneypenny

This was my last commission painting of this year, a little lady named Moneypenny.  She’s a young pup with a great personality and I was given the option of painting her in a realistic portrait style or Totem style, artist’s choice.  Believe it or not, there is no exaggeration in this portrait.  She was really smiling like this in the reference photo, so I didn’t see the point of painting her in the Totem style.

Moneypenny’s portrait was finished earlier this month, but I wasn’t able to show it ’til now, just in case the recipient happened to see it online.  Since I know both the client and the recipient, there was a chance somebody would let it slip, so it was best to hold off.  It was printed and stretched on canvas at 12″ x 16″ and framed.

I found out last night that the gift has been given and while her owner loved it, Moneypenny herself was a little freaked out, thinking there was another dog in the house.  Apparently she barked at it.  Either that was a harsh critique or a wonderful compliment.

Here’s a closeup of the details.

 

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Looking back on 2012

One of the great things about regularly keeping a blog is that it’s like keeping a journal.  I find that each year, I’m actually surprised at how much went on while I was drawing, colouring, and trying to keep from losing my mind.

Here’s a quick recap of the ups, downs, and other stuff that happened in 2012.

This Business of Art.

At the beginning of the year, I canceled my booth at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo because I realized I wasn’t prepared for the April event.  In retrospect, and after attending as one of the hoard, it was a good call because I would have done a number of things wrong.  It wasn’t the best of times for that particular event this year as they did a number of things wrong as well, a casualty of their own growing popularity.  But I’m booked and ready for 2013 and I’m really looking forward to it.

It’s no secret that I enjoy working with Wacom.  I had the pleasure of demoing at their booth at Photoshop World in Vegas in September, was a guest on another of their webinars in November, and recorded a few videos for them throughout the year.  They’re also sending me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the second week of January, so it’s clear that Wacom has become a significant part of my life this year.

I’m fortunate to have been invited to be one of the artists represented on Insivity.com, a new site designed to inspire and motivate artists.  Still in its infancy and only officially launched this week, I look forward to writing and recording some exclusive material for it.  I’ll also be looking to be inspired myself, as we can all use a regular dose of that to keep moving forward.

Hardware and Software

Another Wacom highlight this year was the introduction of the Intuos5 tablets and the new Cintiq displays.  Every time I think they can’t make these products better, I’m happy to be proven wrong.   Both the Intuos5 medium and the Cintiq 24HD display are now tools I use every day and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

After 6 years using a great computer, it was time to bite the bullet and have a new one built this year.  While the last one worked great, it was Windows XP, only had 250GB of hard drive space, and was starting to have trouble running the big files.  I more than got my money’s worth from it, so no regrets.  Without boring you with the details, the new computer is top of the line and a real pleasure to use.

Photoshop CS6 was launched this year and while there were no particular ‘must-haves’ in the features for me, when you record training materials, you need to be using the latest software.

What with a complete upgrade of all of my software and hardware, anything I can’t accomplish in 2013 will be a failing in my skills, not my equipment.

Speaking and Training

I’ve been speaking to schools on digital art and editorial cartooning for a number of years, but with my ever increasing workload, I’ve had to be selective about how many of these I agree to.  Locally, I consider it part of my obligation to contribute to the community I’ve lived in for almost 20 years.  Outside of the Bow Valley, however, there is a fee for my time and travel expenses.

I enjoyed spending an afternoon with a group of art teachers in Red Deer a couple of months ago, introducing them to the entry level Wacom tablets and hopefully inspiring them to spend more time with the technology.  I found out that more of their students are requesting training in digital art.  A fledgling medium has now become main stream and I thought it great that traditionally trained art teachers were so willing to embrace it for the benefit of themselves and their students.

I had hoped to have recorded my next DVD for PhotoshopCAFE by now, Painting Portraits in Photoshop, but I had to keep putting it off in favour of more pressing obligations.  One of the obstacles was the technology.  I needed Photoshop CS6 and a new machine to run it. Now that I no longer have that excuse, recording the DVD has been bumped up the priority list and I look forward to having it done in the first quarter of 2013.

Prints and Products

In a sad turn of events this year, Two Wolves Trading Co. closed the doors in September.  It was the exclusive venue for my limited edition Totem prints and matted paper prints in Canmore.  The owners, Andrea and Michelle, did a lot for promoting my work.  Between their fun personalities and kindness, including that of their staff, it was a pleasure to have had my work sold in their store.

While the closing of the store did have an impact on my business, it was more disappointing to see friends close up shop.  A walk downtown always involved stopping in to Two Wolves to say Hi and kid around.  I still miss that.  Even though my work is available at About Canada in Banff, I’ll be looking for a new venue in Canmore in the new year, but it won’t be the same.

My prints were added to the inventory at the Calgary Zoo retail store this year.  Just a few paintings to start, but I plan to add fuel to that fire in the coming year.

In the meantime, I continue to sell the prints online through my own store.  I recently sent an email to my web designer, Erik Bernskiold, thanking him again for the great job he did on my site.  Everything works flawlessly.  A sale I had earlier this month was a lot of fun and worked very well.  It’s something I plan to do again sometime in the future.

One of the highlights of this year for my work was licensing five of my Totem paintings to The Mountain Corporation out of Keene, New Hampshire.  Their T-shirts are everywhere around the world, from retail outlets and zoos, to big box and online stores.  I was very pleased to have my work added to their catalog and I’m optimistic that these five will just be the beginning.  Having received my samples just this past week, I was very impressed with the quality of both the shirts themselves and the printing.

A lot of other little moments and events throughout the year, but through it all, there were well over 300 editorial cartoons, more than a dozen illustration gigs, and 15 paintings.   While going through my work this year, it’s amazing how much of it I thought I’d done LAST year or even the year before.

With the exception of one commission piece I’m still waiting for permission to post, these are the paintings I completed in 2012.  Clicking on any of the names or images will take you to the original blog post.

The Pets

In order, here are the commissions I enjoyed painting this year.  We’ve got Gilly the Pomeranian, Chase, the German Shepherd with the titanium tooth, Mocha the horse, and a portrait of Brisby, Australian Shepherd/Red Heeler cross.

Gilly

 

Chase

 

Mocha

 

Brisby

 

The People

Again, in order of completion, the first is Jim, one of my closest friends, and a portrait I did as a gift for his 50th birthday.  Then there’s Russell Brown in his Abe Lincoln getup, Madeline Kahn as Elizabeth from the movie, Young Frankenstein, and Martin Sheen as Tom, from the movie The Way.  I’ll have an update on the last painting sometime early in the new year.

Jim, a personal gift - Portrait

Russell Brown - Portrait

Madeline Kahn - Portrait

Martin Sheen - Portrait

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The Totems

In order of when they were completed, here are the Cougar, the Rockhopper Penguin, the Bison, the Otter, and Bald Eagle Totems.

Cougar Totem

Rockhopper Penguin Totem

Bison Totem

Otter Totem

Bald Eagle Totem

So, all in all, pretty pleased with my body of work this year.  Most of what you see above wasn’t planned out at this time last year, so it’ll be interesting to see what I end up painting in 2013.  Obviously more Pets, People and Totems (oh my!), but other than that, there are no resolutions for the next year.  I’ve just decided to wing it and see what happens.

To you regular readers, those who follow my work on social media and are an endless source of encouragement throughout the year, you have my sincere thanks.  The only way I know if my work is making people happy is because you tell me, and it is greatly appreciated.  If you are an artist yourself, I hope you have found a little inspiration here, and believe in yourself enough to find your own style of art, something that speaks to you and makes you want to create even more.

Best to you and yours in the coming year!

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Martin Sheen – The Details

Martin Sheen - PortraitYesterday, I wrote about why I painted this portrait of Martin Sheen’s character, Tom, from the movie ‘The Way.’  Click on this link, if you’d like to read it.  Today, I figured I’d write a little bit about the how, as there are always artists out there who want to know the technical details, and I’m happy to oblige.

This painting was done entirely in Photoshop CS6 Extended using a Wacom Cintiq 24″HD display.  No photos were used in the painting, aside from reference.  I didn’t keep track of how long it took me to complete it because I wasn’t on deadline or in a rush, so while I could easily say 20 hours, it was probably more, over a few weeks.  Without a deadline, I was able to nitpick it and get it as close to perfect as my current skills will allow.  At some point, however, I just have to call it done, because any changes become so minute that nobody will see them but me.

With all of my previous work, it has become my practice to start a painting at low resolution, usually around 9″X12″ at 72ppi.  Then, as the painting progresses, I will keep bumping up the size and resolution.  I teach this method in my PhotoshopCAFE DVD, “Animal Painting in Adobe Photoshop” and it’s the same practice I use for painting portraits of people.  There used to be two reasons for doing this.  First, when you’re working at low-res, you can’t get distracted by putting in too much detail because the size just won’t allow any.  This forces me to well establish ‘the bones’ of a likeness before working on wrinkles, skin texture, and hair.  The other reason for starting at low-res was that my computer had reached the end of it’s efficient life for this type of work and at full-size and full-res, the brushes just wouldn’t move well enough to make broad strokes across the digital canvas.  A completed painting was never more than 18″X24″ at 300ppi, because at that size, I could only work on the fine details without experiencing some lag.

Recently I had a new computer built and I’m back to working on a very current, high end machine.  Running 64bit Windows 7 with 64bit Photoshop, 16GB of RAM and a 4GB video card, everything is running incredibly smooth.  I could have started and finished this painting at full-res, without any problems at all.  BUT, I’m going to continue using my low-res to high-res workflow for the first reason I mentioned.  It forces me to get the likeness right and it works well for me.  That being said, I decided to push this painting to see if I could make it larger, which also allows more attention to detail.  This final painting is 32″X24″ at 300ppi.  At that size, the brushes were working just fine, and I could have bumped it up even more, with no issues in performance.

I’m still using the regular brushes in Photoshop and haven’t used any of the Mixer or Bristle brushes in my paintings.  Those brushes are designed to simulate traditional media and I honestly don’t feel the need to do that.  Digital painting is a medium all on its own, and I don’t try to make it into something it’s not.  I do intend to give those other brushes a try in the coming year, however, simply to see if they’ll offer me some choices to make my work better.  While I’m pleased with the quality of this painting and very much enjoyed working on it, there will always be room to improve.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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Martin Sheen and The Way

You could never consider me a film snob and I’ve never wanted to be a filmmaker or an actor, but I love movies.  Great stories told on the screen by talented storytellers, always a collaboration between the writers, directors, actors and all of the other professional creatives and technicians that make up the industry.    I just know what I like, regardless of critical acclaim or popular opinion.

Earlier this year, I watched the movie, ‘The Way’ and it had a profound affect on me.  Written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen, it tells the story of a father and son and their experiences on the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James.  I’m not ruining the movie for you to tell you that the son (Estevez) dies early in the film at the beginning of his own pilgrimage and the father travels to Spain to retrieve the body.  Despite it seeming to be against his nature, Sheen’s character, Tom, decides to walk the Camino, and in doing so discovers his son and himself.

My wife and I rented this movie and I really enjoyed it.  Likely because I’m now in my early 40’s, dealing with my own evaluation of life and meaning, and realizing that there is probably less time ahead than behind me.  There’s a reason they call it a midlife crisis.  Had I watched this movie in my twenties, I doubt it would have affected me as much.

Shortly after seeing the movie, I found myself browsing in a bookstore and noticed the book, “Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son.”  Written by Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen, it’s a memoir of their perspectives in life,  Sheen growing up and becoming the father while going through his own trials of life, and Estevez seeing many of the same events from the son’s perspective and his thoughts about his own life and career.  It was a truly enjoyable read and one I’d recommend, but as the book references the making of The Way, I’d see the movie first.

I’ve always felt a connection to Martin Sheen, not because I know the man, but because of my own father’s resemblance to him.  Not just their looks, but some of their mannerisms as well.  My Dad’s about the same age, and while he isn’t the spitting image of Sheen, at certain times in their lives he looks remarkably similar.  So much so, in fact, that when we were stationed in Germany, a woman in Brussels insisted that my father was Sheen, even though he denied it.  I always thought that was cool, so naturally I gravitated toward Sheen’s movies.  While watching The Way for the first time, there was one scene where I paused the film and said to my wife, “Holy cow, does he ever look like my Dad.”

As it is a movie about fathers and sons and I’ve always had a great relationship with my Dad, I bought him a copy of the DVD and then sent him my copy of the book as well.  After watching the movie, he called me and asked, “So, when are we going?”

Pretty sure my Mom and my wife would have serious concerns about he and I taking off to Spain for a couple of months to walk the Camino de Santiago.  But I was pleased that he enjoyed the movie and book.

So why the painting?  Well, first of all, I’m more inclined to paint characters, not the actors themselves.  In our society where the privacy of celebrities is almost non-existent when they’re out of their homes, people seem to think they know them from what they read in gossip rags and see on trashy shows like Entertainment Tonight and Inside Hollywood.  I’m under no such illusion.  Simply because I watch their movies and read their memoir, I wouldn’t dare assume I know Martin Sheen or Emilio Estevez.  The book only shares what they wanted to share, and the movie, while infused with their own experiences I’m sure, is about characters Estevez wrote, not the actors themselves.  But good storytelling can make those characters seem real, and in this case, it was Sheen’s character, Tom, for whom I felt a connection.

Having bought my own copy, I’ve now seen the movie a few times, the last time with the purpose of gathering reference.  You may not see in the painting what I see in it, because it’s a scene that, to me, said so much about the journey the character was taking.  This image of Tom looking up and what he was seeing, was brief, but his expression spoke volumes, given what he’d been through.  The scenes that follow really get to me each time I see the movie, and I don’t mind admitting that.  It’s a wonderful story with rich characters, played by a very talented cast.

Lately, all of my work has been product driven.  Editorial cartoons on deadline, illustration commissions, painting commissions, even my Totem paintings have become about prints, licensing and always selling the end product.  As a result, it’s been awhile since I’ve truly enjoyed a painting from start to finish.  One of the reasons I painted this portrait was that it had no deadline and has no commercial value, other than that it will find a place in my portfolio.  I painted it for myself, simply to paint something personal, and I’m pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was a bit like a vacation from the work of being an artist for a living, and I wanted to find the joy in it again.  There is a balance to be found there and I’m still working on it.  This painting was a good start.

For more on the technical details of this painting, click on this link.