dektown blog: skateboarding

Friday, April 24, 2009

blane - progression

here's the progression of a piece i did for the stoked sessions l.a. fundraiser art show.

one:
this is the sketch i began with, it's on 14" x 17" paper. i don't worry about the final that the final painted piece will be, this is all about trying to get the figure down on paper.
unless the background is complicated in some way, i usually don't worry about it at this point.

two:
the pencil sketch is transfered on to the illustration board.
this is the point where (a) i figure out what size the final piece will be (in this case, it's 10" x 10"), (b) figure how big i will have to blow up the sketch on a xerox machine (110% for this piece), then (c ) tape the xeroxed copy on to my illustration board, (d) put a sheet of transfer paper between the xerox and the board, (e) and then trace it to the board.
the transfered sketch always has to be tightened up, tighter than the original sketch.
i also ended up editing out part of blane's body from the original sketch. if i had put his whole body in, he would have been pretty small.
i also transfered it on to an 11" x 14" board, and i just figure i'll trim it down to 10" x 10" later.
i think i played quite a bit of nine inch nails when i was working out this final sketch - also some deftones.

three:
here i tone the board i'm going to paint on - with burnt umber and burnt sienna acrylic paints. this takes the bright white of the paper (or gessoed board when i work on wood) down to a middle tone.

four:
this is my first pass at it with acrylic paint.
trying to get some color and values down. this will by my underpainting. i like using acrylics at this point because they dry super fast, and i can try different colors and values pretty quickly. this is usually my time to play around and experiment, see if the colors in my head are going to actually work.
i had a documentary dvd on while i did the first session - i think it was called 'live girls unite,' about strippers creating a union in san francisco.

five:
this is my second session with acrylic paints.
i've worked in the skin tones more, the lights and shadows are more pronounced.
i've also worked in the background more. i originally try a large storage garage door in the background that i had a reference photo for. but in the end i took it out and tried to keep this smaller piece simple. if i redo the piece larger, i may try to work the door in again.
i think i had on a kurosawa documentary while i did the second session, the third disc in the seven samurai dvd set.

six:
these are the oil paints.
the oil paints go over the acrylics - the colors aren't exactly the same as the acrylics, but i don't aim for them to be. when i put down the oil paints, it's my last chance to adjust hues and values. it's still time to play around at this point.
the background and blane's shirt are less blue than in the acrylics, they've been greyed down a bit. they're fairly close in color - the challenge here was to see how close i could keep them without letting them fade together. i didn't feel i needed absolute separation - i thought if they were close, that would let the skin tones and the skateboard stick out more.
at this point it's still on an 11" x 14" board, so i need to trim it down to 10" x 10".
i just had music on when i did the oils, i played a lot of deftones and atmosphere at this point. also some menomena and sage francis.