Here we are at the end of the week, which means we have come to the final post in this step-by-step explanation of my Indiana Jones and Rocketeer dynamic duo. Once again, if you are just joining this party, perhaps you should start back at Step 1 to truly understand the anatomy of this painting. CLICK HERE to do so.
STEP 5
While Indy and the Rocketeer were outlined with a black Prismacolor pencil, the nuances of their inner details utilized many colors. Lilac, parma violet, deco yellow, violet, cream, sand, some greens, various reds, pinks, and maybe more not coming to mind right now. The point is, colors are important to the success of the piece!
Take for instance this close look at the Rocketeer. There are so many colors working together to create his details. See the lighter highlights on his flight jacket? That’s deco pink! The same deco pink creating highlights on his hands and on his pants. It was a nice gentle light color that also happened to tie him in with the colors around him on the background. You need your figures to look like they belong in their setting, and to do that is to use the same colors as would happen in real life with the idea of reflected light. (I’m not going into a deep explanation of reflected light, but you can look it up.)
The ONLY white used directly on this painting was for the bright highlights on the Rocketeer’s helmet and jacket buttons, and a little on Indy’s teeth. No white is in the Rocketeer’s eye pieces – that’s just a light green in there.The man with the hat ready for his close-up.
And with that, the piece is all done! Here is a scan (not a photo this time) of the final art ready to be framed and hung in a gallery.
Whew! All done!
THE SHOW
On April 22, the Rocketeer art show opened at Creature Features in Burbank, CA. There were MANY great pieces created in all mediums such as oil paint, sculpture, latex, metal work, vinyl, watercolor, marker, acrylic, ink, and the ever popular digital media.
Film score composer Christopher Young dropped by to check out the show!My old friend from our days in New Jersey, Walt Sturrock, who is also an amazing painter. We even worked together at Disney for six years.A wide shot of one of the gallery rooms at Creature Features with everyone enjoying the show.
FOR SALE
ORIGINAL 18X24″ WATERCOLOR & COLORED PENCIL ILLUSTRATION –$1,750.00
Yesterday I finished explaining the painting stage of this Rocketeer/Indiana Jones mash-up illustration. Today begins the explanation of incorporating colored pencil into the piece. This is when the details begin to come forth. If you are just joining our discussion, perhaps you should start with the first post for context. CLICK HERE to start at the beginning!
STEP 4
With the painting portion all done, and the focus having been on the central characters for a while, let’s look at our supporting cast – the Nazis. Now, I’m not in favor of glamorizing Nazis, but I sure don’t have a problem with showing them about to get their hindquarters kicked by a couple of legendary heroes. All that red paint has hidden our villains of the piece, so it is time to bring them back so our heroes can see who they are about to beat down.
I use Prismacolor colored pencils in my work. They sure are expensive. I remember when they were about 50¢ per pencil, while these days it can be $1.50-2.00 each! I buy mine in bulk which helps get the price down, and am happy to utilize rebates that Prismacolor often offers, but they are still very pricey even with discounts.
To get the Nazis going, I chose a violet pencil. Ultimately this color didn’t stand out enough on the red background, so I went over the lines later with a darker violet blue pencil. Using a purple color on the soldiers helps to tie the piece together with the central characters who, as you may recall from yesterday’s tutorial, were shaded with purple paint.
The original pencil lines under the red paint were just visible enough to be easily followed with the dark purple colored pencils used to outline the soldiers.
Once the soldiers were outlined, two pencils were used for the highlights. White? Nope, white wasn’t one of them, though your eye may think there is white in there. Working from back to front, I started with a nectar colored pencil, then lightly applied deco rose for some brighter spots. Both are shades of pink, and worked well against that red BG.
You can really appreciate the texture of the paper when in the colored pencil phase. It almost has a quality of oil pastels, but is less messy.
In keeping the soldiers primarily the red of the background, using these two highlight pencils makes it feel like you are sculpting the characters out of the scene. You are bringing them forth from the flatness of the paper by giving them a bit of dimensionality with well placed tones.
Here’s the piece with all the soldiers completed with their highlights.
And just like that you have a Nazi army poised to cause trouble. Our heroes aren’t quite ready to respond in kind to their imposing enemy. They are still locked in the realm of nebulous paint. They require some definition, too.
Originally I was going to outline Indy and the Rocketeer with a really dark purple pencil called black grape, but when I started using that, their outlines looked a little foggy. There wasn’t enough contrast between the outlines with the color of the BG. I hesitate to use black pencil for outlining in a painting, but it was the only color darker that would work with the color choices in the piece. The lines needed to really pop not only because of that intense red, but because I was thinking about Dave Stevens’ masterful inking in his comics and wished to channel a little of that sensibility.
The heroes now have their outlines, and are ready for their interior pencil work.
Come back tomorrow for the final step that finishes up our heroes, and to see a couple shots of opening night at the Rocketeer art show in the gallery at Creature Features!
So, here we are for the continued explanation of the step-by-step creation of my recent Rocketeer painting. If you need to start back at Step 1, CLICK HERE! Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Step 3
Now that the background has been completed, it is time to remove the liquid frisket from the central characters. To do this, you use a rubber cement remover/eraser. It is a rubbery bumpy square usually found in art supply stores. You rub this gently at first on the edge of the liquid frisket, and if needed, more aggressively as you can without damaging the painted areas. The idea is to peel up the edge of the frisket. Sometimes when you peel up the edge, you can just grab it with your fingers and pull it off. Other times, you need to keep applying the eraser.
Here it is with all the liquid frisket removed.
Below is a close-up of the figures. You can see that there are specks of red paint all over them. I think this was caused by two things: 1. I shook up the liquid frisket before applying, and it had lots of bubbles in it. When the bubbles popped, it may have left tiny holes where the paint got in. 2. When I was using the rubber cement eraser, it picked up some of the red paint from off the frisket, and then smudged it on the paper where the frisket had been removed.
Paint specks made it onto my art which is a drag. This did not happen on a previous painting when I used this technique.
Since the paint is water based, the specks on the characters can be minimized before painting any further. Just wet a brush, dab it onto the affected areas, let it soak in for a moment, then dab it up with a clean paper towel. Repeat. It won’t remove all signs of a color as bright as this red, but it will minimize it enough to where it won’t be noticeable when you continue the rest of your painting.
Back when I was painting the background, there was time to mix up other colors while waiting for each layer of paint to dry. I buy these little Solo condiment cups and lids for paint. You can write on them with a Sharpie, and the paint stays wet inside for days.
Paint cups being guarded by the Rocketeer himself. By the way, that Mickey Mouse hand is my salt shaker. Every time the hand spills some salt, Mickey has seven years of bad luck.
The next step is creating an underpainting layer of shadows on the characters. I often use purple. When working with watercolor, the final color on top will allow this shadow layer to peek through. Paint these shadows darker in spots where a dark color will go on top of them.
Sometimes a sepia can work, but purple is often my choice, especially with that red BG screaming at you.
Once your underpainting has dried. You can lay on your top colors. Because that underpainting was done with watercolor, putting wet paint on top of it can cause the underpainting to run if you are not careful. The best way to prevent that is to paint your top colors on very quickly. The dry paint underneath won’t have a chance to get saturated with the liquid which is why it would start to slide and mix in with your top paint.
Here’s a nice close-up of the central figures all painted. You can see how that underpainting nicely provides colorful shadows on the figures.
I had a friend that would do a shadow underpainting with DW ink, which is acrylic based. Once that dries, it can’t move around with water put on it. They may make a purple DW ink, but so far I just used watercolor paint for my underpainting.
This is how the whole piece looks now that the painted portion of the piece has been completed. There can be other touch ups and additions added later as needed.
So, that is the end of the painted portion of the illustration! Next, the colored pencils come out to do their damage!
Today you will read about the beginning of the painting process of my latest illustration – an 18×24 inch piece featuring Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer created for a group art show in Los Angeles. If you are just joining us with this post, perhaps you would like to start at the beginning with Step 1 by CLICKING HERE!
Step 2
Yesterday you read about the conceptualizing and planning stage for this illustration that pairs up Indiana Jones with the Rocketeer in their united quest to rid the world of Nazis. After working out the final drawing on the computer in Photoshop, that same drawing needs to be transferred to watercolor paper.
I printed out a muted version of the drawing onto Strathmore Layout Bond paper that was in the studio. It is sturdy enough for an inkjet printer, and thin enough that the pressure of a pencil will push its way through the paper and the graphite paper underneath to put the drawing on the painting surface.
Yes, graphite paper. I explained and photographed this paper in a previous step-by-step tutorial last year. You can CLICK HERE to quickly read about that process if it is unfamiliar to you. Go ahead. We’ll wait for you.
So, here is the final drawing on my nice Arches watercolor block paper. The graphite paper can come out light in some areas, but since graphite is just pencil lead, you can easily erase and draw with a pencil to darken it as needed, and change to your tastes. The pencil lines should be dark enough to be seen through the watercolor paint that will soon cover the piece. If you can’t see your lines anymore, then you’ve just crippled your ability to accurately finish the painting!
The paper with the final drawing transferred and ready for paint!
Okay, so you probably noticed a yellowy substance covering our heroes. I failed to snap a picture of just the pencil art without that goo on there. If you really analyzed that color comp from yesterday, you might have noticed some aggressive painting for the background – the color burst around the heroes, paint spatter emanating from the center, and also all that red everywhere.
Normally I would use airbrush frisket to mask off an area, but this particular paper is very textured, and the frisket will not adequately protect the central figures from any of the background painting process. So I used a liquid frisket. It is a liquid latex you can buy in art stores that resembles rubber cement in a way. You spread it on the areas where you don’t want paint, then let it dry. You can do your painting as messy as you wish, then later remove the now solid “liquid” frisket with a rubber cement remover. We’ll get to that later.
This is the bottle of liquid frisket I’m using at the moment. It came with that applicator device with a skinny tip and a chunky tip. You have to use this gently because I’ve found that it can scratch the paper surface if you press too hard.
So, painting. With the needed red color fully mixed, and lots of it, I wet the paper generously with clear water and let it soak in. This will help watercolor paint to go down smoothly over a large surface. The first red layer is spread with a big soft brush, and while it was drying, I sprinkled salt in certain spots of the background. As the paint dries, the salt absorbs the paint where it landed creating interesting speckles on the surface. With two action heroes fighting enemy soldiers, my goal is to have a bit of a gritty surface.
With one layer of paint on the background, the red is still a bit light, but all those speckles created by salt helps give the background a little energy.
Applying the red paint went through several layers, as also the application of more salt. After a layer would dry, the paint could look bunched up in spots, so then I would just wet my big brush and lay down some water to help smooth the whole thing out a bit. All in all, I think there were about 4 or 5 layers of red and water applied to the BG just to get it satisfactory.
In the image below, notice that there are some darker red splotches on the BG. Those were created by dipping a brush in the same red paint and dripped onto the canvas while the paint was all still wet.
Here is one of the extra layers of red applied that is still wet. Salt was thrown on there again, but the results can’t be seen until the paint dries. Notice how the paint beads up on the liquid frisket.
The last step for today is painting that brighter burst in the middle. For that, I used my trusty old airbrush. I mixed two more shades of red with gouache this time (an opaque water based paint), each lighter than the last, and built it up dark to light. This can only be done once you feel the whole BG is working because it would be much harder to undo this if you had to go back to change the main BG later. This isn’t a tutorial on how to airbrush, but just letting you know the tool I used to create that burst behind the heroes.
The frisket continues to protect the characters from the red ravages of the airbrush burst.
By the way, in between layers of spraying that burst, I used an old toothbrush to spritz some small spatter with a lighter red color in the center. I also used a larger brush and did some controlled paint flinging to get larger drops to spread out from the center of the piece. A fun but messy stage that if you haven’t done it many times before, you should practice on a side paper before you risk ruining your picture.
So, that is how the background was painted. Come back tomorrow as we start on the figures!
I recently completed a new painting for an art show currently on display at the Creature Features gallery in Burbank, California. The group show is themed around the late Dave Stevens’ wonderful comic book creation The Rocketeer that many people also remember as a fun adventure movie of the same name produced by Disney back in 1991.
I have been enamored with Stevens’ character from his comics that absolutely oozed fun and excitement in the storytelling combined with the most amazing drawings. Dave painstakingly researched every little detail of the late 1930s time period, and then put all those details into his art including Art Deco sensibilities, every line and bolt in weapons, and every crease in the fabric.
Of course, when the movie came out featuring Billy Campbell in the title role, Alan Arkin as his mentor, Jennifer Connelly as his girlfriend, and that cool rocket pack all while resisting Nazis, the adventure was captivating!
Taken in 2011 at a 20th anniversary screening of The Rocketeer in Hollywood, here I am with Cliff Secord/The Rocketeer himself, Billy Campbell, who happens to be holding my replica helmet.
When I moved out to California 20 years ago, I became acquainted with Dave, and was able to chat with him about his work. It was just an inspiration to be around him now and then. When the opportunity for this show came up, I had to be a part of it if not for any other reason than to thank Dave posthumously for the inspiration he instilled in me. It is hard to believe, but Dave Stevens passed away nine years ago much too young. Cancer.
When my old pal and fellow artist Andy Heckathorne heard I was working on this piece, he wanted to see a step-by-step progression during the making of it. It has been a while since I’ve explained my process here on the ol’ blog, so perhaps it is time to do so with this piece.
Whether you are a student of the arts wanting to know what it takes to do professional work, or perhaps you are a potential client wondering why a “simple” piece of art costs what it does, the explanation of these steps over the next five days will give you an insight into the complicated process of what it takes to create something from a blank piece of paper, some paint & pencils, and twenty-six years of professional experience.
STEP 1
When creating illustrations for clients, they will approach me with their ideas for what they want in a picture. You sketch out a couple of roughs of the concept for them, and then go through a period of revisions to get the idea worked out, and then multiple passes at the final drawing. When creating for myself, such as this painting, the process is a little more streamlined only because I don’t have to do revisions for someone else’s vision.
It all starts with a concept. To get myself in the right frame of mind, I re-read all of Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer comics, and watched the movie again. I even looked at old World War II propaganda posters to get a feel for the artistic time period. Then I started sketching VERY rough thumbnail ideas of what the piece could be. Clearly the Rocketeer needed to be depicted in in his full outfit, and I decided to draw Dave’s comic book rocket pack – not the revised version from the movie (as cool as it is). This was a show in tribute to Dave, so Dave’s rocket it was going to be!
These are just 9 of the 15 or so rough ideas I sketched out in search of the perfect concept.
These thumbnails are incredibly loose with no real attention paid to anatomy or detail. They are just meant to quickly get a rough composition down with the action/scenario in place, then to dash out another one as the ideas were filling my head. A recurring theme was creeping into several of these sketches – the Rocketeer fighting Hitler and Nazis.
As the Nazi thing was mulling through my mind, I remembered that Dave Stevens also created storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones also fought Nazis! Hmmm, what if the Rocketeer and Indiana Jones teamed up? This next sketch was the result of that musing.
The Rocketeer and Indy? Now THIS was an idea that excited me!
By the way, all of these rough sketches were drawn on my Cintiq. The Cintiq is a computer monitor that you can draw on with a stylus. I use Photoshop as my drawing application because I can work things out on layers, resize bits and pieces, and just get it all figured out before taking the art to the traditional steps for a real bonafide painting.
After that last rough sketch, it is time to work out the details of the final drawing. I won’t bore you with all the stages of that, but just know that it usually takes several passes to get the sketch to the next level you see below.
I drew Indy, the Rocketeer, and the Nazi soldiers in different colors just for the sake of visual separation for myself. This was the final drawing that would inform the final painted piece.
After getting the drawing worked out, the next thing needed was a color comp (“comp” being short for comprehensive). Again, Photoshop is used for this process. It is convenient to work out any color problems on the computer, then I make a high quality print on my 8-color printer, and keep that at the drafting table where I will mix paint to match it.
You can see in my color comp, I decided to get a little artsy with the interpretation of the Nazis. The viewer’s attention needed to be instantly attracted to the middle where the two heroes are. Having all the soldiers looking and pointing their guns in that direction is an obvious way to draw the eye, but by keeping them the color of the background with just some highlights will end up putting even more emphasis on the middle. Also, by having a mostly red canvas, this piece will really stand out on the walls of a crowded art gallery. I wanted people in the room to be naturally drawn to this painting.
Indy & the Rocketeer are not intimidated by their surroundings.
So, that’s it for Step 1 today. Come back tomorrow to see the beginning of the painting process!
A couple of weeks ago I shared with you the fact that Paul Coker Jr. drew me into his story in the August 2016 issue of MAD Magazine. He later gifted me with the original art which I received two weeks ago. Since he poked fun of my Disney past (CLICK here to see Paul’s version of me), I thought I’d make him a thank you “card” that was Disney themed. So, it was time to draw the fellas again – Mickey, Donald and Goofy.
I liked how the finished piece turned out, so I thought I’d take you through four of the major steps in creating the painting.
STEP 1: Sketch the Image
I tend to sketch out all my illustrations on my Cintiq monitor. I draw with a stylus right on the screen using Photoshop. I am a sloppy sketcher. Lots of extraneous lines come out of my pen as I look for the right shapes. Quite frankly, when it is a piece just for me, I don’t need to be any neater. I know where I’m going with it. If I am working on something for a client, I would likely clean up the sketch by going over it one more time to make it less sketchy.
A few sketchy characters.
STEP 2: Underpainting
Well, before I start the underpainting, I need to transfer the art from the computer to actual watercolor paper. I print out the drawing in black so it is nice and dark, and I put it on a lightbox to trace it onto the final paper. It is at this time where I draw nice clean lines, and I finesse the drawing a little by making little tweaks to improve it.
Once the pencil drawing is on the paper, I did a purple underpainting of all the shadows. This is a little thing I picked up from Jack Davis who just passed away this week. (CLICK HERE to see the eulogy I wrote for the National Cartoonists Society’s website.) The idea is to let the purple do all the hard work of creating the shading when I lay down the colors in thin layers later.
It’s kind of neat to see them in this monochromatic stage, but this is just one step in their quest for color.
STEP 3: Upperpainting
This is simply picking the final colors and painting them down quickly over the purple underpainting. I say “quickly” because A. you don’t want the paint to streak by drying before you can continue the color, and B. if you linger too long, you will start to smear the purple underpainting and get a muddy mess.
Almost done. Colors are in place, but now for some final touches.
STEP 4: Final Details
This final step involved using colored pencils to give the characters an outline which tightens them up, and I added colored pencil here and there to accentuate the shadows and to create highlights. Very rarely did I use white. In most cases, the highlights were created with lighter shades of purple, pink, blue, etc.
Here are the fellas all finished with colored pencil and a little paint splatter tossed on for interest.
So, there you have it – a super quick tutorial on how to create an appealing piece of art in a relatively short period of time. The more you do it, the less time it takes. Also, this fast technique creates a certain loose quality to the art which gives it more energy.
Welcome to the final step-by-step explanation of the Abigail & John Adams illustration that appears in this month’s issue of Clubhouse Magazine. Today we will look at the last digital methods to add some color to the art and to age it a bit.
First, I start with the traditionally painted image, and scan it into Photoshop. The rest of the steps are all completed in that program. Hopefully you have a decent working knowledge of Photoshop for the rest of what you will read to make sense to you. If not, then just enjoy the visual progression!
So we begin where we left off yesterday with the completely traditionally created ink-washed art.I begin in Photoshop by creating a layer and dropping in a brown color with the paint bucket across the whole image, making sure the layer is set to Overlay. This tints the whole picture, then I adjust the opacity percentage to suit my taste.I don’t want the tint to affect most other areas where color will go, so I erased the brown from over most of our happy couple.I begin to lay in colors now on the windows, the hearts on the letters, and the stamps. Each set of colors is on their own Overlay or Multiply layers so opacities can be adjusted independently.Abigail Adams gets some color with many layers (10), each set for Overlay or Multiply, whichever looked better. Both those settings allow the original art to come through the color in different ways.John Adams joins Abby in the land of color. You can see I even gave a bit of a purple tint to his dark jacket.Now some aging techniques come into play. I have a set of splatter brushes in Photoshop. I used several of them on 11 layers, manipulating each in different ways to make it look like this “photograph” has been affected by the 240 years or so it has been passed down through history. You can see the spots on the wall, windows, characters, borders – everywhere!In this image, I painted in a bit of a dark shadow around the edge of the image area. Helps to look older, and maybe the result of John’s camera having a flash on it.And last, using some plug-in filters, I was able to put in some surface scratches, and some fold marks to complete the aging process!
So, there you go! Now you can go and make your own presidential selfie! Thanks for following along in this little exercise. Hope you are off creating great things on your own!
Yesterday I began sharing with you the preliminary steps in coming up with the composition and overall drawing for the John & Abigail Adams illustration published this month in Clubhouse Magazine. Today I will share with you the next step in the process in which the traditional art supplies come out of the drawer to breathe some life into this piece.
Once the art director was pleased with the drawing, as was I, it was time to do the final art. I printed out my line-art drawing (without all the tones in it) onto a thin Layout Bond paper (I use the Strathmore brand). Then using homemade graphite paper under the print out, I traced the drawing onto thick watercolor paper.
Homemade graphite paper made by rubbing a woodless pencil onto one side of tracing paper.Taping down the layout bond paper with the drawing, I put the graphite paper face down on the watercolor paper, then trace the art with a pencil. It leaves a decent graphite image on the watercolor paper that you can continue to tweak with pencil & eraser if needed.
I use the watercolor block paper that either Strathmore or Arches makes. Arches is better (I have more control over my paint on it), but it also is waaaaay more expensive. If you are a newbie, try the cheaper Strathmore first. The block paper is nice because it is a thick pad glued together on the edges like a block (thus the name). This means if you paint very wet, the paper can’t curl up and warp. When it is all dried, you peel the top sheet off the pad and you have a nice flat painting.
This is a pad of watercolor block paper made by Arches. You can see how the sides are glued together.
Using a watercolor technique, I painted the whole piece with black ink. Yep, black ink. I used a non-waterproof ink, and mixed four shades of black by taking little plastic condiment cups, putting a few drops of ink into each, and then adding various amounts of water. This process takes a bit of time to finesse because each cup needs to be slightly darker than the last one. I actually paint with 5 shades, but #5 is the black ink right out of the bottle. I use non-waterproof ink because it is malleable. You can still work it with water after it dries. I tend to not touch it after it dries completely, but even while it is still slightly wet, I can push it around, or add more to it and it blends in nicely together.
I use Higgins Non-waterproof Drawing Ink for pieces like this, mixing various watered down levels of ink in 1 oz condiment cups.
If you are not accustomed to working with watercolors, do note that this process is not as easy as it sounds. I’ve been doing this for years, and there’s a lot to be said about the experience of trial and error of manipulating paint that I couldn’t possibly put into words. You just have to practice.
When the painting process is done, I put some finishing touches on it with gray colored pencils, and maybe some white highlights with white gouache paint and white colored pencils. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of this piece before the pencils were put on it, but trust me, it tightens up the piece a LOT when the pencils are added.
Here’s a close-up of the finished art. I love having the texture of the paper in there to emphasize that it is handmade art, and it helps give a nostalgic look to nostalgic subject matter.
So, now you can see the finished traditional piece of art that physically is sitting in my studio right now. It is just a black ink washed painting with some colored pencil lines added for good measure. It doesn’t quite look like the final illustration I posted two days ago, does it?
Here’s the final piece of traditional art. The ink is black, the paper is white. It still will go through another few digital steps before it is complete, such as adding a sepia tone to it, and other colors and effects.
Come back tomorrow when I will show you the final digital steps I used to add some color and to make this resemble something from the past!
