Frankenstein’s Monster: Part 4 – Painting the Background

In the last Frankenstein post, you read about the final drawing being applied to the paper. Naturally, the next step is the painting. In this case, it is to be a watercolor painting.

Watercolor is not necessarily a medium to use if you want to have absolute control over where the paint goes and how it dries. It tends to pool in areas on your paper, if you are working on a slight tilt it’ll run, and if it’s not quite dry, it’ll blend. It works differently if you paint onto dry paper than it does if you paint onto paper that has been watersoaked. If it dries, you can hit it with more water and work it some more. It’s kind of a living wild animal all it’s own.

And for those of you curious, I use Winsor & Newton watercolor paint with a variety of brush makes and sizes. What matters to me is that the bristles are soft, and the round brushes maintain a point. I also employ the use of my airbrush now and then.

When I do a piece like this, obviously the central interest of the composition is the character. He’s the reason for the painting, and he’s the subject you are most dying to paint right away. Bup – bup – bup! You must hold off on those urges, and do the background (BG) first. Why? A. Because color is relative, and B. the overlapping nature of painting comes into play.

Let’s deal with A: What is white? Your white shirt looks different inside than it does outside, right? Inside it could be gray, or slightly blueish. Outside?  Maybe a little green if you are standing in a field, maybe even more blue if the sky is blue. See, color is relative to the environment. Color reflects. The paper I start with is white. If I started on the character, I’d be picking tones that looked good in a very bright environment. I need to first make my environment the mood and tone it should be so that the character’s coloring looks correct in the scene. Since the Mona Lisa is my model, that means my BG will have warm tones (browns). So, I started by laying down a coat of light brown that I will build upon. I neglected to scan the piece with this stage by itself, but here’s a small section that survived when I did scan it.

 

This light brown color was the first base coat color for much of the Frankenstein background.
This light brown color was the first base coat color for much of the Frankenstein background.

 

I laid this brown down on the most distant parts of the BG, and I did it on wet paper. I “paint” water onto the area first to get the paper more malleable. If I don’t do this, the paint will dry pretty immediately which will cause unwanted streaks. A more even flow to the color is desired, so the paper is made wet. Then I added the brown. As you can see, I didn’t stay in the lines. The brown seeps into the character. That’s ok. Other darker colors will kinda cover that later on, plus, as written earlier, your coloring is affected by your environment. The brown will only help Frankie look like he’s really in the scene.

So then B: the overlapping nature of painting. If you work from back to front, you can paint broader and more efficiently. For instance, the next stage was to paint the sky. I can go nuts with the sky, painting it even in the areas where the mountains will be because they’ll cover that portion of the sky. If the mountains were done first, then when doing the sky, I would have to paint right up to the edge of the mountains. This would probably give me an undesirable visually distracting hard line all while taking too much time to paint.

So, on with it. The sky. Mona’s sky is a pretty normal cloudless brownish/yellow sky. If you know the story of Frankenstein, you know the sky HAS to be stormy. Let me tell you, my ordeal with the sky was a stormy process.

Again, I needed to work wet on wet so the colors can mix and swirl and be turbulent. I mixed some greenish gray colors, brownish gray, etc., and started dabbing in colors to try to get that cloudy, stormy, overcasty look. After finishing the sky, I stepped back and realized it was a complete mess. It resembled a mud puddle more than anything else. I was trying to make the horizon line lighter in color to suggest distance while making the top darker. It wasn’t happening. So, out came some fresh water to wet it down which was then blotted up with paper towels. The sky was back down to a grayish brown stained tone, which was fine, and then it was repainted all over again. Wouldn’t you know, once again the results were terrible. I tried airbrushing some areas, salt was thrown into wet areas (try it sometime and see what happens) – nothing worked. It was probably about this time that I was muttering under my breath and pacing the studio.

When you start a project like this, you have an image in your mind of what you want it to look like, yet you are working in a medium that has a mind of its own. At some point in the process, you have to abandon your perfect mental image, and see the unplanned beauty that is coming forth out of the paper.

I think I let it sit for an hour or so, then made another attempt. Whether real or imagined, I was becoming afraid that the stamina of the paper was going to be exhausted. The first colors were laid in. Not too bad. Threw in some others, got some darks in there, pulled out the airbrush to lay in some subtle smoothing, and as the paint was halfway dry, I hit parts with a squirt from a water bottle.

 

In the top right corner you'll notice some stippling that occurred when the painting was given a quick squirt from a water bottle.
In the top right corner you’ll notice some stippling that occurred when the painting was given a quick squirt from a water bottle. There’s subtle stippling in other areas, too.

 

When the sky was dry, I even went back in to lighten certain areas by adding lighter paint, but also by painting with pure water and dabbing color back up. This is how I was able to form some of the swirling cloud shapes and the look of distant rain falling. When I sat back, it wasn’t what I had in my head, but it became something neat that I hadn’t expected. SUCCESS! Of course, it’s not quite done. If you recall from the rough sketch, a bolt of lightning will be in the sky, but that will wait until even the character is done.

 

This is the complete basic painting of the sky. It may get more slight tweaks before the whole thing is done, but this is it for now.
This is the complete basic painting of the sky. It may get more slight tweaks before the whole thing is done, but this is it for now.

 

So, the rest of the more distant BG came together when I laid in color for the farthest mountains, the little water area, the castle, more hills, the angry mob, and all that jazz. Everything from back to front.

 

This is the angry mob loosy painted in for now. They'll be more detailed later, complete with flaming torches.
This is the angry mob loosely painted in for now. They’ll be more detailed later, complete with flaming torches.

 

The final castle design inspired by "Young Frankenstein" (see post in Part 3). It'll receive some lighting effects later.
The final castle design inspired by “Young Frankenstein” (see post in Part 3). It’ll receive some lighting effects later.

 

Browns, reddish browns, greens and even purple thrown in here and there for good measure. Through all of this, the colors have been kept somewhat lighter and loose so that they are a little “out of focus”. All to help keep the BG from being the star of the show.

 

Here's the full piece with most of the distant BG painted. An area on the right only has the light brown base coat visible in this scan.
Here’s the full piece with most of the distant BG painted. An area on the right only has the light brown base coat visible in this scan.

 

Now with Mona, you have that area in the foreground that is kept really dark. It’s as if she’s sitting in a chair and no light is exposing it. So that’s what Frankie must have as well. This time I laid down a much darker brown, because I want to keep the warm tones going, even in this dark “black” area. I’m not a big believer in solid black for areas you think are black. I may use a little of it here and there to make other colors be darker versions of themselves, but rarely am I using solid black. With a big flat bristled brush, I painted wet on wet again laying in that dark brown, then a reddish brown, then purple here and there, and then a much darker brown. When that dried, it was a little too streaky, so I took the same color and airbrushed it in to get a more even tone, though not quite eliminating the brush strokes. I still wanted a hint of them.

 

And here's the full Frankenstein piece with a fully painted BG. Everything will be subject to more finishing touches after the character is painted.
And here’s the full Frankenstein piece with a fully painted BG. Everything will be subject to more finishing touches after the character is painted.

 

So, there you have it, the basic painting of the BG. Later, after the figure is painted, I’ll go in and finesse the BG some more with paint and colored pencils, but for now it is done. And now you probably know way more than you thought you cared to about my thinking process in using watercolor on the background!

Next in part 5 – beginning the character!

Michael Giacchino at the Oscars

Just thought I’d write a quick note along with posting a quick color sketch inspired by film composer Michael Giacchino’s appearance last night as Music Director for the Oscar telecast. I feel compelled to do so in light of my very second post on this blog just a few short weeks ago about the  Star Trek Scoring Sessions with Michael.

Perhaps one of the hardest jobs in show business is having to handle the musical duties for a live broadcast in front of a room full of people with whom you have worked and hope to work with in the future. I did not envy Giacchino’s position last night, but thought he did a wonderful job. His take on having the orchestra on stage and playing in the style of big band was really terrific!  Seemed to give the show a bit of a boost energy-wise. Of course, it’s hard to maintain that energy when prolonged  video tributes suck the wind out of the room. Michael had his work cut out for him.

Michael Giacchino being introduced during the 2009 Oscar broadcast by host Hugh Jackman.

Michael Giacchino being introduced during the 2009 Oscar broadcast by host Hugh Jackman.

So, the sketch – it’s based on the one fleeting moment during the program when host Hugh Jackman introduced Giacchino who looked like he was in the middle of working and didn’t really have time to be recognized. And Hugh’s pronunciation of Michael’s last name seemed shortened a bit.

Along with Star Trek, Michael’s musical talents will be heard this year in Land of the Lost, Pixar’s Up, and he continues to work on LOST as well as the show Fringe I believe. All stuff I look forward to listening to while I draw!

Winnie the Pooh (and Piglet too!)

As some of you know, I worked on the entire two season run of The Disney Channel’s pre-school show My Friends Tigger & Pooh that continues to air. I’ve even posted four pieces I did for that series on my website that you can see here:

http://chadfrye.com/Animation/Pooh1.html

The art I created for that show was certainly more in line stylistically with that of a comic book. I’d pencil and ink my pages by hand, then scan and color them in Photoshop. This method was suited for speed since I had to crank out about 17-20 drawings per week.

I like sketching the characters from time to time, and still get asked to do so by children (and sometimes their parents). However, I like the more classic look of a colored pencil line with a dash of watercolor paint, not that unlike the original Disney Pooh cartoons done back in the 1960s.

The following pieces are a few Pooh sketches I’ve done for friends and family that have never seen the light of day other than by whom they were intended.  Tigger on top of Pooh is fresh off the drafting table this week! Enjoy.

pooh-pigletdr-pigletpooh-gangtigger-pooh-paint

...and just as a little bonus, here's the rough pencil sketch drawn first before getting to the final version.
…and just as a little bonus, here’s the rough pencil sketch drawn first before getting to the final version.