Lunch Interrupted- SOLD

Lunch Interrupted- 19" x 11"- Oil on board by Greg Newbold

How now black cow? Cows are such strong graphic shapes. I enjoy painting them juxtaposed against the softer textures of the landscape. The proportion of this piece is a carryover from a previous painting I did while attending a Michael Workman workshop a few years back. This one WAS available at Meyer Gallery in Park City, Utah. For about a half a day. I'm not sure if it even made it on the wall before a collector bought it and shipped it back home to Maine. This is a  new record fast gallery sale for me!

Water Break

Water Break- 32" x 24"- Oil on canvas; 2014 by Greg Newbold

Here's another recent painting that I delivered yesterday to Meyer Gallery in Park City, Utah. The weather and blue sky up there was spectacular. If you get a chance, go up to Park City, breathe deep and check out my paintings as well as the other great Meyer Gallery artists. It's worth the trip. This one is one of my favorite paintings of the year so far.

Roan

When I saw this beast, I knew he had to be a painting. I love the dappled color of his coat. This one is going up to Meyer Gallery in Park City later this week. Oil on board 12" x 12"

Butterfly Book - 4

These are the final two images in the Butterfly Book. The butterfly dries out his wings in the sunshine as the clouds clear and then flutters away to search for nectar among the field of flowers. Here again I utilized repeated butterflies from the other spreads, though flopping and rotating helps disguise that fact. It doesn't often work out to do re use elements without being obvious and short changing the product. In this case it made sense within the framework of a project and it sure was a time saver. 

Here are the previous posts relating to this book project:

Butterfly Book Drawings 1

Butterfly Book Sketches 2

Finish Paintings 1

Finish Paintings 2

Finish Paintings 3

Butterfly Book - 3

In these two pieces, I needed to show the contrast of the butterfly sheltering from the rain and then starting to dry out his wings after the storm passed. As I worked through sketching out this project, I decided that, in to make it easier to execute, I would reuse or modify any elements that made sense. For instance, at least one sky was cropped and reused, two butterflies were flopped and made a second appearance, and in these two illustrations, I made good use of the leaves that the butterfly is using for shelter. I kept the leaf layer separate from the sky which made it simple to swap the rain for a nice cloudy sky. Then I made some modifications to the colors and added a few highlights to the leaves as the butterfly from another spread made a command performance.

This type of planning made the execution of this project go much faster and only really observant kids (and adults for that matter) will ever notice that some of the elements repeat. Although this example is the most obvious repeat, it made total sense in the context of the book, so I was okay with it.

It's tempting to mine your digital archives for things that might speed up a project, but whenever I do reuse elements, I try to disguise them as much as possible. This includes, cropping, changing colors, flopping, rotating and more to make the old element new and to integrate it into the new piece. I only do this when I am either, short of time, short on budget, or both, but it's one more trick that can be helpful if not abused. Don't get sucked into the habit of constantly using shortcuts though, or your art will suffer. There's still no substitute for good drawing and original thinking.

Sugar Bean Sisters - Finished

As promised, here is the final artwork for the Sugar Bean Sisters poster. I really like how things turned out. Let me know what you think!

Sugar Bean Sisters Final Drawing

While you are waiting for the aliens to come back and get you, here's a sneak peek at what it might look like. This is the final drawing for the Sugar Bean Sisters poster I am creating for Footlight Players Theater in Charleston, South Carolina. It is 7" x 13"; black Prismacolor and white charcoal on gray toned paper. This is the first time I have done a two tone drawing on gray paper in I can't remember how long and I really enjoyed it.. I am sure there will be more where that came from. The final digital
color version is about halfway finished and I will post it sometime next week when it is finished.

Sugar Bean Sisters thumbnail sketches

Butterfly Book - 2

Continuing on with the finished pieces of the butterfly book. Here, the butterfly begins to look for shelter as the rain falls I did an alternate version of this one without the branch and bird. A cropped version of it will be used as the cover.

Working digitally makes what used to be nightmare changes in the old days very simple. I just created the different elements on separate layers and turned off the bird layer for the cover. The rainstorm in the background was also created on a different layer which made it very easy to "paint behind" all the other elements without disturbing anything and without having to paint around all the details.

See Butterfly Book paintings 1 and 2 here

Sugar Bean Sisters Sketches

Creating art for theater is always fun because the variety of stories is ever changing. I have had the opportunity to do numerous play and opera posters and I never get tired of it. Something about the blank slate and the open possibilities inspires me. I am currently working on a poster for a Footlight Players Theater in Charleston, South Carolina for their upcoming production of The Sugar Bean Sisters. The play focuses on two spinster sisters who live in a shack in the swampland of Florida. One pines for a husband while the other anxiously awaits the aliens to return and take her away. After a discussion with the theater director about poster concepts, it was decided that the poster should include elements of the UFO as well as the swamp locale. I set to work and these four sketches were submitted to the client. Ultimately they settled on sketch four, which happily was my favorite as well. I'll post the final when I finish.

Butterfly Book-1

Here is the opening two spreads for the butterfly book I just finished. I will post them all in sequence over the next few days. As I showed earlier, these were all sketched out full value and then painted in the computer using Photoshop. I think the hand texture from the drawings combined with the hand done scanned texture adds a real organic and hand done feel to the digital painting. This was a fun project. Stay tuned for the rest of the paintings.