Will Terry Photoshop Painting Video

Check out Will Terry's new Photoshop Painting tutorial on Folio Academy. This one really rocks. Will is a very talented illustrator specializing in children's books. He'll take you all the way through his Photoshop painting process from sketch to full color and teach you a bunch of techniques along the way. Check it out as well as all the other great tutorial videos on Folio Academy.com.

Where Were You? 9-11 Remembered

Where were you on September 11, 2001? I think anyone over a certain age has that day etched in their memory. We were getting the kids ready for school just like any other morning except for some reason, we turned on the TV to find the shocking pictures of a burning World Trade Center on every channel. We saw the second plane hit live as we watched and the reality of that day started to sink in. Grim news became sheer horror as the towers fell before our eyes and two other planes caused similar devastation.

Amid the unbelievable tragedy of that day I strangely remember regretting that I would never get to see New York from the top of the World Trade Center. The above photo was taken by my wife but I  have a nearly exact duplicate of it that I took in 1989 and I am sure countless other tourists have the same shot in their albums. We were in the Big Apple on  the Fourth of July, our country's birthday, and we went to the World Trade Center to see an exhibit of Norman Rockwell paintings. We left the show and walked across the plaza to where I snapped my version of this same scene. My companions and I debated about whether we should go to the top before heading back for the evening. It was decided that the hour plus wait in line was too long and that it was not worth the wait. I promised myself that there would be another time.

My next trip to New York was in 1998. I again thought about making the trip to the top but schedules that day made it unworkable and I missed my opportunity. Oh how I wish I had taken the time to go to the top on that Independence Day twenty-two years ago.

As we remember this day the loss of so many and the heroism and sacrifice of so many brave men and women, let us celebrate the freedoms we have and the love of those around us, for things can change in an instant. Don't be caught thinking "if only". When the Freedom Tower is complete, I want to make sure I visit the World Trade Center Memorial and this time I will make the trip to the top- this I promise.

The above photo comes from this great 9-11 tribute on Artwife Needs a Life

5x5 Invitational

I have been invited to participate in a fundraising event for the new Westmont Museum of Art in Santa Barbara California. Each participating artist was asked to create something on a 5" x 5" piece of  Rives BFK paper and return it for the show. The piece could be a doodle or a more involved creation. All pieces are to be auctioned off to raise funds for the museum. Deadlines are looming, so I didn't feel I had time to do a full blown painting, but this was a nice warm up to the day. I decided on a little freehand version of my Devil-Fish and colored it a bit with Prismacolor pencils. The exhibit will open on November 30, 2011.

Get the full blown  Devil-Fish demo here.
  

Rebirth of an Unused Concept Sketch

Heart Girl-  12" x 16" Mixed Media/Acrylic

In a post last week, Amy mentioned that the concept sketch for my Songs of Power book cover looked a lot like another one of my later paintings. She was correct. I used the drawing as the basis for a painting I did for Love Communications. They used it on their website and also printed a five foot tall version for their office lobby.

Concept sketch from the Songs of Power cover project

I thought I'd show you how that sketch eventually became another painting. That is one thing about doing numerous idea sketches.Even if you don't end up using an idea at the time, there is no telling where that idea or composition might turn up later.

Revised drawing that was used for the above painting

I keep a file of all my sketches and refer back to them from time to time to see if there is a gem in there that has gone unused. I may have posted this image before, but even if I have, it's worth a look alongside the sketch that inspired it.

Thoughts On Mixing More Vibrant Color

Beginning a demo in my Landscape class

One key I find to getting more vibrant color is to keep the colors as clean as I can. Do not  mix fresh color on a dirty palette and clean your palette off if you don't have a space to mix a fresh color. I try to mix the color to the hue and value I want as simply as possible. If you can get to the color you want using only only two or three colors (plus white if needed), you'll get fresher color. Color mixing is a subject unto it's own, but I try to keep it as straight forward as I can. Also, I try to avoid mixing my color around too much on the surface of the painting.  Put it down and leave it. A little blending with a clean brush or a little direct mixing while a stroke goes down is OK, but don't mush colors around once they leaves the brush or you'd just make mud. I also try to load my brush every couple of strokes with fresh paint. I load the brush with enough paint so that only the paint on the brush comes off instead of  "picking up" the paint on the surface. You want the paint you carefully mixed to be the paint that stays visible. If you push it around too much it intermixes with what is already there and can make a mess.

If I am changing colors to a drastically different hue, I clean my brush in mineral spirits as the paint in the brush will pollute the new color. If it's only a slight change in hue, I'll just wipe my brush and let part of the existing hue mix into the new color. Also, Squeeze out enough paint on your palette to cover your painting. I find students or beginners are hesitant to use enough for fear that they will waste paint. It's like trying to paint the Sistine Chapel with a thimble full of color. Give yourself enough paint to do the job right. Usually two or three times as much as you think will be enough. Students cringe when I say that, but my philosophy is if the painting turns out great, you didn't waste paint, regardless of whether there is paint left over.

The concept of warm and cool colors could be a whole book if not it's own series of posts. I'll be as simple as I can, but I try to balance warm and cool colors in my painting. If the light source is warm, I go for relatively cool colors in the shadows. If the light source is cool, I try to inject warmth into the shadows. Mixing a cool pigment with a warm will neutralize the temperature and muddy up the color. For instance if you try to make a purple with cadmium red and Ultamarine blue, you just get a muddy brownish color. If you take a cool version of red like Quinacridone Red, and try the same thing, you get a lovely purple. The best way to learn what colors will mix best with others is to try it. Richard Schmid in his book Alla Prima suggests you tape off a grid of squares on canvas panels and paint all the possible mixing combinations from light to dark with two of each of the colors on your palette until you have mixed all possible combinations. That way you'll get a feel for what each color will do when intermixed.

Class Landscape Demo- 6" x 8" oil

My brushes are mostly synthetic nylon bristle brushes. I beat my brushes up pretty good and the synthetics seem to hold up better  for me than the hog hair brushes. I pick ones that have a nice spring to them but I have yet to find the perfect brush. I keep trying different brands and sometime I'll guess I'll settle on a favorite or two. I clean my brushes thoroughly with Gamsol odorless thinner and then with soap and water. After that, I use a little hair conditioner on them to help them hold shape while they dry. I throw a little travel size bottle of it in my paint box in case I am away from home when I clean the brushes. Hope that helps!

Songs of Power Cover

Cover for Songs of Power by Hilari Bell, 14" x 9" acrylic

The cover for "Songs of Power" by Hilari Bell called for a mysterious feel. The protagonist in this YA science fiction/fantasy was a teenage girl of Inuit descent who had the telepathic power to communicate with whales.

First proposed concept sketch

My first concept was a rather straight forward depiction of the girl meditating on the talisman given to her by her grandfather that helped her talk to the whales. Through the porthole of the undersea city where she lived, the whales began to gather.

Final approved sketch. 

The art director Irene Gallo asked me to come up with a more ethereal and mysterious solution. After a fair bit of sketching, I settled on what became the cover image. It became a wraparound image covering both front and back covers. Note the lack of value on the back of  the cover. I would never submit a sketch today without some indication of value patterns. It's a mystery as to why I didn't always do that back in my early career, but I did. I guess I have learned a few things since then.  I went on to create three more cover paintings for Hilari Bell's novels.

My Outdoor Painting Palette

My plein air painting palette 

Life Needs Art follower Mike Blake recently asked the following question: 

"What would you say the core ABSOLUTELY necessary colors are when painting outside?  I have a hard time getting vibrant natural colors...thanks." 

I am not an expert in outdoor painting, since I have have really only been seriously pursuing it for about a year, but I'll give you my opinion. My choice of colors has shifted slightly as I learn which colors work the best for me outdoors and in general. I have tried slight variations of this palette during each painting excursion, so it's never exactly the same. Color selection is not absolute and will change according to preference. You'll keep going back to the colors that seem to give you the best results.

My Palette in the field prior to wiping it down. 

Here is the selection I am currently using and I am pretty happy with the results I am getting at the moment. From the bottom left going up and around, the colors are as follows:

Titanium White; Cadmium Yellow Light; Cadmium Orange; Raw Sienna; Napthol Red; Quinacridone Red; Burnt Sienna; Viridian; Ultramarine Blue Deep; Cobalt Blue; Cerulean Blue.

I like to have a warm and a cool version of each color and sometimes a dark version as well. I also from time to time will use Alizarin Crimson, and Black, though I have increasingly gone away from Alizarin because I find it's tinting strength to be relatively weak. It tends to gray down pretty quickly and become muted with any mixture so it is very hard to get a clean purple with it. I use black if I feel the subject has a lot of strong darks that I need to mix, though I never use it straight from the tube. I always tint it with another color to shift the hue and liven it up. I got writing and found that there is more to this subject than I want to cram in today, so I'll do another post tomorrow to continue this.