Caveman Dinner

Caveman Dinner-10" x 12" mixed media by Greg Newbold

I've been working on a bunch of stuff that either is not ready to show or that I cannot yet show due to confidentiality agreements, so I thought I'd dig around for an oldie but a goodie. This little gem was for an article in Eating Well magazine from a few years back that outlined the benefits of the "Paleo Diet". Since then there has been a barrage of similar diets that seek to recreate what early man must have eaten. Lots of fruits, nuts and grains, lean protein, no sugar, salt or...no taste. Well, anyway, I tried to look at the subject in a humorous way as the scientist observes from a slight distance what the unsuspecting caveman as his daily diet sizzles over the fire. I don't know about you, but I won't be choking down grubs and bugs any time soon in the name of nutritional well being. Not to mention how close he is to the flames. Fire safety anyone? I don't think I have ever posted this one on the blog before. At least I couldn't find it. But if I have, just call it one from the archives while I get to something new I can post.

Evita Poster Art

Evita- 12" x 16; mixed media by Greg Newbold.

I like to post on the weekly art challenge website Illustration Friday as often as I can. There is a new theme word posted every Friday and participants illustrate it however they want. Sometimes whatever I am working on can be massaged to plausibly fit the week's challenge and I post the current piece. Other times I am too busy to create something new and what I am working on doesn't fit. On those occasions, I like to post things I have created previously that fit the theme. This week the word is voice. I realized that even though this poster I did for a production of Evita was done years ago, I have never posted it here on the blog. So, for what it's worth, here is my take on Eva Peron.

At Their Mother's Feet- Unveiled

At Their Mother's Feet- mixed media on panel 24" x 30" by Greg Newbold

A few posts back I gave a sneak peek of this painting. Now that Christmas has passed, I can reflect upon the whole process without fear of the recipient's surprise being spoiled. This was one of those rare projects in which the client gave me permission to create something beautiful seemingly without any input or concern as to how it would turn out. I was initially a bit nervous since I had no guidelines beyond the concept of having a mother and six daughters being taught. This was to represent my client Jack's own wife and kids without being a literal portrait. In order to make it work and have a certain family resemblance, I enlisted the help of one of his grown daughters and three of his granddaughters as well an infant cousin to get the photo reference I needed.

Preliminary Sketch

I started with a sketch concept and an idea. i knew I wanted to incorporate a lot of texture and collage elements into the piece as well as metal leafing and I wanted to be free to respond to the painting as it progressed, so I kept the sketch purposefully vague. Using the drawing as a guide, I took dozens of photos, trying to get the angles and poses suggested in the sketch. Working directly on the 24" x 30" birch cradled panel, I then used a composite of many of the resulting photos to make  the final drawing. I had previously applied several coats of acrylic gesso, sanding between coats, so I had a nice surface on which to draw. After I was satisfied with the drawing, I began the painting process by applying the collage elements using matte medium as a glue.

The geometric shapes at the bottom were a heavy cotton rag printmaking paper. The other flowers and leaves were created by tearing, crushing and otherwise molding various weights of paper to create the the shapes I wanted. The shapes were then applied with the matte medium and allowed to dry

Some of the elements were stubborn and required and extra coat of medium to adhere tot he surface. Once everything was applied and dry, I covered the entire surface with a wash of burnt sienna acrylic and began to block in the shapes, colors and values with acrylic paint. I was not satisfied with the tooth of the surface in some areas, so I used a heavy gel acrylic medium in some areas such as the suggestion of the sun at the top in order to get the surface ridges evident there.

Other areas just needed a little more acrylic matte medium stomped on with my trusty beat up 2" house painting brush. From there, I pushed and pulled the different areas, alternating between dry brush and wash, sometimes wiping back the washes to leave the residue in the low areas to achieve the effect I wanted. I envisioned a profusion of pattern and texture but I also wanted the patterns to compliment each other, so I carefully created different patterns for each of the dress fabrics and the sofa. The pastel colors of the girl's dresses contrast well with the more saturated colors of the background. The foil areas were applied with a readily available leafing kit and then they were glazed back to add depth and cut back on the reflective quality which was distracting.

Once all the background and fabric areas were complete, I painted all the faces and skin areas with oil. If you want to try this mixed media approach, just remember that oil will adhere to acrylic, but not vice-versa. Oil is the final layer and there is no going back to acrylic once the oil paint goes on. After the painting was finished, I had it photographed and a 16" x 20" giclee print was created for each of the six daughters while the original was presented to Nancy, Jack's wife. If you remember from the previous post, Jack himself had yet to see the artwork at any point in the process. I was very nervous, but felt confident that it would be well received by all. My suspicions were confirmed when Jack and Nancy made a special trip by the studio to thank me and tell me how much they loved it. Mission accomplished. I hope to do more of these figurative type works in the future.

Previous post on using metal leaf

Patterns and Textures

Thought I'd give a little taste of a piece that I just finished. I can't show it all right now since it's a surprise and I don't want to ruin anyone's Christmas. Experimentation and exploration are always a good thing, though rarely do I have a client willing to just let me do what I want. In this case, the client said, after giving me some direction to follow "just do what you think is best. You are the artist, I trust you". No pressure. He dropped by the studio once in a while over the last few months, not to see how things were going, but just to deliver installments on the negotiated price. OK. I have never had a client do that and I got a little more nervous each time he declined to have a look. "I trust you" he would say. A daughter who is in on the surprise and who has seen it finished assures me it is amazing and that everyone will love it. I feel a little better now.

This piece exploits the adage that in decorative painting, too much is not enough. I used collage elements, patterns and gold leaf along with mixed media acrylic techniques and oil paint (mainly in the faces, arms and hands). The painting took a lot longer than I anticipated to create, but I love the result. Fingers crossed for a happy recipient on Christmas day.

Octopus Battle

Octopus Battle- acrylic/mixed media by Greg Newbold.

In this scene from Stormalong, our intrepid hero Stormy dukes it out with a giant octopus in a liquid battleground. The ship's anchor was being dragged deeper and the ship along with it. Of course Stormy dives deep, wins the the wrestling match by tying the octopus' legs in knots and makes it safely back to the surface. I posted a couple of other pieces from this series earlier and you can see them at the links below.

Baby Stormalong discovered on the beach
Stormalong's carved memorial 
Stormalong title page illustration

Clint Eastwood Demo - Finished

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly- Mixed Media, 10" x 12"

Man, a look like that would make you want to get that wagon hitched and get outta Dodge!. You may remember a mixed media painting demo I did for my class a while back. I  posted the process here on Life Needs Art. Well, I finally finished up the painting of the Man With No Name and here he is. I have also added the final piece to the end of the demo post so you can see the process and the comparison. Take a look right here.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly- Demo

I have always liked movie westerns so when thinking of what might be a fun subject for a class demo, I figured I would do a gritty cowboy. What movie cowboy was grittier and tougher than Clint Eastwood's man with no name? Eastwood made this character famous in  the Sergio Leone" classic A Fistful of Dollars and sequels A Few Dollars More and the iconic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly?  The first step was to pull a few reference photos and create a drawing.

The final drawing

I didn't want to simply copy a photo, but rather capture a bit of the character's persona and add in a little bit of stylization to the drawing. I used elements from several photos to come up with my drawing which I then projected onto my cold press illustration board. I refined the drawing and added some value using Prismacolor pencils. I like Prismacolors because they don't get scrubbed off when applying wet washes of acrylic paint.

The next step in this mixed media demo, a variation of the technique used by friend and fellow illustrator C.F. Payne, was to apply initial washes of color starting with a nice warm yellow under wash. This process . I followed that with washes of brown for the hat and a flesh tone on the face and then the chosen colors for the shirt and neck bandana. I keep these washes smooth and even by tilting the surface and "drawing the bead" or letting the paint fall along the wet edge to avoid any streaks.

With oil wash lifted out

Next comes the "ugly" step where things can get scary. I apply a purplish wash of very thinned down oil paint in one pass with a wide varnish brush. The oil is very thin and settles down int he valleys of the board texture but since the binders are mostly obliterated by the thinner, it does not fully adhere to the surface. I then lift out the highlight areas using a kneaded eraser and sometimes a pink pearl eraser.

After Prismacolor application

When I have lifted all the areas I want to remove, I spray the surface with a photo retouch varnish to seal off the oil and give the surface a little tooth in preparation for some Prismacolor. This step can be overdone, so I use the pencil fairy sparingly and apply it with a light touch.

Stopping place- still a lot of work to do to finish

After I am satisfied with some of the colored pencil application, I come back with more acrylic and keep working the surface, pushing the lights and the darks, alternating back and forth with a little more pencil if needed until I am finished. I stopped this demo after two and a half hours, but there is still quite a bit of work left yet to finish this one up right. I'll post the final version sometime later and link to this post.

Addendum: The Finished Painting

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - Mixed Media, 10" x 12'

Here is what the finished demo turned out like. I worked on it for maybe another3 to 4 hours in two sessions after I stopped the above demo. Total working time including sketch was about 8 hours. As you can see from the above photo, I spent a fair amount of time adding detail in areas such as the hatband and the beard. I also cleaned up and strengthened contrasts in the background while still keeping it ambiguous and non distracting. I added a stronger rim lighting on the edges to give the feel of bright sunlight.I'm pretty happy with how it finished up.

Fueling the Fire

Fueling the Fire- 11.5" x 12" acrylic/mixed media by Greg Newbold

Sometimes the only way to keep the wolves at bay is to fuel the fire. Make sure your creative fire is always stoked with new and interesting projects. I have found over the years that I have to take time to do work that is just for myself or just for fun. The breakthroughs and discoveries I make during these explorations are what keeps me excited to do those inevitable jobs that are less than thrilling, but that pay. By injecting aspects of my explorations into my paying work, I have been able to keep my creative fires burning. If you don't have anything exciting going on in your paying work, come up with a personal project that excites you and get to work. The benefits are enormous and far reaching.

Jekyll Or Hyde?

Jekyll and Hyde- 11" x 14", mixed media by Greg Newbold

I did a series of theater posters a while back for Pioneer Theater Company and one of the shows was a production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I wanted to give a sense of mystery without resorting to the tired "half in half" sort of depiction of this character. I decided that instead of having Jekyll in his "Hyde" disguise, or vice versa, I would simply add a sort of  mad glow to his right eye. I got a lot of mileage out of this one including getting it accepted into the Society of Illustrators Annual.

Also see Cyrano De Bergerac from this same series here
Check out my new painting video here

Devil Fish In Progress

Devil Fish- 9" x 9" (detail)acrylic and metal leaf- in progress

Here is a little demo that I did for my Intro to Illustration class at BYU a couple of weeks back (about 2.5 hours working time). It's not done quite yet as deadlines got in the way the last little bit. Tomorrow, I will be painting an entirely new version of this critter for an instructional video I am having filmed. I have never done a video before and I am excited to give it a shot. It will be part of a new video art tutorial site that is being launched by my good friend and fellow artist Will Terry. I'll let you know how it goes and give all my readers first shot at purchasing it when it becomes available. Wish me luck!

Also in this series, see Angler Fish Goes Green, Dog-Fish and Cat-Fish

Asleep At Sea

Last week I posted another piece from this Stormalong series and it just so happens that this weeks theme on Illustration Friday,  "asleep" also fits in with that group of paintings. In the story, Stormalong is so big, that there is no room for him to sleep on the ship. He is resigned to sleeping in (and filling up) the entire lifeboat which is pulled behind the ship. I have a thing for full moons and sunset colors, so it's no surprise I worked both things into this piece. I was also the model with my cooperative wive acting as photographer (she does that a lot- thanks babe!).

Sun Soaked Sailor

Stormalong Title page- 19" x 14" acrylic/mixed media

I did a series of paintings for a reading textbook illustrating the American folk tale Stormalong. It tells the tall tale of a giant baby that gets washed up on shore after a shipwreck. The town folk raise him into a giant sailing man and he has many far fetched adventures on the high seas, including a hair raising battle with a giant octopus on the ocean floor. This was a very fun project and included eight paintings. I'll post some of the others another time.

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

For those of you who entered the Life Needs Art blog birthday giveaway, the drawing was held this morning. The following individuals had luck on their side and were drawn from the hat (actually a paint encrusted Cool Whip container) and will receive autographed copies of my book The Touch of the Master's Hand.

Mike Blake
Chad Grohman
Spencer Harris

Thank you to all who entered and to all of you who check in on this blog on a regular basis. It has been a fun ride to this point and I hope the first year is only the beginning.

Lessons

Lessons- 11.5" x 14.5" Acrylic/mixed media

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
 -C. S. Lewis


Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You cannot try to do things. You simply must do things.
-Ray Bradbury


Art happens. No hovel is safe from it, no prince can depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.
-James A.M. Whistler


Listen to everyone. Ideas come from everywhere.
-Tom Peters

Toys As Reference Material

Grandpa's Tractor (cropped) Acrylic/mixed media

Gathering the right reference material for your artwork can be a challenge, especially if you don't have easy access to the real thing. There are only so many sources to look to in your search for the right information (Internet, libraries, museums) and sometimes those results are unsatisfactory. I try to look for alternate sources to obtain the pictures that I need for a given project and one of those is using toy versions of the object in question.

 Over the years I have purchased and photographed a number of scale model ships and cars (you have to assemble them first) as well as replica toys as small as Matchbox cars.

For the above project, I found a set of three John Deere tractors to use. I picked the one that I liked the best and then set it up at the angle and lighting condition I wanted for my painting. I always draw out my idea sketches first so the photography goes smoothly and fits into my design.

Using a macro setting, I zoomed in as closely as I could and took the photos I needed. I then made final drawings and painted from my "toy reference". I could never have accurately imagined the angle of the overturned tractor without using this process.

Bus Stop Moose

Bus Stop Moose- 9" x 12"; acrylic/mixed media

Wild animals wandering around town can cause quite a stir. I get excited when we get deer or the occasional raccoon in our yard. For some towns like Park City, Utah it seems to be a constant problem and the animals get more and more brazen. That was the thought I had when I came up with this painting for Park City Magazine. It was for an article on how the city deals with these sometimes not so welcome visitors. It was always fun to work with my friends Don Weller and his wife Cha Cha on the magazine (they have since moved on to other pursuits). They always gave me enormous latitude in create an image, which was refreshing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope everyone takes time today to show those around you how much you love them. Reach out with a kind word, a hug, flowers, a card, a phone call or whatever seems appropriate. It's the people around us that make life worth living. I did this piece a few years back for an advertising firm I have done a fair amount of work with called Love Communications.  They still use it on their website (hit refresh once or twice if it doesn't right up on the masthead). There is also a six foot tall version of it smack in their lobby right behind the receptionist desk.

Super Chicken

Super Chicken - Mixed Media/Acrylic- 9.5" x 13"

Muscle and Fitness magazine asked me to do some illustrations for an article dealing with the following question. Can you eat too much protein? I posted another image from this series earlier here. I depicted the body builder in several ridiculous situations in which he was attempting to consume mass quantities of protein in various forms. Thanks to Michael Touna for the opportunity to work on this project.This piece was done in mixed media/acrylic on illustration board and printed as a full page.

Happy New Year!

Cyrano de Bergerac - mixed media, 10" x 13"

With a New Year comes new possibilities and new goals. I think the tired old tradition of making resolutions, of which most will be broken or forgotten by Valentine's Day should be tossed aside. Someone I admire greatly once said "just do the best you can". With that in mind, I think I will simply choose to work hard at doing better. I'll be better at recognizing my blessings, work out harder, love my spouse more, spend better quality time with my family,  reach deeper to make my paintings better, explain concepts to my students in a more meaningful way, and be more satisfied with where I am in my journey. I figure working to simply be "better" than the year before will keep me on the right path to happiness. I wish you all much joy and prosperity in the coming year and may we all be a little bit better.

I. F - Proverb

Grazing - 7" x 5" mixed media/acrylic

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence- or so the proverb says. If you think this way, then either climb the fence or just get on with life on your side. I talk to my students a lot about only worrying what you can control and trying to be happy and and find the positive of whatever situation you find yourself in. Fear and negativity don't jive well with creativity and productivity. So be like this horse and enjoy the grass that's on your side of the fence... while you figure out how to get some from the other side as well.

I. F - Dessert

Protein Shake- 6" x 10" mixed media/acrylic

OK, so I'm a little late on the Illustration Friday thing- whatever. This piece was part of an editorial series I did for Muscle and Fitness magazine. The article dealt with the issue of whether or not it was possible for a body builder or even a mere fitness fanatic to consume too much protein. So here's a guy protein loading a bit too much I think. You never know though, some guys might consider a shake like that "dessert". The art director was Michael Touna. He was great to work with and gave me some good leeway to mold his concept ideas into my style. Hey Tuna- if you're looking- give me some love!