More Butterfly Drawings

Here are the final four drawings for the butterfly book I just finished up.  The first four drawings can be seen here. The digital painting process went well and I was able to render these in full color on the schedule I hoped for which was about a day apiece. Stay tuned for the finished pieces. I will begin posting the full color paintings in the coming week.

SILA Illustration 52 Gold!

Grasshopper Hunter- 13" x 19" digital and graphite- by Greg Newbold.

I am pleased and honored to announce that my painting "Grasshopper Hunter" has been awarded a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles. It will hang in the Illustrators 52 show to be held from March 7-30 at the Center Stage Gallery in Burbank, California as well as on the SILA website. The piece was created for Boys' Life Magazine and continues to be the most awarded piece I have done to date after being accepted into the Society of Illustrators, Spectrum and 3x3 illustration annuals. This award is the first Gold Medal of my career prompting my wife to ask what it feels like to be a twenty year overnight success. Well, honestly, it feels pretty good. Thank you to
the esteemed jurors who I am sure had some pretty tough choices based on the number of extremely talented artists I know whose work was not accepted. Having been on the other side of the equation, all too often it seems, I feel for you my friends. A big thank you to Alyce Heath and everyone at SILA, I am very grateful for this honor.

Butterfly Drawings

Here are the first drawings from a new book project I am beginning. Much like the Egg Book that I did last summer, this book is an easy reader and there are only eight interior illustrations total. The book gently describes a butterfly caught in a rainstorm and how it must wait out the downpour and dry it's wings in order to once again take flight. By spending a little more time on the drawing, I hope to speed the process and cut the actual Photoshop painting time down to about a day apiece. So far so good. I started the first piece late yesterday morning and will finish it up this morning, so I am right on target. I will post the color versions as I go along.

Egg Book finished pieces start here (scroll forward to see them all)
See my Photoshop painting process here

What To Do With Bad Thrift Store Art #1

Detail from "Ugly City" -A Reclaimed Thrift Store Painting

A few months ago we started gathering bad thrift store art. You know, the stuff you find at the Salvation Army store. The stuff painted by some one's nephew or the little blue haired lady down the street that should never hang on the wall (and it does not, which is why you find it at the thrift store). Well, our family thought it would be fun to resurrect these "gems" and have some fun along the way. This is the first of what will be sporadic posts on how to take those bad thrift store paintings and make them into good ones. First up: Ugly City.

"Ugly" City- Before

Ugly City- After- 12" x 48" Acrylic by Greg Newbold (and S. Adams)

I stumbled on this one at the local Assistance League thrift store and could not pass it up. It screamed to have something fun added to it. The good thing about thrift store paintings, especially the bad ones, is that nobody wants them and you can usually pick them up for just a couple of bucks. Since Christmas was coming, I thought I would surprise my son by adding some of his favorite Ugly Doll characters to it. We are big time Ugly Doll fans at our house. If you are not familiar with these plush characters, you can check them out at the Ugly Doll Website here.

Dave Loves Bacon

They are adopted in to our home and become part of the family as evidenced by Dave here enjoying his favorite food- Bacon. Dave is one of our favorites, so it made sense to add Dave and some flying bacon to the scene to replace a few of those lame birds (no offense to S. Adams, whoever you are).

Babo's Bird needed to join the remaining birds in the sky too.

Babo loves cookies, so he needed a nice big one to nosh on. On a technical note, painting on top of thrift store paintings poses a problem in that there is no way of knowing exactly how the original was produced or in what medium. I did a test- I cleaned it. I was pretty sure that the original medium was acrylic or acrylic based spray paint, since the water did not bead up on the surface when I washed off all the dust.  That deduced, I figured it was safe to paint the new characters with acrylic. Had it been oil, the water probably would have beaded up a bit and I would have then painted over the top with oil. Taking someone else's work and making it your own is a tricky balance. In hindsight, I shouldn't have put both green characters next to each other in the composition, but by the time I got down to the last couple of characters, it was too late to switch them. Overall, I had fun and my son was both surprised and amused. He could never guess what that long skinny gift was under the tree. Well, at least not this year anyway. Next year might be a different story. I have other thrift store "gems" in the wings that I will share whenever they happen to get the rescue treatment.

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

Merry Christmas!

All Is Calm- 16" x x12"; Oil by Greg Newbold

Silent night, Holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin , mother and child

Holy infant so, tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace,

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, Holy night

Shepherds quake, at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly, hosts sing Hallelujah.

Christ the Savior is born,

Christ the Savior is born.

Silent night, Holy night

Son of God, love's pure light

Radiant beams from thy holy face

With the dawn of redeeming grace,

Jesus, Lord at thy birth

Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

May the love and joy of this Christmas time settle deep in your hearts and that the memories you make may carry throughout the year. May God bless you all, my friends. Merry Christmas!

Daisy Dog

A recent piece I did for Angels on Earth magazine. The story deals with an abused pit bull dog that a family adopts and names Daisy. Despite the serious neglect, her spirit was not broken and adapted readily to her new home. The concept was to show how content and happy the dog was once she got out of the abusive situation. I had particular fun with all the little details on the dog house as well as the flowers. This one was done digitally over a rough graphite drawing. Unlike some of my previous digital paintings, not much of the original drawing is evident in this one. All the textures were created by hand and imported into the textures palette or applied in multiply mode at the end (crackle texture).