Blog

Posted on by — 4 Comments

The downside of 2011.

I decided to break up my ‘year end’ blog entry into three separate posts.  This is the first one, and the one I didn’t want to write.

Part of the job of a freelancer is to promote yourself like crazy.  Websites, blogs, social media sites, forums, it’s practically a part-time job just getting all of your work out there so it can be seen.  One of the other things you’re supposed to do is put on an optimistic, confident and successful face so that people will think you’ve got everything together.  You have to be your own PR guy, trying to make sure people see all of your latest work, without coming across as a narcissist, something I have no idea if I’m doing well or not.

You’re not supposed to talk about the bad things because you don’t want a reputation as a complainer.  Unfortunately, it can also make people think that nothing ever goes wrong.  I may get to do what I love for a living, but it’s far from perfect.  I’m an artist, so naturally that means I’m neurotic and more than a little obsessive-compulsive.  Working alone at home all the time, you live inside your head a lot, and that’s not always a nice place to be when things aren’t going right.

Social media is a necessary evil, but there are days I’d rather not deal with it.  I’ve come close to deleting my Facebook account more than once this year because being self-employed, you have to be on it a lot, even when you don’t want to be.

Being an editorial and political cartoonist, some days it feels like you wake up in the morning, have a shower, and then wade into mud and shit.  There are many days I hate drawing cartoons about politics and politicians, because you see the same patterns of waste and corruption being repeated year after year, regardless of which party is in power.  But it’s a job, like any other.  You do it, because that’s what pays the mortgage.

Looking back on the blog entry earlier this year that talked about my big plans for 2011 made me laugh out loud.  Apparently, I was determined to learn to sculpt, to get familiar with Adobe Illustrator (again) and to learn a lot more 3D in Photoshop.  I have all of the materials, software, books and resources to work on all three of those, and yet, I never made them a priority.  Put those in the FAIL column.

In that same entry, however, I vowed to paint every chance I got, to work less and play more, and to be less cynical, each of which is still a work in progress.  My wife and I did manage to go on a small vacation to Vancouver Island in June and it was wonderful, one of our best to date, so I count that as a victory on the ‘play more’ side of things, but I didn’t camp at all this year, and that’s something I regret.  Camping is something I love to do, and I didn’t make time for it even once, nobody’s fault but my own.  I didn’t really work less, in fact, I worked very hard all year, but I did manage to say ‘No’ more often when it came to work I didn’t want to do.

As for being less cynical, let’s just say I’m making progress.  I’ve seen some of the best sides of people this year, and I want to focus more on that, but I’m still too judgmental for my own good about people’s seemingly endless need to keep digging deeper holes for themselves while blaming it on somebody else, hence the reason I’m such a Scrooge this time of year.  I’m not a violent person by any means, but I do have my angry and depressed periods on a regular basis, and I take many things way too personally.  But I’m able to let it go a lot easier these days, and I’ll attribute that to getting older and not wanting to waste my time on things I can’t change.  Nobody’s perfect, especially me, and life’s too short.  So I’m still going to work on being less cynical, but I’m going to try to refrain from beating myself up about it.

One of the absolute worst days of my year was the deadline for finishing my first DVD from PhotoshopCAFE.  I had been dealing with almost constant back pain in early Spring for about 2 months, despite regular yoga, stretching, exercise and massage.  Sitting for longer than 20 minutes was excruciating.  Recording the DVD was an incredibly stressful exercise, and it seemed that everything I did while editing it went wrong.  Knowing I was about to turn 40 had sunk me into a deep depression, as my midlife crisis was peaking.  Worst of all, our cat Maya was in failing health and nothing could be done to help her.  So on the night of March 18th, I was up the entire night without any sleep at all in my office, editing the DVD for the next day’s deadline, watching our very sick and disoriented cat in the office with me,  knowing we were putting her to sleep the next day, and my back in excruciating pain.  I alternated between editing a section, getting up to stretch, trying to comfort Maya, and wiping away a lot of tears.  This went on the entire night, and even though I finished the DVD very early the next morning, I really didn’t give a damn, because that afternoon, we had to go put our cat down.  Needless to say, I didn’t celebrate my 40th birthday a week later.

And still, I consider 2011 a great year.  Stuff happens in everybody’s life, and given what some friends have dealt with this year, mine was relatively easy.  Incidentally, I’ve discovered that my recurring back pain was entirely stress related and I thankfully have had very few recurrences.

Freelancing is a tough gig, no doubt about it, and some people can’t handle it, because if you’re not always working, you’re thinking about work, even when you’re on vacation.  Balance is an illusion, at least as far as I’m concerned.  I know enough people in this ‘job’, that it’s a pretty universal trait.  But everybody has it tough, no matter what they do for a living.

So if you follow artists like me, you’ll read a lot of inspiring messages that tell you that you can do whatever you want if you work hard enough, and I firmly believe that’s true, but never believe it’ll be easy.  This is the hardest job I’ve ever had.  You rarely get time off, 12-14 hour days are the norm, you don’t get vacation pay, stat holidays or benefits, and your income is directly related to how hard you work and scramble.  So as much as it’s mostly good, sometimes even great, there’s a lot of crap, too, and you just have to live and work through it, and keep moving forward.  And still, I wouldn’t want to do anything else than what I’m doing now, even knowing I’ll probably have to live through bad and worse days ahead, too.

So there’s a little dose of reality.  As much as I’ll post that everything is great, and often it is, there’s a lot I don’t talk about, because at the end of the day, this is a business, and that would just be bad PR.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Finishing Touches

This is a video I recorded while painting the portrait of Harry Morgan.  All of the brushwork has been sped up, and much of it is very subtle, but it gives you an idea of the detail involved with a painting like this.  I felt this video would be better with music, so I bought the license rights to this piece, appropriately entitled, ‘Fond Memories’ by Heather Fenoughty.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Portrait of Harry Morgan

Harry Morgan passed away this month, peacefully in his sleep at the age of 96 years old.  While he had many movie and television credits in his career, he was most known for the character of Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M.A.S.H. , the role he won an Emmy for in 1980.  The impact of the series on our culture is well known and to this day, I still enjoy watching it in syndication, even though I’m sure I’ve seen every episode more than a few times.

The combination of writing and acting talent on that show was incredibly rare, and what I loved most about the character of Colonel Potter, was that while he was regular army, he had a great sense of humor, and a big heart.  When I heard that Morgan had passed away, I was saddened to hear it, but not too much.  Hard to feel bad for a man who lived a long life doing the work he loved.  Better to be inspired by his example, than mourn his loss.

I thoroughly enjoyed painting his portrait.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Pomeranian – iPad Painting

This is an iPad painting for a piece I’ve been commissioned to do.  It will end up as a fully finished painting in the next few weeks.

When it comes to using the iPad for paintings and drawing, I’ve come to think of it as an advanced sketching device, which is why I’m not putting colour into very many of these.  Since this will be brought into Photoshop, pasted into a higher res image, and painted over, spending a lot of time on colour for a commission like this seemed like a waste of time.

One of the reasons I love painting and sketching on the iPad is that it forces me to tighten up an image as much as possible at very low resolution, with fewer tools than are available in Photoshop.  That way, when I do begin to paint over it, the likeness is pretty solid.

This really is a lot of fun, and after trying a number of styli and apps, I’ve now got my preferred iPad tools down.  For this painting, I used the procreate app, the Wacom Bamboo Stylus, and the Nomad Mini Brush.

Posted on by — 5 Comments

Humpback Whale Totem

Humpback Whale Totem

The latest painting in my Totem series, and while Humpback Whales are found all over the world, I consider this the first image in my Pacific Coast series.

This painting was an incredible challenge, and while I had always intended the Humpback to be part of my Totem series, it was something I wanted to do to prove a little something to myself as well.  Comments on the other animal paintings often mention how much people like the way I paint fur.  While that’s appreciated, I wanted to paint an animal that had none at all, just to see if I could do it.

There were a number of challenges with this painting.  First, it’s underwater, so there were choices to make on that.  When dealing with cool colors on cool colors, the effort to make the whale stand out from the background was going to be in the light contrast and taking a lot of creative license in the color of the whale itself.  Another challenge was the texture.  For a few hours while painting this, she looked a little like stucco because I had far too much contrast in the details, so rather than a rubbery looking skin, it looked almost scaly.  While correcting that, I went a little too far and the skin look too airbrushed.  What you see here is the compromise.  Skin that is still textured and non-uniform, but still trying to achieve a smoother look than I’m used to. And finally, I wrestled with the water.  I didn’t want a smooth gradient look, but I also didn’t want to go with the cliché ‘god lights’ that so many artists use in underwater scenes, those rays of light beaming in from the surface to give the painting an ethereal look.  Just didn’t feel right.  The background in my paintings is supposed to be just that, so I broke it up with the suggestion of particulates and bubbles.

Initially, I had planned on the finished image being 30″x40″ at 300 ppi.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get there.  The full resolution file for this painting is 18″x24″ at 300 ppi, because at one point, the working file size was right around 800MB.  My computer’s good, but it gets sluggish when painting detail at that size.  I’ve no doubt that I could still print this file at 30″x40″ at 200ppi on canvas and it would still look good, though.

Had a bunch of highs and lows while painting this little lady (BIG lady) and I can’t even guess how many hours I put into it, but it was a lot, likely more than I’ve put into any other painting.  For a few hours on the weekend, I was very frustrated and was worried I wasn’t going to achieve the look I wanted.  When that was going on, I wasn’t having any fun, whatsoever.

As difficult as this painting was, I learned a lot.  Had to create a few new brushes, something I haven’t done in awhile, but they’re now in my library and will come in handy the next time I paint an animal with mottled textured skin.  I also learned a few new layering techniques to get the suggestion of detail, without making it too sharp.

While it took a lot out of me, I’m pleased with the finished painting, and I think I’ve grown a little more as an artist, which is always the intent.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

The Perfect Bait

This morning, I finished listening to Bobby Chiu’s new book, The Perfect Bait.  It far exceeded my expectations.

While I have met Bobby before at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo a few years back, and have taken a couple of courses from instructors at his Schoolism.com site, I don’t actually know him.  But I do know his fantastic work, and have followed his career.  Bobby is a successful artist, and while I know his work is ever evolving and he is nowhere near where he intends to be, his example is one that many artists can learn from.   One of his recent more famous projects is that he worked as a creature designer on Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland.’   Here’s a look at his creature design work on his CGSociety portfolio.

It should come as no surprise why I’m a fan, and not just because he’s a fellow Canadian.  But it’s not just his work that’s impressive, it’s his philosophy on the business of art.  One of the benefits of buying the book is that you get access to the audio version as well.  So while I haven’t yet received the book, I have listened to the entire thing already while working yesterday and this morning.  Many art books end up being simply motivational ‘you can do it!’ publications, but Bobby talks about real world examples of how specific things worked out for him and why others didn’t, and how failure is as much a recipe for success as any award or accolade.  And best of all, he puts more stock in hard work than talent, something I’ve believed in for years, as I’ve seen artists far more talented than I, fall into obscurity because they simply didn’t apply themselves.

The benefits to me personally were two-fold.  First, there was a fair bit of confirmation in the book that I’m doing a lot of things right.  Had I read the book five years ago, that would not have been the case, but I’ve made plenty of mistakes, learned from them, made course corrections and carried on.  The second benefit was being made aware of a number of things I’m fully capable of doing to better my career but either had not thought of them, or I didn’t think they were important enough to bother with.  I stand corrected and feel better equipped to continue my forward momentum.

Most importantly, Bobby emphasizes the importance of passion in your work.  I’ve heard many times over the years that the work an artist should be doing is the work they would still do even if nobody paid them.  I am incredibly fortunate that with my animal paintings over the past couple of years, I have discovered that work, and am grateful for it.  I was already passionate about painting, but this book stoked that furnace even more.  In a perfect world, everybody would realize their passion and find it within themselves to pursue it.

So if art is your passion, no matter what kind of art that is, I would like to help ONE of you take a step forward.  On Friday afternoon, I will draw a name on my business Facebook page, and then I’ll buy that person a copy of Bobby’s book.  All you have to do is leave a comment on the post that links to this blog entry.

If you would like to buy Bobby’s book, visit the webpage, www.ThePerfectBait.com and get yourself a copy.  You’ll be glad you did.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Painting a Gentle Giant

Humpback whale and calf in The Broken Group Islands – Patrick LaMontagne

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enamored with humpback whales, and I have no idea why this particular species of baleen whale holds my love and interest over any other marine mammal.  My wife and I saw these two (and a few more) on a tour of the Broken Group Islands out of Ucluelet on Vancouver Island this past summer, and although we only saw backs and tails, it was a thrilling experience.

A longtime dream I’ve had is to be in the water with one of these massive creatures.  Now before you think me a little nuts, I’m not oblivious to the danger.  I know that an animal can be as gentle as a kitten, but when it’s the size of a semi truck, you don’t want to be under it when it rolls over.  Despite that, the desire is very strong and I intend to make it happen.  I want to get my diving certification in the next year or two, and to swim with humpbacks in the next five.  It’s an expensive trip, but it’s one worth saving for.

From time to time over the years, I’ve had very vivid dreams featuring different animals.  One in particular, was the spark for my Animal Totem series.  Humpbacks have shown up a few times, most recently last week and it prompted me to start searching for reference.  When I found the right image (and there was no doubt, once I saw it), I started looking for the photographer who took it.

As I’ve mentioned before about photo reference, no photos are ever part of my paintings, but I still need to have great shots to work from in order to get the level of detail that I paint.  I can’t tell you from memory what the hair on a moose looks like as it transitions over the nose, or how a bighorn sheep’s horns curl around in relation to his other features.  So, I rely on the work of wildlife photographers to provide me with the reference I need.

Some photographer friends, of which I thankfully have many, have been very generous in allowing me the use of their work.  For others, I have traded my services as an illustrator for their own projects, or paid them outright for the license to use certain photos.   A few have asked for canvas prints of the finished painting in payment.  I’ve been agreeable to all of these terms, and grateful for their willingness to help me do what I love to do.

From time to time, a wildlife photographer will tell me they aren’t interested or their price will be too high for my budget.  In those cases, I’m usually disappointed, but I thank them for their time and look for other reference.  Even though my finished paintings look very little like the photos I use for reference, so many photographers have had their work stolen online and they’re extra cautious about allowing their work to be used.  It’s unfortunate, but a reality of the business, and as these photos are the product of their time and effort, they have every right to say No,  just as I’ve declined certain uses of my own work.  So I try to be hopeful but not too optimistic when I approach a photographer with whom I have no connection.

When I found the right humpback image, I was pleased.  All that was left was to get permission and the high resolution photo, and that’s how I found Scott Portelli.  Scott is a wildlife photographer out of Sydney,  Australia, and he specializes in taking photos of Humpback Whales.  Each year, for the past decade, he has taken small groups of people to Tonga to swim with these gentle giants.  From August to October, Humpbacks mate and give birth in these warm waters.  Scott is an active supporter of whale conservation and vocal opponent of the practice of whaling that sadly, still goes on today.

Having made ‘the ask,’  I set about to work on other things, as you never know how long the response will take.  Scott replied quickly, was very kind and we soon came to an agreement for the use of the photo.  Yesterday, I received the high-res image and I am very happy.  It’s a beautiful reference to work from, and I now have no doubt that I’ll be able to paint the image I’ve been imagining.  There are a few animals I’ve been waiting to paint until I had just the right reference, and this is one of them.  Thanks, Scott.

While I won’t post the image I’m using, please do look at Scott’s wonderful photos of these and other beautiful animals.  You can find his website and links to his Flickr account at www.scottportelli.com.

What I find especially thrilling is that this search led me not only to the photo, but to the means to fulfill my dream.  When I am ready to swim with Humpback Whales, I will know who to contact.  If you’d like to find out more about Scott’s excursions and tours to the beautiful waters around Tonga, you can find that information at www.swimmingwithgentlegiants.com

Somebody recently made a comment online that my specialty was obviously painting fur.  While it’s great to have that skill recognized, as it took me a long time to develop the techniques, I have no desire to be a one-trick-pony and only be able to paint furry animals, despite how much I enjoy it.  This whale will be a personal challenge as there’s not one hair to be painted in the whole image, but I think I’m up to it.  And I’m excited to get started.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Portrait of Rocky Balboa

This painting, like many that I do these days, was an absolute pleasure to work on.  For the past couple of years, I’ve been focused on my Animal Totems, and although they are still where I plan to continue investing my creative energy, I realized that I hadn’t done a full painting of a person in quite awhile.  Yes, I’ve done a few on the iPad, but not a fully finished painting.  I think the last one I did was a caricature of Bert Monroy, and that was in June of 2010.  I figured it was time to do another one, and rather than a caricature, I wanted to paint a portrait.

Regular readers will know how much I love movies.  One of my favorites is Rocky Balboa, the sixth movie in the series.  I think the reason I like it is because it’s not so much about Rocky’s battle with an opponent, it’s his struggle with getting older, but still feeling he has left something undone.  Some critics panned it for being overly romanticized and unrealistic, but I disagree.  Very much like the tone and writing of the first Rocky movie, the movie that won and was nominated for a slew of Oscars in 1976.   Rocky Balboa inspired me, much like Sylvester Stallone’s own personal story does.  If you aren’t familiar with it, you might want to take the time to listen to how Tony Robbins tells it.

Rather than paint him as the fighter in the ring, I wanted to paint the real character.   His wife has passed on, his son is now a young man living on his own, and Rocky spends his evenings at his restaurant telling people old ‘war stories’ from his glory days.  But there’s still that hunger.  The movie reminds me that one of my own biggest fears is becoming an old man and regretting the things left undone.

This was started as a painting on the iPad, shown here.  I used the procreate app, the Wacom Bamboo Stylus, and the Nomad mini brush.  As much as I enjoy painting on the iPad, and a number of my recent portrait paintings have stopped there, I brought this one into Photoshop and painted over it to get the look and texture I wanted.  While my animal paintings are very detailed, this one is intentionally rougher.  The tone of the piece, and the age of the subject called for a little less polish.  The finished painting was done in Photoshop with a Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet, and the image size is 16″X20″ at 300ppi.

Even though I’ve never had any of my own work printed for myself, I think I will get this one printed on canvas and framed for my office.  Never hurts to be reminded that our time here is short.

Incidentally, one of my favorite onscreen speeches is from this movie, this one from Rocky to his son.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Rocky Balboa – iPad Painting

This is my latest iPad painting, Sylvester Stallone as Rocky in the sixth and final movie of the series, Rocky Balboa.  Some critics scorned it as having too many clichés and being unbelievable, but it’s my favorite of the series.

This is as far as I could take the painting on the iPad, and I’ll be using this as a rough for a finished painting in Photoshop.  The finished painting will not be in black and white, but I find accurate colour to be incredibly difficult and a useless effort on the iPad, so I’ll do that in Photoshop.

I painted this with the procreate app, still the one I prefer to work with most.  Most of the work here was done using the Wacom Bamboo Stylus, but I also used the Nomad Mini brush for some of the nitpicky texture work.

This is by no means finished, and I can already see many things  I want to change and improve on, both in the painted details and the likeness.  But it’s a good start.  With each iPad painting I do, I’m getting more comfortable with it, and figuring out just what’s possible.  Still enjoying working with the device, tools, and apps and I plan to continue improving my skills.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Tom Richmond and The Mad Art of Caricature!

There are many people who consider the humourous paintings of people that I do to be caricature, but just as many who don’t.  I consider traditional caricature to be an exaggeration of features while maintaining the likeness.   At the risk of trying to slap a label on it, my work fits somewhere in between caricaturing a person and cartooning them.  Often it will be a large head, small body, with only mild distortion or exaggeration.  For a lot of business or gift purposes, that’s what my clients want.  But wild exaggeration or not, I still feel that I have a lot to learn.

I have no desire to be a quick-sketch caricature artist, the kind you see at an amusement park or event, but I have a great deal of respect for those who are able to fill that role.  It’s a difficult skill to master and very different from the type of painting and cartooning that I do.  You have to be confident and bold when drawing live, and I’m a tentative obsessive sketcher when I’m drawing people.  I don’t mind admitting that I find quick-sketch caricature very difficult and I’d like to become better at it.

When I think of caricature artists that really wow me with their skill, Tom Richmond tops the list.  Tom is best known for his MAD magazine work, but he’s done a lot more than that in his long career.  Rather than list his accomplishments, take a look at his website and I’ll let his work speak for itself.  I’ve written about Tom before on this blog .  OK, maybe more than once.  What can I say, I’m a fan.

Last week, I received a copy of Tom’s new book “The Mad Art of Caricature: A Serious Guide to Drawing Funny Faces.”  People have been nagging him for years to write a book like this, and whether it’s because he got tired of it, or just realized he was ready and made the time, it was well worth the wait.  I pre-ordered the book sometime this summer, and I’ve been looking forward to it ever since.  I had very high expectations, and Tom’s book surpassed them.

I’ve bought many cartooning and caricature books over the years, and this one is hands-down the best I’ve ever seen.  From tutorials on how to draw specific body parts, exaggeration, relationships between facial features…I could go on at great length about all of the wonderful specifics he teaches in this book.  It is comprehensive and complete.  There are techniques and tutorials in this book that I’ve never seen explained in any other I’ve bought, not to mention valuable insights into how to become better at live or studio caricature work.  And content aside, it’s quality printing with beautiful colour, too.  Put simply, I would recommend this book to beginners and professionals alike, without reservation.

While reading the book, I just wanted to pick up a pencil and draw.  Yes, I draw every day already, and while it’s enjoyable, it’s not often that I get excited about it.  I’ve said before that Tom’s work makes me want to be a better artist.  I’ve no doubt that his book will teach me how.

To order a copy of your own, here’s the link again.  “The Mad Art of Caricature: A Serious Guide to Drawing Funny Faces.”