Art Philosophy - Thoughts on Style

It's amazing what a difference style makes to a work. One can use the same drawing technique and basic design approach and yet come up with three completely different looks that almost appear to be from three different people all because of a change in style.

Style has a huge influence on a work. It it the first thing that the viewer notices. It's a close tie between style and subject for the major reason someone is drawn into a work. A unique enough style can even cover up a multitude of artistic blunders and weaknesses, at least for a short time.

And yet style also puts a work into a pigeon hole which both creates and limits the audience and potential uses for a work. Ironic.

The three illustrations above were all drawn with different tools and colored with different programs in different styles. My overall drawing style still pulls them together as being done by me because it is pretty strong and distinct, and yet there is some nice variety and experimentation going on.

Which do you like best?

Character Sketch: Jungle Boy

This drawing is unusual. Usually when I create an image in this style, it's 100% digital. But for some reason I pulled out my brush and Sumi ink and drew it by hand before scanning it in and adding the colors and textures in Adobe Photoshop. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I thought it turned out really well. I got a lot of great comments from it (and one really pointless one, but that's all part of the game).

What do you think?

Third times the charm

Covers are a tricky thing for me. I know what I love in a cover, but when it comes to create one, I struggle. This is my third attempt at a cover to The Green Bull. I liked the first one I did, but it was radically different from other covers I'd done, and it didn't seem to get a much reaction. So I tried something else, but I wasn't very satisfied with it. So I tried one more time.

This time I finally got the kind of image I want for a Wandering Koala story. It's moody, it's pulpy, and it is a scene from the story that whets one's appetite for the rest.

The story is now available for all eReaders at Smashwords, and is available at most individual stores and will soon be available at all fine retailers.

The Green Bull redux

Just before Christmas I published a new illustrated novella titled "The Green Bull (a Wandering Koala tale)" and made it exclusive to the Amazon Kindle to take advantage of their lending and free days. I thought it would be a good way to promote my work and get my book in the hands of more readers.

It wasn't.

The 90 days are up and I am now publishing it to all formats. I think this will get the story into more hands.

What's it about? Here's a brief description:
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Kinghorn never expected to see a murdered co-worker's body tied to the blade of a windmill he helped have built. He is even more shocked to learn his best friend is the prime suspect!

The case appears open and shut on the surface—but dark secrets never stay buried. Can Kinghorn deal with the truth behind the man he worships and the cause he's given everything to support? What price will he pay for his loyalty? And what will it cost the city around him? Can even the intervention of the Wandering Koala solve the riddle of the Green Bull?

The Green Bull is a 17,000-word novella with 20 original illustrations and a new essay. 
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The title refers to both the idol the cult worships and the fact that the whole green movement is a pile of -- I think you get the idea.

Preserving the environment? Good idea, I'm all for it.

Going Green ie. turning into an irrational madman who sacrifices everything else for measures that don't actually help preserve the environment (CFL bulbs, windmills, cap and trade, electric cars, Al Gore)? Not a good idea. In fact, a very bad idea. But so many people have drunk the Kool-Aid. And they proudly announce the fact to the world.

Read the book. It's an exciting murder mystery with many good messages: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/298256

Telling a story with black & white illustrations

A single illustration has the ability to tell an entire tale and has been used since the dawn or history to do so. Whether drawn for children or adults, images speak a universal language that all can understand. The right drawing will jump out and grab you by the throat—but in a good way.

Black & white illustrations are the clearest and most direct intimately drawing the viewer in in a way color can’t. Some artists have compared it to type—black letters on white paper—claiming it has the same clarity as words. I certainly find myself getting draw into (pun intended) a story more white black and white images that were meant to stand alone without color. I do plan to do a color version of the above image. I'll post it when I do and you can compare.

The drawing above was sketched with a Staedtler Mars Lumograph 2B pencil and inked with a #8 brush dipped in Sumi ink.

Character Sketch: The Prince of Egypt

So I've gone back to traditional illustration techniques for this character sketch. I really like the brushwork and how the black & white version turned out. The color version seemed to lose some of the magic. I really like how the background was created with two colors and the base of the lion/sphinx is shapes and gradients. I like the pose and the colors, but there is still something missing.

As for the subject matter, I've always loved all things ancient Egypt. I'm not sure why. It just has a mystery that draws me to it. It's been a decade since I've done anything with it, so I thought it was about time. Let me know what you think.

Color Illustration: Chained and Doomed

I'm not sure why I felt like drawing a six-armed beast with a blade in each hand ready to slice a chained Wandering Koala, but I did. Chains look really cool, have great texture, and take forever to draw. I really like how there are only two colors on the beast, and yet he looks like he's in full color. I also beat up the Wandering Koala more than usual with cuts, bruises, and torn clothes. Usually he escapes untouched, but that can get boring after a while.

I drew this with a Staedtler 2B pencil, inked it with a brush and sumi ink, and colored it in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. I used a more painterly style, because this was a fantasy illustration and fantasy looks best in surreal paints.

Let me know what you think!

Teamwork in Fiction

After I finished my latest comic, Wandering Koala uncovers the Sixth Figure, an exciting murder mystery, I wanted to do something really different. the Sixth Figure was very stylized in a comic book format. It is visually exciting and a great deal of fun to do, but it's not what I enjoy doing most. My very favorite art work to do is a one-page, full color illustration that tells a story. I've also wanted to do a team up with Wandering Koala and another character for a while. But who to choose? Jak Phoenix, of course!

Jak Phoenix is an exciting space opera created by Matt D. Williams in his debut science fiction novel. The sequel, The Markazian Deception, is due this spring. I really enjoyed the first novel, and am looking forward to the second which made me wonder what would happen if the Wandering Koala somehow made it into space and met up with this indifferent adventurer. I usually keep my character in this world with situations that could and do happen in everyday life except for one fantastic element. But I also made sure to give Kyle several magical tools so his world was open to anything. So it is possible for the two to meet.

I laid out the illustration with a Staedtler 2B pencil, penciled it with a Sharpwriter mechanical pencil, inked it with a paint brush and sumi ink, then colored it in Adobe Photoshop CS. I was really pleased with the result.

Plan on seeing more one-page illustrations, both black & white and color. I'm currently writing a science fiction short story, but after than it's another illustrated novella like The Caveman Conspiracy!

Let me know what you think of this latest illustration.

More Jak Phoenix Character Sketches

So Matt asked me to sketch a few more characters. I was going to wait until I finished reading the novel, but after meeting Cartrite I had these images of characters in my head and wanted to get them on paper.

First is Cartrite. He's orchestrating the takeover of the entire galaxy by setting up a government that is destined to fail and then stepping in and saving the day. It's a rather brilliant yet insidious plot. What's scary is it could so easily happen in real life.

I based his costume on Stalin's uniform and the face is a composite of two white haired actors. I bought a new skinny brush that I used for the first time on this face to create more delicate lines for faces and hands while going for thick lines for the clothes and chair. It provides a nicer line weight contrast than I usually have.

The next character is Rusty. He's the proprietor of a space station where weary travelers can stop and repair their ships and themselves. In the story he gives Jak first class treatment, but Jak suspects there's something not entirely altruistic in his motives, and of course he's right; Rusty wants something--something big.

I based his look on a couple of different characters. I thought a medieval type garb would fit the innkeeper nature of the character. I pictured him as being short and round, but I wasn't sure about the hair. This version shows it well kept, but I did consider making him much older with out of control hair. I'm not sure which is better.

If you haven't had a chance to read Jak Phoenix and you enjoy old fashioned space operas, do yourself a favor and pick it up. The story is great! The characters are more memorable than the typical space opera character. The adventure is interesting and varied. The only criticism I have is the writing: it's not as efficient as it could be, some parts a little overwritten, and a few awkward phraseologies pop up here and there, but not enough to get in the way of enjoying the story.

Cover Art

Have you ever been told not to judge a book by its cover? And have you put that to the test and realized it was absolute nonsense? Of course you should judge a book by its cover. That's why it has one!

Which brings me to the topic at hand. This was my first attempt at a cover for an inspirational book. It was rejected. Why? The client loved the colors and the figures, but it did not represent the content of the book. So I ended up doing something completely different that the client absolutely loved, and will probably attract the type of customer who will buy and enjoy her book.

This was done with my dollar brush, sumi ink, then scanned into my iMac and digitally colored in Corel Painter X. The background is a composite of three photos and the rock their standing on is from the Australian Outback. I really like putting cartoon figures with a realistic coloring against a photographic background that's been digitally tweaked to look painted.

Character Sketches: More from the Jak Phoenix Universe

So Matt, the creater of Jak Phoenix, liked the drawings I did so much, he wanted more. And I was glad to draw more. I've been interested in this kind of space opera style scifi for a while and have wanted to do something in this style, but I never had a good reason for it. Until now.

The characters were again drawn with a brush dipped in Sumi ink on Strathmore Drawing Paper (the yellow cover), then scanned into my iMac on a Canoscan printer, and digitally colored in Corel Painter X. I really liked the end result. This may be the process I use for all my art for a while.

Let me know what you think.

Character Sketch: Space Opera

It's been a while since I've put up a character sketch, so I thought I'd put one up. This one was commissioned by Matt Williams, the author of Jak Phoenix, a fun space opera available from Smashwords.com and other fine retailers. Matt has even released a short story that is currently free so you can check out his universe.

I tried something a little different for this one. I used my usual brush and Sumi ink, but instead of drawing it in my sketchbook, I used Strathmore 70lb Drawing Paper which gave me a cleaner line than the sketch paper. I like a textured line, but the one I've been getting was a little too rough. This one was much cleaner while still having some character. I had a few sheets left over from drawing One Thing Right by Colin Shanafelt, a children's storybook which should be released in the next couple of months. I colored these sketches (and One Thing Right) with Corel Painter X on my iMac. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I'm not sure if Matt is though.

We'll see.

Paint & Photo

I like to mix photographs in with my cartoons. I have a huge library from various trips, and there are a lot of public domain images available online. I usually do some digital altering of them so they mesh well with my drawings. For example, on these three comic book pages, I used photos of the sky and space as wall paper and blurred them so they looked like prints on canvas. I think the effect was very nice, and it adds a lot of character to the images. What do you think?

These are three fully colored pages from the second issue of Wandering Koala vs. The Scientific Method. I should be finished with it in a week or so, and then I'll publish it. This is the first comic book I've done that I've really felt looked like I wanted it to; that looked like a comic book by me. I may even do more if this one sells well.

The Muses Are NOT Amused

In college I was an English minor. One of the classes I took for it was a creative writing class in which we wrote an essay and a short story. The teacher used a method developed by Nyberg. You start with a turning point, then write about the scene, then turn it from first person to third person, and create a fictional story from it. I wrote a story and thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Then the file went missing.

A few years later, I found it. It wasn't as good as I remembered. So I reworked it and added a fantasy-horror element to it. It's currently on sale as Smashwords in every eBook format for FREE. (I'll probably start charging money for it in a couple of weeks.)

The cover took me quite a while to come up with. I've been wanting to combine brushwork characters with Photoshop created objects and a photograph background. I like it, but I'm not sure if this is the direction I want to go.

What do you think?

Character Sketch: Summertime Lady in the Park

My original plan was to turn this into an art deco type decoration, but I was coloring it in Corel Painter X and looking thru my iPhoto library and found this picture of a park in Savannah, GA that fit the sketch perfectly.

I love to mix my cartoons with photos. It creates a really unique effect. And my iPhoto library is big enough that I have a nice selection of pictures. From now on I'll have to take more scenery type pictures of places I go.

I still plan to do an art deco version. Be sure to check back for it.

Character Sketch: Summertime Lady

So it's been a while since I last posted. That's the thing about work--it takes up all your free time! But seriously, it is good to be busy working and earning money in the current state of the economy.

This is another in my series of character sketches. I used a $1 brush from Porter's in Idaho Falls and sumi ink from Udrecht's in Tempe, AZ. It's based on a photo of an ice sculptress that I'm creating an animation for. I was going thru files on my computer looking to delete anything old and unnecessary, and I found this photo. I thought the pose was really nice and would work as an art deco-styled illustration, so I added the fancy dress and large hat. (She was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts in the photo.) I'm going to add color and a cool background, but I thought I'd let you see the linework, because it did turn out really nice. Check back in a day or two for the full color version!

Digital Art

I've always been a traditionalist, mainly because digital art rarely turns out as well as the traditional stuff. I offer two reasons for this.

First, the technology takes a long time to catch up. Digital is pretty new. The computational power to actually create art has only existed for about 20 years. Traditional art has had thousands of years.

Second, the people that do digital art are usually technology enthusiasts or fairly unskilled artists; the skilled ones are too busy learning the traditional method to do the digital stuff. Just look at all the junk that's been thrown up (pun intended) on the Internet with Flash.

These two factors are why I am a critic of digital art and an opponent of 3D computer generated stuff like Pixar or Dreamworks. I've always said that if you got a great sculptor to create art with a 3D program you would come up with something pretty amazing.

I recently purchased a program called Brushes for the iPhone that is a pretty cool painting program. The artwork you can create with it is really nice--it has a certain Jack Vettriano feel to it. Programs like it and Corel Painter make me feel a lot more favorably towards digital art.

Here is a video of me creating my first painting with Brushes. Enjoy!