I had the good fortune of getting to work on some art as training for work this week.  My company and more specifically my supervisors are pretty cool that way!  Unfortunately I didn’t realize I hadn’t gelled this nightingale before I showed up so most of the first day was spent working on other art while I waited for the gel to dry.  Still, I had a little time that day and some of the next to work on unifying the base blue-green color for the shadows and building up some of my base values.  I haven’t posted many works in progress so this seemed like a good opportunity.  I think I’m going to leave much of the background that blue-green, just pushing in some slight color variation and pulling out more color and detail in my foreground elements.  I like the way the unity of the color in the background is focusing attention where I want it but still holding enough detail to move the eye around.  We’ll have to see how this piece behaves.  Sometimes these works seem to have minds of their own regarding what they will let me get away with.

So I’m finally able to post this piece, the one I was working on for so long but didn’t want to show to hopefully get more people to come see it in person at the show.  This one was a real challenge as it started out in the comp as a day scene but as I began working on it, building from dark to light, I really liked the way the clouds were implying a night scene with the moon coming through them.  A lot of this one was back and forth, changing things as I went.  I think I painted over parts of this one more than any other painting I’ve done yet.

The name of this piece is “Fires Off the Coast of Cherbough” when the artist and crew finally reach close to their destination in France and are greeted with burning ships.  I love the way the story is coming together with each new animal I do.  Each comp suggests the animal’s personality and story and is helping to construct the story as I go.  I have petitioned to take the creative writing masters at Full Sail, one of the many many perks of a great job, and hope that it will enable me to strengthen my writing skills and possibly allow me to even work on the book as I am working towards the degree.  I haven’t been approved yet but, if I am, I have high hopes it will facilitate my writing more (like I need more opportunities for projects.)  I do have a few books already planned including Miranda and the Men from Mars, my Animals book, Finch, and (gulp) a young adult vampire novel.  It isn’t as bad as it sounds.  I have an interesting new take on the genre. We’ll have to see how they come together as I have a lot of painting projects and a huge game I am working on as well.  Maybe I’ll get to that when I’m 80 and retired.

I had the opportunity to participate in a show at downtown Orlando at the City Arts Gallery on Orange and Pine.  There are 16 artists in all including many very talented co-workers of mine.  The opening it Thursday June 16th from 6:00pm to 9:00pm and should promise to be a really fun time filled with lots of great art.  I’m showing what I have completed of my Animals series which is all work for a dual book set that I am currently plugging away on.  One will be an alphabet book with a different animal for each letter and another will be a novella about the journey of the artist and all the interesting characters he is meeting.  He pays for his passage to Europe with portrait work.  Fun.  Here are a few pictures of my work from the hanging that took place on Tuesday.

Another one of my animal paintings in the bag.  I finished my merchant pig and haven’t decided yet if he is a wine merchant or if he is a bit of a smuggler.  I’m sure at some point the environment will drive me one way or the other.  I’m leaning towards wine merchant right now as he seems pretty pleasant… not that a smuggler couldn’t be pleasant, I just am not getting that vibe.  It is interesting how the animals speak to me with respect to their individual stories so when it comes time to piece together the story of the artist’s journey, it will be in some ways writing itself.

This one wasn’t too challenging a painting except for the fact that once I put the gel over the charcoal and the dark blue washes to unify the shadows and background color, it was really difficult to see what I had before.  Sometimes I was bouncing back and forth from the scan I did of the charcoals just to figure out my landmarks in the painting.

Funny that I’ve had this umbrella bird done for a bit and have neglected to post on it.  Sometimes I just get so busy trying to push and make progress on the many projects I have in the works that I forget to show what I’m up to.  These animals are coming together really nicely now that I’ve finished the large one.  There is a light at the end of the 26 animal tunnel.

The umbrella bird posed an interesting issue in that I had to paint the background sky four times to get the value right do it wasn’t too dark that I don’t get nice contrast with the bunched up sail and dark enough to get a good pop on the white in the clothing.  Never had that much of an issue with a background before.

I don’t have this fellow’s name yet but his story is that obviously he is one of the crew on the ship that our artist has booked passage on.  Handy to have some light weight bird characters that can make their way through the rigging quickly and keep lookout.  My wife thought he might be a bit of a punk because of the hair but he never really struck me like that.

I know, I know… Been a while since posting happened.  Well, there is a reason for that.  I actually took a week long vacation to paint on my large 30×40 animal piece and it is taking quite a long time.  I haven’t posted on it because I want it to be something new for everyone when I take part in the show on June 16th.  In the meantime, I’ve managed to finish this Jackrabbit which posed it’s own issues and I might go back in and push on it a little more.  I had to push in a little more shadow on the right side of the face and neck, realizing there was a little inconsistency in the lighting.  One of the issues of comping together reference with different light sources.  Usually I am pretty good about getting that done in the charcoals but I think this one slipped in under the radar a bit.  No worries.  Fixed it in post as they say.  For the meantime, I’m calling it done.

I finally finished the value pass on my larger animal painting and I’m planning on plugging away on the painting of it next week.  If all goes to plan I hope to finish it (I took a week off from work to hopefully accomplish that task.)  This one I had to push a lot more than I usually do, particularly in the darkness of the clouds.  They were way too contrasted in the beginning so I had to keep knocking them back, lightening them up.  They popped darker again when I spray fixed the piece so I’ll have to make some adjustments when I’m painting.  Always to be expected.

I’ve been super busy with work and planning my daughter’s birthday (she wants a ghost hunter themed party!  Couldn’t be prouder!)  I have been managing to get work done on the painting nonetheless.  Got the character’s pretty well blocked in and I’ve started plugging away on the ship and background.  I’m not super happy with the clouds and water I have in my comp so I’ve started pulling new reference of a more active sky and water.  Here is the latest image of the work.  I am hopeful I will have the values blocked in after about two more week’s work.  Keeping my fingers crossed that nothing comes up and gets in the way.

I’m making slow and steady progress.  Couldn’t resist starting to push in a little detail and now that I am looking at it small, on my computer screen, I see there will be a fair amount of shadow work that needs to be pushed further due to the captain’s large head.  No biggie.  I’m up to the task.  I think I’m going to get my other characters a little more fleshed in.  I’m still not really feeling the cat and may have to amend the face to look more like the smaller cat painting I did earlier.  I mean, I can have two different cat crew members.  The other one is the cook, after all.  We’ll have to see.

I’ve been so wrapped up in the progress of this latest painting that I have neglected to post in a bit.  I started a larger painting, 30″ x 40″ showcasing a few animals together in one scene.  This image depicts our captain and a few of his mates collecting a prize ship.  The mock-up took a while and there are still areas in the comp that I’m going to have to work through on the fly, matching lighting, refining detail, and the like.  Regardless, I finished blocking in most of the image and am now pushing in a little more value range and refinement in the details.  There is a long way to go and I grit my teeth whenever I look at it now but then, as my colleague Johannah said to me, “It looks bad until it doesn’t.”  I’m going to try to remember that wisdom and plow ahead.  I will try to be a little more regular with my progress here.