The Long Path Process

That thing on the tracing paper is a Donato/Julie Bell original, from the critique section.

Apart from a lot of frustration over the armor, I have a first sketch! Right?

No, said Dan Dos Santos - I do that mostly-turned away face in pretty much every other painting.

Yes Dan, you are correct. The face turn is a gesture that touches on something inside my head, but if I do it ad nauseum then it looks like I'm trying to get away with something. Final drawing for real, with a face, plus bonus actual armor reference.

My board in the moment of silence before the plunge. (reference is also present, just on my computer.)

Please caption this for yourselves with the wild screaming happening in my head at the time.

Wild screaming continues. "OH GOD I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, NO ONE LOOK."

Here I am seen desperately trying to regain some control in my life, by noodling with the foreground lay-in.

At this point the screaming stopped, because the environment first pass is done and the next step is the figure. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the identical first stage of pretty much every painting I do. 

Starting the face! "Oh thank god," I whisper.

It's a face first pass. I do routinely lose the drawing this badly on my first pass of the face, which is stupid and I should stop that.

My setup, filled with a lot pictures of me. I fit my entire setup and a cup of tea on this little tabaret without once spilling anything on my computer or dipping my brush into the wrong container.

So I got to this point when I realized that not only had I lost the drawing of the face, but the head was about 25% too small as well. I took a deep breath...

...and wiped it out entirely. (After doing that, I got up and walked around the studio for a bit. It's important to remember that nothing you do is sacred, but that doesn't make it easy, just doable.)

I came back and restarted the face. Before I could take a picture of the new progress, Dan sat down and showed how a pro paints a face. I was having a hard time applying the skill I do possess in lighting a face because the light itself was so intense and chromatic, and I was washing it out and making it chalky.

That started, it was time for armor. Fun fact: I had no idea how to paint armor.

That being said, the IMC has a way of making me better than I am. First pass on armor: achieved.

Horribly, horribly lit hands? Achieved.

Next day, and I got in some glazing for the light when Rebecca Guay came by and helped me with the foreground, which I was Not Panicking Over and ignoring as thoroughly as I could. Thank you Rebecca ;__;.

Then Dan came back! And told me that the glimpse of the sky was stupid, that the light I'd started to put in was good but I should stop! being! timid!

Pushing more in the face, and touches in the armor courtesy of Dan! Who kicked my ass back and forth this year, to my eternal gratitude.

Look! It's almost like a real painting is happening!

Glowey stuff! Thank you, Dan. You are best.

Working on the hands, starting on the chain mail.

This is a comforting stage of a painting to reach - rough, but all the bones are there, and I can see the finish line.

Glazing, and scumbling, are beautiful things. I have never used so much yellow in a painting.

Face! Chain mail! Oh my god it's like I know how to paint!

I finished the chain mail and fixed the hands and then tried not to lose it when Donato complimented them.

Thus, a finished pass - not polished, but a lot of work to have accomplished in just the week at the IMC.

Polishing pass on the armor! Painting in the sword! Working up the cloth! Edges!!

And this is what I finished with, on my easel at home, after a few more days of work after the IMC. The finished piece that I posted saw some after-work in Photoshop, but the original holds itself up.

The Long Path

The Long Path, 11"x19.5"

Here is my finished piece for Light Grey Art Lab’s Rolemodels exhibition! I finished it early this summer, after getting a huge chunk of it laid in at the IMC, and I'm really, exceptionally proud of what I accomplished here.

You can buy a print of this piece here, a print of any other the other pieces made for this exhibition here, and the card deck here!

The Long Road drawing, before and after

It's been almost a month, and I just realized I never posted the final drawing for my IMC painting. Before I do, here's a reminder of the sketch I brought:

And here's the drawing I wound up taking to the board, after critiques from everyone:

There's a delicate balance to strike when doing the drawing for the IMC: if it's too rough, not only will the teachers not have much to work off of in their critique, but you get to spend it wallowing in the shame of bringing something that looks like that in front of Irene Gallo and Boris Vallejo and Scott Fischer (see: me, last year. scroll through this post for the 'drawing' I brought and the drawing I wound up with). If it's too refined, however, you get to enjoy watching hours of your careful work get ripped apart, as the instructors point out all of the things you did wrong/could have done better/didn't even think of doing.

I think this year I hit the correct balance. The composition and values are generally there (though I later wound up regretting not having done a more refined value study), and the gesture is conveyed along with just enough details to give the piece context for what I see in my head. Especially when combined with the color studies and initial thumbs, it communicated the direction I see myself going in, and it gave the instructors a clear idea of what I was trying to do - which meant they were able to give me equally clear suggestions on how to do it.

IMC assignment, take 2

So, about that last post -

- some peers and also Dan Dos Santos gave me feedback which amounted to 'you are really in your comfort zone/you're better than this/push harder push harder', and when I went back to the thumbnails I came to the realization that I just... had nowhere to go with them. There's a lot of emotional exhaustion tied up in them, both from the timing of having my awful crash on the same day as the assignment email came out, and from the fact that I just don't like A Midsummer Night's Dream to begin with, really - and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

Also contributing to the decision to abandon/step away from my Midsummer illustration was my acceptance to Light Grey Art Lab's October show, Rolemodels. The piece for it is due mid-July, and if I had waited to start on it until after I returned from the IMC, I would have had less than a month to do it from thumbs to finish, coming off of a week that last year not only left me exhausted, but also emptied my artistic tank down to nothing.

Beyond the way that the timing works for doing the Rolemodels piece at the IMC, it's an image I'm really, really excited about. I was already exhausted by Midsummer and I hadn't even gotten out of the thumbnail stage - but every stage of this piece so far has been nothing but inspiring.

The show itself is for D&D-type fantasy self-portraits, with all of the artists being one of several classes and having to represent themselves through that context. I'm a paladin in this case, a religious warrior, and I (being spiritual but very non-religious) was shocked to find a D&D-canon deity that really did fit: The Path of Light, more philosophy than god, which holds its adherents to honing their personal skill and following the light.

As I was thumbnailing I found myself drawn again and again to the struggle of following that light - I shied away from triumphant poses (that one thumb aside) and focused on the journey. The thing about the thumb I chose, the thing about the sketch I did, is that I feel in it the exhaustion that I know intimately, but also the hope and the urge to go forward.

I hope that the painting can carry that sense of weight and forward motion.