She Sings From Somewhere You Can’t See

It’s been a while since I posted to my poor dusty blog. Alas.

But I have worked on some art here and there, and here’s one piece in progress:

This marks a broad departure from a lot of my work in the last decade because it’s traditional physical media and not digital. Acrylic on gessoed board, to be precise. It’s kinda weird getting used to physical artifacts of art again. Getting used to there being no control+z, no zooming in. I forgot that the hairs on the brush can tweak off at the last second, spoiling your perfectly curving stroke, or sometimes creating a happy accident.

BTW, this sketch does not constitute endorsement of Chertoff or his policies. It’s not “fan-art”. It was just a study because I thought his face would make fantastic reference for the Prototypically Gaunt Creepy Mad Herr Doktor. I think he needs an Igor to be completed. I found the pic at Boing Boing, and it seems to be the photo associated with his wikipedia profile and the official DHS pic as well.

Today I skibbled down the Seattle Aquarium to do some sketching with co-workers. I’ve got a membership and I might as well use it, right?

Thing about sketching in public that I forget is that you have a lot of people either not noticing you at all, and standing RIGHT BETWEEN you and the thing you are sketching OR you have people peering over your shoulder and asking questions. Also, it is hard to sketch when your subjects keep swimming around, and when small children insist on banging on the glass and disturbing them. All in all, it’s a bit tricky. One feels best off just getting basic shapes and form, or concentrating on one section of the animal rather than getting a full view.

The octopus in particular is very popular, so it’s probably best to take reference photos, and let it go.

This is a sketch that is partly homage to Maxfield Parrish’s art.

Keep in mind this is pretty rough–there’s a lot of things I’d fix before moving ahead with this. The length of her forearms–too long–and the length of her legs–possibly too short. And the overlapping legs. Meh.

This week’s Environment of the Week over at ConceptArt.org is Dracula’s Castle. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to participate. I made the castle part in 3DSMax and after experimenting with views, roughed in two layout ideas I’m torn between. John likes the one on the right better, I’m leaning towards the one on the left.

I decided to try this technique posted by Bumskee in the ConceptArt threads. Here is the sketch with some of the basic colours blocked in. Below, the finished sketch.

In case you ever actually have these items hanging around in your kitchen, you can make a very yummy risotto with them, provided you also have the arborio rice and some gorgonzola and a few other piffling ingredients. I mostly follow that recipe, but I am pretty freeform when it comes to risotto. So I added leeks, because I like leeks, and because I had half of an old onion (red) waiting to be used, my onion is half red onion, half yellow. I decided I liked the red, because it gave the mixture a little bit of colour. You can optionally sautee the leek and onion with a little garlic, but I don’t recommend more than two or three garlic cloves, since you don’t want to overwhelm the pear. I use two pears worth of pears. And for the cheese part, I did some parmesan–what I had left from the last time I made risotto–and probably a quarter cup of gorgonzola crumbles. Again, not totally sure, because I just sorta throw stuff at the pot. Spices: freshly ground pepper, parsley, a pinch of basil. (Majoram also works nicely, but I didn’t use it this time.)

Anyways, how I do this:

Dice pears. Caramelize pears. Once they are browning at the edges, but still goldeny in the middle, toss in the leeks, red onion, and garlic. (Don’t wait too long. You don’t want squishy pear.) Add more butter. Sautee. Once leeks and red onion are softened, remove mixture. Sautee yellow onion in butter. Add risotto rice. Add broth. Stir a lot. Probably stir on and off for about 25 minutes. Keep adding broth whenever you can see too much of the rice. (You will probably go through about five cups of broth.) When rice is a little al dente but not too (25 minute mark approximately), I add the caramelised pears and sauteed leeks and red onion. Then I add my parmesan, then I add gorgonzola, then I add the spice mixture I put to the side. Then I stir it all, dish it up, and garnish with pear slices.

Okay, I went a bit farther with this then I meant to. I was just gonna lay in the basic shapes and some colours. Instead, I ended up inking my initial sketch. Once I got started, I wanted to go further with the colouring, but I also wanted to have something that looked fairly cohesive, so I ended stopping here:

Reference is from my photos at the Seattle Aquarium. I took this particular shot during my brother’s visit earlier in April. I managed to get some fairly decent photos despite the flash and despite the fact that our camera’s lens needs cleaning. Well, decent enough for reference.

Here’s the in-progress shots. First, the sketch:

Then I put another layer on top of the sketch layer, and ink in a more refined version with more subtle details. The reddish-orange is the inks layer, the orange is the sketch layer beneath. I’m inking with a 3 and 5 solid round paintbrush at 45%.

And the finished inks:

The colouring was done in three different layers. The flats–the orange background. I later dropped its layer opacity to 66 percent. Then the shadows, painted roughly on with a fuzzy round brush, and then set to multiply with the layer opacity set to about 15 percent. And the highlights layer (100 percent opacity on the layer itself) but painted with brushes anywhere from 7-25% opacity.

I’ll probably revisit this in the future because I am really aching to try painting his awesome colouring, but for now, let’s call it a night.