ToraSoraChibi

It has been a beast of a year.

A little image to wrap up the year of the Tiger.

Happy New Year Everyone
See ya in 2011

Trey

3 Rings Comic Prop Key

So the 3 Rings Comic is back on, and coming to an end. This image is a prop from the comic. It is one of many pieces that are waiting to be composed into something that resembles a comic. So now comes the hard part.

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Hanuman

Hanuman the Monkey King!

I was working on this painting at the same time as the Torasora painting. This painting is also done in watercolor. This was one of my first larger paintings, being about 13 inches by 28 inches. I have my eye on gallery shows, so I'm trying to work larger. This one was fun and taught me a great deal about my process.

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HanumanProcess

Some thumbnails on the painting process of a Hanuman painting.

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Torasora Final

A painting is never really done until it is cut free from its tapped board. So here is the final piece. The original idea was of a mythical tiger descending from the sky by walking on storm clouds. I made some mistakes here and there, but I like how it turned out.

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Deadline

Today is the end. The painting is done.

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Day 13

Tomorrow is the last day. So I washed the painting down, now it is time for detail work on the tiger.

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Day 12

Some minor tweaks.

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Day 11

Washed the painting down, and now I'm trying to get the sky just how I want.

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Day 10

Mind the wet paint! I was a bit aggressive today, but it is shaping up. There can be surprise or two, but I can see just about what it will look like in the end. After a wash, and a few days of detailing, we can call it a wrap.

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Day 9

One of the joys and pain about watercolor is it takes patience. In the beginning of a painting I can be messy and work all over. But as the image starts to take shape I slow down, usually alternating days working on the background, other days on the focal point of the image. The bad part is it can feel like progress is slow. The good, is that you can see it fresh every day and can plan and make adjustment as you see the painting take shape. I'm an impatient person, but I really enjoy the back and forth.

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This is the final week. I am setting the deadline of 10/10/10. I have learned of the positive power of a deadline. I often will work a project until it is forcibly taken from me. I am also a procrastinator; so knowing where and when to stop helps.

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Day 7

Punch up the colors.

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Color Set

Did not paint today, so I will go over what makes up my watercolor set.

Winsor Newton watercolors palette
left side top to bottom

Permanent Alizarin Crimson (this gets used in mixes a lot)
Burnt Sienna (I love this red brown color)
Vandyke Brown( a new favorite is a really nice dark chocolate color)
Raw Umber
Yellow Ochre
Raw Sienna
Indian Yellow
Cadmium Yellow

bottom left to right

Green Gold (another new favorite is a vibrant yellow green)
Olive Green
Permanent Sap Green( my most used green)
Perylene Green( a new addition, but I like its dark tone)
Winsor Green(yellow shade)(can be a bit strong but good for under painting)
Mixture GreenBlue Green Gold/Olive/Sap Green with Cerulean Blue
Mixture mid GreenBlue- Olive/Sap Green/Winsor Green with Cobalt Blue
Mix dark GreenBlue- Sap Green/Perylene Green with Prussian Blue
Mix Prussian Blue and a touch of Lamp Black

right side bottom to top

Cerulean Blue (red shade)( my favorite for painting happy clouds)
Mix- Cobalt Blue and Cerulean Blue( this is a beautiful mix)
Cobalt Blue
French Ultramarine( a new and lovely addition for a deep blue)
Prussian Blue( one of my most used colors I love the color)
Mix- Winsor Violet and Prussian Blue
Mix- Alizarin Crimson and Prussian Blue

top right to left

Winsor Violet (dioxazine) (a new additon, to help get the deep dark colors.
Winsor Violet and Alizarin Crimson
Permanent Magenta
Winsor Orange (red shade)
Rose Madder(I get more use from this than I thought, and it smells nice)
Venetian Red (a new favorite, and it lays over other color well for me)
Perylene Maroon( to add punch to my reds)

center left to right
(*with the middle area, I use a lot of water and is great in slowly building up a painting at the start of the process. This area gets used the most for coverage of large areas and to start with a base color before applying deeper colors.*)
Mix of all browns
Mix of all greens
Mix of all blues

Brushes are an assortment of brushes I have collected over the years. I still buy inexpensive brushes because I tend to use them roughly.

The large flat brush is for washing down watercolor paintings.

Eye dropper to add water to palette.

Spray bottle for texture and wet into wet.

This is what my set has evolved into over the years adding and removing different color for different reasons. Currently, I think I have my set just about how I like it. So this is my watercolor set up.

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Day 6

This is after I washed the painting down and started my second round. Adding two layers of yellow for the tiger and blue tints for the wings.

Washing down a watercolor is one of my standard practices; where I take a very large flat brush and a lot of water to wipe the painting down. It removes some of the harder edges that can happen when layering watercolor. Any example is under Day 5's left wing. It also softens and unifies the colors; compare the bottom clouds between today and yesterday.

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Day 5

Getting messy with clouds.

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Day 4

Now it is starting to look like something.

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Day 3

Another layer of color for the tiger.

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Day 2

Loose background. It seems strange that simple clouds give a feeling of space.

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Day 1

First day of painting. Keeping it loose with a lot of water and very little color.
It's more like staining in colors very lightly than anything major.

I like this stage because I can be a bit sloppy with application of color

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Watercolor Materials

Wood panels
in three sizes
36 by 24 inches 5 pieces
24 by 24 inches 5 pieces
12 by 24 inches 12 pieces
I seem to have a lot of wood. Anyway, I bought all 22 panels for about 30 dollars from HomeDepot and had them cut it to the size I needed.
I like to rotate artwork, starting new work as I'm putting final detail on older work.

Paper
Water color paper 30 by 22 (winsor newton rough paper is my current favorite)
Drawing paper 18 by 24
Saral paper, (the light blue paper) to transfer drawings onto watercolor paper
Gummed paper tape(on the left side just above the brushes)

Colors
Winsor Newton water color

Brushes
a random collection of cheap brushes I've been gathering since community college. I don't trust myself with expensive brushes because I'm really hard on them.

Eye dropper to add water to the colors

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Enlargement and Mounting

1st images shows original drawing on a 22x30 inch Winsor and Newton 300 Rough watercolor paper.

2nd image drawing enlarged to around 18x24 inches in photoshop and printed out the pieces without color.

3rd image transfer using Saral (trasfer) paper under the copy using a pen to go over the lines that I want to paint.

4th image the drawing on the watercolor paper and mounted onto a wood board with gummed paper tape, this is to prevent paper warping, and for when you wash down the painting. (pencil to show scale)

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Tight Pencil

The cleaned up pencil on the middle of the 5Tigers. I worked up the pencils with a little shading and changed the wing positions. This was done on an 11 by 17 sheet of regular copy paper.

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Value Sketch

Usually I give myself a week to finish a value sketch, which is important for planning my lights and darks in the finished painting. But this time I'm going for speed, I would like to have this whole project done in about 2 weeks.

So this gives me more or less a plan to paint from.

But why change your process?

Well, I'm calling this an experiment. I have a problem of not finishing projects in a timely manner. On top of that I noodle, doodle, tinker, and over work paintings sometimes.
So this time I will call this a speed painting.
Plus, I just want to see if I can.

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5Tigers

The far left is the concept redrawn, done without photo reference. I like the looseness and energy.
2 - 4 were drawn with photo ref, and developed with varying levels of success.
Sometimes I forget the danger of photo ref and get caught up in the details too soon, which can start to sap all the energy out of sketches

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torasora concept

I have had this idea in my head for a few years.

The concept is of a mythical tiger descending from the sky by walking on the clouds

So seeing as this is the year of the Tiger, I thought I should get it out of my head and onto paper.
One day I think I might like to do a series of zodiac animal paintings.
The tiger is a good place to start.

The image is from an early attempt done in 2007 for my graduation gallery show. I think the concept is in need of an update. This is going to be a fun short side quest.

Trey

3 Rings Comic Characters Color Ruff

A version of the characters colored. I'm still trying different combinations, and using various colors, but so far I like this.
Color has always been difficult, especially on computer because of the large amount of choice in color. I swear i could try slightly different variations of color for hours.

Trey

3 Rings Comic project Background Sketch 005

These are the last of the larger Background graphite sketches. I sometimes do painting in watercolor without the graphite sketches but I think the final art looks better with than without. I believe that thinking of the final art in another medium really helps inform my choices. Of course it adds time to making art and on a deadline...

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3 Rings Comic project Background Sketch 004

Backgrounds of a lava pit temple, and the temple gate.

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3 Rings Comic project Background Sketch 003

More backgrounds.

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3 Rings Comic project Background Sketch 002

Larger Background sketches to be painted in watercolor. These are about 11x17 which is the same size of the watercolors. Drawn not very tight as I lose much of the detail in the painting and focus more on the contrast of light and dark.

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3 Rings Comic project Background Sketch 001

More Background Sketches. These are to be painted in watercolor, and I have learned that these sketches are a big help in the painting process. They are not high in detail or drawn very large but the variations of tone, the contrast of light and dark really help to inform how it is to be painted.

3 Rings Comic project Background Sketch

Some Background Sketches for the 3 Rings project.

3RingsCharaFullCastInk

Inked version of the characters. I'm inking the characters using traditional ink quills and different sizes of nibs to see what I can do. I really like using traditional media and I'm trying to work on getting the variation of line weight that look so good from early 19th century artists.

3RingsCharaFullCast

Here is the Full Cast to a short comic project.

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