Painting Fundamentals

This is an attempt to summarize the basics of painting in 10 minutes.

Mech

Bit of fun experimenting on this one. That blur was achieved using a hand-painted depth map, which is a concept I 'borrowed' from 3D. A depth map is a grayscale image that represents the depth information in a still picture. Black represents short distance, white represents far distance (and everything in between). After I painted the depth map on a separate layer, I fed it into Photoshop's Lens Blur filter and dialed in the amount of blur I wanted.

Iron Giant

My friends at The Labyrinth Book Store asked me to contribute a piece to their Iron Giant Project. Anything goes, as long as it somehow relates to the film. I decided to pretend like the events of the film actually happened, and this is a vintage photograph signed by an adult Hogarth Hughes.

More Matte Painting

This is part of a personal matte shot I'm working on. I had a still plate to start with, which required some set-extention to fill out the city, and of course the sky scrapers are added with a combination of 3D and painting. This entire scene also exists as simple 3D geometry to facilitate a camera move (there's like a million little cubes representing most of those buildings).
I'll get back to regular painting soon, I promise!

3D Matte Painting

Been buuussyy lately. The above image is part of a 3D matte painting. A familiar process to matte artists out there. I created a quick, 1 minute overview video of the process. A 10mb download.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW IT!

Exciting Commission

This established gentleman is Fernando Rego. He is a clothier with a very high-end store in the heart of Toronto's financial district. Thankfully, he liked the painting and it now hangs in his store! It's 27x40", oil on board.

Sketch From Today

One of those sketches that needed to come out while at work today. Took a second look at home and finished it up a little.

Castle Interior

Just when you thought I was done with castles...
This one will most likely make it into my book that I'm still hard at work on. In related news, I was hanging out with Jason Seiler while he was here for the Toronto Fan Expo. He saw this painting while it was in progress, and suggested putting those chains on the wall. Thanks buddy!

Plein Air Painting Video

I was on vacation last week and did a lot of plein air painting. I kidnapped my cousin and gave him a camera and told him to film one for YouTube. Figured this would be a good break from the digital vids.

Prints for Sale at Little City!

Little City is a local online art community co-owned by one of my very good friends, Alyssa Bistonath. Basically, they host a small roster of artists and sell high-quality, archival prints. I have a couple of pieces available there, and will probably have different pieces every few months. Let me know if you order something, and I'll be sure to sign it for you before they send it off!

http://www.littlecityandhow.com

Tonight's Sketches

Three sketches from tonight. Trying to push warm vs. cool colors without getting cheesy with it.

Again With The Castles

You may have noticed that I latch onto certain subject matter for a few paintings in a row. Right now it's definitely castles. This was a sketch I pecked away at whenever I had a free moment, either at work or home. I've noticed that I tend to get better results when I let my sketches sit for a few days before coming back to finish them.

Castle Walls - Matte Painting

This started as a digital matte painting demo I gave to some co-workers. The demo only lasted an hour, but I liked the direction the painting was headed, so I dumped another 3 days into it. It's rare, but sometimes I do enjoy dealing with lots of detail and layers.
(For those who are unaware, digital matte painting is a combination of painting/photo manipulation/photoshop trickery. It's like a street fight - anything goes!)

Wanna Be Sargent!

Usually my portrait paintings have a lot of 'patchy' brushwork, which is one of the ways I like to approach oil painting. But this time, I wanted to try to be more like Sargent, using broad, sweeping brushstrokes, and trying to make a statement in the fewest possible marks. In the areas where I got it right, I think it makes for a more powerful impact.

Painting Outdoors: Studies

I refer to plein air painting often in my video commentaries. Here are some of my studies. This is where I do 99% of my learning about light and colour. In my opinion, nature is the best teacher, and you don't get charged tuition either.

Concept Illustration + Video

I've been painting for my book...and decided to record one to feed the ol' blog.

Thumbs

Did I ever post this? Three of these sketches were in that YouTube video I did a few months back. This is as far as I got with this particular environment.

Ambush

I have a friend who teaches grade 5. For her students' writing class, she has them write stories based on some of their favourite paintings of mine (which is a huge honour for me!)
I told her that the class could write a story of their own, and I would take a section and illustrate it for them. This was a point in their story where the protagonists are prematurely celebrating their conquest, unaware of a pending ambush.

More Portrait Sketches

My friend Steve was over yesterday, and I did a quick portrait sketch. This is oil on board, 8x10".

EDIT: Just added a quick sketch of Dean, one of the lighters at work. A few of us at the studio painted him over our lunch hour. I think the brushstrokes in that one are evidence of the time limit.

Working On A Book!

I've been looking forward to announcing this! I'm in the early stages of putting together a book. The book will be a collection of personal illustrations (like this one, and this one). I want the book to be comprised mostly of new images, so for that reason my updates here might be a little slow, as a lot of my efforts will wind up going into the book. Maybe I'll leak a painting or two every now and then...like the WIP above. I currently have no estimated publication date, but I'll keep everyone posted!

Portrait Commission

A recent commission. Oil on board, 18x24". The lower image is an extreme closeup of the head.
My goal with this one (other than capturing the girl) was to play with various levels of finish. The head being at the highest level of finish, and everything else tapering off according to how far away they are.

Lighting Keys + Video

Been awhile since I did a video! This one deals with quickly keying out a shot and exploring lighting possibilities. I decided to do a commentary track again. Not sure how helpful that is. You can turn the sound off if you like :)

Tall Town

I dunno. There's just something about nonsensical, whimsical environments that keeps me coming back to 'em. Anybody with me on that?

Character Art for the Film

This is a colour key/concept rendering for a character in the short film. This started as a 3D model (which I did not do). I did a quick lighting pass in Maya, and then painted right over top of it in Photoshop.
And yes, I am aware that Pixar did a monster with blue fur as well. The similarity ends there, I assure you.

Environment Test for the Short

Click HERE to see the Quicktime.

Threw a quick test together on the weekend to see how the hand-painted environments might look with the 3D treatment. The top image is the original colour key, and below it is the 3D set. The painting gets 'projected' right into the 3D scene, and the result is the ability to move the camera around the painting in actual 3D space. The quicktime video is just a simple camera move to demonstrate the effect.

More Keys & Designs

A few more colour keys from the project. These sets will be built in 3D, then fully painted in 2D and mapped with a common camera projection technique. My goal is to make the finished set have the charm of a small thumbnail. So let's see how badly I can fail at that.

Side Project

A couple work friends and I got together and decided to start a small side project! We're currently in the exciting early stages. The cool thing is that each person is a one-man department. I am the color/background department. Here's some keys that I've done, exploring various lighting and color design.

Nosferatu

A quick oil sketch of Nosferatu. This is the Klaus Kinksi character from the 1979 version, directed by Werner Herzog. Hard not to be inspired to paint when you watch that film.
Next post I'll get back to the illustration stuff, I promise.

Gabriel

This is the 2-year-old son of my friend and former co-worker, Colin Jack. In fact, some of you may know him from his awesome blog. Easily one of the coolest and best guys I've worked with. I have about 30 of his post-it note drawings of Batman in rehab cluttering up my desk at work.

Big Bridge...and New Website Launch!

The more I paint, the more I seem to appreciate the appeal of a limited palette.

New Website Announcement!
I've been working on a brand new site for the past few months with a really skilled kid named Taher Ali (he's only 17!). His cousin, Danial Jaffry did the coding. Both did excellent work, and the site was launched today. Take a look!

Dragon?

This one was for last week's DrawerGeeks. The topic was 'Dragon', but my illustration ended up being more about the environment than the creature. I don't even know if that's a dragon, really. I guess it could be a baby Dragon?

Sarah

Sarah is someone I've fortunately come to know over the past two years, and it was my pleasure to have her pose for this painting. Having done a number of portrait commissions where I'm basically painting the person straight-on, I felt the personal need to do something a little more interesting, but still with a strong focus on capturing Sarah as accurately as possible.
This is oil on board, 18x24".

West Coast Painting & Rest In Peace Aunt Paulette

Just got back from a short trip to beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada (the northern neighbor of Washington, to place it on a map for you). It wasn't a painting trip. My family and I went to visit my Aunt, who was sick with lung cancer. Tragically, my Aunt, still in her 60s, passed away before my family and I arrived at her house. She was an incredible person, and played a profound role in my own life. My Uncle asked me if I'd like to put one of the above paintings in my Aunt's coffin, to be cremated with her. I chose the boat painting, because it's probably the best of the three, and I think best relates to her. The painting now exists amongst the ashes of my Aunt. It's doubtful that I'll ever do another painting that will reach that level of personal significance.

Joker

Somebody asked me to paint the Joker for them. This is oil wash on masonite board.

Also, Whohub e-mailed and asked me to do an interview with them, which you can read here. In fact...after I answered their questions, I realized anybody can go there and be "interviewed". So, you should do it too!

Portrait Sketches

Finally got a functional studio space. I've been having friends/models come over and sit for a portrait sketch on a regular basis. Lots of fun! Here's some recent ones.
These are all 11x14" or smaller, done in 2-3 hours, oil on masonite usually. Sometimes linen.

Pushing for Colour

This was was done solely for exploration of colour. Or I should say, varieties of colour within a given palette. Don't really feel like I can type it out in a cohesive way right now (it's late)...but stay tuned for more stuff like this, hopefully.

Even More Nintendo DS?

You bet! Did these for this week's DrawerGeeks topic - Tiki.

Again with the Nintendo DS

Still haven't put it down! Sketches from this past week.
Once again, I uploaded a few of the playbacks.

Nintendo DS: Reloaded

I have a weird relationship with this thing. I will go months without using it, then I find myself not being able to put it down for a few weeks. Right now I am in the latter mode.
Update: You can view playbacks of some of these paintings here.

Sketchy Illustration in Oil

It's strange; I often sketch without reference when working digitally, but I rarely do that with oil paint. Why not? So last week I decided to just sit down at the easel and push around the paint, with no pre-planning, to see what would come of it. And it was fun!
Oil on masonite, 11x14"