Donato love

I was visiting Mr. Gurney's blog and saw that Donato Giancola has a new DVD, whaaat?!? why didn't I know this?!? I loved The Mechanic and this would surely fit perfectly next to it in my shelf, not to mention my dvd player.

I want it. I need it. N·O·W. Where's that stupid "donate" button when you need it?

Make a wish

Last year I went on a Thank You quest by the end of the year, I felt it was important to show appreciation to the people that made my year better one way or another.

Loved to do it. I don't do this every year, neither I send christmas cards, honestly I seldom text people for christmas, when I do I want it to be special and personal and hopefully make that person's day a little bit brighter.

Have you ever made new year resolutions? or a new year planning? or a wish list? I have, it's private, just for me, with musts, goals and wild wishes.

Last month -thinking about the next year's one and revisiting my last year one- have made me realize how important the wishes section on that list is.

That's why this year I've gone and done little paintings again, proper christmas cards this time, filled with stars ready to grant all kind of wishes.

So make a wish, make many, from the heart, believe that you can make them happen and go for it!

May 2012 be your best year yet.

Back home and fully energized

It's been enlightening in so many ways :)

Nupastels are all kinds of messy fun

Today has been quite hot here in Madrid, so instead of going to the painting table to work on watercolours I decided to relax a bit at the balcony and doodle a bit, somehow it looked like the perfect chance to try the Nupastels at last so instead of the sketchbook and pencil I've grabbed a box with some of them, a paper and an old cotton rag, and started doodling just for fun.

Can you tell I have mummies in my mind lately? ignore the weird look and unfinished look, this quick sketch has served 2 purposes: one has been overcoming the dead end I was trapped at with my concept doodles getting me closer to the body structure I was looking for (some times going back to basics is the best to take a turn and get into the right way), and second letting me learn some things about nupastels:

-They are surprisingly soft for a pastel that is called "hard" but it's indeed harder than the usual pastels, added to their thin and squared shape they allow a great control, I like that :)

-It is true that there's only an amount of pastel the paper will take but I find it easier to control the amount of pigment you use, they are very versatile, you can go from superwide strokes to thin lines made with a corner without effort, from soft touch to intense color, in just one stroke, this makes really easy to not overwork it and even let the grain of the paper show through for as long as you want to.

- They don't feel like chalk at all!

-They blend so easily and yet it's easy too to cleanly cover a previous color with a new one as if the other wasn't there, I guess that could not be so if the area were quite overworked already but I didn't get to that extent, in my mummy I found no trouble putting a clean soft pink over a couple of layers of deep gray and dark blue.

-Dust, this is the thing that you won't get rid of no matter how hard the pastel is, but that's the great thing about using them out of the house, you can just blow it away and let the wind do the rest :)

Now that I've made one test I want to try some more things with them, one is try them on a paper without grain (nupastels have beaten the panpastels without mercy this time but no grain maybe provide a more balanced battleground) but the most important one is trying different ways of lifting it so you won't get to overwork the paper unless you go too far, not knowing too much about working with pastels I want to try to lift them with some kind of brush, smudging with a cloth will get rid of some of the pigment but will mostly blend and smudge it into the paper texture (already tried that today), but maybe the bristles of a brush get more pastel off the paper, also I want to try using masking tape, the pigment should stick to it and be completely lifted right? so my bet right now is:

cloth: more blending than lifting
brush: more lifting than blending
tape: no blending at all and some lifting

I can't wait to try this theory :). So...what else can I try? sugestions? have you done any experimenting with these?

Oh, and now that the mummy is done I'm looking at the pastel fixative spray bottle in disbelief, there's no way any fixative can really seal this, is there? nah!

One done, two to go!

And Under the Wave is finished, now onto the next one!

Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, step 2, step 3

Under the wave: halfway through

It's taking shape, a couple more sessions and I think it'll be done.

I love staining pigments for this kind of painting where I need superdarks and vibrant colours at the same time, also they let you keep layering forever, the only con is that it's difficult to fade them to white in such a small painting since they are really intrusive pigments, that's why I've been working so slowly up till now until all the light areas were established, usually I prefer to fade those edges as I'm adding paint but this time I'll just have to blur them later.


Anyone wants a minicornetto? I'm taking one, as Ben Affleck said in that commercial because I worth it *yums!*

New WIP

No Hobbit update this week, sorry, but I have 3 little paintings in line and to be honest, it feels grrrrreat to hold a brush again, I'd missed those relaxing hours one on one with the paint and paper, feels like forever since last time I painted something!

The first one is going to be called Under the Wave and looks like this so far, I'd love to say that it's just a first wash but nope, more like some hours of work O_O, anyway I'm completely excited about painting this one because it's been on my to-do list for a couple of years (ok, more like 4), it was going to be one of a couple, the other one was Over the Wave and this one of course couldn't be but Under the Wave, have you ever had a title decided so long before actually painting the work? :P

Ok, it's an early stage and it's flowing quite easily so far so there isn't any secret or decission-making to share about this step. I'm using a very limited palette of 4 colors, the same used for the other painting, it has made me rethink about the importance or not of documenting your works, a.k.a. should I once and for all keep a decent record of my works instead of random swatches and photos of the used palette when I remember to do it?

Here's over the wave, the current twin gotta look at least as good so cross all your fingers for me ^_^.

Leaving Mirkwood, slooooowly

Not there yet, but it's getting closer :)

I know what's bothering me so much about this one, I killed the composition in every single possible way, overall wrong placings, the horizontal line, the verticals splitting in half the upper half, mirrored negative spaces, Bilbo right in the middle, how did I manage to do this? it can be mended though.

And this one is gaining positions and might surpass the other composition in the end, not yet but it has potential. The big problem with this one is that there's too much dead space, and that barrel needs to be lifted, moved around and overlapped with other elements, then it might work... (and for crying out loud that hand must leave the center of the pic again, how does Bilbo manage to get in the middle all the time?)


Right now I think that overlapping is key, and unbalance, I need to break the quietness, it's time to go bold! don't you think?

Illustrating the Hobbit: Leaving Mirkwood

Bilbo estaba ahora en un túnel oscuro, flotando en el agua helada, completamente solo
He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all alone

There we go, skipping Mirkwood without mercy. The dwarfs and Bilbo finally get out of the forest, but poor Bilbo didn't notice an important detail missing in his plan :)

"He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all alone - for you cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels. Very soon a grey patch came up in the darkness ahead. He heard the creak of the water-gate being hauled up, and he found that he was in the midst of a bobbling and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing together to pass under the arch and get out into the open stream"

These are the 2 roughs I'm pondering:

This one is truer to the text and does have a confinement feel to it but I'm worried about it getting too busy, I didn't even add the barrels and Bilbo in it, on the other hand for this scene I kind of favor a long format vs. my usually loved squared formats.

This other one feels better in my eyes, it has more interesting shapes, some areas to rest the eyes and overall more possibilities, but it will only work the way I want if I manage to accentuate more the perspective and put Bilbo in the very foreground, the key will be in being able to lower the horizon line enough to make the viewer feel like floating in the water right there behind Bilbo *I think*. The only thing that I'm not sure about this one is the format, I usually love square formats but for this illo maybe a long format would be better....

I'll start playing with some line drawings tomorrow and then decide.

Illustrating the Hobbit: lanterns to the shore - pencils done

Check this out, I've just noticed about this today while merging the scans in PS, I scanned the illo in 3 parts and upside down, and somehow they make much better abstract paintings unintentionally than the finished illustration does on purpose. I have encountered feelings about this right now, excitement for the chance of strong new paintings hidden in this illustration and sadness because they're happy accidents instead something elaborated on purpose.

But the post is about the illustration itself and here it is, it's been three weeks of working on and (mostly) off on this one and now that it's done is time to move on.

I am glad for the potential it has for the final piece but I know that even when I've stick to my goals and made a finished drawing before picking up a brush it's not what it should have, it should not be focused on anything other than stating the values perfectly, but somehow I've been caught up in fiddling with tiny details instead of values (which still need some severe adjustments).

What I'm happy about is that, even if it needs some tweaks on the values, I know exactly where and how much, and even if I've gone way too far with unnecessary detail now my brain and my arm know exactly every shape and movement and it's going to be so much easier to paint it, I have a much better understanding of the image and how to control the eye flow around it.

Now a secret between us, using a kneaded eraser to lift up the graphite back to white for the lanterns is not as good an idea as it appeared to be, using white chalk over it ain't the brightest idea either...

Ok, here's the first linework that was the skeleton to all this drawing, from the moment this line work was done all my body has been urging me to stop drawing and start painting, the devilish little teresa on my shoulder kept whispering that it was more than enough to get to painting. Even if I followed the little sensible teresa advices and finished the drawing it'll be used as one more reference, it's served it's purpose to let me familiarize with the surroundings, the shapes, the values, the flow and the mood I want, but the base for the painting will be a rough line drawing similar to this one.

The palette I have in mind will range from dark blues to fuchsia unless the color thumbs get to look too weird.

But that won't happen yet, I'm going to let this one rest because I'm too much into little details about it right now and I don't think that will be of any good to the final painting, also my goals included a "finish all the drawings first, for cohesion" and I'll try to stick to that (for as long as I can :P)

Illustrating the Hobbit: decision time

Los elfos habían traído faroles brillantes a la orilla y cantaron 
the elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang

That's the sentence I had underlined during the reading and - having been in love for some years with japanese and chinese lanterns of all kinds - the image that immediately came to mind was a quiet shore full of lanterns floating on the water, lighting a bit the dark evening forest. That's one of the 3 reasons why I chose to take this scene to the next level instead of others that happen sooner in the story, but not the only one, other reasons to choose it have been that there're no characters that need to be recognizable and it's up high among the top six images that hit me hard when reading the book.

After deciding to take on this one I returned to the book and reread the whole page to be sure of all the details, somehow the image that my mind created was not true to the scene described by Tolkien, reading the description before that sentence it states that the river "was flowing fast and noisily, as mountain streams do of a summer evenings when sun has been all day on the snow far up above" also "there was only a narrow bridge of stone without a parapet" and only after that "the elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang a merry song" which means that my first vision of the image won't work, I've tried to revamp it without harming my main idea too much which was making the lanterns the main character:

- Off with the zoomed in lanterns quietly floating near the shore, since the river is running "fast and noisily" I've tried 2 approaches: a huuuuuge river wide enough to portrait running water that seems quite quiet, or a stream with jumps and more obvious flowing water. Both options makes me zoom out.
- Zooming out means that I'll have to add the bridge.
- Zooming out also means the close up on the lanterns is not an option, making them the main star will have to be done by the light effect on the river and shore rather than by the detail on them, also off with the idea of having them floating on the water unless I want them all over the place instead of close to the shore and/or bridge, the stream would carry them away, right? I've decided not to compromise on making the lanterns the main character so I'll have them floating over the water, why? why not.

I though the huge river would be better at first but now I think the running waters with falls will have more interest and also will let me have the bridge and lanterns a bit closer to the viewer.

And between the running streams I'm going to go for this one because I want to move the angle of the bridge and I like how it has more interest and depth, even if I like the water itself better on another one, but the scene will be in the late evening and the river and woods are going to be supporting characters.

These are some of the roughs that didn't make the cut:

I'm going to try to turn the cons of this illo into pros, so far:
-I'm into close ups, opening the scope feels weird, but the scene being at the end of the day gives me the chance to still tone everything down except for the area with the lanterns.
-Landscapes, big fat nemesis of mine, I hear my brains going eeeeeek! But on second thoughts it's mainly a river instead of foliage and land, I can do water, it's going to be fine...

What do you think, does my approach make sense? Will that work? I do hope so.

Illustrating the Hobbit: there's no shame in failure if it leads to success!

This week is the fourth deadline of the Hobbit project, I kind of feel guilty for not having updated on my progress at all, the reason? there's almost no progress but I'm on the way, it's taking quite some time because so far instead of the usual natural flow I'm kind of hitting against a wall, going through all the dead ends of failed ideas before getting to the right track, but I'll end up in the right track if only due to stubbornness.

After rereading the book I ended up with a pretty huge list of scenes, probably my punishment for my evil thoughts when I saw my 2 partners in crime having problems to edit their lists down to 14; here's mine, a huge 28 *blush* BUT as you can see I'm already working on editing it down and the final choices will be made after some sketches, then I'll be able to base the decision both on preference of the feeling I had when reading the book AND how well I can make it work on paper.

Once I decided to stop trying to downsize that list and just start doodling and see which ones would have more potential I though that would be it, the end to my troubles, but the thumbs have been just another kind of bump in the road, seems like reducing that list won't be easy, the scenes that where clearer in my mind and I thought were keepers have been being more challenging to define in those thumbs than others.

So I've decided to take one more step since this process seems to be based on substracting all the failures before hitting the good one. That means I've started to work on rough sketches of one of the scenes, maybe if I elaborate the images a bit more I'll had a better understanding of the scene and will be able to decide easily if it'll work on the long run or not, sounds like a plan?

But it's late and I have to leave so those first roughs will be posted tomorrow, meanwhile here are some of the thumbs, yes I know, rough doesn't even begin to define it, but I promise there are at least 6 Bilbos, 2 dragons, and 2 Bardos, even a Gandalf! Bear with me for a while please, they do make sense in my mind :)

Illustrating The Hobbit: codename BOLSÓN

Have you met Ben and Andy? This past month Ben invited Andy and me to join him for a project, illustrating the Hobbit, a challenge as exciting as terrifying, to the point that I took a whole day to think if I should join them or chicken out, but the possibilities are endless, the growth assured and honestly I've been craving a group challenge with close friends for almost 2 years now and Ben&Andy are the perfect partners in crime, so it's a yes, even if it takes me way out of my comfort zone, so far from it that I can't even see it at all, which is good.

The challenge is finishing 14 illustrations, one every 3 weeks. I started late and planned on catching up by the second mark (the 6th week), I wanted at least to have a final list of all the moments of the book I'd like to illustrate by now, but somehow I'm still rereading the book, still at the middle of it, the good news are that so far I already have 11 scenes.

Also I've just noticed that my book is in spanish and I have no idea which are the original names to most of the creatures and places, or even how are the original descriptions, so who knows how I'm going to put my list of 14 scenes up here without making a fool of myself. That's why I'm gonna tag this whole project as "Codename: BOLSÓN", because Bilbo Baggins in spanish was translated as Bilbo Bolsón, yes, don't even ask...

I didn't get to see Andy at the starting point of this journey, I turned around just on time to see his trail, filling his sketchbook with several thumbs (which I call well developed concepts) and some character designs already. Not long ago Ben took off too with some character designs. I'm still here at the starting point but will follow their lead really soon, I'll make sure they know I'm with them, maybe they won't see my trail but sure will hear me panting somewhere right behind.

Since I have no sketches to share yet I'll set up a couple of personal goals, weaknesses that I hope to improve with this project:

- Storytelling/Narration
- Character design
- Cohesion in a group of paintings - series.

Also I'm rethinking the schedule, this last year I've been reading a lot about how to create a picture book and a lot of illustrators have in common one procedure, instead of making each page from start to finish and then go to the next one they work on all the pages at the same time, advancing one stage at a time. I think that's a really smart way to keep things cohesive so that's made me rethink my approach here. Instead of 1 finished illustration every 3 weeks I´d like to spend the first ones getting a cohesive group of scenes and start painting them only when I have all the base drawings for the illustrations nailed. Then finish each illustration in full color in one or 2 weeks instead of 3, that would balance the overall schedule. Of course that's just an idea that I still have to ponder, and yes, this is me getting all cocky when I haven't even finished rereading the book and the first 3 weeks mark has already past, hmmm...

Christmas ramblings

When I woke up this morning I was complaining in my mind about the horrible rainy dark cold and early morning I'd have to face and how I should just rebel against the world by staying in bed warm and cozy under the duvet, then I thought that hey, christmas lottery day should have a sweet surprise for me so it wouldn't be that bad to get up and moving.

I didn't win the Christmas national lottery today. I honestly thought I should be one of the winners this year but alas, Lady Luck messed it up again and got lost somewhere in the way. Yet this morning - while it was still dark and the sky filled with stars and a fantabulous full moon hidden somewhere behind those rainy clouds - I was feeling like running, dancing and jumping to the rhythm of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" in my way to the subway. So I guess it's been a good day after all, right? That's the interesting thing about days, that they let you see how relative good and bad can be.

I've been thinking about my 2010 and pondering all that's happened and all that hasn't, trying to see things in perspective, how good has "good" been and how bad has "bad" been and how much they've mingled and changed coats or how much they've been totally apart from each other and true to themselves.

While doing all that thinking I've spent the last couple of weeks painting like crazy these little tokens of appreciation, I only have these 2 to show, the first and the last, the ones who haven't carried messages to so many special people yet, the ones that will carry it for you, I've loved to chat, laugh, rant and drool with you so far, I've had the chance to tighten bonds with dear old friends, met some new and enjoy lots of art, anecdotes and insight. I hope to be able to walk through this road with you all in the year to come, with the occasional stop for bed and breakfast?

Is this a Merry Christmas post? Yes it is, bear with me and my ramblings for this one, pretty please? And forgive me for not fixing that scanned crazy red but I wasn't in the mood, after all I haven't won the lottery today, remember? Now go and have fun!

Wanna make a good deed?

Some of you might know already that Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson has been making anything and everything since last september to help her dear childhood friend Cherie Stannard, since she explains it much better than I could ever do I'm shamelessly stealing part of her blog posts so you can get the idea of what this family is going through:

"Cherie is my life-long friend of 42 who rolled her Jeep in September and suffered a spinal cord injury. Cherie is currently in rehab in Atlanta and when she comes home, her brother and sister have to adapt a home and provide 24-hour care for her as she is paralyzed from the shoulders down."

One of Elizabeth many efforts has been putting together an art book full of donated works, you can see a preview of the whole book here and maybe if you like it you'll consider purchasing your own copy, $12 of each copy go to Cherie, the rest are producing costs, Blurb will take $10 off orders until Dec 31th if you use one of these codes depending on your currency: USD$: CHEER , GBP£: CHEER1 , EUR€: CHEER2 , CAD$: CHEER3 , AUD$: CHEER4

Art with Heart by Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson

Just one last thing, maybe you don't like the book, or you don't want one more art book right now, or simply don't have enough to spare from this month already tight budget, if that's the case and you still want to help Cherie you can visit Cherie's fund raising web page where you can make direct donations anytime to the Cherie Ann Stannard Special Needs Trust, or simply spread the word! Every little bit helps.

Now it's time to go back to the painting table, the second batch of illustrations is already on the making and the first one is ready to be mailed!