Last Minute Panic

Are you familiar with Bill Watterson’s Calvin&Hobbes?

Do you remember that strip where Hobbes asks Calvin whether he already has come up with an idea for something he should be doing, and Calvin’s retort is that you have to be in the right mood? When Hobbes asks what mood is that Calvin goes “last minute panic”.

Well I’ve been in last minute panic mode for over a week. Painting like a possessed woman.

Painting and ripping and restarting and layering paint like there were no tomorrow.

Disregarding hours of work in 15 minutes by hitting full blast what once were mild dark areas with a brush loaded with thick dark paint, mercilessly.

Removing masking tape (which BTW managed to take with it some of my hair - yes, the gum in the hair nightmare come true way after grade school) just to realize I wanted more darks hence laying down some more masking tape.

After taking this photo yesterday those darks have expanded up the neck to the jaw and under the chin.

Last minute panic. What a ride. And loved each second of it.

Now onto the next one J

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 :)

Last project of 2010? maybe!

I can't remember last time I painted in bulk like this, but I'm sure I've never done more than 4 in this way, I'm ridiculously excited about this!

This past sunday I finally came up with a concept I liked which, as usual, had nothing to do with the original idea, soon enough I had 3 sketches that has been edited very little. So I have 3 designs that will be painted in n cards, and of course I want to make 3 extra ones for me to keep them, will I? depends on how tired I get of painting them.

Lately I'm realizing that I enjoy more and more the preparation process, a couple of years ago I'd let a lot of ideas undone just because I'd grind too much through the pre-work, now it's quite different, it's becoming not just a preparation for the final work but a preparation of my mind state too, getting me in the right mood for painting, does that sound too weird? have you gone through something like that too?

This time it's made me try an alternative to saving a crisp edge around the illustrations with tape, somehow the last tape I bought doesn't work well, it either doesn't stick well to the paper letting the water run beneath it or tear the paper off when I remove it, the other one I have is great for stretching but not for saving white paper 'cos when you remove it it leaves a lot of yellowish sticky gum *yuck!*, so this morning I decided to simply use masking fluid, then realized I 'd had to freehand the straight lines and with masking fluid once you put the brush to paper it's done for good or bad, unless you want to wait for it to dry and remove it all, so I've put myself to the task and found myself checking against the window light if the lines where straight.

What's happened is that the first time I've seen a sloppy one I've gone over it again trying to fix it, the result... let's say that it's like that moment when you know you must stop adding more colors to a wash but you just can't and end up overworking it at best, yep, I'd love to say "lesson learned" but it's not, I just couldn't let them alone. I hope that, after all the fiddling I've done, they end up looking good but I won't know until the pics are finished and the mask removed.

So, right now this is the first batch of 6 ready to be painted tomorrow and hopefully cut the paper for the next batch, remember this, I now predict that the first one of each batch will be the fresher, probably the second and third will be the best ones, and the last three the average ones, shouldn't it be like that painting in groups of 6? have I mentioned how excited I am about this? :D if they don't decide to go a different way I plan a back to basics in these ones.

BTW, do you have a favorite brand of masking tape? wondering if I can find around something inexpensive and that gets the work done, I thought I had the perfect one all these years and now it comes and fails horribly...

Baby's first value study

Today I've just tilted the drawing table, taped an A3 paper to it and made a value study of yesterday's quick sketch, guess what, it finally looks like her! Could it be more finished? yes, quite a lot more, but I don't think it's needed, it's served its purpose already.

After spending almost 3 hours working on this, studying every plane and shape of her head, I feel like I have a much better understanding of her facial features than I did before, drawing values really force you to pay much more attention to all the little details and to realize what's where. And maybe when I make the next one I'll have to swallow these words :)

I don't feel like starting the color sketches yet so probably there'll be more quick sketches and value studies in the near future, though I feel much more comfortable already, even with this sore shoulder, I could do with a massage, volunteers?

One more warm up sketch

Better but not there yet, though it's already resembling her. This one deserves another attempt, without the time restrain since, in an attempt to loosen up my arm and wrist, I'm doing these pretty fast, for me anyway, I know people who can get finished colored sketches in 10 minutes but I'm not one of them.

Things to have in mind for the next one: the eye is still a bit large but not too much, and probably what's making the huge difference is the shape of the eyelids, they should have a bit more roundness.

I think it's time to start alternating these roughs with more finished drawings that'll allow me to define the shapes better, and following my friend Ben's advice I'll work on those bigger, probably that'll help.

Baby portrait operation: face

This is the first attempt I make at sketching her face. The bad thing about it is that it doesn't look like her AT ALL, the good thing is that ...it looks like a baby? an old baby with a bit of a mustache?

On the bright side I think I know where is the problem/s, I did the eyes too big, moved the angle of the nose and - trying not to add too many shadows to avoid an old look - I just lost the roundness of her cheeks and forehead, not to mention the mustache.

All that should help for the next one, right? or maybe I'll just create a brand new human being mwahahahaha!

Shaking the rust away

Have you ever got that mix of excitement and fear when someone ask you about a possible comission in the manner of "could you make it look like *insert here one of your previous works*"?

I recently have and it's kind of scary, I don't like that feeling because I know that any piece that I begin with fear won't flow, won't work at all, so I've decided to take action and just get familiar with the subject, I'm lucky enough to have several pictures of this little sweetie around so why not, right?

So I'm gonna aproach it in different ways:
a)warm up with some gesture drawings of the baby, full body.
b)sketches of her facial expressions to get familiar with the subtleties.
c)value sketches, the goal is to get so used to her correct volume and proportions that it comes natural.
d)color swatches and color sketches to see which ones suit her better and getting confident to use them boldly.

Sounds like a plan? It does to me and after drawing this first gesture I feel more confident already.

I'll share the wip of this process, for better or worse, wish me luck!

Halloween's around the corner

And little Franken jr. is eager to go trick or treating around the neighborhood dressed up as Jack Sparrow, because every kid wants to be Jack Sparrow! I want! you know I'm five

This concept was edited quite a bit since it came to my mind so here are some steps for your entertainment:

Nobody can deny that when I say I doodle or draw rough sketches I mean it, reeeeeeally doodly and rough first concept, at that time I had a version of Mama Estein dressed up as the little red riding hood in mind too

The idea at first was having her taking little Franken around the neighborhood, with some creepy fences and houses silhouettes in the background, but she was totally looking like Marge Simpson so... off with her!

And as you can see the idea of some metal fence surrounding the blocked shape of the background remained until I was half done with the illustration, at that point I was thinking on using some white for them to make them look like carved shapes that melted with all the white surrounding the main theme, that was edited out too, as soon as I was carried away by the dark night sky and decided I didn't want anything to compete with it.

My favorite part of this illustration? painting those dreadlocks! I want to do that again, maybe a series of monsters dressed up as Jack Sparrow is in the making... or maybe not!

Muffin top illustrated, take one

Lately I haven't been very productive but my friend Angie has put a stop to that asking me to make some illustrations, so I'm having fun doodling, inking and playing with them in photoshop.


She's starting an awesome fashion blog called Fashionista Mileurista (it's in spanish but I'm pretty sure with time she'll make it available in both spanish and english, go take a look!) and wants some illustrations to go with the articles, since one of the images she wants is a muffin top and I was already in the funny-faces mood I came up with this one that may or may not be suitable, either way I did have so much fun with it!

Now I'm thinking that I'll probably play a bit more with this image on paper, with watercolors, to see how it looks.



I've promised to make a little smiling face for her Twitter icon too which hopefully is up to par with the ones she made years ago for mine, I like the final linework but was worried because once resized to the actual tiny icon size it wasn't working, a cropping was needed but I still wasn't happy (click on the image to full view it and you'll see the cropped icon actual size) and after taking a look at it she agreed too.

So this is currently in the middle of a changing process, as much as I like the idea of having her inside her bag that will most probably be edited out, and I need to figure how to keep that scarf in, happily floating around and still not interfering or getting the face reduced.

So revamping the current icon is already in my to-do list and -since I've been playing with styles for the blog illus- I'll probably give a shot to the idea of a more realistic detail of a muffin top seen from behind too (such as the rough sketch on the left of the page), in graphite/charcoal and watercolors.


What do you think? quirky and crazy fun or serious and realistic?

Time to resume the door front painting

I know, I know! I haven't been painting much these past couple of months, baaad me!

So now it's time to finish the detail of the romanesque entrance, it's taking forever to be done, and at this point it's already taken control and I'm just following, struggling won't do any good to it at all, right?

This is how it looks right now, some of the paint is still wet but the overall idea of how dark the darks are going to be is already clear:



Thoughts to have in mind during the next painting sessions:

- Don't loose the highlights! it's being so easy to add too much of those siennas while building the texture.

- Check if there's some masking fluid on the area you're going to paint next, it's not viewable at all and I'm not sure if I want it in all the places I put it at first seeing the big value leap I'm getting in those shaded areas, so it's time to TOUCH before adding paint.

- Don't get lost in the texture! It's the global look the one that has to look good, don't fall in love with the brushwork, don't go overboard and make it busy all over the place! I can see already how and where I'll have to dull and tame some areas and it's going to be a difficult step for me, I'm not the best at editing.

Here are some close ups to some of the areas that are more developed right now, click on them if you want to see them big:







Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5

Just for fun

This morning I've been painting a bit more of the church portal after almost two months without working on it, since it's starting to feel as if the whole blog is filled only with this painting I'll just add a link to a detail of today's progress.

So instead of today's painting session I'll post some of the other stuff I've been doing during march, this is my brother's birthday gift, an iPad! Well, not the real thing since it's not available here yet, but an arts&crafts bank version with some money.

Yeah, I know, looks like a school project but I had so much fun making it!

Darks on the bottom area

I don't know why but I've gone darker this time, what I meant as mid values are almost the same value of some older darks, and the darks on the lower body of the dog are deeper and with a lot more of blues than the ones I painted in previous days.

The fact that I went one point darker doesn't bother me at all, after all the goal is getting all them dark enough, but when I come back to this area I have to be careful and tame a bit all that intense blue.

This is starting to feel like a neverending wip, sorry!

Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5

Building some shapes on the door-front watercolor

I've been trying different things all over this painting because this time I've chosen a palette full of colors that I don't often use (plus some old friends of mine) and I wasn't sure what I could expect from them.

What I can already say about this piece is that it's looking nowhere near to what I had in mind when I started sketching, that's why I've made so many trial and error, but as soon as I've let go and just follow the path it's taking me through I've begun to enjoy each minute of the trip, sometimes it's better to let it do its thing.

Usually I would build up a painting slowly layering pure colors, getting crisp and clean edges, but for this one that didn't seem to be working so I've decided to just block in some darks, hoping those let me simplify and see my design clearly, because I was stressing too much about shapes and pigments and temperatures and what not.

So far laying the dark areas first is being really helpful though I already know they're going to need at least one more layer, they are not as dark as they should be and it'll be more obvious when I introduce more mid tones but so far I'm focusing on getting them rich in color, clean and with texture, hopefuly I stay focused and don't mess temperatures.

My main concern is that the warm areas, filled with ochers and reds, look lighter in value than the blue/violet ones at first sight but they are not, they're tricky when it comes to value and I've found myself being sort of self-indulgent with the rich colors and ignoring their value strength, gotta be more focused and careful about that when I start with the second layers.

This is a detail of the middle of the painting, I've been thinking a lot about that crisp shadow there, it's dark and rich and as hard edged as I love, but I'm not sure I want that kind o finish there, I would have softened it already if I wouldn't miss to get this kind of sharpness in this painting, so far I think I'll have time to soften it if needed when the painting is more developed but I probably will have to do so, what do you think? Maybe getting a look closer to the one in the upper hand?

Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5