Stoat: it's all coming back to me...

[Stoat]

Okay, here's my story. Went to RISD in the late '70s. Ran out of money after two years. Banged around for a few years as a freelance illustrator. My best work was pretty good...but I didn't always do my best work, and I was terribly slow. But, you know, I was getting there.

Then, to pay the bills, I took a job in the art department of a research and engineering company. Not bad. Kind of fun, really. Did everything from technical illustration to publication design. Any job where you draw pictures all day is a good job, right?

A couple of years in, we got our first computer, and I was. Just. Completely. Floored. Knocked out. Blown away. Bowled over. I lost it completely. For the next twenty years, I ate, slept and breathed computers. Gave up conventional illustration completely. I got to play with the earliest versions of image manipulation software (before Photoshop!) and 3D modeling programs. Scripting and programming languages. Markup languages. Publications software. Typographical software. Director. Shockwave. Shoot, I'd play with the operating system, if that's all I had to play with. I got a reputation for figuring out new technology quickly, so I got all the best toys first. I built prototypes. I *loved* my job.

So now it's, like, twenty five years later, and I'm pushing fifty (and it's pushing back!). I'm about to quit my job and move to the UK. And...I finally have to make up my mind what I want to be when I grow up. I don't think I want to chase the technology any more. I don't have the enthusiasm for new information that I used to have. Or maybe I'm just mentally slowing. I think I want to make art again. But with a technology assist.

Anyhow, of all the forums I looked at, CA seemed the most serious and professional. So I'll put a stake in the ground here, if I may...even if concept art isn't where I end up. This morning, I dug out my last ever sketchbook. There are no dates, but I think it's about 1984. Here's the frontispiece:

[Stoat]

Here's the next page in. Obviously, I had some kind of model for the top guy. I'm guessing a magazine picture. It turned into a painting: my last full oil painting. I'll have to dig that up this morning, too.

You'll notice from the standing guys that symmetry is something I don't do well. And yet, I often choose to draw symmetrical compositions. I think my weakness there niggles at the back of my mind, you know?

That's one area where digital painting makes it so much easier: flipping the illustration to work on it backwards. You can do similar things with conventional art (shining a light through the paper and looking from the back; tracing it and flipping the tracing), but it's so much more cumbersome.

[Stoat]

Yeah, here we go. Excuse the reproduction; my scanner is busted (this would be too big for it anyhow). Sure, it's an homage to da Vinci, but mostly it's an effort not to paint his genitals. Not that I can't paint genitals, you understand. It's just that...once you've got genitals on the page, that's all anybody looks at.

Am I right? Am I right?

This is what makes the comic book guys such geniuses. All those people in tights. You can paint nudes without those terribly inconvenient winkies and thingies and such.

Huh. I like the sketch better than the painting (isn't that always the way?). The second guy is obviously derived from the same image, whatever it was. Oil on masonite panel. My favorite medium.

[Stoat]

Right. Back to the sketchbook. Next page: bird man.

[Stoat]

Next page: Puss 'n Boots in sepia wash. Not a great drawing, but I did a little oil painting from it I was very proud of. I gave it away. I gave most of my finished work away.

[toubab]

impressiove works, love how you put shades and lights on bodies!

[Stoat]

Ooo! My first comment. Thank you, toubab.

Here's the last from the sketchbook. I'm not too happy with the way I rendered the animals, but I still like the idea. I was going to make a big two-panel painting out of it, like a religious diptych. The other panel (for which there are drawings around here somewhere) was the wedding portrait of the Dish and the Spoon. The little painting is a watercolor study. I never finished it; a bigger drawing of this is as far as I got with it.

[Stoat]

Oh, god. May you live long enough to embarrass yourself this badly. This is me, around 1985.

The provenance of this image is interesting. It was a little oil-on-panel, about the size of the palm of my hand. The background is gold leaf (the one and only time I used gold leaf). I had the painting at my desk when, years later, we were loaned a color Xerox machine (back when they were a quarter of a million bucks). I blew up the image about 1,000% experimentally. This one is about three feet by three feet; you can see the seams.

Then I mounted it on foamcore stuck it on the wall. Which thoroughly pissed off...exactly the people I wanted to piss off thoroughly.

[speedysam267]

those are some great paintings, and don't worry I think everyone as made a heroic pose at least once, they just didn't have a camera and canvas around!

keep posting, and How did you do the area within the circle for the last one? is that just light hitting the little ridges made by your brush?

[Stoat]

keep posting, and How did you do the area within the circle for the last one? is that just light hitting the little ridges made by your brush?

That's the gold leaf. When I tried to burnish it on, the leaf began to rub off, so I left it. So there's a bit of the panel from below showing through on the knobbly parts.

And just make sure, when you strike your heroic pose for the canvas, you don't have a really stupid haircut!

[Fraz]

Great works man. I especially love the all pencil drawings. You are a skilled painter too.
Do you plan on going back to traditional drawing, or are you just showing us to see what people think of it nowadays?

[Stoat]

Do you plan on going back to traditional drawing, or are you just showing us to see what people think of it nowadays?

Hm. Probably both. I'm trying to psych myself up, I guess. When I hunted up the sketchbook this morning, I hadn't seen those images...since I drew them, I'll bet. I'm touching base with the last place I was at.

I've developed all kinds of technical skills since then, but I suspect my drawing ability is frozen in time. And drawing is the master skill from which all the others derive.

What I need most is to get back to life drawing, but that'll have to wait a while longer.

[zerocforever]

great skill in pencil sketching, also great in painting too
would u teach me?

zeroc sketchbook
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=108389

[MeTaL-Mike]

ohhh man you've got some awesome stuff there. great sb

[zephyri]

Wow, these sketches/works are gorgeous, the sort of work I might inspire to myself should I ever find the time to fiddle with oils. I love your pencil work, the form and light is just wonderful and I love how none of it really gets lost when you transfer to paint. The way you handle flesh in the medium is beautiful too. Fabulous and inspiring! Oh, and its great to hear of another artist who frequently gives work away too, I'm a sucker for that.

[trevor]

after reading this i just have to ask
which pieces are the recent ones? and if they are all old
you have to start again man
too good to go for so long neglecting it
ps
not tryin to give you a bunch of crap
after my pancreas gave out on me this year
ive become a bit of a ass hahaha

i would love to see more, and more recent, work from you
the man elected jesus commands it haha

[Stoat]

Awww...shoot, Trevor. You're no fun. We could've had a really good blood feud or something.

Okay! Enough with the memory lane already. It's back to the basics for this little weasel. How was your morning? Mine was beige. Very, very beige.

[Stoat]

Shoot. I was going to take this week's Spartan Camp #18 -- I need to loosen up and work faster and 50 gesture drawings seemed just the thing -- but I only got to eight before the phone rang and I got lumbered with a stupid job. Stupid clients. Stupid not-being-born-rich. I'm going to be hella busy between now and Sunday, so here's my stupid eight:

[Doomgriever]

H0ly shiet! o_O man u rock! love the birdman!! anyways about that black painting u talked about. yeah that is weird stumbled apon the same situation too, but i found 5 black paintings with the headline "5 words"... and i was like... "um..OK?!"

[Christian223]

Hello, you draw well, the best way to learn is to teach, so why not teach?, i think that would be the best choice you could make in your life... think about it. keep posting.

[Stoat]

Thanks, Christian but...teaching? Holy cow! There're kids on this site half my age who blow me away! I got some serious catching up to do...

This lady showed up on our corporate website this morning winning an award or something, and she was just so shiny and pink...like delicious candy...

[ThaHellion]

I would love to see more of your old pencil style, but newer images. I think you should try to relive the style where you have shading, and while it is a delicate looking shadow, it gives the image all it's personality. I am not sure if I described it quite right, but my favorites were the minimal shading pencil renderings.

[Stoat]

Thank you, ThaHellion. I'm itching to get back to traditional media, too. I'm in the middle of a complex move, though, and all my art stuff is packed up. It's going to be a few months, at least, until I can unpack it in a new workspace.

Until then, I figured it was a good opportunity to play with Photoshop. I've done business graphics with PS, but I've never before tried to get arty with it. I'm having loads of fun, but this doesn't really look like me.

[zephyri]

Wow, i love the look of the coffee in that cup, looks like it might spill out of the screen. ehehe. And I think, to say you've never really used it for artistic purposes that you seem to have a great handle on the ways of painting in PS. That last sketch reminds me a little of Zhu Zhu's work: http://zhuzhu.deviantart.com/

[Liam Harvey]

wow these are really good

[Perenoid]

uuuuuuuuum, amazing.

[Stoat]

I'm having totally STUPID amounts of fun playing with Photoshop. And, yes, I really did have a red velvet sailor suit like that...for about ten minutes. Then I think they realized I was going to set fire to the house in the night if they made me wear it. I was youngest; I got hand-me-downs. But god knows when that thing was handed down from -- a Victorian orphanage, by the look of it.

[Jakers]

haha your crativity is a great thing. I like it when someones personality comes right out in their work.

The birdman, I also enjoyed...what about bringing him back and doing a nice digital? I don't know exactly what your wanting to dig back into though. thanks for correcting my aweful 'beetle' spelling. Don't be a stranger, I want to see what you do in the future

[Zord]

Welcome to CA Stoat, and to the sketchbook section.

The oils are what get me, just beautiful. Not sure about that haircut though .
Hope you keep posting and updating this thread, would be cool to see the progression in a year. Cheers!

[TheBeast]

*jahmy*cooOooffeee........oh sorry, it looks so delicius^^
realy great work here, please go on.... i want to see more!