ccsears sketchbook

[ccsears]

someone asked me to start doodling around with massive comic book hero/villain proportions. i.e. if loomis' heroic figures are about 8 heads tall, these are going to need to be about 10 heads tall and 5 wide.

i've got another couple in progress. but here's the one i scribbled out earlier tonight. my process is pretty simple--silhouette doodling in painter 9, then print it out and use prismacolor and drafting vellum to draw over the silhouette. the vellum i use is called duralar--prismacolor erases from it cleanly.

i need to work on my foot drawing from imagination... most characters have some kind of footwear, so it's not that big of a deal since i understand the masses. but still... i'm kind of annoyed at myself for not finishing it off like i should.



Voraz thanks for looking, man. the class i'm taking demands a lot of painting in sketchbooks, so there will hopefully be a lot more updates.

[JS Neo]

Wonderful drawings and paintings!! Love your mum painting demo, really helpful for beginners like me One question, what are you working as now? You seems to be taking alot of classes now and then. How do you manage to squeeze them into your worklife?

Anyway great sb, going to subscribe to it..

[ccsears]

i warmed up with a monochrome sketch first (not shown here)

then i did this one. i've expanded my basic palette to:

burnt sienna
burnt umber
ultramarine
raw umber
yellow ochre
cad red hue
alizarin crimson hue
ivory black
titanium white

there are nuances to each of these colors, but i still think of them mostly as red, yellow, blue. maybe burnt sienna is more of an orange, i guess. for figure work, i really don't need anything else--maybe viridian, but that's about it.

i'm kind of happy with this one. not because it's a good drawing, but because i feel like i made some progress mixing colors. i didn't use any cad red in this one, and i think i kind of suffered a little because of that. i've noticed that in most naturally lit rooms, the shadow-light tends to be a very dullish purple. i think i use ultra and crimson and white to get the approximate purple and then kill it with yellow ochre or raw/burnt umber. that rough combination has a north light feel as long as it doesn't have too much crimson in it.


then i switched seats and did this one. made some more progress by focusing on the figures lit side. tried using mostly cad red and yellow ochre plus white for a baseline. then i neutralized it in various ways with black,raw umber, burnt umber, etc. some of the more orange stuff might have a little burnt sienna in it too. raw umber and a little yellow ochre works well for dirty blond colored hair. the composition in this one is stronger and the drawing is better too.


Mydrako for the past five and a half years, i've worked as a laser and electro-optical engineer on the USAF's Airborne Laser Program. I've had to travel and relocate many times, but i'm now mostly in the Mojave desert helping the USAF try to shoot down missiles. I have a security clearance, etc. the whole nine yards.

My art education is pretty weird. Of course I drew a lot when I was little. And i've studied Japanese since 1991, lived abroad in Japan twice. I didn't study art in college until after I finished my engineering degree--and then i was a sculpture major. (this is back in illinois) I moved to california for my job. There I met Mark Westermoe. I saved up two years' worth of vacation time to take his five-week long Master's Program, and it really cleared up almost all of my loose ends in drawing. Over the next two or three years, I studied with him on the weekends. He gave me a key to the school and i slept on the model's couch in a sleeping bag and painted friday through sunday. the big japanese paintings and most of the rubouts were done independently after mark's school closed down for good, but they were done with a lot of good feedback and technical guidance from mark beforehand. he was a very good friend and an excellent teacher.

currently i take class with Nathan Fowkes once per week. I also usually go to a couple of uninstructed life drawing/painting sessions as time permits on the weekends. For a few weeks, I also studied independently with John Watkiss, another excellent teacher, but he isn't teaching at the moment because he has had a death in his family. finally, i also know mike butkus who works in hollywood as a movie poster comp artist. i'm nottaking class with mike, but he helps me develop my portfolio, shows me some tricks of the trade, and gives me good feedback. mike had the studio upstairs at mark's old school and it was incredible to see him turning out movie poster designs night after night after night. think harry potter, i robot, polar express, hellboy, spiderman 1 2 3, superman returns, robocop, etc. etc. etc. he is responsible for a ton of those sketches and a good deal of finished work.

http://www.mikebutkus.net look at all of his stuff and you will be blown away.

i supplied a lot of hard work and perserverance. i went through about 180 pages of quicksketch in san francisco, san jose and los angeles while travelling for work just as preparation to study with mark. and by preparation, i mean finding out where my mental blocks were. it took almost no time at all for mark to help me fix my drawing. once the mental organization is there, everything opened up.

then i translated a 70 page japanese short story, storyboarded a scene from it, shot reference photos and did the rubouts. the two big 30x40's were done in wichita, ks while i was working out there in 2005-06. painting has taken longer because i never did it before meeting mark; i was always more of a drawer/sculptor. but mark knew how to guide me into that as well and i'm very grateful. Nathan's class helps me get my color straight and forces me to put in the quick painting mileage that i need. he also has a great perspective on the artistic learning process.

anyway, i consider myself extremely lucky to have met the people i have. these people are legendary in the illustration field. but i also give myself a little credit for being willing to put in the work necessary to make the most out of learning from them.

so that's as much of my biography as i'm going to put on the web...

[SMILEFACE]

seems like your able to catch or present the mood or feeling of the figure really well im glad i dropped in

[ccsears]

here's another 10x5 head sketch. the placement of the head/neck is a little off for the pose. should look "farther back" so he appears more "super" and confident.

anyway. fun to screw around with.

went over to mike butkus' studio today and posed for poster sketches for an upcoming movie... then i was lucky enough to get a firsthand demo of his sketching. very, very cool stuff, and he does it unbelievably quickly. i would post it here, but i'm sure there's risks in doing that. all i can say is CHECK OUT HIS STUFF ONLINE. http://www.mikebutkus.net



grandmassa Thanks. i'm glad i'm forcing myself to paint and try new things. mood is really important most of the time. sometimes more design-oriented work doesn't let you play around with it--they usually want something more like a blueprint. but anyway, once i have the basics down, i try to keep edgar allen poe in mind--start with the effect you want the viewer/reader to feel and organize everything in your work to maximize it and minimize distractions from it. that little nugget is what lets us all break the rules and get away with it.

[JS Neo]

Woww, Mike Butkus' work really kick ass !!... It is good that you can learn from such a great master of illustration... Too bad there isnt any master in my country (at least I havent seen any that is offering classes)

[brunopicinini]

dude really, your SB is not only REALLY good but it is also full of insights and comments that helps one to better understand what he is doing and how to better study/draw or whatever!

really, I really like when you post some studies and say what you had in mind when you did that (like that one with the tracing paper where you show anatomy, composition, etc ...) really good!

have you ever taught about becoming a teacher?? I mean it hehe, I think you are really good at simplifying and make your point across!

and about your bio that you described quickly, maybe you are lucky, but you can give yourself way more credit for what you have aqcuired ... when I read the story that you sletp in the couch on the school and painted from friday to sunday, that made me put some stuff on perspective.
Like once, a Brazilian player called "Zico" was hitting A LOT of free kicks on matches. Then one journalist went to him and said "So Zico, you are hitting almost every single shot that you have. You are pretty luckly lately". Zico just smiled and said "Yeah, it is quite funny, the more I practice, the luckier I get".

please keep sharing and inspiring!
5 stars from me

Best regards
Bruno

[Mr-Joe]

Great sketchbook, you have some really great work in here.


I'm wondering if you can explain this:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...7&d=1186544764

I'm guessing thats oil's, I'm curious how you lay out the colors like that, that looks much easier to paint with, with all the possibilities laid out like that.

[ccsears]

Mydrako Mike's stuff really does kick ass. I went over there again today and learned a lot. Some of it was really technical--how to anticipate your value range with prismacolor and photoshop--and some of it was about approach/effect big-picture type stuff. You will never meet a nicer guy at the top of his game.

I can't post replies to questions without including some of my own stuff...

this was done from a thumbnail sized sketch in USA Today about a year and a half ago...

I was experimenting with turpenoid and black prismacolor on tracing paper.


this is from a rolling stone magazine cover. i redrew it much, much larger freehand and then reinvented the lighting. (I highly recommend doing this at least once as an exercise. if you know the planes of the face, it won't be too hard, if not.... well, it will teach you what you need to work on.)


bruno thanks. brush/pen/etc mileage is the great equalizer. mike butkus is the source of the 10000 hours quote a few pages back. that is literally how long it takes to get good enough at anything to do it professionally. mike is gifted to begin with, but he puts in hours at the drafting table that would make me beg for mercy. but, if you love what you do... 10,000 hours can be a wonderful learning experience.

mr-joe my teacher, mark westermoe, was taught by fred fixler who was taught by frank j.reilly. so this stuff goes back about 100 years to the roots of the golden age of american illustration--norman rockwell, jc leyendecker, nc wyeth, etc.

reilly's method in teaching figure painting was to actually have his students mix up whole piles/tubes of colors beforehand. in other words, you would mix up 10 values of cad red/crimson/burnt umber, 10 values of yellow ochre/burnt umber/black, 10 values of neutral gray, and ten values of flesh tone (mixture of the previous three) BEFORE you would even start to paint. you would store these in tubes or jars and bring them to class.

if you do this, painting becomes much easier. because value plays such a big role in painting, you learn how to deal with it effectively by doing this.

i knew this and understood it, but i needed to modify it for different circumstances. after all, i wasn't painting a nude indoors under a warm spotlight.

my approach was to think of three primaries--red, blue yellow. at night, these would change to something duller and cooler like indian red, yellow ochre and payne's gray. i mixed all the combinations of the paints and then took them from light to dark values to figure out what was going on. by limiting myself to this very limited palette, harmony was much easier to achieve.

because i was working in an "indirect" approach, my underpainting/rubout had most of the necessary value light/dark information and drawing/placement already figured out. the only thing left was figuring out whta color to put at each value-position. because i worked in layers, it was easy to get that painterly richness and vibrancy.

anyway, because i was halfway decent at drawing but totally inexperienced at painting, this helped a lot. different people start out in different ways. if your drawing is good, but you have problems or fears with color, i recommend this approach.

thanks for stopping by, you guys, i like to think i'm passing on good information that i didn't have access to when i was younger.

[Mr-Joe]

thanks for stopping by, you guys, i like to think i'm passing on good information that i didn't have access to when i was younger.

Absolutely, theres tons of good information in your posts, and thanks very much for the reply.

Could you explain how you lay it out? like for example.

---Red--Blue--Yellow--White

Mix

red --()-- --()-- --()-- --()--

Blue --()-- --()-- --()-- --()--

Yellow -()-- --()-- --()-- --()--

White --()-- --()-- --()-- --()--



or is it more like:


---------Red---Blue---Yellow--

Mix

+++white ()-- --()-- --()--

++white -()-- --()-- --()--

+white --()-- --()-- --()--

Then the same with black?? -

I'm sorry if I'm asking too much and I can understand if you don't explain this.
I'm sure I can figure it out with a little experimentation but I figured I'd ask anyways.

Thanks a bunch for your time. ... .. also you can use turpenoid with pencils? do you have to use a thick paper?

[Kan Muftić]

No!
I forbid you to be so good.
Stop.
Now.

[ccsears]

Chupacabra Thanks, I still have a long way to go.

Mr-Joe here's a lot of information:
correction--i used payne's gray, dioxazine purple, light red, raw sienna, and titanium white. eventually i used prussian blue and ivory black to deepen the background.

for the photo of my palette, i was looking for a good "base color" for flesh. by using velaturas and glazes (see the acryllic demo of my mom a few ages back) i could modulate it and make it warmer or cooler.

as i said before, most skin types can be painted with the primaries--one red, one yellow, and one blue to dull it or do cool shadows. for nightime i used the colors i listed above--dull, nighttime primaries.

the rows of my palette are:

from the top row:
payne's gray + white
payne's gray + dioxazine purple + white
payne's gray + light red + white
payne's gray + raw sienna + white
payne's gray + dioxazine purple + light red + white
payne's + dioxazine + raw sienna + white
payne's + dioxazine + light red + raw sienna + white--> everything.

if i remember correctly, the third row from the bottom looked like a good starting point for me--payne's + dioxazine + light red. payne's gray is usually just premixed with a tiny bit of ultramarine and a lot of black. all of these colors were the normal student grade winsor & newton stuff.

---------------------------------

another popular palette for learning how to paint is black red yellow. my advice to you is to use ivory black, alizarin crimson, and yellow ochre. i saw a friend using this in his painting class.

before you start painting from the model, before the model even arrives, you should mix up four extra colors:

1) black + ochre = dull green
2) black + a little white = light grey but will appear very blue on your canvas next to everything else
3) black + crimson = deep violet
4) crimson + ochre = orange

mix up "piles" of these colors just like you would squeeze them out of the tube. it will save you time when you're painting rather than wasting it remixing them from scratch for every brushstroke.

NOTES:
1) if you look at most in-class paintings of models under incandescent lights, you will notice that skin tones for the average caucasian are very orange, but dulled a little so that they don't look like they have a fake tan.learning to mix this orange-ish skin color is a very important first step in studio painting.

2) use your "blue" or "green" to neutralize most colors and create your halftones. probably mix green and orange and blue to get your shadow-side stuff. the blue will help if you have outside sky light bouncing around the room. otherwise shadows will appear pretty warm form the incandescent light.

3)IMPORTANT. a very big lesson to learn: you have two ways to render form--color and value. always, always, always, try to mainly use color to turn your form before you try to do it by adding white. the reason for this is that using white gobbles up your potential value range; once you use it, you can't go any lighter or brighter. also, think about painting something like a shiny piece of fruit like a grape or an orange--if you want that shiny highlight to "pop" it needs to be set against something darker. most "highlights" are not on glossy objects so much. skin doesn't always shine like that. so be very restrained with using white to turn form. under most lighting conditions, put a little more warmth in the cheeks, gray out a male's jaw, put more red in the hands, etc. etc. etc. look at the acryllic sketches above. they're not great, but you don't see a ton of white turning the forms. treat white like your secret weapon. use it for the big dramatic effect or the finishing touches, use it sparingly on the more ordinary stuff.

[AztcFireFlower]

Explanations are nice and clear. Reminds me how much I miss painting.
Mike is pretty amazing. Learned alot from him, too. You're making amazingly fast progress in the color department. Not surprising.

See you in sketch class.

[Mr-Joe]

Thanks a bunch sears, I really really appreciate you taking the time to explain all that.

[Newbs]

f#cking awesome sketchbook man! I love the diversity of styles and subjects you got going on. really appreciate the eye studies from page one.

[ccsears]

this is a link to a demo on turp/prismacolor pencils.
[URL="http://www.visualfulfillment.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemi d=15"]http://www.visualfulfillment.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemi d=15URL]

carlos huante also uses a turp/prismacolor technique.
http://www.carloshuanteart.com/
go to the gnomon workshop and you can order a creature drawing dvd that shows it in detail. materials matter. some kinds of tracing paper don't work well. duralar or duralene work best (drafting mylar/acetate)


these are just more character sketches i did this afternoon really quick. i'm still trying to get a feel for what kind of character _____ wants me to work on so i whipped these out just to get some feedback and direction from him.



Aztc Thanks, Nathan has lit a fire under my butt so i've come to the point where i just gotta push through what's uncomfortable to make some progress. will see you at qs. the sunday long poses might be good next term--they're supposed to be all costumed.

Mr-Joe No problem. hope it helps. if i was working in oil, i'd do a black-red-yellow to show what i mean, but that stuff is all packed away because i will be moving shortly.

Newbs Thanks. keep in mind though that before the features can be placed, you need to have a good understanding of the masses of the head. by the time you understand that, you will understand how to place the eye in it's socket. eyes are also good practice in learning how to group shadow shapes. also good practice in subtlety--the shapes of the whites of the eyes reveal emotion. There is one good book out with absolutely shitty drawings but great information--The Artist's complete GUide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin. He draws weird, but the subtle differences in facial expression are explained very well. For that reason, I highly recommend the book--just don't waste your time copying his drawings for practice.

[ccsears]

did these tonight. did about 20 more too, but they sucked badly. these are the last 4 of the session. after three hours of struggling in vain to adapt my acryllics to 5min sketches, i resorted to this. these poses were about 10 minutes long, but i typically finished these in 7 so i didn't overwork them.

this is the downside of using acrylics--they dry too fast without medium. nice for anything longer than 15-20 minutes, but really tough on anything shorter. i guess that's why most people use watercolor for those.

anyway. i wanted to paint opaquely, and i know i can do it. but i just can't do it this fast. semitransparent works all right though. i guess the faster i paint, the more transparent and washy i have to paint. i'll figure it out one of these days.

black and white acrylic in a 5x7inch scrapbook.
page1

page2

page3

page4

[DennisCurrie]

Nice work. Cross-hatching is great fun with the pen, isn't it! Thanks for posting.

[ccsears]

5-10 minute figure quickpaints in acrylic are pretty nerve-wracking. this was done at a long-pose session at LAAFA in Los Angeles today. The session was 5 hours long. It was pretty productive--I did the acrylic painting, drew another red conte and white portrait (not shown), did two quick head drawing demos for a friend on her newsprint pad, and did another quick pencil portrait lay-in. The big suck is that most of the other painters grab most of the spots for the whole five hours, so I can't switch seats once I finish something. (And some of the old-timers can be pretty cranky and territorial and uptight about really minor shit...but that's another story.)



the drawing, likeness, and finish are nothing special. what makes me happy is just experimenting with new colors on the palette and learning how far i can push certain combinations. today was the first time i used permanent rose (magenta or quinacridone red) and cad orange in a figure painting. just having an excuse to screw around on the disposable palette and figure out new ways to make skin tones, modulate them warm and cool, turn them into shadows, etc. is a lot of fun right now. when i finally get back to doing more finished paintings in oil, I think I will have more confidence with color, react more spontaneously to my first impressions, and be able to pull off some more subtle effects than i can with normal drawing.

Dennis Yeah, it's a lot of fun. unforgiving sometimes, but fun. Joseph Clement Coll, Chrarles Dana Gibson, and Franklin Booth are my 3 favorite pen and ink artists. Having no "soft" edges and only two pure tones to work with really forces you to think outside of the box. By the way, I looked at your sketchbook two. Some very nice ink work in there too. Will try to leave comments next time.

[ccsears]

i meant too, not two. i iz a gud riter wen i tri reel hard.

[SMILEFACE]

m r ducks no a r o s a r m r ducks

[HunterKiller_]

Beautiful new works!
The B&W acrylics are wonderful, especially the face closeup.

Nice to see these comic book style characters, too.

[ccsears]

Stuff from Nathan Fowkes' class tonight... The model was wearing a very red dress and head-thingy. There were two lights on her--one incandescent and one withg a blue gel-filter over it. The background drapery was golden colored.

Anyway, this was the big week where we started working in full-range palette. A good chance to use pthalo blue for a change.

cool vs. warm. i accidentally hunched up the gesture, but the colors work. this photo is not too good though.

cool vs. warm again. bad composition in the background, but some things worked all right.

this photo sucks and is much too dark. got bored with the blue background so I edited what i saw to make it gold. kept the cool side-light on the face.

tried substituting pthalo green to use as a complement to all the red...



Mike Butkus at work... I posed for some hand/lighting/gesture reference for him, and he let me watch him work all weekend. Eye-opening experience. Mike's a great guy.


this is some reference i shot of myself for a little monthly illustration blog some classmates of mine are running. had to wear the baseball hat to keep the hair outta my face. If it gets finished, i'll post it. In the meantime, I'm laughing my ass off at myself. Every illustrator should have tons of photos of himself doing all kinds of weird shit.


Spect Massa Gr. That made my day. Thanks.
Hunterkiller Thanks. Just bobbing and weaving. Can't stay still for too long or I get bored with myself.

[ccsears]

1) YA-10B, a two-seater variant of the A-10, probably for testing and training. This is a retired bird parked in front of the base museum.

took this afterwards


2) These are concrete munitions bunkers as seen from the parking lot at work. The Angeles Forest and mountains are in the background.

The active USAF bombers have all been tested adjacent to where i work. But, as the saying goes, I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of XXXXXXX at Edwards AFB--hence no matching photo.

as my security manager reminds me often--the last thing i need is an 18 year old pointing a loaded M-16 at my neck.

3) the inside of my little 2002 Hyundai Accent. poor car has been through a lot with me.

[ccsears]

I showed up early for the long pose session, so I was able to get a good seat and convince the regulars to try something new and use a red color gel on the light and a white backdrop. Made it a lot more fun than usual, starting to explore my colors more with less hesitation.

palette:
cad red light hue (napthol)
ultramarine
alizarin crimson
burnt umber
ivory black
titanium white
cad yellow deep
yellow ochre.




finished the first one before noon, finished this by 1:30pm.

same palette, still trying to see how much cad red i can use and still pull off a decent read.

still a lot of fun. had a good day.

[Diphallia]

poor car
What's really up with the bombing?

[ccsears]

i can't remember if i posted this before... if i did, my apologies.

these are from a class at the gnomon workshop i took with john brown.

you can see his fine art stuff at http://www.johnbrownfineart.com/

and his older commercial stuff
http://www.figuresandfocus.com


Diphalia--thanks for looking. I can't talk about military shit online (or in person either). Edwards AFB is a flight test center, so they usually don't do any weapons testing. mostly it's fake dummy bomb testing for accuracy and making sure the bomb doesn't hit the wing on the way down, etc. i work on a missile defense laser program (try googling "airborne laser" and look for pictures, or try "ABL"). They do shoot that into a big test device on the ground in the hangar, but i can't say anything more than that. it's a weird job, not a lot of fun most of the time, but i do get to see some interesting shit.

[ccsears]

not all that quick, but i still can pull these two off in about 3.5-4 hours. a nice relaxed pace. i showed up early to set up a blue light in front, a gold shiny curtain behind with an incandescent on it as a kind of rim light (from where i was sitting at least.)

anyway.
the first one (head) usually takes longer because i'm figuring out my palette.



the second one (full figure) is usually very quick and loose. usually done in under 50 minutes or so since i don't have to "guess" so much.



These are influenced color-wise by a painting or two I saw of Max Turner's.

i'm close to having some more stuff to post from imagination. will see how it turns out soon.

[ccsears]

Did this for ______________ as part of the reference for his upcoming instructional DVD. (sorry for the low-res, but i'm just coverin' my butt).

So the basic idea was to get the proportions in a thumbnail (not shown) then do a blow up of that with the same proportions (also not shown). Then this is like an intermediate stage. From here, we'll start playing around with design motifs and devices, emblems, etc. Anyway, sending e-mails back and forth took too long, so i just went over to his place and nailed this and another design in about an hour. This tightening up took about another 45 minutes drinking coffee in la crescenta.

Also had a good time over at John Watkiss' house. His paintings are awesome. Played bass for the first time in about 2 years. Some really heavy conversation about very profound ideas that aren't for public consumption here, but suffice it to say that there are some very valuable gems of truth underneath his personality and circumstances.

Also met Max Turner again passing through somewhere.

Man, I had a really good weekend. Hope the same for all of you anonymous viewers out there.

[Howie]

I really like your oil paintings. I just started painting this semester and your stuff is inspiring to look at.