| Bio and Technique |
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Page 6 of 6 My Technique.I always find this hard to sum up as I actually don’t feel my process of working is anything special, but seeing as I am asked this week in, week out, I will try. Oil painting I started out using oils, originally on pre made canvas board. I would draw the pencil line down, put in under painting to block in the tones. Build the base colours up in acrylics, then go in with the oils. I would generally use soft, medium, very dry brushes to blend / fan the colour and establish very blended graduations. At this very wet stage, I would have to wait for bits to dry using fast drying mediums like Liquin, then use smaller brushes, for all the detail. Most if not all of my initial book covers were in oils and I managed to get an almost photoreal, old masters effect, which seemed to work well- but hellish to get dry on time!!! Acrylics & Airbrush Having a few horrible last moment disasters with oils not drying, I switched to Liquitex Acrylics, staywet palates and the damn airbrush for blending. I say damn airbrush as it seemed to rule my life for over 10 years. Yes it could do great things but was an utter pain to keep working- ironically I got well known for doing the thing I most hated using! Where oils were all juicy, wet and blendable- Acrylics were to me all dry, unblendable- but much easier to manage in a commercial sense. They were great for textures / grass / rocks etc. but somehow a bit soulless after oil paint. Some of the vivid colours were easier to get “straight out the tube” and I did have fun getting a more graphical feel, but looking back, always they felt just a means to an end. Digital Art I remember the day Pat and I bought our first Apple Mac. Utterly slow by today's meager speed monsters, but within a few days BREAKTHROUGH!!!. Using Photoshop and Painter, I could see how I could blend images, make painterly gestures, do textures and airbrush just the same- WITHOUT ALL THE HASSLE!!!. This was a great breakthrough and mostly I have never looked back. With modern technology and these great machines, it straight away suited the fast commercial world. My basic way of working today is: First I make little thumb nail sketches and get together the basic idea. I will look at my reference books, my own photography and sometimes put together in Photoshop a montage of random pictures, to establish quickly to relevant mass of objects- as they relate to each other. There are only a few artists who don’t use reference- most do. I never use photographs for the actual end piece, but my technique sometimes can look very real- especially with some of my older work Then I Draw everything on actual paper with a 2H propelling pencil, sketching out the image, often being quite tight and precise. The line is usually clean, as I will be later, digitally be making the image into sections. Then it is scanned into photoshop and I e-mail it to the client After approval, I make any changes, then begin to tonally build up the image. This mostly is done by spending a few hours ‘pathing’ out the whole image (where possible) creating layers, darkening the front, getting lighter to the back. This is the tonal perspective stage, but I will also begin to give each layer a colour tint. Having got my tonal values established, I will nudge the composition about and re-tweak the design. Considering now the colour elements, I will begin the all important “shedding light” onto each element. This can come from anywhere, maybe top right, and can be any hue. Probably I will be at the same time putting in a secondary side light, maybe half as strong possibly like a glow from another light source off to the left. When I get positive feedback about my work, it’s almost always about the way I use lighting. This to me, is just obvious, as Great Lighting = Great Atmosphere. Just look at almost all of Kev Walkers paintings, the guys the master at lighting (and great a design) but it’s the light which makes anything special... An image can have great detail and technique, but if it has no atmosphere, for me it’s dead. At this stage, I can really sense where the image is going and may radically change something, possibly even showing the client, as it was not apparent on the initial sketch. Sometimes I will panic and think it looks like a pile of cr-ap, but it’s better to sort out any problems now then get in too deep. Details and form will now be essential and key to the specifics. If the trees, for instance, have a certain type of bark, the clothing on the figure is made of a certain type of texture or the creature has a certain type of scales on it’s body- now is the time to get stuck in. I will never ever just finnish a section, but get about half way, then move on. I only finnish a bit, if I am sure it’s right, and I only know this, after a while. Often, it looks better unfinished- ironically some finished bits look too busy and I will be taking them out. I just hate paintings that are all busy and have too much detail- I have done this myself and can look just like a Christmas Tree. This is why I only finnish the individual sections, at the end. As I said before, you can still radically do some serious changes- even at the closing stages. Don’t feel bad if you take out a bit that took hours to do, it was essential journey to now know what “to do” Sometimes that elusive bit only comes to me, by a process of elimination. This is where computers are great. I have a thing about too many colours- I hate multi colored pictures, other artists have sometimes said I can be too monochromatic, this is often true, but to me some colours look just wrong and I would rather just put in grey and it feels right than chuck in loads of colours and it look wrong. Colour is an area I still need to work on, it’s all about confidence and experimentation, but all in good time!- There is often a euphoric end stage, when It’s starting to come together, when you feel this, your almost there. I will flatten the whole image and just instinctively put bits of light here and there, then somehow there is a point when it’s... over.I am asked sometimes “how do you know when to stop?” For me there is a point where the image just seems to be where I wanted it to be and as I am artistically a restless kind of person, I just want to move on. There is also the time issue. Mostly I am working to a schedule and literally have to begin the next piece and my head has already moved on to the next challenge! We all find our own voice eventually, in truth I am still trying to find mine, and is quite rightly is an on going process. But there are some things which work better than others and act as foundations. It may be I will soon find another way to work for it’s good to stay open to new ways of expression and methods- this keeps us fresh and forward looking. My favorite contemporary artists (relevant to Magic) are Todd Lockwood, Kev Walker, Daren Bader, Mark Zug and Donato Giancola- all who have fantastic technique and seem to have a very recognizable style. Anthony Waters can draw and concept the most amazing things and some of his paintings are just off the scale in ideas. I also like comic book artists like Glen Fabry and Carl Critchlow who use line in such a supreme way, all these guys make me drool with envy!!!
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