James Gurney at RIT

Illustrator James Gurney spent a few hours with us today at RIT. We were fortunate to hear him lecture on the history and practices of Plein Air painting, followed by a drawing demo, and a lecture on Imaginative Realism. If you follow Gurney's blog, Gurney Journey (gurneyjourney.blogspot.com), you will know how informative and enjoyable our afternoon was.

The benefit to the visit, aside form the informative, was the interaction. Gurney spent a lot of time with Q&A and offered some good advice to the students throughout the afternoon. It was also great to see some of the originals he brought, including some sketchbooks, of which Iv seen on his blog and in print. We all really enjoyed the visit.

Thanks James!

Ella

Prep

Im spending a lot of time this summer getting ready for next year at RIT. Ill talk a little bit about tool options, using portraits as examples. "This does that and this will get you this" type of thing. That extends to Wacom too. This one is being painted with an Intuos 4 in CS5.

Digital Illustration One - Second Section

I dont see it on the schedule yet, but I know we are adding a second section of Digital Illustration ONE, to be held on Thursday afternoons in the fall. The regular section is full, so if your an RIT student, and you need it, please sign up. This section will be open to all students so no restrictions. If you know any non-illustration majors, spread the word.... As it stands, the class will have a focus on Adobe Illustrator, as ONE always does.

First Plein Air of the Season

I haven't been able to get out painting or sketching this year up to now. But today, I took the Digital Mixed Media class out for plein air sketching at Corbett's Glen. I think everyone enjoyed themselves, and although the lighting wasn't consistently ideal, the rain was cooperative and let some sun shine in. After I walked around with them a while, I settled in for a couple sketches myself. A bunch of them sat by the waterfall which seems like a must if you to the glen. Click sketch to enlarge.

RIT Illustration Senior Show

Congratulations to all the soon-to-be-graduating illustration students at RIT. Tonight they had their senior show with great attendance. They worked hard to get the show together and produced some great work throughout this past year. There was a lot of good news about jobs and prospects. A bunch of former graduates showed up to see their friends and they are doing pretty well too, which is always great news. Good job everyone.

Digital Mixed Media

My favorite class starts tomorrow in this spring quarter. We will be working in class and talking about different techniques. I will do some demos throughout the quarter, but I also like to pull jobs apart and talk about how they were created. I try and save essential progress before I merge their layers for that reason.

It may not seem like the Acryla Gouache is doing much (left) but it really is. It helps block in the shapes, establish a color base, and often lends to nice distortions and valuable mistakes. Even if the whole thing was painted over, it has a large effect in the final outcome.

Demo Tomorrow

Tomorrows class is not a digital class, but there are some that are working that way so I'm going to do this snowy day painting. Usually I draw them out first but here we'll just go at it. I like to come in with something (in layers) started, but if they want, Ill start over from scratch. Its been so cold here in Western NY, I long for 32 degrees. Freezing would seem warm.

LEACHES!

A great day at the Rochester Science Museum today with the sketchbook class. I'm looking forward to going over their work next week. From what I saw as I went around, it should be a good review. I'm thinking our next outing will be the local conservatory. I would really like to get them to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens but even with our five hour block, I don't think it would be good for time. I got a few drawings in myself and enjoyed sketching with the group.

As for the above image, the environment was from a day of sketching at Mendon Pond in Rochester over the past summer. Hands courtesy of my mac's Photo Booth.

Fall Promotion (In PS)

I started my fall promo illustration to be sent out mid September. Its good to get this going.

The fall quarter is off to a good start. Im teaching sketchbook this year which should shape up very well. I recently moved (still actually) and am looking forward to getting back to my regular schedule; including more regular posts here.

Contributor: Bob Dorsey Illustration Demo

If you are an illustration student at RIT, you will, at some point, have Bob Dorsey as one of your instructors. Throughout each quarter, he will give any number of demonstrations on materials, but two you can count on, and will want to see, are oil and acrylic. At the end of last year, I sat in and took some photos of one of his oil demos. To begin, he spends some time talking about setting up, his color pallet, brushes and other materials, and some history of painting.

We have a pretty good space for getting students together for presentations and discussions.

He chose Adam Francey, a Rochester tattoo artist and painter, for that days portrait. With this technique, Bob establishes his darks at the pencil stage which will show through the thin oil layer. Ensuring the portrait likeness at the pencil stage will save unnecessary pushing and pulling of proportions while painting. This is prepared prior to the demo and is sprayed with workable fixative to keep the pencil stable.

He begins by scrubbing a thin layer of oil onto the board (canvas glued onto Masonite). The oil is thinned with orderless mineral spirits. The sketch underneath is showing through and begins to establish some of the darks. This is a dark to light process.

Toward the bottom of the picture, he mixed in some purple for temperature variation. After putting in the color, the whole surface if gone over with a larger soft brush to blend. This is repeated at different times of the painting as the oil is built up.

After a layer of paint, he begins the removal stage which is key to this technique. Using a cloth (here an old tee shirt) he wipes away some of the oil to reveal the mid tones. Notice he is using latex gloves. They protect from the chemicals that come along with oil painting. Not everyone has gotten clean, so to speak, but its a good idea to start good habits if your just getting into oils.

After using the cloth, a small brush dipped in mineral spirits is used for finer removal before painting in lights.

As the painting moves along and gets lighter, darks are put in as well. The darkened pencil marks are not quite the darkest darks. When the darker values are added, the lights really pop.

This small brush is for final touches. Large brushes are used predominately throughout the painting, thinking about large planes and shapes, and keeping from being too careful.

Some warms are put in for the mouth and meatier parts but when greens and blues are introduced, a larger sense of space and personality show through.

A maul stick can be very helpful to steady the hand. They sell "professional" versions but dowels work really well.

Taking a step back to see if the values are working. These demos go about three short hours and he paints to finish. Its a fantastic technique and I could never see it enough. This year I hope to post his acryic demo.

Look for Bob's own blog coming this year. I will be sure to link to it when its up. He is a great instructor and is a wealth of knowlage when it comes to illustration and techniques.

Shapes: For Students

Many times when a student is just getting going in digital art, especially vector, a lot of the same issues come up.  One of the first stumbling blocks is shape creation.  We see a lot of very simple shapes used for highlights and shadows, that would not usually be employed if the subject was executed traditionally by the student.  This can look good, but its not necessarily what they would do if they had more practice.

The red onion above was done in very simple shapes, without much thought going into it regarding the translation from reference to execution. 

When doing a full illustration, after we figure out the composition, value and elements, its time to start rendering.  Like most illustrations, the rending should start with a tight drawing. What's particular about vector art is that shapes must be though of as closed, working by themselves and in unison with their neighbor, whether next to, or on top of.  At first, its a good idea to nail down a sketch in line art, putting most of the creativity in the drawing.  Then take it into the computer and just replicate.  As projects go by, less and less ironing out needs to be done at the sketch stage and more creative shape making can be done on the fly.

The shapes in this onion were made to reflect its texture more closely.  Still, a lot of people work very simply and it often looks very, very good.  Things don't have to have a ton of information in them to be successful.  This is just one way of seeing things.  I look at vector art like I see painting because I tend to render graphically whether its traditional or digital.  The biggest difference is that here, I'm building each brush stroke, instead of actually painting them.

Digital Mixed Media

Next quarter Digital Mixed Media is offered in the illustration program at RIT.  This class is only offered once a year and for you guys and girls in the major, its a great class to take.  Last year we had some good projects come out and this year should be even better.  The last post was painted traditionally in pieces and assembled and colored in PS.  In the regular digital classes, we try to have all rendering done digitally even if its converting line work so we can learn the programs and to see what we like.  In Mixed Media, its much more open.  I gotta say its my favorite class.

RIT Demo: Illustrator Paths 1

We went over some aspects of Illustrator today to prepare for next weeks project at RIT. There are just a few things to remember.

After you work out a tight sketch, scan in your line art at 300dpi.

Start by opening up the scan in Photoshop and make any adjustments you need including sizing.  If your working from a small sketch, increase the size so its easier to work with.  Re size to about 8x8 at 300dpi.  You could go lower but Id stay away from dropping below 100dpi.

Open up the file in Illustrator.  To keep from saving over your original scan, go to FILE> SAVE AS and save the document with a .ai tag (ex. finch.psd saves as finch.ai).  When I work this way, I delete the photo every time I save to keep the file size down, then just EDIT>UNDO

 (command Z) to bring it back after the save.  This is an old habit from illustrator 7 and 8 where the files would often become corrupt if it had a .psd in it.  At least mine did.

I drew this on tracing paper, starting with a very rough sketch to work out composition and patterning.  I took that and traced over it refining the forms and then a third time for better clarity.  Think of Illustrator the same way.  Its just another stage of refinement.

Add another layer over the scan.  Create a large square or rectangle and fill it with white.  Set this on a TRANSPARENCY (pallet found in WINDOW) that you are comfortable with so that enough of the art shows but not so much that it competes with your path color.  I chose 90%.  I left some edges peak out so you can see the contrast.

Add another layer for the paths.  You are adding layers so that you can turn them off and on.  You will want to turn off the sketch to see the development of your paths.  I always lock these layers so I don't select them by mistake and that they don't get in the way.

Now that your set up, your ready to start the paths.  The path tool (Pen Tool) has 4 functions.  The tool itself that creates the path, the add points function, the delete points function, and the convert points function.  When the tool is selected, it will add points on the path if you just hover over the section you want to add to and click on it.  The same goes for subtract.  If you click on any existing point, it will delete.  The particular path must be selected at the time.  To change the direction of the handlebar, use the convert points function to select one handlebar and bend it.

When creating paths remember:

Click and drag if you want a curve.  Look at the handlebars.  If you want clean, equal curves, both sides should do equal work and so the handlebars should be the same lengths (see the light blue lines above).  If there is an unusual bend, one handlebar will be longer, pushing the path into the other point.  The fewer the points, the smoother the curve.

The above lines were duplicated and moved to ensure the line is parallel (EDIT>COPY>PASTE IN FRONT and nudge one point with the arrow key).  The blue line, now a shape, is joined at one end.  You will need to join the two ends to make a workable shape.  Do this by holding down SHIFT, select the end point on each path >OBJECT>PATH>JOIN (command J).

Once you have your paths made, you can start cleaning up the shapes.  In the finch image above, you can see that the dark blue shape is longer than it needs to be.  To get rid of this extra end, I would:

1. COPY the orange shape (after joining the ends)

2. PASTE IN FRONT of the blue shape.

3. holding down SHIFT, select both the orange and the blue,

4. in the PATHFINDER (found in WINDOW) subtract from shape area.  That's the second button in from the left.  Remember that the shape on top will be the deleting shape.  That's why you COPY it.  Because it will delete and you still need it.

5.  Click EXPAND in the PATHFINDER pallet.

Play around with the PATHFINDER pallet.  Concern yourself mostly with the top row for now.  The first one combines, the second subtracts from shape, the third intersects, the forth excludes.

When you have cleaned up all your paths, combine them together.  Now you can select the parts individually to fill with color.  Using the hollow arrow plus, select the piece you want to color, COPY, PAST IN BACK and chose your color.  You need to use the hollow arrow plus because you are selecting part of a GROUP.

It may seem awkward at first but this whole explanation is done in minuets and repeated and repeated until done.  You will fall into an enjoyable rhythm.  At least I think its enjoyable.