Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Dumping another load of steaming fresh artwork

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I believe this was Peter O'Toole, from Born Free 2 if I remember right.... I just thought he had a cool look (sort of Posiedon-ish or something) so I recorded a bit and did another of my VCR sketches. I like doing those because you have to draw fast... you only have 5 minutes till it shuts down, and you'll never find the exact same frame again! Drawn in charcoal pencil, sealed with 2 coats of matte spray, then tinted overall blue using oil pastels washed over with Turpenoid. I love this, because even on thin paper it doesn't buckle swell or wrinkle AT ALL!!! So crazy after messing with watercolors for so long! Anyway, over that I believe I just used oil pastels, or possibly also some aquarelles. hard to tell sometimes.

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Here's Tori Amos, done also as a VCR sketch. Looks like a 2B pencil (my favorite for most drawing unless I want it really dark), sealed (always seal before doing anything else... or it will smear and get all ugly. 2 coats to seal.) and again tinted blue overall, I think with areas of reds added in here and there. Then the aquarelles. I remember this one was really difficult, especially trying to build up opaque enough color on the face to almost cover that blue tint (while letting it create the overall color tint for the image).

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Here we have Fiona Apple, VCR sketch taken from a Howard Stern appearance. I had this crazy thing about her for a long time... she's an incredible artist and a hottie, and she also hit the scene right around the time I met Jenni, who reminded me strongly of her. Heh... yeah. Personalitywise. Sad but true. And I didn't have any reference for drawing Jenni, so I drew Fiona. I punched up the contrast on this one digitally so the lights in the background would look right (could even be a bit stronger), and I'm afraid it kind of screwed up the image a bit. But when those lights don't pop the way they should it looks stupid. Done entirely in oil pastel wash over pencil, and some details scratched in.

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Fiona again, doing her famed snakedance routine she always did in the song Criminal. I thought it was a cool pose, almost like something from a Symbolist painting. This one is drawn on paper, sealed, and then painted with Alkyd paints. Alkyds are synthetic oil paints, they act almost exactly like oils except they dry faster and more uniformly.

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And here's Jennifer Anniston (not supposed to be a likeness, just a quick sketch done from a Friends freeze frame). Just playing with coloring methods again and trying to draw like my idol Kent Williams.

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And finally, here's an expressionistic drawing of Jenni (maybe a little TOO expressionistic!). I believe this is just pencil and oil pastel.

3 comments:

Shelley Noble said...

Is Jenni the one who ends up scowling in the rain? Hee hee.

UbaTuber said...

The Fiona's are great, that is an awesome pose...I can see it on Hecate, snake witch :)

re: oil pastels/turp wash......you actually draw/color with the oil pastels, then paint on and smudge with turp? never tried it, sounds cool, like reinvigorating dried up oil paint...

Darkmatters said...

Yes and yes.

If you're going to do an oil pastel wash you want to just put it on very lightly, a few lines with a little space between them. If you apply it thick at all it'll gum up and get all weird on you. Save the thicker appliactions for later.

The thing that took some getting used to for me is that, even when you put on thick layers of solid oil pastels it's translucent! Dammit... i wanted to be able to do opaque coloring over a tinted background. But you can build it up fairly opaquely in time.