These things have been making the rounds all over the online artist communities and I am being fashionably late.  These are just the ones freshest in my mind as I am definetely forgetting at least 100-200 of my other biggest influences.  It’s odd what influences me. Sometimes it’s only one painting an artist does that really strikes a chord in me.  I’ll go search out the artist only to find I don’t really care for anything else they’ve done.  The biggest things that draw my attention are brushstrokes, emotional impact, and color harmonies.  Really good foundational drawing always perks me up too.  There are a lot of guys and gals I like that I wish would never finish a piece because the beginning has so much more interest.

Anybody who can name all the squares will receive either 500 dollars (in monopoly money) or a free sketch, my choice.

Click on the image to see a full resolution version.

In a bold attempt to write more than one sentence about each person and to populate my blog with some content I’m going to drag this out a bit.  Every week I’ll post a new one  counting down from 10 until we get to my #1 all time favorite artist, which even as I type this I’m not sure who that is.  Let’s get started.  Here is number #10.

#10 – Brian Stelfreeze

I grew up on comics.  Reading them led to my love of drawing.  There is one comic artist who influenced me not as much by his fantastic art but more because of the type of person and teacher he is.  That would be the incredibly talented Brian Stelfreeze.  I’ve been attending the Heroes comic book convention as a fan or artist for almost 15 years now and every single year I’d hang out at Brian’s table because he was dropping some serious art knowledge atomic bombs.  In fact, in hindsight I wish I’d just taken all that money for art school and hired Brian as a mentor and tutor.  He’s an artist who has a rare ability to be an even better teacher and that’s saying a mouthful as his art is quite awesome.  You can see him at almost any show with clipboard in hand showing struggling artist (and sometime professionals) the keys to making good comics.

He isn’t one to placate an artists either.  He once looked though a comic I’d self published to give me some feedback.  As he tuned the pages he’d commit on my strengths here or what I’d done good there, but then he’d stop dead on a page, tap the page and ask me why I had to go and %$^ it all up and do this.  You’re killing me, he’d say.  You’ve got all this beautiful rendering but you didn’t follow this basic rule.  The other cool thing about Brian is that when he gives you some knowledge you better pull up a chair.  I’ve never had a critique from the guys that was less than 20 minutes and I’ve had some that went over an hour.

Almost every time I draw or paint at some point during the process I’ll hear Brian’s voice in my head reminding me of one of the hundreds of art lessons or techniques he’s taught me over the years.

Honorable Mention:  Lee Weeks and JRJR

Lee Weeks (and his run on the Incredible Hulk) and John Romita, JR. (and his run on Spider-man) should also get an honorable mention.  The thing that links these two guys together in my eyes is their ability to ride a fine line between telling a story and being an illustrator.  I grew up in the middle of the Image comics revolution during a time when comic art was 90% sizzle and 10% steak, with tons of random cross hatching covering up some misguided fundamentals.  JRJR and Weeks are the perfect combination of steak and sizzle.

Incidentally, that Batman image above is the cover to my favorite Batman comic of all time.  The story is about the Joker who is in jail in Arkum Asylum.  He knows there a kidnapped little girl is being held.  If Batman can’t get the Joker to talk the little girl will die.  Great story and wonderful art.

Here are a couple I did recently.

I’ve decided to go back to basics.  I’ve started by reading up on my basics from the drawing teachers I respect and envy the most, Frank Reilly, George Bridgeman, and Andrew Loomis.    There is also a health dose of a few people from the web whose technique or drawing I really love.  People such as Lucas Graciano, Hope Reiley, and Eric Gist as well as a few others.

After a couple weeks of reading and study I decided to implement what I’ve learned by drawing 1,000 faces.  In a row.  OK, I’ll stop to sleep and do some other work but the idea is to overload my brain and hands with drawing faces til it becomes second nature or my hand falls off, which ever comes first.  My plan is to do 500 men and 500 women. Each odd numbers drawing will be done from reference and than I’ll do the same drawing from memory to apply what I’ve leaned.

Most of the drawings will be done in about 5 to 15 minutes to start although I won’t rule out any longer drawings but the concepts I want to focus on are more to do with structure, proportion, speed and less on finishing and advanced stages of rendering.

My initial plan is to have a 90 day deadline on this.  That’s 11 faces a day.

As I go I’ll also be posting and passing on some awesome handouts and information I’ve gathered along the way.

Here’s the drawings from day 1.

Here is the final for the Muse contest over at Artorder.com.  Be sure to head on over and check out all the great entries.  For details on this contest check out this previous post.

Every year at the Heroes comic book convention I wait in the weeds like a tiger stalking his prey for that one small moment when Superstar artist Brian Stelfreeze is alone.  Or at least a time when I can fight my way through the deluge of comic nerds, er, fans.  The man is the single best purveyor of wisdom in comic artdom.  This year I was on my way out Sunday, after the convention was over, when I spotted Brian packing up.  Ha ha!  Gotcha!

I ended up picking his brain for a good 20 minutes.  The bits of knowledge I squeezed from him would probably cost you about a semester’s worth of dough at your local art college.  Sometimes, Brian just really points home something I already knew but didn’t really take to heart and sometimes he blows me out of the water with something that 6 years of art college and 9 years as a freelancer has failed to instill in me.

My big thing this year and for the last few months as been edges.  To paraphrase Brian said edges are anywhere a value shape ends or begins.  That can be the side of an arm, the edge where a dark shadow becomes light, where the red blotch of a cheek turns to a more peachy tone.  If you can see the edge clearly, it’s a sharp edge.  If you can’t see it at all it’s a lost edge.  Intermediate edges are just regular edges.  Soft edges are just that, soft.  Paintings are really just a puzzle of these value shapes and how they interact is your edges.

There are two ways to soften an edge.  Sweep your brush through the two adjacent colors or (and this is what really stuck out for me), put a transition color between the two.  For instance in that example I mention with the red cheek and the peach skin.  To soften that transition without blending you could put a plug of reddish peach in between the two.  Awesome!

The other big thing Brian put to me is the skinny on color temperature.  I know the warm light = cool shadows and cool light = warm shadows.  It’s one of the closest things to gospel in painting.  But I still tend to confuse myself.  What about reflected light, secondary light sources, or just keeping which one I’m doing straight.  Forget all that, Brian says you can’t stray from the chick you brought to the party cause the party won’t end well.  (That’s my analogy, not Brian’s)  A useful way to keep your commitment is to lay all your shadows in at the beginning in that cool or warm color.  That way when your brain turns into mush, better know as rendering mode, you won’t be able to just blindly put down the wrong color temperature!

Brian also said I was awesome and DC should give me some Batman covers.

I did mention I was paraphrasing?  Didn’t I?

I appreciate all those who came out and said Hi or bought anything from me.  Even that one really weird guy.  Yea, I’m talking about you.

Can’t wait until next year.

The Heroes Con is this weekend!!!  I know, it always seems to take forever to get here and then, BAM, here is it is.  You’ve probably putting the finishing touches on your Spider-man or Ghost Busters costume.  You may be like a friend of mind who at one Heroes convention where Jim Lee was a guest brought every single comic book Mr. Lee had every done.  Not to get signed, just to prove to Mr. Lee what a fan he was.

In all this excitement don’t forget to come by my booth now firmly located at SP-22.  I’ll have tons of prints, mini-books of my work and more.  There is always “and more!”  I’ll be doing sketches, paintings, sketchcards and whatever else I can think of.

Here’s a few maps to help you along the way.  Heroes con isn’t middle earth but it can still get pretty confusing when you’re trying to find your way around.  Just think of me as Mount Doom and you’re bringing the precious!

<—Click there for a full map of the convention floor.

June 4-6 I’ll be at the Heroes Comic Convention here in Charlotte.  I’m not sure what space I’ll be in as the great folks at Heroes haven’t quite got all that worked out yet.  I’ll be sure and update my fan as soon as the information become available.  It’s a great convention and I love going every year.  Stop by my table and say Hi, you’ll be glad you did.

Frank Frazetta – February 9, 1928  May 10, 2010

I used to have a copy of this great Frazetta painting above my bedroom door as a teenager.  What’s to say?  This guy was a legend and his passing is felt throughout the art community.  He defined fantasy art more than any other artist.  I’ve linked to a trailer for his DVD “Fire and Ice” about his life and work.

I start as usual doing some quick sketches which I didn’t show because basically I think I may be the only person on the planet who can interpret the things.  They just look like a mass of lines.  I then get my reference but in this case since the contest supplies the reference I already had it.  I did look over the reference before I started sketching because I needed to use some of the supplied reference.  I usually look at reference until I’ve got my sketch going because I don’t the reference to become overbearing in my image.

I then get a tighter sketch going, throw some tones on it in Photoshop and start playing around with a color palette.  I ended up going with a gold and purple basic color scheme.  Lotta cremes.  I think it gives off a mystical quality like the scene in Gladiator where the women is walking through the wheat fields.

I also may need to add some monkeys. Everybody loves monkeys.

The beautiful model supplied by Artorder is the talented Veronika Kotlajic.

Details on the contest can be found HERE.

I actually really dig the Spider-man!

I’ve been working on a Hulk pinup recently and I thought I might be done but as is often the case a day or two later can make all the difference.

I also posted it in a few online forum and numerous people had the same reaction.  That reaction being that it look like the Hulk is ripping an massive, giant, fart.  (I wonder how Google will index this post?)  This just goes to show you one really needs to think about composition when doing a piece of artwork.  You shouldn’t just start sketching in Photoshop willy nilly like I did.  So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he want it.  Well, he gets it.  A giant Hulk poot!

I was way to anxious to get started and ended up with Hulk farting.  I should be hiding my head in shame or rolling on the floor laughing but instead I’m determined to take this “happy accident” and turn it into gold.  I’ll use this as an opportunity to make a better composition and give the piece a lot more impact and excitement.

Stay tuned.

Anybody that can find the movie quote in this post and name the movie will get a bfowler.com noprize.

I’ve retooled the cloud quite a bit and repainted Hulk’s face.  Overall, it’s just a matter of bring up and refining what’s already there.

Here are three that I penciled last night whilst watching the telly.  I’ll ink and color them shortly.  I actually kinda really like the Spider-man one.

I’ve started to really look at my tones and my tonal edges in the Hulk’s skin and begin to build that up.  It’s a continuous process of building up, reassessing, painting over lightly and restating my tonal patches.  A tonal patch is any area of tone/color that my eyes see (or I decide) to be separate enough to paint.  It’s all this interlocking tones that creates the image.  The decision of those edges is also really important.  It the difference between something looking choppy when it supposed to be choppy and smooth when it supposed to be smooth.

I also did a bit of rendering on the face but as is my habit I’ve went out and got some reference for it.    My plan now is to block in the lower part of the image and focus on those hands.  I may need to some indication of something in the distance.  A city scape or maybe some canyon like mountain.  Something to break up that blue but not be intrusive.  I’m babbling on now.  My art brain is getting in the way of this post.

I went over the whole image with some texture brushes with some red to get rid of all the white.  I choose red because it’s green’s compliment so it’ll make the Hulk pop.  After that I began to block in the Hulk.  Block in is simply filling in area as shadow, half tone, and light.  This defines your basic form and is a sound structure for my next layer.  I’ve already done it but what’s the fun if I post everything at one time.

Right now, I’ve been updating my portfolio to target Wizards of the Coast and Marvel Comics.  With the Incredible Hulk being so incredible (and my favorite character) I thought a nice trading card type illustration would be a groovy thing.  Yes, I still like the word groovy even though it’s popularity was well before my time.

To begin an illustration I usually do some thumbnails or if there’s a minimal background, I just start sketching to see what grabs me.  I ended up with this to start with.

Looks OK.  I like the pose and the expression on his face.  It’s time to refine it a bit and add some spot blacks.  I’ve also decided that it needs somewhat of a proper background.  What could be better for the Hulk than a big mushroom cloud?  Fun to paint and that will allow me to add some abstract qualities to it that I like when painting.  I also changed the size to 10×16 over all just because.    Here’s where we are now.

Now, in general I’m pretty good at just drawing out of my head but good reference will always take your work to a higher quality.  You don’t know what you don’t know and reference will give you the information that you don’t know.  Man, that was a sentence and a half.  I think my brain just started smoking.

Here is my reference.  I’ll probably take some photography later for specific parts like the face and anything that looks off after I get going that needs some attention.