Wednesday, March 31, 2010

just details


Painter Oils tool




Today I thought I'd move on from the dry tools like charcoal and conte and play around with Painter 11's oils tools . This is also a 25 minute sketch with no model , just painting from memory/imagination. As an exercise I thought I'd take screen grabs in progression.

-Image 1 is the beginning at 10 seconds. Just sketching in a head. I started with a pale colored background and started painting on a separate layer for convenience. You can choose this color when you start a new image or use the paint bucket tool later. I didn't bother with setting a paper texture although I guess canvas would have been nice.
-Image 2 is at 2 minutes. Just feeling out the forms grabbing colors from the color wheel and deciding on the type of oil brush . It's a basic bristle oil , variable size. A default brush. The default brushes seem to do well even though I know you can create endless brushes in Painter 11.
- Image 3 is at 4 minutes - still feeling it out
-Image 4 is at 10 minutes. At this point I flipped the image to check symmetry and fixed any imbalances. After doing that I decided that I liked the flipped version. The advantage of working digitally.
- Image 5 is at 15 minutes. Here I'm playing around with how Painter 11 handles the paint. Like real oils the colors smear into each other and you can mix the color on the canvas to a point .
There's a little impasto there but it doesn't read unless you view at actual size.
-Image 6 is at 25 minutes. At this point I'm just placing more color and dropping in some highlights. Working this way is very satisfying if you want to do an oil painting in less than an hour. I thinks it takes me longer than an hour just to set up an oil palette and brushes.
I'm not saying that Digital is better. It's just depends on what your needs are.

Even though this is just a sketch it keeps me drawing.
-Larry Navarro

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Fit friend



This drawing is based on someone I know although it can't be considered a portrait .
More of a drawing influenced by an image. This was done almost exclusively in Painter 11.
Using the conte tool on three different layers. A ground layer , a dark conte layer and a light conte layer. I added a small gradation in photoshop to give it a little paper dimension .
I find that the conte tool in painter is the best for simulating real dry media but I've also noticed that if you leave the program for an instant, when you come back you have to recalibrate the pen stroke with brush tracking in preferences. There must be some way of fixing that.
Another thing that came up : I find that if you work at 100 percent image size you have less surprises. If you need it to be 300 dpi for printing maybe you can get away with rez-ing it up in Photoshop. I know that "Eye Candy" makes a program that can do a great job of resizing an image but I think Photoshop does a good job too.
I like the look of classic drawing materials and I admit painter makes it easy. I don't have to go get the right paper , sharpen charcoal pencils and white conte or get my clothes all dirty.
But I guess you can argue that getting you hands dirty is the real spirit of drawing. I agree with that. Our new 21st century tools make things faster and easier . But just because I'm doing this drawing using digital tools it doesn't mean I've forgotten how to use pencil and paper.
-Larry

Friday, March 26, 2010

only charcoal


This time I'm only playing around with the Charcoal tool in Painter 11.
Just drawing in a pencil fashion . I never have to create this look in real life work situation.
Well, almost never. Looks like charcoal pencil. No real surprises . Only that the pencil doesn't seem very sensitive at times. Like drawing with burnt stick as opposed to a soft charcoal pencil.
It was still easier to open it up in Photoshop to crop it .
-Larry

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Conte and Charcoal in painter



Still seeing what the Conte tool is capable of.
It's a ruff tool but I used a little Charcoal pencil to do a little smoothing out.
I still believe that Painter files need to go to Photoshop for refinement . It was mentioned that it's hard to get good darks in painter. I'm not too sure about that but I know it's just easier to do it in Photoshop.
When drawing things out of my head I shouldn't try to get too detailed because it starts to look unconvincing. It's always better to have a model. This sketch would probably look better if I didn't draw a face on it . But then these are all exercises.
-Larry

Sunday, March 21, 2010

painter conte on colores ground


Just something before I hit the hay. Seems Like I only spend 15 to 20 minutes
on these things these days.
As for Painter , I still like it but I'm starting to see that is seems to be a sort of "plug in " for photoshop. I can never seem to do anything in it without opening it up in Photoshop to do something or another that Painter has difficulty doing. Resizing the image size for one. Adjusting colors for another.
Really good for those things that really need to have some sort of "technique" look to it.
That's all for now.
- Larry

Thursday, March 18, 2010

older sketch


I think I posted this one before but I like the roughness of it .

15 minute painter


Just cranking out quick sketches . Painter conte crayon tool.
Can't get the same feeling of real conte or pencil on paper with digital tools.
Maybe the same look but definitely not the same
feeling when drawing.
Actually it takes longer to post the drawings than it takes to do the
drawing.
-Larry

Wednesday, March 10, 2010



Nothing big. Just a cartoon . If I drew everything as a cartoon my work would be so much easier. Cartoons are so much easier to draw but that doesn't mean that they are in fact easy to draw. I suppose if you are going for the Gary Panter style of cartooning it could be easier.
But you know that's not easy either . It's really hard for me to draw something that looks really crude and child like. I've tried and it's just not convincing . I suppose I could do it if I really
"Let Go" and let my sub conscience take over . But then it doesn't really seem like a worthwhile goal for that kind of effort. Tomorrow I'm back to drawing Fruit Cups... Hey, Things could be worse.
-Larry