When I was in art school, my instructor ALWAYS insisted on doing color comps and studies of our paintings. It took awhile for that to really sink in with me, I always thought it was unnecessary extra work and that I could just jump right into the final painting because I "knew" what it was going to look like when I was finished. But after a few dozen of crap paintings where I get to a certain point and say to myself, "okay, now what?" I'd always find myself in a rut, with a painting that looks like somebody did not know what they were doing and you could tell when my paintings looked like it was worked and re-worked to death only because I had no idea what direction to take it.... if only I had a map. OH! So THATS what those are for!? Now, depending on the project, I sometime do my color studies digitally, this has it's ups and downs. It's handy to do quick digital color comps because you can adjust overall color schemes immediately and fix issues very quickly. But the downside to that is if you plan to use traditional paints on the final, if you are like me, find yourself trying to figure out how to mix certain colors to get it the way you have it on you comp. So anytime I am able to do a REAL PAINTED color comp I will leap at the chance. All you are doing is creating a guide for the final painting. In this particular case, I knew I would be painting a 24x48 painting so laid out my pencil sketch on a 12x24 gessoed masonite board.
Remember last post where I mentioned a BIG little advantage I have? Well this is where it comes into play. My full time day job consists of designing things, but not super awesome Cthulhu creatures and half naked sea-girls. Nope, I am a graphic designer and large format print specialist here in Nashville at a place called ProGraphics. We have two flat-bed printers that will allow me to print on pretty much ANY flat surface up to 1.75" inches in thickness and 4'x8' in size.
Here are a few shots of this process:
(these shots are from the actual 24x48 painting, not the color study from this post)
BEFORE
DURING
AFTER
SO! As you can see I have developed a nice little technique I like to use on larger paintings. I will draw my pencils at a more comfortable size for me (normally around an 11x14ish size area) then scan in my pencils and fix any blunders in Photoshop and then enlarge my drawing to the desired size and just print my pencil sketch directly to my masonite board. Call me lazy if you will, I like to think of it as being time efficient. Doing this method allows me to cut out the light table or projector or however else I used to get my sketches to the board. Sometimes, I'll print the sketch at around 10-20% opacity and go back and re-draw a much finer detailed render. But in this painting's particular case, I knew it would be loaded with paint so I decided I could just use my original sketch as my pencils and jump right into painting.
On to the fun part, the PAINT! I'll spare you the play-by-play, I'm using acrylics and this was painted over a span of about 2.5 hours.
Below is the final color comp scan, if you noticed, I switched his hand from the original drawing, but before I started the final, i went and had a friend pose his hands for me so I could a good exact idea how the hand would be gripping the top of that rock. (see the first pic where I digitally fixed the hand, and on the pencils as well for the final.)
So below is what the color study looked like sitting beside my ready-to-paint final image.
I may post another quick post of some of the progress shots on here before the show, but if you follow my on twitter, instagram, or we are friends on Facebook then you can catch up to date action as it unveils. :)
ALSO! I'd like to point out again that the above COLOR STUDY FOR THIS PAINTING, a 12x24 acrylic painting will be up for grabs the night of the show, all you gotta do is
order your tickets in advance here. It's only $10 a ticket with no added fees and this will ensure your name gets into the random drawing to win this piece!
As, always, thanks for viewing the posts and I hope you've enjoyed this little endeavor!
*** UP NEXT ***
I will be posting a few of the sweet Lovecraftian swag items I designed for the show. Political yard signs just in time for the elections as well as a fun little homage (ripoff) of a pretty popular poster design.
Also a sweet little keepsake for my own selfish reasons but which will be fitting for the show.
See you next time!
-b
