Jared Barnes Art

Final Dragon

2012-01-17T20:35:00.001-08:00

Step by Step: Drawing a dragon

2012-01-16T03:40:00.000-08:00

Well its been a century since my last post. So I thought that I would show you all an example of how I make up a painting from my imagination. NOTE: This dragon painting isn't done, but its close. It still needs a bubbles container down by his right foot, hence the amputee look. Anyways here are the steps.

This was my initial drawing. I thought that it would be funny if the dragon was blowing fire proof bubbles. So the drawing is simple, but it tells me where to go.

This Step is always fun for me. I love molding the drawing to become 3d like. This takes time and patience. I use the ball technique that I have shown in the past view posts, and then I make the grey scale drawing have color with image>adjustments>hue/saturation, and press colorize taking the color to reflect the kind of light that the blue sky would cast.

Now I add directional lighting. This is also fun. I use the same technique as the previous, except I now use the previous layer to tell me where to go, not the original sketch.

I add subsurface scattering, reflective light and the light caused by the flame.

After all my light sources are done I color it. This is done with all of the light sources in a folder. The folder blend mode being set to multiply, and all the light source layers blend mode set to screen. Underneath all of that I make another layer called color. And from there I color it like I would with crayons. straight color, and this is the result.

I apply atmosphere to the drawing.

I then do specular light.

I then finalize the feel of the painting, by just painting right on top of the result of all the previous layers.

As I have wrote earlier, This isn't done, but I was so excited about how this was coming out that I decided to blog the steps thus far. I hope you enjoyed seeing my process to making up scenes in photoshop.

Sculpting with Photoshop

2011-12-29T08:18:00.001-08:00

Here is another quick sketch that I did. I really love trying to sculpt figures with photoshop. I quickly make a ball that represents my light, and its pretty easy from there. I just suction drop the values from the ball and transfer the values to the plains on the face. It really feels like I'm sculpting with photoshop.

The Ball Technique - drawing

2011-10-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

I was out talking with Dixon the other day, and he mentioned a ball technique that Sam Nielson does. So I thought that I would give that a try. This was done in about 30 minutes or so, with my monkey daughter climbing all over me (She is adorable, or I probably wouldn't take it for very long). I really think that this technique will speed up the process of rendering out the painting. I'm probably going to use this for every painting here on out. You all should give it a try, its quite helpful. Enjoy.

Specular Light

2011-07-15T16:15:00.001-07:00

If this 3-side object was reflective, this diagram shows where the reflection would be coming from.

In most cases specular light is fragmented, so reflections from wider angles reflect stronger.... well not really but here is why it looks that way.

Have you ever driven past a mountain or a hill and noticed that as the hill goes up you can see into the trees, but the flatter the hill gets to level the less you can see the ground. This is really the same principle. Notice how the green of the trees is nearly contiguous from the level view, and not at all frome the arial view.

Lets take a minute and find out where the reflective lights are coming from on this deer.

At the top of the deer its going to be reflecting back the green trees from right behind him. Instinctually we just want to just put blue on the top planes, but thats not how specular light works. Then the blue from the sky hits most of the body until it rounds enough to change into the trees that are by the viewer. Then the fun plane that reflects from the ground. If you try to think of the deer as chrome deer, this would be how it reflects back... just not as intense, but becoming more intense as the plane moves away from you.

Here is a good example of how it would reflect back.

Chief

2011-07-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

I was trying to figure out how to make really good brushes. This portrait is a consequence of that. I have been using my diffused light method to get realistic colors. I feel that its working, but maybe its not and I have stared at my own paintings for too long.

Cave Troll

2011-07-12T08:43:00.001-07:00

Here is my latest.

Lunch - Dragon

2011-07-07T01:21:00.000-07:00

Indian

2011-07-06T08:42:00.001-07:00

Here is last nights practice.

So I didn't think that the painting had enough substance so I added two tipi's to add interest.

Christ and the Leper

2011-07-04T00:48:00.001-07:00

Another painting idea... maybe.

Bearskin - Part Two

2011-06-30T23:46:00.001-07:00

Well, I couldn't just stop with one bearskin painting, so here is my second attempt at an art order challenge frome the "theartorder.com". I hope you all enjoy it.

Grimm Tales - Bearskin

2011-06-28T03:06:00.000-07:00

Here is an art order challenge from theartorder.com. It didn't turn out all that great. The mood isn't there, and there is a lot of unfinished problems, but I am done with it. Lesson learned, next drawing.

Here's an update

Yet another update.... I basically rid myself of 80% of my painting. But thats okay.

Diffused Light Example, psd

2011-06-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a file of how I use the blend modes in recreating light. Note that this is a really ugly example, but it illustrates my methods. I have also named every layer, so there isn't any question as to what the layer is doing. I hope this helps everyone.

http://www.box.net/shared/zj2z863lokrdhikmmit5

Enjoy!

Diffused Light

2011-06-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Cg art has kinda taken me by storm. Its locked me in its whirlwind of power. It has struck me with awe and wanting more.

If anyone knows me personally, they'll tell you that I'm really a left brained artist. This isn't a complement, because it implies that you aren't creative, which is somewhat true. I have tried to find a balance between the two halves of the brain, and make magic happen. There is a need for using both sides of the brain in art.

In order to explain how I think, I always went about art with the question in my head, how would I explain this to a novice, so that they would understand, and be able to execute on the newly found knowledge. With this habit, my process in building a piece of art, is somewhat too structured for the average right brained artist. But its me and it's what I have to work with.

Today I would like to talk about how I use photoshop. How by using its blend modes it does alot of the hard work for you. It can replicate diffused light with blend modes, when applied in the right sequence. It can replicate specular light, and atmosphere. All of these "light nuances" are extremely hard to just conjure up without references unless you use the techniques that I have found. Its really that exciting. I had to study the science behind light for six months to find out how to replicate this in a systematic way (There's that left brain again).

So diffused light is a farely easy light principle to understand. Diffused light is what gives form to all things that we see. specular light doesn't do this. Because of the texture and color of an object, it reflects a certain amount of light back to the retna of your eye. Light that your computer screen uses is a very wonderful example of how light works. Computer screens use the RGB model, or red, green, blue. You may say well how do those colors make yellow, or white. Well when red and green light bump together they produce yellow. This is known as additive light. Red, green and blue light produce white. Yeah I know this hard to swallow. But once you brain finally comes to terms with that knowledge, it can understand how diffused light works.

So lets discuss diffused light in the rgb model. If you are looking at a red ball, it means that the red ball absorbs all of the green and blue light rays in itself and only reflects back the red light rays. This is why the ball appears red. If you have a black ball, the ball simply reflects no light rays back, and as consequence produces no form. I have rarely seen something pure black, keep that in mind while choosing colors in your picture. So how is this replicated in photoshop. We know that the "screen" blend mode is a great additive color mode. Meaning you can put multiple light sources on each other in any order and it still produces the same result, and accomplishing the cool things that additive color mixing do. Like mixing red and green to make yellow.

So how do we replicate the principle of diffused light in photoshop. Its done by putting all of your light source layers, in a folder, making sure that the light source layers are in screen mode (With an extra all black layer using the "normal" blend mode placed under all the light source layers). Then you make the folder blend mode "multiply".

Multiply? really.... yep! So how does multiply work?
Its algorithm is this:

Result = (TopLayer/255) * BottomLayer

The TopLayer is going to be your folder with all of its light sources in it, and the bottom layer is the pure color of the object. All the 255 really means is that that's the highest possible intensity that that light ray can be. So the algorithm could be rewritten as:

DiffusedLight = (LightSources/MaxAmountOfLight) * ColorOfObject

To wrap you head around this color model lets write out a few colors. 0 being no light and 255 being its greatest light intensity.

White:
=====================
Red = 255
Green = 255
Blue = 255
=====================

Red:
=====================
Red = 255
Green = 0
Blue = 0
=====================

So if the light source was white, and the object red. Its result would be this.

Result
=====================
Red = 255 = ( (255/255) * 255 )
Green = 0 = ( (255/255) * 0 )
Blue = 0 = ( (255/255) * 0 )

One more expample to be sure you all understand.

Here is the left brained numbers.

Light

=====================

Red = 159

Green = 228

Blue = 203

Color

=====================

Red = 227

Green = 234

Blue = 137

Result

=====================

Red = 142 = ( (159/255)*227)

Green = 209 = (228/255)*234)

Blue = 109 = (203/255)*137)

Here is the result for the right brain.

Color	Light	Result

This is in its simplest form but is sufficient to illustrate its truthfulness.

The ultimate test is, what will it do when the light source is exactly the complement of the objects color. Science says that it will appear black. This is because the object will absorb all of the light rays shown at it, and reflect nothing back. This blend mode holds true to that principle as well. This is where things get a bit tricky when making stuff up from your head, and not using blend modes. You have to think of all the little subtleties that light makes. This is so hard to conjure up that I had to find a way to have photoshop handle it for me. Then once its figured out. I'll let my right brain take over and play with the colors a little bit, but never straying far from what could realy happen. Otherwise it just looks fake. This was an extremely long post. I hope that this post was helpful, and helped you all understand a little bit more about how light works.

I'll share a photoshop file soon using all of these techniques. Actually having the file in hand and playing with it makes all the difference in understanding it.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersive_prism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_reflection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refln/u13l1d.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering

Practice

2011-06-18T10:57:00.001-07:00

Dixon and I got together for a quick draw, where we took a line drawing of liv tyler, and made up the lighting. We decided that it was fire lit from underneath and a rim highlight from the moon. This was really beneficial. I want to do it some more.

Dragons Fighting

2011-06-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

For some reason I just want to paint dragons, castles, and the bit. I had a lot of fun with this one. I hope you enjoy it.

Castle

2011-06-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

I'm still having fun with this photoshop stuff.

Here is an update.

Ocean

2011-06-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

Here is another one.

Multiply is actually diffused light.

2011-06-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

Well, to my big surprise, we had "diffused light" in photoshop all along. I didn't even need to program it. I asked for help on Photoshops facebook page, and they told me that that algorithm I used for diffused light was the same as multiply. This didn't make since to me at first. I always used multiply as a way to make something darker.

So after finding out the good news I went and drew this picture last night. It took me about two hours. I'm happy on how it turned out. I'll have to do a big blog post on diffused light, specular light, and atmosphere, all of these can mimic reality with the right blend modes are on top of each other. I'll explain the science behind it too.

So here is the picture.

Lehi

2011-06-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

This was last nights drawing. I hope you like it.

Drawing Part 2: Using Grids

2011-06-06T08:57:00.001-07:00

This was done in roughly an hour, I sped up the video by about six times. I also narrated the video, to explain how and why I do things. I hope you enjoy this video.

Another video that shows the sequential process of one of my blog post.

First YouTube Video

2011-06-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it. I finally thought that I had explained this concept enough to new artist, that its time to make a video. I think the foundation to all representational art is learning how to see. I give a short demonstration, and discuss different things that spontaneously came to mind as I taught. So here it is, view away!

Practice - Body Sketch

2011-06-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have become addicted to the power of digital art. It has the wonders of undo/redo, and you can cut and paste modify quickly.

I have been practicing with digital art so much lately so that I can do my life's project. I want to do a series of life size paintings of Christ that have the look of Carl Block's work, or better yet Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's work. These paintings are not going to be easy. They are going to take time, patience and a lot of homework. I want the paintings to be as authentic to reality as possible. I want it to appear like it happened ( Which it did :) ). This is sometimes a draw back because, it doesn't fit in with the rest of main stream Christian art, which lends itself to glowy, gooey and unrealistic settings to make them more attractive, or sellable. I think that the digital art will ease the creation process. From creating the seens, the lighting, or even costume design. Enough talk, here is a fat man that I did from my imagination. Hope you all enjoy.

Personal Challenge Day 2

2011-04-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Well here is day two. I had a lot of fun doin this. Its not the greatest, but its only one day of work. I hope I get better at it as I go along.

A Personal Challenge

2011-04-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

I have always wanted to be able to just make something up, or better yet, make something up amoung reality. This is what some people would declare matte painting. Which it probably is. I want to put a collection together of these types of drawings.

The objective is to find a picture on the internet, preferably a movie picture, and make something really silly that doesn't belong in the picture feel like it does. This is going to be really challenging, and fun. So here we go. One drawing a day for two weeks and we'll see what we end up with.

Hope you enjoy.

Random Sketches

2011-03-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

While my family and I were moving into our new house, I found some old sketch books. Its funny how you forget some of the drawings you have done altogether while others you remember vividly, nevertheless here are the drawings that I liked.

Hope you enjoy.

These are drawings from life. Unsuspecting victims. ;) And some random objects around the studio.

Here are some drawings from pausing movies and drawing from the tv.

Here is one from my imagination.

Portrait - continued

2011-02-22T19:51:00.000-08:00

I have continued to work on the portrait that I blogged about previously, and decided that its time to blog about how I do it all. I have been contemplating how I would explain the process in which I do paintings from my imagination. To be entirely honest its hard to describe, but I'll take a gander at explaining how I do it.

This approach may not be for everyone, but works for me.

Since I wrote my rendering program, which I'll explain a little bit, it compartmentalized the whole dilemma of creating color nuances with-in a subject. These little nuances are what I told my wife 5 years ago was impossible to make up. Well.... maybe somewhat impossible.

What I do in photoshop, is I create a diffused light layer, and this is how it looks.... I know its kinda scary. Not very well drawn either.

Side note: I usually paint all of these light layers in just black and white values and then I apply color using the Hue/Saturation option found under Image --> Adjustments --> Hue/Saturation. I then click the colorize option and apply a slight color hue to the image.

I then create a second layer, this is usually the main light source. The strong lighting that really defines the shape. Here it is.

After finishing the main lighting I also put in a secondary light source to bring out the form a little more. This one isn't much but you'll understand if you take these images into photoshop and try to use them as I will explain.

So if you are really interested in seeing what it looks like all together. Here it is.

If you take all the images I supplied and pasted them into photoshop you could replicate this image by doing the layers as such:

Now after completing this I take this compilation of light and upload it to my program along with what I call the local color of the subject. Here is the local color image.

This is the lamest drawing of them all, I didn't spend much time on this. If I really want things to look good this is where I put all sorts of skin detail. But for this one I just slapped together some color to see what it would look like roughly. The local color image has nothing to do with values. Its just the color of the skin.

Now my rendering program, has a built in algorithm that looks at the local color and the light source and renders it compiling both of my drawings into one. This is result.

My program doesn't do any specular lighting, just diffused, since diffused is what defines form. I then take this image back to photoshop and make further adjustments and add specular highligts. This part is fun, because you can see the drawing come to life. So here is the final again.

Almost A Year

2011-02-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

This has been a crazy year for me. I have literally built my own house from scratch with my father in law. I know that that isn't an excuse.... but it is because I have been putting 16-18 hour days in, and haven't found time to even say hi to my wonderful wife, let alone post on my blog.

So in this last year, my knowledge about digital art has enhanced. I have found wonderful examples online, as well as have found little tricks of my own. I actually wrote a program online. The program lets me compartmentalize all the complexity of light, and how it responds to the color on the object.

This is my latest creation (Using my program). I did this all from my head and have loved doing it. I get lost while I draw. I believe everyone needs to get lost while drawing. Its so relaxing. I hope you enjoy it.

By the way the sketch isn't finished.

Concept Art

2010-04-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

Well its been a while since my last post, but i have found some interesting techniques for photoshop. I Did this drawing using those techniques and found that the results were pretty real.

So to sum up what I found.

Adams way of using screens had some draw backs. First if the light source was the complementary color of the native color it would make it to bright. So I set out looking at all of the photoshop blend modes. I also wondered what 3d engines did to render out a scene. I wikipedia'd it until I found some answers. And these are the different steps in the rendering mode.

First is the local color of the object. This is an intense pure scan of your skin, usually this color is quite light and bright. For example if your shirt was red you would use pure red, no thoughts to shadow just pure color.

Second is the Ambient light. This basically determines the darkest dark for each color in your picture. It simply represents light bouncing around creating ambience.... I think ;) .

Third is your diffused light. This is what gives your object form.

Fourth is your specular light. Objects either absorb light or reflect it. Specular is used to fill the need of reflective light. A good example of this are leaves. If you look at the sun through a leaf its an intense yellow green, where as, if you look on the side the sun is shinning on its a lot cooler almost blue. This is because the light is reflecting back to you, giving you a reflection of light not diffusion of light.

And that is it.

Pretty simple. Now lets explain how photoshop can tackle each of these steps.

I did a skull study with this technique. And here are the layers.

The first layer is the local color of the skull, and its blend mode set to normal.

This is the Ambient light Layer. I took this hex color #070300

and bucket filled the layer and set the blend mode to Multiply. I then set the layer opacity to about 86%. I usually stay within 80-90% opacity on all ambient layers.

I then turn off all other layers and define the first diffused light source by drawing a value study of the skull with the light coming in at angle from the top. I stayed with in a 9 value scale. Remember not to think about reflective light just one light source at a time. This technique will do all the hard work of mixing colors for you.

After doing this value study of the light, I turn on the local color layer, and the ambient layer, and change the blend mode to "Color Dodge" and 100% opacity. And this is the result of one light source on the skull.

Next I do a value study of the second diffused light coming in from the bottom-left side. I turn off all the layers at this point and just do a simple value study again of the skull.

Now if you want to change the color of the light source push ctrl+u and select colorize and then mess with that until you get the light that you want. I did this for this light source by changing it to a blue light.

Next I turn on all the layers including the first light source, and place this layer on top of the first light source and change the blend mode to color dodge as well and wala. We get all the color subtleties of reality.

Now I didn't even use the fourth step of specular light. If you wanted to use this step you would do a value study of the light like I did on the other light source steps but change the blend mode to lighten and adjust the opacity to the needs of reflection.

Well I hope this helps the creation process. Good luck and go try it.

Computer Art

2010-04-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming more of a fan of this computer stuff by the minute. I have worked on a couple of pictures, and have learned a ton. Here is my latest. I used Adams technique on this as well. I be posting a larger post on all the steps later, so till then take a look.

And here is a teaser step...

Art Order - human like frog

2010-04-02T23:11:00.001-07:00

I have spent way to much time today on the new color technique. But what amazes me is that it still works for everything that I tried. I can't thank Adam enough for the tutorial. Anyways enough chatter here is a frog in a subway. Hope you like it. :)

Art Order

2010-04-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

Today I worked on a piece for a competition held at ArtOrder.blogspot.com. It was interesting. The art order was to morph or make two different animals morph into one. This is what I came up with. I had a lot of fun trying this new light technique that I just learn about. Well I hope you like it.

Wizard Two

2010-04-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

I could help but play a little bit with the color. I need to post about what Dixon told me about light spectrums etc. But if you follow the tutorial exactly you can place the character in any light really. Its amazing, take a look at what I did in about a minute. I changed the light spectrum to blue/dark blue and the reflective light to a brown green. This is what I got.

Drawing From Your Imagination - Wizard

2010-04-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

Dixon Leavitt and I got together and talked about his great experiences at some sculpting workshops, and while we talked he said that he had a great blog post that he wanted to show to me. Well we talked and talked and forgot about the tutorial. But Dixon, being the nice guy that he is he emailed me this link, http://adamscreation.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-depressing-being-second-tier-street.html. This artist did one of the best jobs explaining how to make up lighting in your head with photoshop. I just had to try this. So if you want to know what I did, go to that link and read. I followed his steps exactly and this is what I got. I hope this helps others as much as it helped me.

Here is the final piece. I just love the subtleties in the skin. I could not make that up without the help of this tutorial.

This is a sketch that I did to layout the wizard that I was about to draw. This didn't take but 3 minutes to draw.

Next I broke the image into different color families like skin, hair, and robe color.
This is what the artist called ambient occlusion. To be completely honest I didn't know what that meant, so I wikipedia'd it and understood completely.

This is a screen layer of orange/brown for the light.
I then did another screen of the light coming from the blue sky.

And wala this is all the layers turned on. I did each light source alone, so I didn't get confused as to where I was or what I was doing. This truely was really fun. I can't wait to do another one.

Springville Art Museum - Portrait Painting Day Two

2010-04-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Well I didn't do so well in taking pictures of day two... okay okay, I didn't take any, but its pretty much just rendering everything out until I feel that its right. I'm still not done with the final touches but its close. I really enjoyed and worked hard on the hands. I hope you like it.

Springville Art Museum - Portrait Painting

2010-03-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to paint my daughter kendi for some time, so when I got the Springville Art Invitation I decided that now is the time. This is only day one of the painting. I probably spent 6 hours on it so for. I snapped sequential steps to show how I paint and why. So here is a close up of day one.

This picture is slightly skewed from taking a picture, but I think that it gives enough information to be of some value.

I always start by toning my canvas with a color that is part of the color harmony in the picture. The colors that I used for the wash was mostly colbalt blue, and transparent oxide brown, with a touch of viridian here and there. I then block in the colors so I have a gauge for my final colors. I have found that it is always easier just to put something down and change it till its right. I have seen artist hesitate putting color down, and then once they put it down there scared to change it. Just remember, that when you are painting you are just fixing your last mistake (brush stroke). Don't ever be scared to start, just start and fix the painting if its wrong.

When I block in the painting I thin the paint with turpentine, but not to much because it becomes hard to handle. Then when the paint is down I take a paper towel and dip it into turpentine and create textures with it. This softens edges as well. I love this part.

At this point I have blocked it in enough to start rendering out the painting. I was satisfied with the positioning and the colors, so I started putting more effort into the face.

I continued to render out the face.... this is the hard part that no one really appreciates, but is nesseccary to hold the viewers attention. I really do enjoy this to, because its satisfying after your done.

And this is it after day one.

Stay tuned for day two.

Drawing a Lamp - (sleep insomnia)

2010-03-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not one to really struggle falling asleep, but for some reason I just couldn't shut my brain off. LeAnn was still reading, and I laid awake starring at the lamp on the bed stand beside me. I couldn't stop thinking about how this lamp would be a challenge to draw, and that I would need to stay true to values and edges in order to make it look real. That was the trigger for me. I couldn't take it any more, so I grabbed a pencil and a paper and began to draw. This is the 45 min. result. I hope you like it.

Drawing Tips

2010-02-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

This is a checklist that I naturally follow, for the most part, while drawing.

1. Squint - This simplifies the shapes on your subject to more recognizable blocks of abstract shapes. If this doesn't make sense read this.

2. Back and Forth (Quickly) - I look from my drawing to my reference so much that I sometimes I get dizzy. If you look back and forth quickly, your drawing will look like its shifting if its wrong. Try it, you'll understand. I look at my reference far more than I look at my drawing. (SIDE NOTE: John Singer Sargent would look at his model for a long period of time, and then slowly place one stroke down and back up and repeat the process until the painting was done. You wouldn't think that looking at his paintings, but that is why he needed so few brush strokes to render a likeness. He looked at the model more than his painting.)

3. Easy Shapes - Look for shapes and lines which are straight up and down or straight across. These are the easiest angles to draw, and the rest of the angles are easier to recognize and draw once these vertical and horzontal lines are done.

Confused? Here is an examnple:

Both the crease on his nose and the shadow of his nose are great starting places. They are almost perfectly up and down or straight across.

4. Smoke In - The more I draw, the more I do this. It gives me a since of direction, a reference to gauge if changes need to be made.

5. Render As You Go - Once you have blocked in the masses, its easier to render as you go. Making sure all shapes are in proportion to the first thing drawn.

6. Edges (soft soft soft) - I have realized that there are really very few hard edges, so few that I probably shouldn't pay any attention to them anyway. Some of the best painters I know have master this. Richard Schmid, Jeremy Lipking, Casey Baugh, and Anders Zorn. They know how to draw.

7. Paper Towells - This has made my drawings significantly better, I never let my oily fingers get on the paper, because the oils on your fingers act as a sealer. So resist shading with your fingers. There is no repentance or forgiveness if you use you fingers.

.... Well if there are any more I'll be sure to post them later.

Thought of some more.

8. Close one Eye (Your less dominant eye) - This only really helps while drawing from life. If you have struggled with drawing from life, but can draw really well off of a photo reference, this is probably your remedy. Only open boths eyes when its time to soften and harden edges. The purpose for two eyes is to allow you to see in 3d. My great-grandpa Winsor lost an eye in an accident while he was a kid, and he struggled with alot of things that we take for granted, having two eyes. His driving in particular was scary (personal experience). So use your eyes when you need to find the softness or hardness of edges, and close one eye while you draw the shapes in. Try it, it works.

Artwork for Sale

2010-01-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

We have some really nice "one-of-a kind" frames for sale. Each of these frames were created uniquely for the piece of art. They were all distressed, leafed and painted by hand. They were made by a professional framer that you can check out at Goldrivergallery.com. Each of these images are textured to look like original paintings. The images look much better in real life because the camera kept picking up the glare from the texture. These were supposed to go to China, but no one feels like they want to take them over there anymore. We would like to sell these at the wholesale price of $299 or best offer. Shipping is $17. Please email us at epicart@mail.com if you are interested in owning any of these pieces.

True Disciples; outside dimensions: 25x31

Prince of Peace; outside dimensions: 24.5 x 29
Merciful Savior; outside dimensions: 24.5 x 29

For Such is the Kingdom; outside dimensions: 24.5 x 29

If you are interested in owning one of these pieces please email us at epicart@mail.com

Palette - The atoms of creation

2009-12-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

Palettes are amazing. With just a few colors you can essentially mix any color that you see. Once you get past the secondary color mixing of green, purple, and orange, you enter into the dark world of the deceiving grays. Pretty much everything in our site right now, besides our computer screen, is simply a gray color with a hint of a pure color, like red or blue or yellow. I remember being frustrated about how I couldn't get colors right, and the majority of the time I was mixing the color too pure. I didn't dare to make it gray, because that would mean that its gray not red or blue.... boy was I wrong. If we want to learn color right now it would be wise to start with gray, which is close to the value of the color that you are trying to mix, and mix in the pure color in small increments. We'd probably arrive to the color faster than the other way around. Besides flowers, clothing, and the computer screens, we rarely see colors in their pure form. Grays are hard to nail down too. They shift with every stroke we paint. For example, if we put a grayish orange next to a grayish blue, the grayish orange and the grayish blue will look more intense. This is the principle of complimentary colors. They intensify each other. They make each other powerful, and that is what makes it difficult. We'd expect that they are purer than they really are. So mixing colors takes practice, time and thought to master, and I don't think that we can really nail it in a life time.... well maybe a few have, but for most of us, we simply give it a good effort and settle. The best way to learn how to paint color is to paint everything over and over again until it clicks. Pay attention to patterns, and principles. If principles govern our mixing, our colors will be more accurate and take less time to mix than before. PAY ATTENTION with every color shift while mixing. This is the only way to perfecting color. Its filled with headaches, frustration, and anger. But this hard road doesn't justify becoming apethetic. We never learn, without challenges. And the reward for those who push on... its a masterpiece, that may even influence millions. I'd say thats a fair trade off.

Flowers

2009-11-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, its not very manly to like flowers. But I have to admit that they are perhaps one of the funnest things to paint. Its really rare that you get to use paint straight out of the tube, but with flowers its almost certain that you will. I thought I would show some of my paintings that I have done of roses and an other flower.

All of these paintings where done from life in about 3-4 hours. They are by no means spectacular, but I liked them.

Now if you want to see the a real man paint flowers take a look at some of Richard Schmids paintings.

Sketch - Full Body

2009-11-17T20:57:00.001-08:00

I thought it would be a great idea (thanks Ethan) to show how I draw a full body. So here we go.

I start as I do any other drawing by smoking in, or toning the stark white paper. After toning my paper I make my best guess as to how big the body will be on the paper. I make a few marks marking the width and height of the head, and make sure that the smoked in subject will fit on my paper.

After I know that the size is right I begin to render out the head. I almost always start with the eyes and work my way out, carefully measuring the size of shapes along the way. In this you'll see the beginning stages of the nose which is quite abstract and fun to look at.

I continue upon the same path as I mentioned above, by carefully measuring distances and shapes.

Same as above.

After wasting some time in just rendering the sleeve, I decided to draw in the rest of the body so I could smoke it in. Notice how straight each line is drawn at this stage. I don't care so much to show off at this point. I just stick to boring old straight, and accurate lines. This approach ensures structure.

Smoking in big shapes of the body, like I did the face in the first stage.

In this stage I begin to render out the shirt. I really enjoyed the value subtleties between the skin and shirt.

Just rendering......

More Rendering..... and some fun show off lose stuff. I wish the whole drawing could be that fun.

On the last stage I play a little bit longer with fun pattern. I also pull out the highlights in the pants and other areas.

I had way too much fun drawing this one. I love drawing my kids. They are just way too cute. Remember if you have any questions leave a comment, and I'll try to answer all that I can. Now go practice! :)

Giveaway

2009-11-11T19:38:00.000-08:00

Head over to Organize and Decorate Everything for a chance to win one of two of my Calendars. Giveaway ends Saturday.

2010 Calendars Are Here

2009-10-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

They are finally here. I get to give you a "Blog Reader" discount. They normally cost $12.99, but I can sell them for $10.39. That's a great gift price and it won't last long. These calendars have a few different images than last years calendar so they are a little different. Please email epicart@mail.com and leave your name, number and best time to reach you so we can take your orders over the phone. For wholesale inquiries go to cedarfort.com.

Escalante Plein Air

2009-09-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

This last week my family and I were able to go to Escalante for four days. LeAnn was so supportive, during the whole week, it helped me focus on just painting. I learned an awful lot from painting everyday from life. Light changes so quickly while painting that its debilitating. I found that if I painted a certain direction facing perpendicular plains, light changed less. Learning this was invaluable as the days went on. I then learned which things to paint first and which to paint last.

I did a 16 x 20 canvas for the competition, and I didn't like it as well as my smaller paintings that I did. I'm still trying to figure out how to make my bigger plein air paintings look as fresh as my smaller ones. Matt Smith is a wonderful example of how to paint well whether big or small. If you haven't seen Matt's paintings I would suggest to visit his site http://www.mattsmithstudio.com/ . He is so good at capturing the true colors of nature that you feel as if you were standing there on the spot with him.

So here are my small paintings, that I did. These are 8 x 10.

This was painted on the first day, about 5 miles west of Escalante in the evening. One think I loved about Escalante is that you don't have to go to the popular spots to find a beautiful scene to paint. I painted this about 30 ft from the highway. I loved how the light bounced around on the rocks and the ground. I also thought that the distant mountains popped the rocks in the foreground. I did a lot of pallette knife work on this one. If you want to see the pallette knife work just click the image to enlarge it. This painting was done in about 3 hours.

This painting was painted in the morning on the second day. I really enjoyed this because of the challenge of the composition. I usually use a dark pattern composition seperated by light spots. On this piece, on the other hand, I used the opposite approach. I'm still not sure if I really really like it, but its growing on me.

This was painted in the morning on the third day. This became my favorite. I love the feeling of morning light on rocks. It just makes you happy.

By this time I had figured out a process of painting. Not a memorized set of colors, but rather the steps to take to render the painting. I started with bristle brushes and blocked in all the colors in about 30 minutes or so, so that I could see the colors reacting to each other. This seemed to help me paint more quickly as I detailed out each segment of the painting. What a morning. I think I finished this painting in about 2 hours.

My Way on How to Stretch a Canvas

2009-09-18T18:30:00.000-07:00

Clear back in my teens, I was able to go and learn from Jimmy Jones how to stretch a canvas. At the time, I didn't really understand how to do it without getting wrinkles in it. Luckily, later in life, when I worked at a framing shop I had the chance to figure out the fastest and best system for me. I did a lot of stretching back in those days and I'm thankful that I learned this technique.

The technique that I use isn't the same as you would probably be taught in school, but it works and its usually a lot faster.

So here are the tools that I use.

I use wire cutters, canvas grips, and a staple gun.

The first step in getting a canvas stretched is to put a staple in the center of each side, pulling the canvas tight. This isn't where I'm different in the traditional stretching technique.

The image illustrates the sequence.

While stretching literally hundreds of canvas' I found that they often wrinkled on the long side of the canvas. So to prevent this I would pull the canvas tight and put staples at the top of each corner temporarily, and not staple the staple in all the way.

I then decided to just do it every time. So here is where I put those four staples.

Now with the long side as tight as it can be, I staple the entire long side starting from the middle and working out on both sides of the middle staple. When I get near the corner, about 2 or so inches from it, I take out the temporary staple on that corner and finish the long side.

After finishing both long sides I do the same for the short sides, starting from the middle staple moving out.

The illustration below shows the order in which I do this.

Now the corners are somewhat tricky. This is how I handle them.

I put my finger on the corner and run it towards the middle of the short side. This creates the fold. I then pull down the top canvas parallel with the corner of the stretcher bars. Like hospital corners on your bedsheets.

Here is another angle of this step.

I then pull the canvas to the right/left towards the middle of the short side, and tuck it under the top canvas like so.

Well I hope this helps those who have found the traditional way of stretching frustrating. Make sure you post a comment if you have any questions.

Drawing Tools

2009-09-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

I had my cousin ask a good question about what kind of pencils I use when I draw. After reading his question I decided to write a post just about the tools that I use while drawing. I'm all about keeping things as simple as they can be when I create something artistic. Whether its painting or drawing, I try to use as few tools as possible. So when I draw I only use three things.

1. Viva paper towels.

2. Number 2 pencil.

3. Kneaded eraser by sanford.

The Viva paper towels can be bought at about any grocery store out there.

The number 2 pencil can be bought at walmart in bulk. The thing I would watch out for is the number 2 pencils that are made with particle board instead of a solid piece of wood tend to be worse (don't go as dark). So when you are bying your pencils make sure you can see wood grain at the bottom of the pencils. The reason why I only use the number 2 pencil is because, back in the day when I was younger my dad went and bought me a huge set. I can't remember how big it was but I think it went from 8B to 8H or something like that. This is how they looked.

I thought that this would make my drawings all the better. But to my surprise I notice that the hard leaded pencils, the ones that were supposed to draw lighter, actually scratch my paper as I drew. I could never get rid of the scratches, even when I drew over it with a darker pencil. This drove me crazy. I could have a great drawing that was scarred by unwanted scratches. Now, someone may read this and say, well Jared just doesn't know how to use the pencil set. They are probably right, but I didn't have the patience to learn something that could be solved by just pushing one pencil softer for a lighter value and harder for a darker value.

And last but not least the wonderful kneaded eraser by sanford. This eraser is a life saver. I could not do a drawing unless I have this eraser. The reason why I depend on this eraser so much is that they last forever, they mold to any shape that you want, and they erase down to the white of the paper without smearing or leaving the color of the eraser behind. This eraser can be bought at misterart.com or dickblick.com. Check it out its worth it.

Edges

2009-09-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

In order to make a good painting great, we need to know about edges. Edges are used to create the illusion of depth. We paint on two-dimensional surfaces, yet we are expected to make people believe it is 3-dimensional. This is troubling and difficult. So how do we do this? First we must understand how our eyes create depth.

The whole reason for having two eyes is to create depth. Our brain receives two images, one from each eye, and then overlays the images. One of our eyes is more dominant than the other, and that is why it doesn't seem to0 blurry. I have recreated, in photoshop, what our eyes do when looking at an object . The first image is just what a camera does, and the second image is what our eyes do. I snapped the photos as described in the illustration to the left. One photo for each eye's perspective. I took the left eye image and made it semi-transparent and laid it over my dominant right eye image. The focus of the two eyes is the duracell logo. You'll notice that the image is clear there and partly blurry everywhere else. This is how depth is created.

This is how the camara sees.

This is how our eyes' see.

This is all easier said than done, and the best way to learn about edges is to study what masters have done in their paintings to create depth. Here are some that I have marveled at.

This was painted by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

This one was painted by Richard Schmid.

1 Hour Portrait

2009-09-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

This demostration was an hour long. I love to practice drawing by pausing movies. It gives you the time you need to practice with an ideal model that doesn't move, plus all of your family will recognize the actor, if it is drawn well, and that is always fun. Anyways this character is off Hildago. I picked it because of the strong lighting on the face. All of the photos are five minutes apart.

At the very beginning of every drawing I tone the horrible white paper. Nothing in my whole drawing is even close to being white, so I darken it by drawing horizontal strokes holding my pencil on its side like so.

(I got this picture off another blog, click it to see the blog.)

0 minutes
Its good to think that the white of the paper as being as bright as the sun. We rarely see things pure white, so we should avoid it.

0-5 minutes In this next step I quickly smoke in important shapes of the face that I can see. In this case it was the left eye (his right). I explained how I see shapes in a previous post titled "Values and Shapes". If you haven't read that yet, I would recommend it, or the next few stages might not make as much sense.
5-10 minutes
I continue on seeing and drawing the shapes of the face as simply as I can. This is not a time to think about detail. Its a time to focus on the beauty of simple shapes on a face.

10-15 minutes
I'm still blocking in the simplified shapes.

15-20 minutes
Still blocking in, no detail yet.

20-25 minutes
This is where it starts to get fun. I finally blocked in all the major shapes, and I can now start focusing on rendering the picture. While I draw I never let my fingers touch the paper, because the oil in our hands make the graphite unerasable. So I always have a nice Viva paper towell near by to use as my blending tool. And that is exactly what I have done on this stage. I smoothed out my drawing by gently rubbing the paper towell on my drawing. You'll notice that the drawing is more smooth than in the previous stage. I also use a kneaded eraser to get the different textures on the drawing.
25-35 minutes
I render out one item at a time. I don't jump around from thing to thing, because I feel like I loose focus if I do. Rendering it out as you go along helps fix initial drawing mistakes as well. In the previous stage you'll notice that the jaw on the light side is wider than it should be. I noticed a measuring error on the jaw and quickly changed it to be correct in this stage.

35-60 minutes
I continue rendering out the drawing until the end of the hour, and this is the result.

I hope this is helpful, if you have any questions or comments please post a comment.

Kendi's Portrait

2009-08-31T11:57:00.001-07:00

Saturday I really wanted to record how I do a quick portrait. I got everything set up, the camera the lighting, and started recording, but half way through the five hour painting I ran out of tape. This was hard because I really liked how the painting turned out. Nonetheless I will post the videos of the first half of the painting as soon as I can. For now, we will all have to imagine how I finished it. I'll do another post on how I render out paintings.

Here is the painting at roughly five hours. Click image to enlarge.

This is a detail of the face. I really get frustrated when a painting doesn't have a detail. I like to see all the nitty-gritty detail of a painting, so here it is. Click image to enlarge.

I was pleased on how the left eye (Kendi's right eye) turned out. Most people tend to make the edges of an iris way to hard, because they think that creating detail means painting hard edges everywhere. This is a common mistake, and should be avoided. I would rather error on the side that my painting looks blury than that of hard edges everywehere. If you look closely at the eye you'll see that all the edges besides the highlight are soft. This is what gives the eye depth. Edges are used to create depth in a painting. I'll explain this in further detail some other time.

If you have any questions ask them in the commments and I'll try to answer as many as I can.

Values and Shapes

2009-08-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

I still remember the day when drawing values and shapes clicked for me. I was sick and home from school with a soar throat. Most kids hated being sick, but I loved it, because it meant that I could draw and paint all day. Dixon Leavitt and I had made it a habit of drawing off the television by pausing movies like Star Wars, Mission Impossible and all the other classics. We only had about 5-10 minutes before the VCR would just shut off. It was frustrating but rewarding. I was drawing Denzel Washington on the day it all clicked. The values that made the shapes were so obvious that I wondered how I couldn't see it before. I looked at the TV and laughed, it was really that easy to draw. There aren't many things in life where the problem is also the answer. Drawing is really quite simple once we tell ourselves the truth about our drawings. If the nose is wrong erase it and fix it. I believe that we often find ourselves settling, because that's the easy thing to do. Anyway, enough talk, lets get to explaining how to see correctly, or with the eye of an artist. Here is a photo I pulled off the web of Sean Connery. I wanted to show how I see things. As artists it is our job to simplify and abstract, from reality, the neccesary parts to illustrate our point.

Values are tricky, because there are so many, billions if not trillions that the eye can pick up. So that is why it is neccesary to be able to see simple shapes and simple values. Instead of working with billions of values we should try to stick with just a few. Below I have photoshoped over Sean's face to show how I see when I begin to paint, or draw.

And no this isn't a photoshop filter, its Jared's filter using the polygonal lasso tool.

You may say, gee that looks a little funny, and my reply would be yep, it does. Its looks funny because you wouldn't leave a painting at this stage, well... I do sometimes, just because its cool to see it in it's simplest shape possible. If you don't start a painting or a drawing with simplicity, most times it loses its form. Notice the straight lines of all the shapes, I draw with straight lines, rarely curved (unless I want to "show off" at the very end, and I pretty much trace my straight lines that are already there). My shapes need to be extremely simplified, or they lose their form as well.

How I see is perhaps the hardest concept to explain to others. This is really how I see the world, in simplified shapes of values.

This is the best way I can think of, on explaining how an artist sees reality. It may look funny right now, but one day you'll look back as you are drawing and say... oh I get it.