Here is another desk shot, showing what I'm working on tonight.  I'm finishing up some inks this evening. It's a LIIIIIITLE cropped in as I can't give much away about this project, yet.  Still, I wanted to share a sneak peek of things with you guys.  I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 2:50 AM No Comments »

Been intending to put up my stack of books from this past Wednsday, all week.  Just now getting to it.

It was kind of a light week for me, so I ended up picking up a couple of hardcovers.





THE WALKING DEAD #80

SWEETS #4

OZMA OF OZ #3

AVENGERS PRIME #5

ULTIMATE CAPTAIN AMERICA #1

EDGE OF DOOM #3

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #4

CHOKER #5





In spite of it being a pretty light week, I've really enjoyed everything I've read, so far.  I'm really excited about the new "No Way Out" arc of The Walking Dead. With this issue it really started off with a bang.  I also dug Jason Aaron and Ron Garney's first issue of Ultimate Captain America.  Between it and Hickman's Ultimate Thor, I might just stick with the Ultimate universe a bit longer.





I haven't gotten to anything else yet because I pretty much dove into the BEAUTIFUL hardcovers that I picked up.  I'm absolutely loving Darwyn Cooke's adaptations of the Parker novels.  I think Cooke is a genius.  One of the real modern masters of comics.  As much as I liked the first volume, The Hunter, I think I'm enjoying The Outfit even more.

I tend drone on and on about my love for all things Mignola. The Amazing Screw On Head and Other Curious Objects collection only feeds my obsession.  It's filled, cover to cover with some of Mignola's most inspired work.  I've read it twice and still keep wanting to stare at it some more.

So there you go.  What I picked up last week...almost just in time for me to do this all over again this week.  Sorry.

Until next time.  Keep reading comics.  And don't illegally download them off of the web.  It's just shitty.

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 10:43 PM No Comments »

2011 has started off with a bang.  It's been a busy week around here and I'm playing a bit of catch up.  As promised though, here are a few shots of the process of the Zatanna painting. It was a fun and challenging little project. I hope you dig it!



I started off on a nice piece of 11 x 14 Arches watercolor paper.  It's nice thick stuff with a good bit of texture.  Early in my career I liked working on smooth papers, so the "tooth" to the Arches paper would have driven me crazy, but I've really grown to love that texture.  As always, I penciled the image with a 2H mechanical pencil.  Out of habit, I filled in the black areas.  It's something I always do when penciling to make filling in the blacks easier.  I didn't even think about the extra graphite muddying up the watercolors.  Luckily, another artist buddy of mine pointed out that I should try and remove as much of it as possible using a drafting eraser pad. I had to be careful doing so. It worked out really well and removed the majority of the fill graphite without losing much line or more importantly damaging the paper.



I was a LITTLE nervous about starting this painting. I always am when it comes to watercolor.  This particular piece had a lot of elements, like the stars, and I really wanted to make Zatanna look beautiful. I just didn't want to mess it up.  I had a plan for how I wanted to do the background, but I decided to start in on some of the other elements.  The majority of this piece was done with this really old, kind of crusty pan of watercolors.  It has a good selection of colors and is nice to work with.  As always, I work light to dark.  I started with the lightest skin tones and some of the blue/purple hughes on the shirt etc and worked them up from there.  I also went in and painted in a nice, light yellow ochre for the stars.  It took a lot of passes to build up the color.  I pretty much started out with an almost transparent wash and went from there.



I really liked the light colors that I laid down.  They felt like a good starting point, so it was time to move on to the background before I got any darker on the figure.  I knew what I wanted to do for the background itself, but I went ahead and dropped a pic of the image as is into photoshop and messed with a few color choices.  I knew Zatanna herself would have some blue hews to her costume so I was kind of tempted to go with an orange color for the background, but it just felt a little overpowering.  Red seemed like a logical choice, but again could have been too much.  In the end, after far too much deliberation and getting opinions from friends, I decided to go with a blue.



I usually don't tape off the edges and go for more of the free form thing, but this time around, I decided I'd like a straighter edge.  I took a nice tube of Windsor Newton - Payne's Gray and used it for the background blue.  Payne's is easily one of my favorite colors to work with.  A lot of painters I know love to use it.  It's a pretty perfect color.  Technically a gray, but moving into the blue spectrum.  It has a ton of depth to it and is perfect for the sort of ghostly atmospheric backgrounds I like to do.

The trick with this is that I needed to move FAST. Doing a wet on wet technique is something that has to be done quickly.  The really scary part was the stars. Having to move fast and lay down a lot of water amidst these TINY intricate shapes was intimidating as hell.  I took a pretty big 12 Round brush and threw down as much water onto the paper as I could.  I managed to avoid the stars...well mostly.  I then quickly went in with a wash of the Payne's Gray and just kind of let it go.  Not easy to do.  Watercolor, especially wet on wet just kind of does it's thing that's where a lot of the beauty happens.



I let the background dry and then went in with a few Sakura Pigma Micron pens (01, 02, 03).



I would have preferred to use a crow quill and ink for this stage instead of Microns, but in spite of it's claims, the Yasumoto Sumi ink I use is NOT waterproof.  I learned that the hard way.



Watercolor purists would kill me for inking a watercolor image. I just like the hard edge against the soft color.  What can I say...it's my thing.



After inking in a few hard lines and making sure everything was dry, I went back in and re-wetted the page to give the background a little more depth and really play up the murky-smokey aspect.  My studio has a LOT of bright lights.  They tend to run a bit hot so stuff dries pretty quickly.  That's good for inking, but bad for trying to keep a page wet enough to move around watercolor.  After REALLY wetting down the page, I quickly went in and blotted on a lot of dark Payne's Gray.  I thinned it down, but not much.  I really wanted to get some nice darks in there.



After blotting in the color I just let gravity and the water work together, moving the page around and letting the color do it's thing.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  I probably could have gone back in again a couple more times repeating the process, but didn't want to overwork things and lose any of the cool variation I got.



After finishing the background and allowing it to fully dry, I went back in and added a little more depth to the skin tones and tux.  One down side of adding black to an image is it IMMEDIATELY washes out all of your light tones and steals a lot of the subtle depth.  I punched things up a little bit going in and adding a bit more shadow and bringing in a tiny bit of the Payne's with subtle, light washes.   Once I knew that those were good and dry, I went in with my crow quill and Sumi ink and added a bit more organic line to give things even more depth.



From there, I went in with a brush and ink and filled the black areas of Zatanna's tux, hat and hair.  Again, I know watercolor purists would shoot me for using straight black ink on an image.  For my purposes, I think having that strong black plays up the watercolor.  Had I gone with a dark Lamp Black/Payne's Gray tint, it would have had a nice depth but would have remained soft against the background.  This way, the figure really stands out and pops against the soft fog.



With the ink fills done, it was time for just a few more adjustments here and there.  I had to be REALLY careful doing any additional work to the figure, since I knew the ink could easily move and dirty things up.  I carefully went in here and there and added a few watercolor shadows to the tux and shirt.  I even took a calculated risk and hit the ink a couple of times on the jacket and hat and let the ink gray up the tones just to give it a little more depth.  I could have probably played with things for hours at this stage.  Eventually I had to let it go.



The last thing I did was lay in the red on Zatanna's lips and the cards.  As I was working on this piece, I picked up a really nice Windsor Newton Watercolor Compact Set.  I'd already done 90% of the work on this piece, so I didn't get to mess with it much, but the set had this beautiful Alizarin Crimson that I used for the reds.  Alizarin Crimson, like Payne's Gray is one of my favorite colors. It's a rich, deep, blood red.  Kind of perfect for a lot of things.  I used it on the lips and cards pretty much straight out of the pan.  I like the way it came out.  Not too pink.   Not too brown.

This was how the finish piece looked on my desk.  For the most part a real success.  The tape came off and had a nice edge.  Not TOO perfect.  Still a bit natural due to the grain of the paper.



Finally I scanned the piece into Photoshop.  My scanner is just a crappy Mustek, but I'm always surprised at the color depth it gets.  A lot of guys I know have trouble scanning color stuff.  The Mustek never really lets me down.   There were a couple of little areas where the background ran into the stars.  Nothing drastic, but just a slight difference.  I went in using Photoshop and fixed 'em.  I also played with the levels a little to make the blacks and whites pop, but other than that, this final image looks pretty much exactly like the painting on my desk.

In the end I'm really happy with the way this turned out.  Sure there are things I would like to have done differently, or better, but I'd consider it a success. This has really got me enjoying painting.  I'm definitely doing to be doing more of it this year.

Thanks so much for checking out my process blog.  I'm going to continue to do more of them in '11.  They're kinda fun. :)

Thanks-

-Jeremy @ 7:44 AM 1 Comment »

So that's a wrap on 2010.  I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you all for your support over the past year.  2010 was a long hard year. I worked pretty much non stop on several projects and easily had my most creatively productive and artistically satisfying year to date.  I owe so much of it to you, the people who read my blog, buy my books, and support my work.

This year, 2011, is going to be a BIG year for me.  One full of change and some really positive creative challenges. Over the next few weeks I'm going to be making some big announcements about what's on the horizon in the coming months. I'm hella excited.

I'm also going to do my best in '11 to keep up with the blog and regularly post more of my work.  I'm going to continue to update at least a couple times a week with artwork, news about books, and regular features like my silly "Positive Thursdays".  I'm also going to try and feature monthly process blogs and stuff like that.

And there you go.  Goodbye 2010.  Welcome 2011.  It's good to see you.

Thanks

-Jeremy @ 1:01 AM 4 Comments »