Su Haitao Paint-Sketch

As mentioned previously, I am doing an interview for my friend Su Haitao from China. For part of the interview I did a simple step by step on sketching as well as this small and quick painting. The picture that I used as reference was fairly low resolution, which was plenty good enough to sketch from. Once I decided I wanted to paint it, I asked Su if he had a better version of the reference with higher resolution. He didn't, and even though he sent new but different pictures that were of higher resolution, I decided to just stick with my original reference. I liked the colors and the setting . . . so, because the image was lower in resolution and I only had a little time to spare for this, I decided to do something a bit more painterly and loose, and I also limited myself to finishing the painting in under two hours.

I used a round brush to block in large amounts of color, then one of my brushy looking brushes for the remainder of the painting. Rather than focusing on the small details of the face, I chose to approach the painting more like that of a plein air painting. Squinting my eyes and focusing on shape, color, and value.

It was quick, fun, and I rather enjoy the final result.




Here's a detail image to see how loose and brushy it is.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but again, I would like to remind everyone that my next class on CARICATURE starts April 16th at www.schoolism.com As always, any questions you may have can be emailed to me or the staff at Schoolism. Thank you.

9 Hour turnaround, Nancy Pelosi for The Weekly Standard

I broke a new personal record with this one . . . Nine hours from start to finish.
When you get a call to paint Nancy Pelosi, you take it! Her face was well worth the struggle I undertook to finish this deadline! I was given this assignment late Thursday night. The final art is due by the end of the next day . . .

I didn't get to work until around 8:00 a.m. Did a really quick sketch, got it approved, and by 9:30 a.m. I was painting like a mad-man. To start and finish an illustration in one day is a challenge to say the least. You've got to always be thinking a few steps ahead. For example, I remember that when I was painting the nose, I was thinking about how I was going to paint the chalk board.

There is no time to sit back and reflect, it's just GO TIME! Paint, paint, paint! I realized I wasn't going to have time to eat lunch unless I got some help, and luckily my wife came through for me and bought me a sandwich from Subway, which I literally ate with my left hand while painting with my right.

This type of a deadline can be stressful, but I also find that there is an energy and a life to the work that I really enjoy. I like the painterly look as well. And though there may be little things here and there that bother me about this piece, I truly had a blast, developed new ways to paint faster, and realized new ways "how not to do things" . . . I love my job!







Dunce Pelosi Detail.




Final product.

Su Haitao sketch

Wow, things have been nuts lately, there's a lot going on! One of the things I'm doing is an interview for my friend Su Haitao, and for part of the interview I did a sketch of him and saved the steps for the readers. I'll share that here eventually. He's got a great face to draw, If I have time, I'd love to paint this as well.

Please feel free to click here to see Su Haitao's blog.

Also, just to remind everyone, my next Caricature class at Schoolism starts on April 16th! Please email me or the Schoolism staff for more info!

Showtime's Bad Girls for The Wall Street Journal

Here's a painting I did for The Wall Street Journal last week. I had to pull an all nighter to make the deadline, having only a day and a half to paint these four women . . . so, for the time given I feel good about the final result even though the entire experience felt very rushed. Of course there are always things I would have liked to have done differently if I had the time, but the "editorial world" is quite the animal, and you do what you can with what you have.



Very quick sketches done of the actresses, getting a quick feel for their likenesses.




Mistakes do happen, I'm not upset with the Journal, these things happen. If you went and bought a copy of The WSJ you may have noticed that the art printed was not my final painting. This is because they accidentally used an older file that I sent to them. While working on illustrations for magazines, I tend to share my progress, showing them how the painting is coming along. The version that printed is a "low res" jpeg, and major parts of my painting have not yet been completed and are still in the sketch stage. For example, Nurse Jackie's hair and body have not yet been painted . . . a frustrating situation as you can imagine. Here's an image of how my art looked printed in The Wall Street Journal . . . a far cry from the original.



This is how the art "should" have printed.


Showtime didn't seem to notice the printing error and actually really liked the art enough that they're going to be contacting me for some prints.

Featuring the work of Schoolism student Didier Loubat!

WARNING: TO THOSE OF YOU WHO MAY HAVE READ MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT MY COURSE AT SCHOOLISM . . . THE MESSAGE IS THE SAME, SCHOOLISM IS AWESOME, YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT! BUT TODAY I WANT TO FEATURE GREAT WORK FROM A DIFFERENT STUDENT, DIDIER LOUBAT! PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THE WONDERFUL WORK HE HAS CREATED, ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT SCHOOLISM PLEASE DON'T HESITATE TO CONTACT ME. THANK YOU.
















I've got another class starting soon, so I wanted to make sure to let everyone know, and to remind you of what to expect from my class. From time to time I would like to feature a few students here on my blog, to show you what kind of work is done during the course but also to feature the artists themselves as I am very proud of their hard work. It is so exciting to watch a student grow and become better in a span of 9 lessons.


All of the work on this post was drawn and painted by Didier. These sketches and painting will give you an idea of what the students are learning in my course.

My next course at www.schoolism.com will start on the 16th of April. I will be taking on students for an 11 week online course. What can you expect to learn from taking my course at www.schoolism.com?
The way Schoolism works is students will watch a lesson which is usually two hours long. You can pause, go back, take notes, sketch and so on. After watching the lesson of the week, the student is then given ten to 14 days to complete the assignment. This deadline changes from week to week depending on what is expected that week for homework. Once the assignment is finished, the student uploads their home work to the Schoolism site, leaving questions and comments for me to go over with them. I then download their work and record a 25 to 30 minute critique on their work and then upload that critique to their file at www.schoolism.com I work one on one with each student, and as I said above, every student is at a different place artistically, so each critique I do is very different. And one of the cool things about this is that the students at Schoolism have access to the rest of their classes critiques as well as past critiques from previous semesters. So there are literally hours and hours of demos and critiques to soak up while taking the course.

My critiques are honest and to the point. I look for each students strengths and then push them further in that direction, helping to develop their style. We work together to improve on areas that need work, and as long as the student puts in the time and effort, they always come out on top!

Caricature is not only about how much you can exaggerate a person, there's so much more to it than that. My course covers everything from sketching, and the importance of thumbnails . . . developing character, likeness as well as the essence of a person. How to exaggerate and push the features while keeping a strong likeness. Exploring shape and form as well as the unique relationships between the features on the face, finding the weight and so on. The course also covers painting in values as well as color temperature, and palettes. I go over skulls and understanding the anatomy of the face as well as teaching my techniques for painting hair.
Finally, the last three lessons of the course are dedicated to creating a final piece of art that the student can use in their portfolio. These lessons cover techniques that I use for my editorial and illustration work. Putting all the previous lessons together to create one final painting.

Any questions please email me or the staff at Schoolism My next course starts on the 16th of April and seats are filling up fast!

15 minute warm up sketch

15 minute quick sketch . . . . good practice for me as I tend to be a slow poke unless I'm under a deadline . . . so this was good fun and good practice!

My next course at Schoolism starts on April 16th, there are only 15 spaces and seats are filling up, so sign up today! For more info, please vist www.schoolism.com and read my previous blog post!

Featuring the work of Schoolism student Sycra Yasin!

As many of you know, I am one of the instructors at www.schoolism.com I've got another class starting soon, so I wanted to make sure to let everyone know, and to remind you of what to expect from my class. From time to time I would like to feature a few students here on my blog, to show you what kind of work is done during the course but also to feature the artists themselves as I am very proud of their hard work. It is so exciting to watch a student grow and become better in a span of 9 lessons.
This week I would like to feature Sycra Yasin!

All of the work on this post was drawn and painted by Sycra. These are only two of the assignments, lessons 4 and 6.

My next course at www.schoolism.com will start on the 16th of April. I will be taking on students for an 11 week online course. What can you expect to learn from taking my course at www.schoolism.com?
The way Schoolism works is students will watch a lesson which is usually two hours long. You can pause, go back, take notes, sketch and so on. After watching the lesson of the week, the student is then given ten to 14 days to complete the assignment. This deadline changes from week to week depending on what is expected that week for homework. Once the assignment is finished, the student uploads their home work to the Schoolism site, leaving questions and comments for me to go over with them. I then download their work and record a 25 to 30 minute critique on their work and then upload that critique to their file at www.schoolism.com I work one on one with each student, and as I said above, every student is at a different place artistically, so each critique I do is very different. And one of the cool things about this is that the students at Schoolism have access to the rest of their classes critiques as well as past critiques from previous semesters. So there are literally hours and hours of demos and critiques to soak up while taking the course.

My critiques are honest and to the point. I look for each students strengths and then push them further in that direction, helping to develop their style. We work together to improve on areas that need work, and as long as the student puts in the time and effort, they always come out on top!

Caricature is not only about how much you can exaggerate a person, there's so much more to it than that. My course covers everything from sketching, and the importance of thumbnails . . . developing character, likeness as well as the essence of a person. How to exaggerate and push the features while keeping a strong likeness. Exploring shape and form as well as the unique relationships between the features on the face, finding the weight and so on. The course also covers painting in values as well as color temperature, and palettes. I go over skulls and understanding the anatomy of the face as well as teaching my techniques for painting hair.
Finally, the last three lessons of the course are dedicated to creating a final piece of art that the student can use in their portfolio. These lessons cover techniques that I use for my editorial and illustration work. Putting all the previous lessons together to create one final painting.

Any questions please email me or the staff at Schoolism My next course starts on the 16th of April and seats are filling up fast!

Now, enough talking . . . please enjoy these great sketches and paintings by Sycra Yasin!

Thom Yorke: For the Birds

I know this is very different from what I normally do, people always expect tight rendering and so forth. I enjoy that kind of work, but I also LOVE work that is loose, painterly, and sketchy. I enjoy moody palettes, and I love to paint, and love to sketch. So for an experiment of sorts I decided to have some fun and play around with my style a bit, mixing all that I love into one piece.

This doesn't mean that everything I do will have this look, however, I would like to develop and explore this path a bit to see where it may lead? I feel it's important to mix things up a bit, trying something new can be as good as therapy. I had a lot of fun messing around with this, but it wasn't easy ignoring the left side of my brain. You know, that critical voice who just won't leave you alone? It was hard to resist the temptation to render the snot out of everything. I decided to let go and let my artistic side take over . . . I'm not a spontaneous person so this was a challenge. I wasn't sure where I was going to end up or if the trip was even worth it? I'm glad I went along for the ride.



I was happy with the "feeling" I captured . . . I look forward to working on the next piece.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland concept art: Tweedles

This is another character that I worked on with my friend Bobby Chiu. Bobby did the initial sketch of the Tweedle shape and proportions and then passed it onto me to do my thing. I had a lot of fun working on this creepy little boy. I had an image in mind before I began to paint, so I found some references to help me reach what I was going for, but also took a bunch of pictures of my oldest daughter Isabeau in various lighting. I've attached some of my references below.

The twin girls from "The Shining" were an influence as was the obese man in the movie "Seven". I was in a park with my daughter Isabeau and was inspired by a couple kids that I saw playing. The skin on their forehead was so transparent that you could see these blue veins and it was so cool . . . I couldn't wait to get back to my studio to finish my Tweedle painting. That little detail was exactly what I was looking for. To finish it off I added a bit of the forest floor at his feet, to tie everything together.

My goal with all the concept art that I worked on was to try and capture a "feeling" something that would hopefully translate well into film. I was pleased to see these details were not lost along the way, that they made it into the film.




Detail of face.



Our revision after feedback from Burton.





One of the many pictures I took of Isabeau for lighting and expression reference . . . she was only 4 at the time, but what a fantastic model she was. She made all sorts of faces for me to work with, she was great!




One of my references for the veins.




Hand reference.





Reference for body frame and so forth.



Face reference.




This picture was taken at the "Curiouser & Curiouser" show at Gallery Nucleus in L.A. A small sculpt created of a Tweedle for the film.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland concept art: Executioner

This was another character that I was assigned to work on for Alice in Wonderland. For this concept, I wasn't given any direction or information on who or what this character should be like. So I decided to create something that I would like to see in a movie. A lot of Burton's characters seem to be similar from movie to movie . . . so, my hope was to come up with something different and not so "typical" of a Tim Burton film . . . but also something creepy and a bit humorous. I thought of the last person I'd want to see before losing my head. The idea of not covering all of his face, and leaving only his mouth exposed seemed interesting too. There's a creepy, suspenseful feeling in not knowing what the rest of his face looks like. I also liked the idea that he could either be a small guy next to a normal sized sword, or an average sized man, but with an enormous sword. This was one of my favorite pieces that I did even though it wasn't used in the film.

About a day or so of time spent on this concept.

-A small shout out to my friend Don Hill for giving me some great expressions to work off of.




Detail.



I heard that Tim had another type of executioner in mind, so I received a small sketch that Tim Burton did. It made me laugh because it was "typical" to what I thought he would do, basically a grim reaper with a small axe. So, from his sketch I decided to have another go at the executioner . . . I still tried to bring something different to the character, while sticking to Burton's grim reaper sketch. I wanted to create a character that had a creepy and unsettling feeling, again, the last person you'd want to see before losing your head.

I'm not sure how it normally works working as a character designer for a film as this was my first experience? I wasn't told very much, wasn't given much of an idea or direction on where to go with the "feeling" of the characters. And I suppose that could be a good thing too, giving the artist free range to create whatever he/she wants to. I can see how that would be helpful for a director as well. But after seeing the film, I now realize the kind of movie Burton was going for. While working on the concepts, I was given the impression that it was going to be a very dark film, which it is to an extent, but no where near how I thought it would be.

All in all, it was a great experience, and a lot of fun, and very exciting to see characters I helped develop up on the big screen.



Detail. Again, I thought that rather than covering his whole face, I'd leave a bit exposed, leaving the viewers imagination free to roam.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland concept art: Queen of Hearts

Here's my painting of the Queen of Hearts as a concept for Alice in Wonderland. All the work I did for "Alice" was done around two years ago, and I spent about a day on each image, some a little more. It's great to be able to finally share what I did. I saw the film on Friday, and thought it was a lot of fun especially in 3D. However, it was what I expected from a Tim Burton film. A fantastic looking movie with a not-so-fantastic story. Still a fun movie, with a lot of great eye candy to enjoy!

This concept of the queen was exciting to work on, mainly because I was emailed a sketch of the queen that Tim Burton himself sketched out. I was asked to paint on top of his sketch, bring some life and character to his drawing, his drawing was loose, and quite simple, with no background. So I decided to paint her in a creepy forest, to give the piece a more finished look.





Detail of face. You can see it was painted fairly loose.





References I took for lighting, expression and color.



Hand reference.