Charlie Harper

The Latest Techno Fad: Brain Scrubbing & Cleaning Salons

Still learning, one painting at a time.

I have done 3 digital paintings in the past couple days. Like my previous post they are not high quality finished creations, but more like instruments of learning. I was having a issue with figuring out how to paint and make my line art go away underneath and the image still read correctly. Last night I had a VIOLA! moment after watching a Jason Chan digital download I purchased from Massive Black. This image is long from being over with. I plan on putting more time into it, to continue to learn, tighten it up, and perhaps pull off a little more realism. It is way over saturated right now because I got a little adjustment layer happy last night.

My process was this:

1. Initial drawing on layer 1.
2. Lowered layer 1 opacity to 30%, created layers 2 and refined line art
3. Created a multiply layer 3 and dropped a purple color over the line work with paint bucket.
4. On layer 3 painted a bunch of colors all over the place
5. Created overlay layer 4 to make the color more vibrant
6. Adjustment layer, color balance, messed with RBG settings.
7 Adjustment layer, Hue/Saturation, played with that for a while.
8. Painted and painted some more eye dropping and mixing a way at my heart’s content.
9. Where I am at now, it sux, but it is fun and I am learning by doing.

I have been focusing on the use of colors to make a image look interesting. These daily paintings I am going to be posting are not the most finished image you will ever see, but I hope that you see my effort in trying to push the color as far as I can. I am still working on the Evil Elf painting and hope to finish it by the end of next week.

My fear of color is starting to fade somewhat and as I have said before, the more I DO the more I LEARN.

“The Cave”
I actually started this off with mixing a bunch of colors in the background. I then made a new layer and sketched in a form and it was off to imagination land from there. This only took me about 15 minutes to do. You can get a lot out of doing a quick sketch daily. I have found doing this gets me to play around with all the different layers options and and tools to see what they do. This guy is kinda of a futuristic explorer on a far away planet going into a cave, hehe. The geek in me lives on.

I am only 25% into painting this image in Photoshop CS2 and I am learning a lot. Digital painting is so versatile for expanding on your original line art. I have changed the hair and the skirt from the original line art which you can see in an earlier blog entry below. Basically all I have to show right now is a couple changes to the line art and the flat colors.

Next on tap is adding a color rendering, light source, shading, and texture. I also plan on adding a background, so she can have some contrast and isn’t floating in space. I am taking my time with this one and hope that what I learn will speed me up for future paintings with a higher level of quality. In keeping with my prior post, learning by doing is the best means to an end to be proud of.

Lastly, I wanted to give a big thanks to Brian Fowler and John for commenting on my last post.

Brian I am looking forward to seeing more work from you on your blog soon and I want to buy a copy of your comic “5 More Minutes” which can be purchased at IndyPlanet.com here if anyone else is interested. If I had been a smart guy, I should have just bought “5 More Minutes” from you at Heroes Con 2008 when I purchased the Batgirl print.

John I hope you Sarah and Bailey are doing well in the big easy. It was great to hear from you.

Look for updates soon!

My passion for art is a process of constant self teaching because there are no shortcuts or substitutes for trial and error education. When I am not drawing or painting I have been studying the way many of my favorite artists use color, line, and composition. They give me inspiration, ideas, and knowledge to apply to my own creativity. Beyond their creations, I have been reading about their past on Wikipedia and other online resources. I don’t know about you, but I love quotes, and reading quotes from artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso is mind opening. Brainyquote.com is a really good site for quotations. So I would like to share with you what I like most about them and what I am learning from them.

The first of my many favorite artists I would like to talk about is John Howe. He is famous for his work in fantasy art including many book covers and the art of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. I own his book “John Howe Fantasy Art Workshop” and I read it cover to cover. There two very impacting things that I personally took from his book, how I hold my pencil and collecting references. I have since changed the way I hold my pencil during the initial stages of a drawing, the roughing in part to let only the weight of the pencil do the work. It has helped me especially when drawing from life, holding the pencil in any other way other than how you use it to write will force you to be more loose and use your entire arm when putting down your silhouette or foundation marks. Another habit that I have taken from his book is the collection of all kinds of references, and my fiancee Laura has helped me with that. I have been ordering random clothing catalogs to keep up with style and to learn how clothing hangs on the human form. Pretty soon I hope to be getting a digital camera to get some images I create to use as reference and will be cutting out and categorizing them for future use.

I recently found a presentation at IdeaCity Online that John Howe made in 2006. In the video he talks about why most people are not drawing and why he does. I found what he said about John Ruskin very interesting. I have since read John Ruskin’s quotes and about who he was on Wikipedia. He makes a funny reference about the earliest laptop, a sketchbook. I carry one of these fancy paper laptops with me all the time, everywhere I go. You can view the presentation off of John Howe’s website link below.

John Howe at ideaCity06

By far one of my favorite fantasy paintings done by John Howe is titled Elves and Dragons.

He has a new book coming out on 10/10/08 called “John Howe Forging Dragons” that I cannot wait to add to my collection. Not to mention, I love dragons hehe.

To make this long blog entry, even longer I would like to share some of my recent pencil adventures.

Trojan
I did this drawing very fast, it took me no more than 15 mins, that is why it is so unfinished. I don’t know what I was thinking. I am going to use it to further my learning in digital painting.

Deviant Elf
The hand gave me trouble to say the least, I wanted to make it more interesting, hence the reason it probably isn’t. She is hiding something, a dark secret, almost like the viewer walked in on her at the wrong time.

I have been sketching a lot in Photoshop CS2, but nothing worth sharing, just learning. I hope your eyes do not bleed if you read this long post.

I have been redrawing from some reference photos directly into Photoshop instead of scanning sketches in. I am in the process of painting one now I hope to post soon. I am diving into color and beyond. My site is so black and white, time for some color.

Learning to draw with the Wacom. It is different because unlike drawing in a sketchbook you don’t look at what your hand is doing, if that makes sense…

30 min sketch I did at a coffee shop zoning out to the good music and mocha.

Ok…first off, blogging every three days was overly ambitious on my part. Life comes at you from every direction and I have been drawing pretty much non stop in my free time. This blog is about my love for art and the experiences I have and the people I meet because of it. So I will not bore you with the adventures of having to buy a new car.

Second, thank you to those who have left comments on my blog. All of you are great new additions to my life’s path and you will only make me a better person for knowing you.

So I discovered that inking is harder than it looks. I had spent some time penciling the first few frames of a story I am working on with my friend Beau. I had done some thumbnails to know exactly what I wanted to do. I composed it out on Bristol and was happy with the pencils, but instead of scanning it in first, I went to inking. Lesson learned. I do not have an issue with identifying my light source or inking my line work. It is shaping the larger inked areas. This will only come with practice, but from this point forward I will be inking in Photoshop. I don’t have a A3 printer, scanner, and light box to really be taking advantage of blue line correcting processes anyways. So I need to make them pencils go far lol. I am even cutting out 10 x 5 Bristol slices for my frames so I can scan them in. I can put them back together in Photoshop on whatever size I want.

Ninja Girly. I did this one tonight.

Creature. Did this one months ago when I was working with a CA.org mentor.

Well I got called out by a friend about being a slack ass when it came to using my blog. Well I hope to change all that with updating it at least once every three days. I have been drawing a lot in my spare time away from work and when I am not helping Laura with wedding stuff. Here are a few things I have been working on, including the first doodles of a web comic I want to do called “The Ant Hill”.

I am also finally taking the advice I had been given many times over with my drawing, I am now making it a habit to draw more from life. Everything I have drawn prior to now has been from my head, and let’s face it, my “current” talent level along with my skewed perception of the world has led to a lack of understanding of whats around me, the missing details like perspective, gesture, and form. I have a more travel size sketchbook at my side all the time now, It is changing how I look at everything and hopefully will change my skill level.

This was a quick and dirty sketch of a dudes head I saw.

The first couple doodles of many to come for my upcoming web comic “The Ant Hill”. I am applying some of what I learned from the SCAD team at Heroes Con recently to designing these characters.

Here is a scene I have had in my head for a while, decided to put it on paper, it is much larger than this on paper of course, I have to resize to fit it on my site.

Here is another image I did from life, hehe I draw a lot of backs because I don’t want them to know I am drawing them. Don’t get me wrong, I am not shy by any means, I have quite the gift of the gab but I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable.

This is actually a Starbucks girl I see at Barnes and Noble sometimes when I go there at lunch to do some sketching. I put different hair on her though…

Even though I am trying to draw from life more, my mind still wonders…here is a creature that crawled out through my pencil. Slippery suckers…

The human form is very challenging, and most of the ones I do are floating in the space of my page with no environment to be found, so I thought I might as well having one flying in this space.

Ok day 2 at Heroes Con was off the chain…

The SCAD workshops on the second day, Saturday, were fantastic at Heroes Con! There were 3 workshops back to back in the same room so me and my friend Beau were in there for several hours on Saturday. Character Design instructed by Chris Schweizer was the first lecture. This lecture was amazing, he really knew his stuff. He basically read from a stack of papers the entire time, so it was kind of monotone and not as enthusiastic of a presentation as I would have liked, but the more and more knowledge he shared along with his slides really kept me at attention taking notes etc. I will never look at character relationships, shape, style, etc. the same ever again. The second session taught by Nolan Woodard from SCAD Atlanta was incredible, Computer Coloring for Comics, from A Retouching Point of View. I learned a lot about preparing line art for color, using CMYK and preparing a page for a printer. What was really cool was learning about the different types of adjustment layers in Photoshop and using layer masks which speeds up the entire process. He has a visual example on his blog at http://nolanw.blogspot.com/ if you are interested. He said he may even look into doing a book in one of his comments on his blog site, so look for that for sure. The final class I attended on Saturday was Composition and Coloring Comic Book Covers instructed by Shawn Crystal which went over a lot of basics on composition including the rule of thirds and contrasting colors to lead the eye through a illustration. When you are sitting in front of people explaining this knowledge and relating it with examples on subjects you are so very interested in, you really don’t want it to end. I soaked up the knowledge like a sponge. I couldn’t believe a $20 3 day pass was getting me into a mini art school experience. When I left Shawn’s presentation it was time for food and finding some more people I had come to meet.

After the workshops I went back down to the main floor. Beau went to get something to eat and went back to the hotel. I stuck around to pick up our prints and because Dwight and Swain from sidebarnation.com, the podcast I listen to regularly, had told me via email to look for them in shirts with their podcast logo on it. Talk about two really cool dudes. We hit it off from the word go. I have never been shy, so I just went up to them, names confused between which was who, so I called Swain “Dwight”, he looked at me funny lol. He corrected me and Dwight walked up and then I told them I was the “Raleigh Listener”, which I had tagged myself as in previous emails discussing the shows. It was on then, we talked some shit about their show etc. and they invited me to meet them at the Westin Hotel bar later for some cold beers, which I would later find out was where half the convention was that night lol.

So Beau and I headed over to the Westin around 7:30pm and met up with Dwight and Swain and we had a freaking blast with these guys, although Swain looked wore out because they had driven from Atlanta at 4:30am that morning to Charlotte, but he was still hanging tight. We talked about everything, conceptart.org workshops, their show and how they do it, the future of the show, and some of their upcoming things including the incorporation of a forum to discuss shows which is going to be very cool .

The Saturday night game changer however was when Bobby Chiu with his girlfriend and fellow Imaginism Studios artist Kei Acedera rolled in. I guess we had made an impression on him because we gave him a big ole “BOBBY!” and he strolled on over. We would then talk for several hours about everything and it was a blast. I was really surrounded by some visionaries, I was the village idiot or jester amongst royalty it seemed. Bobby let us in on some his future plans on a site that will help artists find work coming out later this year. We talked his schoolism.com endeavors and we even got into some politics, which are affecting the exchange rate and his income. Go OBAMA! Swain coined “chiuism.com” as we all told him to do a site with all his motivational speaking. I told Bobby after I had started listening to his podcasts I called him the “The Sensai” or “The Chiu” and that I would listen to them whenever I was getting lazy with my art.

I was a total fanboy Saturday night of the convention weekend. I was fortunate to not only be talking with people I admired via their online personalities, but also to be able to spend a night with good people. What more can you look forward to? If you told me when I left on Friday that I was going to have the Saturday night that I had I would have laughed in your face. I soaked up so much inspiration that night I couldn’t get to sleep till 2am. So I drew Bobby Chiu a sort of graffiti type illustraion of chuisms.com and gave it to him at his booth on Sunday. I had signed it with a note of thanks. Sunday me and my friend Beau were tired, we attended a class on inking, went and said our good byes and it was off to home in Raleigh.

I will be for sure making this an annual trip and will be staying at the Westin next year because it seem that is where the majority of exhibitors stay, plus the best bar is right in the hotel.

On a short side note, I did get to meet Brian Stelfreeze briefly in the lobby of the Westin. I had heard his story of getting into the business on the Sidebar podcast which was hilarious. So I got a hand shake and told him I loved his stuff and his story. He was a really cool cat. He was constantly surrounded by people in the convention so I took advantage of the opportunity to speak with such a fantastic artist and educator. If I lived in Atlanta, I would be taking his classes at http://www.gaijinstudios.com/ for sure.

And Dwight if you ever read this…you are still a dick for going to the San Fran CA.org workshop and being able to learn under Stelfreeze in Hotlanta. Much love man, but you’re an asshole because Raleigh is all landscapes and old people, and that is all the education there is to be had here in art. /knucklebump bro.

I popped my geek convention cherry this past weekend and attended Heroes Con in Charlotte. I have never been to a comic book convention before, so I really didn’t know what to expect. What I did know was that there were going to be people there I had prior correspondences with via emails and forums I wanted to meet in person. SCAD(Savannah College of Art and Design) was putting on workshops that I wanted to attend. Also one of my favorite artists was going to be there. My expectations for a great weekend would be far exceeded and I will be for sure going back for many years to come. Here is some of what happened on Friday day 1.

The first thing I did was attend a SCAD workshop on Hero Anatomy which was awesome, a lot of influence came from Andrew Loomis in this presentation. You can find all of Loomis’ books on PDF on my side bar under “Resources”. It was nice to be around so many other with the same interests for a change. In Raleigh it is pretty much impossible to find.

After the SCAD workshop I was determined to find some of these people I wanted to meet in person, so I looked for my conceptart.org acquaintances first. I am a regular troll and contributer on ConceptArt.org. We have a NC artists forum there for locals to discuss art and local events etc. I had exchanges in the past with both bfowler and Grendel on there and before the con we had all posted that we were going and where we would be. I first got the pleasure of meeting Kim(Grendel), a very talented fantasy artist, now living in Georgia. I had admired her work since first seeing it on the ca.org site, so I had to buy a print that I cannot wait to frame up. She was a very cool person and I would recommend anyone checking out her work at her blog Dark Tree Studios. The funny thing about meeting bfowler(Brian Fowler) was I had purchased his print of Batgirl from him before I knew it was him, I hadn’t put the pieces together. Only after talking with Kim again did I realize who he was and I went back to his table and introduced myself as “wheezy” (my ca.org name). You can check out Brians work at his site 2AM Studios.

Friday afternoon me and my friend Beau who went with me were split up doing our own thing and he gives me a call. He says come to the 500 isle I think there is someone over here you wanted to meet. So I walk over and come upon the Imaginism Studios booth where Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera are. I love their art, but what really has made me a fan of Bobby Chiu are his podcasts. Bobby is both an educator and a motivational speaker in his podcasts. Whenever inspiration is running dry all I have to do is play one of his podcasts to bitch slap myself because I have no excuse. So it was a great honor to meet this digital personality in person. I began talking with him about his podcasts and called him out for the story he told about being on the plane, if you don’t know what that is about listen to his latests podcasts which you can find in my links section on my sidebar. I purchased their dragons book and my favorite print done by him which he signed and drew a quick sketch on the back and signed. Kei did me the pleasure of also drawing in my book and they both signed it. I have to admit, people you look up to, when you first meet them can seem unapproachable, but not these good people. It was a great experience.

I left the first day of the con so excited, filled with inspiration from all the art I saw and the great people I came closer to. This however was just the beginning of what would turn out to be one of the best Saturdays I have had in a very long time.

Obviously I am an amateur artist, however I do like to give myself projects with a purpose other than just random drawing. I want to create an entire universe of characters to fit into a story a friend and I are working on called “Trinity Lost”. It is sort of a mix of post apocalyptic, future sci-fi, myth, and cybernetics. So alien races, weapons, vehicles, misc. gear, etc. etc. is all coming out of my head and it is really a fun subject for me.

Here are a couple characters I have been working on. The long necked guy, who is of the Zorphian race is something I need to refine for sure but it was fun to draw the first of many to come.

Another character I am working on is a female character that is intelligent and good with machinery such as cybernetics. I like the face but I need to work on female anatomy and clothing.

I have had this idea in my head for a while and decided to throw it down on paper in the first of a series of sketches to really get the idea in my head like I want it. When I get it the way I want it, I hope to do this on a A3 Bristol Board and ink it.

I am working on this weeks CHOW on ConceptArt.org. I am going with this sketch to now pain in PS CS2. I do plan on coming back to this to finish rendering, but in the interest of time and actually finishing a CHOW I am going straight to painting. Wish me luck!

I started this one late yesterday afternoon while watching some football. I will probably paint this in Corel X or PS CS2 for practice because I suck at digital painting. But there is no other way to get better than practice practice practice!

So I thought I would give the newest Character of the Week activity on Conceptart.org a try. This is the initial sketch that I have scanned in and will be painting in Photoshop CS2.

Every wall or obstacle in my art now is something to look forward to climbing over to be a better artist on the other side. I have made a pact with myself that everything I draw from this point forward I will paint in PS to increase my skills and embrace my passion for digital art and drawing.

I got two DVDs for Christmas that have helped me turn a corner in my art. The one that I wanted for the longest time was Maro Djurdjevic’s Character Ideation. Marko talks about how fear can affect you, and there is no need to have fear. This is so true and I think this is why I go through periods of creativity drought. Thomas Hunt, my ConceptArt.org Mentor, pointed me to another DVD from The Gnomon Workshop by Puddnhead, otherwise known as Kevin Llewellyn. It is called The Techniques of Puddnhead Volume 1: Creature Design and Drawing. I recommend both of these DVDs and the follow up to Puddnhead’s Volume 1 which covers digital painting.

The Litch

The Battle Stance