Sunrise Earth Study

I'm working on some exciting things I can't yet share, so here's a morsel to tide you over.

Since I'm often up during the wee hours, I frequently like to tune in to Discovery HD Theater. A show called Sunrise Earth is really inspiring to watch for the colors, compositions and high quality cinematography that captures far away scenery that we're not likely to ever see in person. It's a very peaceful and relaxing way to start/end the day. This really quick study was done from memory awhile ago from an episode in a beautiful Japanese park... the name escapes me now.

5.5" x 3.5" cel vinyl acrylic on watercolor paper.

If you're up at 4:00am or 7:00am and get the Discovery HD Theater channel, you might check it out.

P.S. I'm offering free holiday shipping for a limited time (until Monday, Dec 14th) in my Etsy shop. A big thank you to everyone who has ordered prints so far!

LA Part Deux

Off to L.A. again for a few days. Should be a lot of fun and a lot warmer than Seattle (dryer too).

I leave you with a very small, quick, Eyvind Earle inspired gouache study I did a few days after watching the new DVD release of Sleeping Beauty. The backgrounds in the movie are mind blowing... some of the most extensive and detailed in history. Extremely scarce, but if you find one of Eyvind's Sleeping Beauty bgs for sale, it could be yours for a mere $50,000.

Milt Gross + Hanna Barbera BG Study 2

Another color version with a few changes. I loosely freehand painted some of the lines, but plan to use an artist bridge going forward to keep them cleaner.

4.5" x 10" cel vinyl on bristol paper.

See the original Milt Gross illo below.

Milt Gross + Hanna Barbera BG Study

Here's my attempt at a Milt Gross drawing mixed with Hanna Barbera style painting from the 50's, ala Bob Gentle and Art Lozzi. This is a little exercise John K posted awhile back that I wanted to try. There are a few sloppy areas and the colors look better in person. I have another color version I'll post soon.

My attempt at combining the styles. 4.5" x 10" cel vinyl acrylic on Bristol paper. Scan.

Photo.

The original Milt Gross illustration.

Sample of HB background art.

Also, go check out John's latest post about Scott Wills, where he uses many of the DVD screencaps I put together. Thanks for the mention, John!

Art Lozzi BG Study Process

Here are the pics from the BG study I did, in case you're interested. Please refer to the post below for more accurate colors.

1. Taped down the bg paper (in this case, 2 ply bristol).

2. I brushed on the flat salmon color. In the future I'd use a roller to get it nice and even. You can also see the first mask I cut out of the animation cel (I pre-cut all of them from the printed out image). The cels came in handy with their registration holes. I did a trial run, so that's the sponging you see.

3. Sponging applied and cel removed. You can see how the paper is buckling (this leveled out later).

4. Sponging detail.

5. Two more layers of sponging applied. The light green has been masked off with another cel.

6. Dark brown sponging over the red brown.

7. While sponging on the bushes, the sponge and paint were too wet, which caused a little sloppiness. After this point, I made sure not to make the same mistake.

8. Here's a shot of the cel with shapes cut out and paint sponged on. The crazy reflection is from a funky shaped pendant lamp.

9. Cel removed to show the result.

10. Close-up of green detail lines being added (with a #3 round sable).

11. Tree details sponged in.

12. Bush details added and tree trunk painted in.

13. First layer of dark sponging and details are added to the trunk.

14. Light blue details and sponging added.

15. Dark details added again to complete the stump.

16. Tape removed! Added the last couple details before scanning (see post below).


Hope showing these steps has helped someone learn... something! I know I did. A lot more work goes into these "simple" style paintings than it may seem at first glance.

Art Lozzi BG Study

I've been wanting to do some background studies from cartoon screencaps, so here's a study of a partial pan background from Yogi Bear by the amazing Art Lozzi. I tried to do this accurately to the original and in doing so, learn more about how the HB background painters used color and texture. I approached the painting by using the methods that Art described in some posts on John K's blog, using cartoon cels to mask out the shapes and so forth.

Here's Art's original

My attempt. It could use some improvement in a few areas.
8" x 10.5" on 12 field size bristol paper (vellum finish).

I was distressed a little after the 2 ply bristol buckled pretty bad after the initial paint layer (the paint seemed sufficiently thick), but after a couple days it flattened out. In the future I'd prefer to use slightly thicker bristol, I think.

I'll post up shots of the process soon.