Here's the finished result of the card I posted in my last tutorial.



Pen and ink, watercolor, charcoal pencil, instant coffee, and (fake) gold leafing.

Recently I was trying to explain to a friend about how to transfer a sketch to another work surface. The benefit of transferring is that you can keep the original drawing or sketch without painting over it. This way, if you're working on the final piece and it doesn't go the way you want it go (or the dog eats it, the cat spills ink on it, etc.), you still have the initial drawing and can start over.

 While I was explaining it, I realized it probably didn't make a lot of sense and would be a lot clearer if I had pictures. I realized it would be a perfect tutorial! While it's probably common knowledge among a lot of working artists/illustrators, it's something I didn't know about doing until I began art school, and it would have done me a lot of good many years before hand.

What you'll need:

• sketch or drawing to transfer
• work surface for the sketch to be transferred onto (if it's for a painting, make sure your canvas/surface is primed and ready to go)
• tracing paper
• acid free tape
• fine-tipped Sharpie or pen
• soft graphite pencil (I recommend B or 2B) OR transfer paper
• a colored pencil

It's been a while since I've posted new work, but I swear I have a good excuse. The past few months I've been working on my book I mentioned in a previous post. While I did the required amount of work for my class, I didn't get all of the illustrations done that I had planned. The book contained 12 double page spreads and I only managed to finish 6 (though considering I only had 10 weeks to plan, execute, print, and bind a book, that was a pretty good feat!). I'm spending the summer finishing the illustrations I didn't complete, and I have a plan in mind for the future of the work, and as such I don't want to post it with the story on here. So, apologies! You can, however, see some of the illustrations on my website, and as I finish more I may post them here. But until then, here's a small work I did for my mother:



Mixed media, but the main ingredient was instant coffee.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I’m going to try to make up for it with some info about supplies. I’m going to try to post tutorials about different supplies in stages so as not to go overboard. There’s quite a bit of information to be given. I can only post about materials I’ve had experience with, but I’ll try and tell you as much as I know. I’ll start off with a tutorial about work surfaces.

Some don’t put much thought into work surfaces thinking that if their painting/drawing materials are good, the surface doesn’t matter. This is a major mistake. Your painting and drawing materials can be stellar, but if your surface is sub-par, it will negatively impact your piece. It’s like having a top of the line electric guitar with no amp. So what kinds of surfaces should you work on? Well, that depends on what materials you’re planning on using, but there are some general things to keep in mind...



A VERY important thing to point out is that all good, quality art materials are acid free.  Why acid free? Well, if a paper is acidic, or if something acidic comes in contact with acid free paper, over time the acid will break down the paper and it will turn yellow. As more time passes, the paper will break down further. If your piece is on some of this paper, it breaks down as well. In order to keep your piece archival, you must use acid free, or pH balanced materials. This includes adhesives! Most people don’t think about this, and this includes me. I used the generic blue painter’s tape for years before realizing this kind of tape is not acid free. Instead of using this tape to tape off drawings and paintings, you should use Artists Masking tape. They come in different colors and are completely acid free, and relatively low-tack, so it’s easy to remove it from your surface without ripping anything.

All of these materials can be found at your local art store, or online. I'm a big fan of DickBlick.com. They offer much lower prices than most of the shops I go to, and I've always had good experiences with them.

I know I've been lagging a bit on updating, and I apologize. Most of my time has been sucked into school, mainly my Book Illustration class. It's tough work putting a book together, but very rewarding, and I'm learning what my artistic weaknesses are and how to fix them (and that's the important thing!). In addition I had the honor and pleasure to meet my favorite illustrator Gerald Scarfe in the flesh, which I promise I will do an entry on sometime in the near future. Until then, I'm sharing my first real digital piece made for my Electronic Illustration class.



This was made by taking a pencil sketch into Photoshop and painting it using a layering technique, taught by my professor John Foerster.

I'm currently enrolled in Book Illustration and our project for the class is...illustrating a book! It's totally up to us what we want to do; we can illustrate a book of poetry, a children's book, something someone else has written, or something we have written ourselves. I've chosen to illustrate a story that I have written. I had the concept in mind for a long time and I'm very glad that this class has given me a means by which to do the project. I'm not planning on posting the manuscript until the project is completed, but I did want to post storyboards of my process.

( Storyboards... )

Even though the project is just in its early stages, I'm having so much fun with it already. The next step is character sketches which I've already been working on. When I have more to show of those I'll post them.

My first ever post on my art blog! It's an event worth marking...hopefully there will be many more posts where this came from. And since this is my starter post, I figure it should be about getting started.

I've had a few people ask me "how do you start an illustration?" Well, everyone has their own particular way of doing things, but it's safe to say that with many artists, and nearly all illustrators, it starts with thumbnails. What are "thumbnails", do you ask? Thumbnails are small sketches that you do when you have an idea for a new piece. Think of it as visual brainstorming. Thumbnails let you get your ideas down visually, plus they allow you to map out how your composition will be. I was first introduced to the concept of a thumbnail in a high school art class. Back then I wanted nothing to do with it...it was a hassle to draw a bunch of different ideas when I already knew what I wanted to do. You get over that quickly, however. After all, you wouldn't build a house without a blueprint, and you wouldn't drive in an unfamiliar place without a map. So why would you start "arting" without knowing where you want to go?

Thumbnails do not have to be big. Mine are usually maybe 2" x 3", or a bit bigger or smaller depending on the proportions of the final piece. Currently my professors want to see 5-10 thumbnails before I even begin a piece, but professionals do as many as they need before arriving at a design idea. Sometimes it's 3...sometimes much more. With thumbnails, you can see if your original idea will work or not. You might find the idea that you had isn't sound visually...whether the composition needs to be worked on, or whether things need to be added or subtracted from the composition. I'll show one of my pieces as an example...


You can see my visual process with the bird thumbnails. The top two were my original ideas for a mock promo poster for Roger Waters' opera, Ça Ira. After drawing them, I found that the sparrow looked too static for the composition. So I drew the third thumbnail and was  much more satisfied. After deciding on the thumbnail that best suits your idea, you begin a final sketch. This is usually fully proportional to your final piece, although if your final piece is of a very large size, you'll probably do a small sketch and then transfer the sketch by gridding. In my case I was going to be working on a 9" x 12" canvas board, so I could work full size. With the final sketch, you want to include everything that will be in your final piece. If your piece is for a client, you'll be sending a copy of the final sketch to the client for a final OK. This way your client knows exactly what they'll be getting, and can ask you to make last minute adjustments if necessary (in my case, there was no client, but I found that the text I originally wanted was not going to work in the piece, so I dropped it. It went from being a mock poster to an illustration of a scene in the opera). Once you've finished your final sketch, you can transfer it to your working surface.


Since this piece was going to be done in acrylics, I traced the sketch with tracing paper, then affixed the tracing paper to the top of my canvas board. I placed transfer paper (also known as graphite paper...a lot like carbon paper) between the board and tracing paper, then traced over the image so that the image would be transferred to the board. In order for the image to be seen through the layers of paint being initially put on it, I outlined the image with an India ink pen (I recommend Faber Castell Pitt pens...I use the brush pen, but they have varying degrees pen diameters, plus LOTS of different colors to choose from...they're also quite nice for sketching).


So, there you have it! I hope it helps...