Toomai of the Elephants!

So here's the first of three illustrations for Rudyard Kipling's Toomai of the Elephants from The Jungle Books. This would be a double page spread allowing for a column of text to the left. This is a scene briefly mentioned early in the story where it describes how the elephant Kali Nag (black snake) bats away a wounded tiger with his head. I thought of this as my one opportunity to show Kali Nag as a bad ass, a flashback to his younger years.

My object here is to put together some sample illustrations for a possible dummy for a proposed Toomai book.



And a couple of details:



As before, I worked in pieces, inking each individual element and recombining the whole mess on the computer. In this one there's a bird I didn't end up using, but I used pretty much everything else.












Some textures I scanned in. All the color aside from a few highlights is cloned from watercolor and pastel textures. Here are a few examples:





The only texture I didn't make was the texture on the red cushion which I borrowed from A Dover pattern book and then tweaked using "spherize" and "distort" on Photoshop until it fit. Usually I like to hand draw everything including patterns like this, but it was easier and simpler just to use a preexisting image. It's not so jarringly different than the rest of the line art that it's distracting so I figured it was a fair enough cheat.

And some reference:



Me, acting like a maniac for some reference:




I print out all my reference in black and white to save ink because I print out a lot of reference and ink is expensive. Since I don't add color till everything's scanned this works out pretty well.

More Wednesday figure drawings

More Wednesday figure studies. I'm noticing some problematic trends. One thing I'm noticing is my deficits in anatomy showing. I have got the shoulders and clavicle head and torso covered, Feet aren't bad, hands need a little work but lower arms and some aspects of the leg need serious study. It's been a while since I've done my anatomy lessons and it looks like it's time to revisit them.

toomai studies

Yep, more elephants.

These are studies for the Toomai picture I'm currently working on. Kali Nag is the star of the show, and I wanted to give him a distinct personality. Also Indian elephants are different than African elephants--smaller ears, two humps on the head instead of one--something I never particularly paid that much attention to before. Also Indian elephants sometimes have these spots, sort of freckles on their trunks and ears, and I decided to give him these markings.





The Tiger.

In the story, there's a brief mention of Kali Nag batting an attacking wounded tiger away with his head. This is a sort of flashback, and through most of the story he's a very old elephant, and I thought this was a good opportunity to focus on what a bad ass he once was. This was also an opportunity to expand on an image that wasn't very detailed in the prose. I had to figure out tiger anatomy, and so I did a few studies to get a better sense of it so I could put the tiger in action. I found some actual footage of a tiger attacking an elephant rider on Youtube which was helpful. I also have an excellent book on animal anatomy, Goldfinger's Animal Anatomy for artists.

Another figure

This one is from the same night. I convinced myself that this drawing wasn't any good. I've since changed that opinion.



I'm noticing the arms a little out of proportion, but I still like the drawing.

Wednesday figure drawing

Here's a drawing from our every other wednesday figure drawing group.

I'm not quite ready to show the good, the bad and the ugly yet, so this one was the only one I was really happy with. It has a nice sense of weight.

In Progress...

Haven't posted anything in a while so here's a self-initiated (the first of three) illustration for Rudyard Kipling's Toomai of the Elephants in progress. Inks are done. This would be a double-page spread and the text would be to the left, so the whole spread would be wider than this.

Another figure

It looks like it's been a while since I've posted any art, and even though I am slow, it's not for my lack of producing. I'm working on another pretty elaborate picture, and illustration from Kipling's Toomai of the Elephants, and it's been pretty labor intensive. I'll probably post the finish in a couple of weeks.

We moved the figure drawing group to another gallery, so it's been a few weeks. We had a ridiculously huge turn-out. We fit 24 people in the room, and had to turn away more. I started this thing in the hopes of getting maybe 8.

This one's a little overworked and just a little stiff, but I'm proud of the hand. I took it home and cross-hatched the bejeezus out of it.

The model was a dancer, very thin with an elegant long neck that looked like it came out of a mannerist painting. Wish I did her a little more justice. We're getting a spotlight for the next group so we'll have less of a generalized light source.

Studio Makeover, A New Goal

I haven't cleaned my studio since I moved in with Reg in 2003. That's That's nearly 7 years. Every once in a while I would scoop up a superficial layer of artwork and store it, throw away some reference print-outs and some miscellaneous debris, but other than that, I haven't made much effort to change my ways. I have a huge drawing table (got it for a steal--100 bucks about 10 years ago from a guy I shared a house with), but have only really been using about a third of it in the last few years because it's been covered in art supplies and other stuff. So I finally decided to do something about it. It's taken the better part of a week, but I've finally gotten it cleaned and organized. You might notice that the keyboard is broken, dropped in the process, a small price to pay for a clean and organized studio. The process has been a kind of excavation, turning up old work and discovering just how bad I used to be.

Here's what it looks like now:




This is what it used to look like:

March 2006



July 2009



This is Probably Going to Sound Embarrassingly Earnest, but...

Right now, I'm not anything close to a full time freelancer. Until recently I felt like I had failed as a freelancer, and was very much on my way to giving up the idea that this would ever happen. But with the encouragement of Regina and a few friends and acquaintances, I've been inspired to redirect my energy towards this goal and am determined to be well on this path by the end of next year. The first thing I've done is tried to identify what my weaknesses are and address them. Organization has been one major setback, and so cleaning the studio was one more small step in the process of becoming more organized and better prepared.

Another problem is that for a variety of reasons, my work has been inaccessible to anyone but a very small audience. To broaden the appeal of my work I've redirected my focus towards children's markets and have slowly built up my portfolio with more kid friendly pieces and pieces based on classic children's lit. Apparently I had forgotten why I wanted to do this in the first place: before I went to art school or had any formal training my goal had always been to make illustrated books, both for children and adults. Since graduation I've meandered in a lot of different directions, and more recently have tried to do editorial work, something I never had much aptitude for and something I didn't even know existed before college.

Also, because of a lack of discipline and focus early on, I lacked a certain amount of technical skill. This is something that can fortunately be learned and practiced, so to this end I've started doing more life drawing, anatomy studies and applying myself to making more credible spaces with more accurate perspective. In the past I've tended to neglect backgrounds and focus mainly on figures and now I'm more focused on complete scenes and multi-figure tableaus. Color is also something I've been paying more attention to.

Tin Salmunic, Angelique Benicio and Frank Stockton

Aside from Regina who is my best friend and my greatest support, three people have stood out as inspirations: Tin Salmunic, Angelique Benicio and Frank Stockton. Tin said something that really hit home, "Don't decide what your limits are until you've pushed them." Tin has been nothing but encouraging and supportive and I am grateful to have come in contact with him even though we haven't yet had the opportunity to meet in person.

Angelique is a friend from college who I recently have gotten back into contact with. Angelique is a powerhouse, a single mom who has been determined to make her living from her skill as an artist since she moved back to the states from an 8 year stint in Paris and Brazil. Just a few months after moving here she's already achieved this by doing commissioned sculptures but like me is very much interested in getting into Children's illustration. We've both been encouraging and helping one another to make this happen.

Frank Stockton is another illustrator who has encouraged me both personally, and through his very inspirational blog. You can check his blog out here:

www.frankstockton.com

And check out Tin's blog here:

www.salmunicart.blogspot.com

And Angelique's website is here:

www.kaliart.com