#150 Red & Brown

Been really loving these Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils for drawing & sketching lately. They are really inexpensive and the color combinations make me want to sketch more. The two colors can really add depth to a drawing. These thumbnails are for a "Sea Monster vs. Victorian Submarine" illustration for the Sketchbook.

EDIT: I'll fix the picture later, you can click I for the full version.

#149 Sketchbook 2012!

Out of necessity I've been posting a lot from my iPhone lately, so I have to keep things a bit short. But I wanted to share a bit of a drawing I've been working on this week... And share a bit of what it is for.
I am planning a printed Sketchbook!
I have a theme in mind, but haven't decided on a title yet. It will feature about 8 - 10 finished illustrations, along with all the sketches that go along with them, and will (hopefully) be printed in full color!
I'll share more details as they come, but I won't be posting all the finished art, but will keep you updated!
Look for a release sometime this summer. Stay tuned!

-Will

#148 Warrior Sketch

15 minute sketch with Prismacolor Col-Erase vermillion on Moleskine. (Photo Taken w/Instagram).

#147 Oil Painting (Still Life)

Before Christmas last, I attended a workshop on oil painting at a local art supply store. I wanted to simply be introduced to the materials involved in oil painting, and it was a decent introduction. I have not touched oils since, simply because of one or all of these three things:

1. I haven't bought any more canvas or boards.

2. I am a procrastinator.

3. Oils are messy.

The latter statement is one that I discovered during the class. The instructor informed us (halfway through the class) that oil paints have the potential to be rather toxic. Of course, at this point I had them all over both my hands. I was not amused.

Still, however, I plan on doing more oil studies soon. James Gurney, a fabulous oil painter who works mainly in the plein-air method, will be a day lecturer at IMC this year, and I very much want to attend his class. So I hope to learn a few things before I go so I will at least be able to follow along at a limping pace.

-Will

#146 Atmospheric Thumbnails

I'm trying to discipline myself to post on this blog on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday basis.

"Well Will you're doing a pretty awful job of it" you say.

But I'm posting. And it's Monday. And I haven't made a whole lot of progress on Desert Chase (although I did stretch some watercolor paper today, in preparation for another Hobbit portrait - more on that soon). So I rummaged through my cluttered hard drive to find some stuff in the archives that had never seen the light of day on the blog. These are atmospheric thumbnails for a school project I did a while back. They were so much fun to do. I will probably do these in preparation for my next illustration. But until then, you may enjoy these - on which, I will not elaborate to a great degree, only to tell you that they involove a lot of falcons, H. G. Wells Martians, and people in top hats running for their lives.

-Will

#145 Some News!

1.

Just a quick break here for a little self-promotion (this won't take long, trust me). I wanted to announce that I have created a brand-new Tumblr blog, WTK to showcase only finished illustrations, graphic design projects, and sketches. This differs from Drawing the Sword in that I am being quite strict in what pieces I post there, in order to maintain a constant showing of my best work. Drawing the Sword (the blog you're looking at now) has primarily evolved into a place to share my work process, or how I get art pieces done. So go check it out, and share the link if you're so inclined! Hopefully you might find some pieces you're familiar with, or find a new favorite. Here's the link: http://willkellyart.tumblr.com/

2.
The second bit of news is that yesterday I learned that my registration was finalized, and that I will be attending the Illustration Master Class in Amherst, Massachusetts! There were only 6 spots left when I frantically sent my application, sweating all the way, hoping I hadn't missed out. Thankfully, I was able to secure a spot for the 2012 class in June. It is going to be an amazing week with the opportunity to learn one-on-one with artists like Greg Manchess, James Gurney, Dan dos Santos, and a whole bunch more. I am so excited, and humbled that I was granted this amazing learning opportunity. I will definitely be posting more news about this as it comes - and of course, pictures of the actual class!

So, that's about it for now, I'll get back to posting more on my Desert Chase illustration soon.

-Will

#144 Desert Chase: Thumbnail/Brainstorm Stage

It probably goes without saying that when you start an illustration project, you do thumbnails. Lots of them. But believe it or not, I have to be reminded of that constantly.
I won't say that thumbnailing is my least favorite part of the process, but it certainly is one that I seem to shy away from. Trying to come up with ten solutions to an illustration problem of concept, design and composition is about like pulling mastodon teeth for me.
Many professional artists/designers will create upwards to 100 or so thumbnails before they begin to narrow it down to a design that will work. For me, ten is pretty good.
While sitting at my somewhat tedious "day job" I cobbled these thumbnails & sketches together on notebook paper & smuggled them into my pocket before the company secret agents came and handcuffed me, escorting me to a very dark room with a chair and a blinding light.
My thumbnails are usually very rough explorations of form and placement of elements. I don't worry too much about the actual look of the objects because I already have an idea of what they'll look like anyway. It does help to look up reference ahead of time because it gives you more confidence in the placement & size of certain parts of the image.

As you can see (or hopefully you can see) early on, I'm trying to establish perspective. So far I've been going with one-point perspective with a vanishing point on the horizon, located using the Rule of Thirds. You might also notice that I have some significant rock formations in the background. This is where reference comes in handy. At this stage I just did a simple Google search for "Utah rock formations" and took a good look. Don't copy reference, just make mental notes of outstanding characteristics of the reference material. Later you'll have a better idea of what you want to draw.
I also searched for vintage motorbike reference which will be an important part of this piece. Above you can see that I've made a lot of notes on what I want to include in the painting, as well as just general brainstorming about technique/mood/lighting - just all kinds of stuff.

________________

That's all for now. Next time I'll try to share some finished sketches!
-Will

#143 Thorin Oakenshield: Digital Process

Thorin Oakenshield
(7 1/2" x 11" watercolor, digital)

Here is Thorin in all his digitally edited glory.
I had a lot of fun exploring this watercolor thing fully for the first time. I will say though that I was quite disappointed in the way I managed the color. I know very little color theory in general, but I knew that the helmet here was going to be gold, so in order to create a somewhat effective image, there would need to be a cooler, contrasting color (preferably in the shadow areas).
I believe that in the end it all ended up pretty muddy, because I was afraid of adding too much color into the image and making it to bright and vibrant. So, I continued to add wash after wash of light, muted color. This turned out to be somewhat of a disaster.
But there was a glimmer of hope! I could use Photoshop to improve this right? This all-powerful tool of pixel wizardry could turn even the worst of watercolors into a masterpiece! So I scanned it, and began.

The Un-Edited Scanned Painting.

The The scan was, of course, very greyed out and bland. Scanners have the evil intent of ruining your every attempt at artistic excellence. So upon entering Photoshop, I had to adjust the Levels to get the values back to normal. After this, I added several (as in five or six) Color Dodge & Color Burn layers. I painted over various areas of the painting in these layers with colors that I sampled from the image. This brightened and darkened the different colors I wanted to emphasize, and that I unfortunately wasn't able to achieve in the original painting. It also allowed me to create the illusion of the highlights "glowing". Finally, I dabbled with a Color Balance layer or two, giving the shadows a darker Violet tone to contrast the Yellows of the highlights.
Another thing that you may notice is that I eliminated those ghastly bags under Thorin's eyes with the Clone Stamp tool. I have no idea what possessed me to put those in the drawing.

So, hope you liked that little run-down of my process. Let me know what you think could use improvement. Now, on to other characters!

-Will

#142 Thorin Oakenshield: Watercolor Progress

Before we go any further, let me make one thing clear: DON'T LEARN HOW TO WATERCOLOR FROM ME.
I really have very little idea what I'm doing. But so far I think I'm doing *something* that looks half decent. I'm learning all I can right now from Justin Gerard who is also doing some Tolkien inspired artwork right now. I would appreciate any comments & tips or suggestions you might have. Lets hear what you have to say! I'll post more progress as it's finished. Thanks for looking!

#141 Dwarfed

Assorted Dwarves in Various Stages of Completion.

Thorin Oakenshield (?)

A couple of quick Dwarf doodles/studies. Trying to pave the way for some finished Tolkienesque artwork to be finished in watercolor and digital (Yes!! Watercolor!!). I'm actually going to try William Stout's "Rackham/Dulac Method" for the finished pieces (recommended by Justin Gerard here). Wish me luck!

#140 New Year, New Directions

Well, it is already 2012, and since I'm sure that you're already sick and tired of hearing about New Year's Resolutions (and of course the finer points of Mayan calender reckoning), I'll spare you much of the sappy gushing about an old year gone and a new year begun.

To be quite honest, I've gone through a lot of re-evaluating the direction of my art goals in the past year, and a lot has changed in the way I look at my approach to learning the trade of Illustrator and Artist. So I thought that I would briefly fill you in on what's been going through my brain so you will know what to expect this year from Drawing the Sword.

One of the most game-changing decisions I've made in the past year is the decision to stop attending Academy of Art University Online. This decision was a hard one, but overall I feel that I'm already better off for it. After talking with several people, including the esteemed Matt Silver of the Silver Agency, I made the decision (based on my own reasoning, no one else's) to quit art school in favor of simply schooling myself in the ways of crafting illustrations.

At this point I hear art instructors everywhere screaming:
"HE'S A FOOL! HE SHOULD BE IN AN ACCREDITED INSTITUTION PAYING GOBS OF MONEY SO HE CAN GET A WELL PAYING JOB SOMEDAY! HE CAN'T BECOME AN ILLUSTRATOR JUST BY READING BOOKS AND WATCHING YOUTUBE!!!"

And I can understand their concerns. For one thing, attempting this is a very risky business. And they are right, books and YouTube (YouTube especially) can be hit or miss. But one of the best things about it is, it may be risky, but it is far less costly. Accredited institutions are not cheap, folks. And for what I could pay for tuition at AAU I can finance a trip to Amherst MA to attend one of the world's finest week-long learning sessions with America's finest illustrators, learn from them, talk to them, network with them. Buy them coffee. Whatever. That one week would be ultimately more profitable to me than a year in school, learning at a school's pace. I would prefer to learn from real people that I can connect with than just by reading a syllabus.

So ultimately what this comes to is one very important thing: Portfolio.
I will be spending this year, 2012 constructing the best portfolio I can. I plan to do what I thought I could do with an Illustration degree (get very fine freelance illustration work), with a solid portfolio. Most clients will not give a flip about my dusty diploma hanging on the wall in my cramped, book laden, paint smudged studio. They want to see what I can do. They want art, not a piece of parchment with Gothic print all over it and a gold seal at the bottom.


I have several personal projects in the pipeline. I'll be announcing them soon, as the plans become more concrete. But you can bet that I will soon be drawing a great deal of Hobbits & Dwarves this next year. That's all I'll say on that one.

Two other very important goals that I am aiming for this year are this: Obtaining my own Website, and securing an internship somewhere with a studio or independent artist. These are both pretty reliant on how my portfolio is looking. Without a well-rounded portfolio, a website is going to look pretty anemic, and securing an internship of any kind beyond "Official Studio Toilet Scrubber Intern" will be fairly difficult. So, like I said before, Portfolio is the name of the game right now. I'll be hard at work on that, and while doing so will be perfecting technique - drawing, digital, watercolor, oils.

I think that one thing I have learned is this: becoming an Illustrator is more than just an event that happens. It's a lifelong process. The masters haven't perfected it yet. They're still on their own journey. So I figure that I had better get started down the road. The sooner the better!

So here's to 2012 - The Year of the Illustrator!!

-Will

#139 BAH, HUMBUG!

Ebenezer Scrooge, on behalf of Drawing The Sword, wishes you a
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

And a shot of me posing a little too effectively as Scrooge with a little Photoshop help with the props. I've been told that I'm possibly related to Scrooge, though that remains to be determined by DNA testing.

-Will