“I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (I was trying to find a good quote from Frankenstein about creating a monster, but this is just so good out of context that I’m going to leave it. )

This piece was one I did a few months ago for my senior thesis, and I really enjoyed doing it. I even bought an old ant farm, hacked it to pieces with a saw, got some custom cut plexiglass and made it a really rad frame that currently sits in a closet. What you see above though is also approximately 7 different pieces of paper. The majority of the work is something that no one will ever see. Well… unless you end up at my house and we have a few beers, in which case I’ll probably shove a painting of the dirt in your face and yell at you, “LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT MY DIRT THAT I HAVE CREATED.”

That’s totally ok with me… the fun of this piece was figuring out how to do parts that no one will ever notice or pay attention to. Hell, most of the illustrations that I do have so much prep work that goes into them that by the time I’m actually painting it, the majority of the fun is done, and the rest is more like meditation. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE inking and that whole part of the process, but for me, the greatest joy is in the prep work in figuring out how to paint a texture or surface that I have no clue how to do.

Take the dirt in the background of that piece, for example. I probably wasted 5 good sheets of expensive watercolor paper before I even did the one I ended up using. Thats another dirty secret of mine. I’m horribly inefficient with my materials, but I kind of have to be. I could do testers on shitty paper, but it won’t look the same. The first thing I did was experiment. I tried mixtures of alcohol and ink, solvents, all kinds of weird shit thats probably going to someday give me cancer, and I did it all on one sheet in a poorly ventilated room while horribly tired. Because the delirium is a huge part of the equation. I’m not going to show you every combination or tell you exactly what they are, because that’d be horribly boring, but heres two details from a few sheets.

And eventually I found out a very specific way that involved measurements, baby syringes, Ink, other chemicals, and absolutely no brush that led me to that damn painting of dirt. And no one would ever know that if I didnt just write all this stupid stuff down.

The rest of this piece is a similar story from inception to finish. I didn’t paint every single one of those ants individually because the original is only 13.5 inches square. If I didn’t value my sanity, I probably could’ve gotten my smallest brush and sat there and planned around it, but really that’s insane. Especially with inks. Yes, you can totally paint darker on top of lighter and all that jazz, but you can’t go the inverse. If i had a lighter passage above a darker passage, I have to plan that out and know where I’m going before I even dip my brush because if I fuck that up, then theres not much I can do to fix it. So for me, If i want it to be perfect, I’m going to do these parts in pieces so I have absolute control over them.

That little bastard up there is the ant you see all over the brain. I knew they’d be small, and I knew that there’d be a ton of them. I didnt need to paint it to be photorealistic, I just needed the shapes to be somewhat in the right areas and the values to be correct. Because heres another one of my dirty little secrets: When you paint something bigger and you shrink it down, your little mistakes become a lot harder to see and the overall painting looks a lot tighter than it actually is. Theres a balance to that, though… I don’t ever go above a certain “threshold”  if I’m going to be shrinking something down, because there are diminishing returns. After a certain point, it just draws attention to itself and looks out of place. So I try to balance it.

Heres a pretty good example of this.

This thing is 11 inches x 17 inches in real life. That figure is probably about half as big as i painted it.

This is the original painting of the girl. Now, I could’ve sat down and figured out how to paint her transparently and to size, but my way was much quicker and more efficient and I think it came out better honestly. So I guess thats my biggest dirty little secret. I’m a very hardworking lazy person, if that makes any sense.

All in all, I think the end result is the most important thing. Having an original is great, especially if you’d like to sell it, but to me the only time I’ll work all on one sheet is if it’s a commissioned piece and someone is paying me to do so. Otherwise, I’m going to continue to use 5 different pieces of paper to get 3 different textures and drop them together in photoshop. And honestly? A lot of people do that. I think all illustrators have their own little secrets. Some have a texture they throw over a final in photoshop, some have help with colors from their spouse or friends, some might purposefully degrade linework in photoshop. All of these things are rad ideas, and I’m totally going to steal them in the future if they can help me make the best work I can. So maybe thats the illustration industries dirty little secret too: We’re all a bunch of hardworking, lazy bastards.

-J

Thanks for reading.

About a month ago, after 7 long years, I finally graduated from college. What that exactly means for me, outside of the safety net of school being gone, is that CCA has decided that i am qualified (enough) to doodle for a living. Because of this, I’ve been thinking a lot about this past semester, the future, and how quickly I can down a six pack while sitting in my boxers with my cats (because ya know. College.), and I’ve kind of come up with a list of a few things that I wish I had known or thought about before hand because if i did, i would’ve probably had a few extra weeks where I didn’t have to put pants on or get out of bed.

And, just to get this shameless plug out of the way because I’ve been in my cave working for  months on it, you can check out my finished thesis HERE on my website toward the bottom.

I encourage any of the rest of you freaks and weirdos who’ve already graduated or are going to be graduating to add to it, post something relevant,  reasons why I am way cooler than Chris Koehler, or reasons why  this list is utterly wrong. (But be nice about it, I’m fragile)

Alright. So:

Those of you going into the fall semester have a few months. You could probably have most of your sketches or thumbs done. I know someone who knew what he was doing enough to where he finished a piece or two before school even started. I wasted three weeks at the beginning of the semester switching topics and trying to find one that I was interested in and would work. (This freaked one of my advisors out, apparently. Still finished.)

All of them were cool ideas, but it wasn’t until I started planning and sketching them out that I realized some of them just wouldn’t work. If you’re doing 10 reasons why Chris Koehler isn’t as handsome as I am, research those ten reasons and do a few thumbnails.  Don’t waste your break procrastinating because it will bite you in the ass. Sometimes you don’t realize an idea isn’t working until you start to hash it out. In short:  Don’t come in the first day and say this is my idea. It may not work and that sucks. Have some sketches, notes, research. Do the leg work up front and you will have a solid few extra weeks to do good work. Or to drink until you completely forget about the real world. 

(Theres always the bottle deposit to make your rent…)

I procrastinated this part until the very end, and guess what? It sucked. I had to go to three different frame shops to get 9 frames that were what I wanted and exactly the same. Since I have a car, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been, but driving to Emeryville, then Bezerkley, then back to the city really sucked. Granted, part of that was because the Aaron Brothers in the city is staffed by lazy buttholes who can’t be bother to, you know, do their job, but still.  Stephanie Gobby bought all of her frames at the beginning of the semester, and as she finished her pieces she would slap them in the frames. Easy storage, and it can give you an extra week or two at the end of the semester. Sometimes you don’t want or need frames. That’s cool, and if that’s the case you should buy me a burrito from all that money you’re saving.

(I imagine its hard to find good employees in hell. Which is where every Aaron Brother’s store is located.)

Think about the size you want to work at before thesis. I really like to work at 11 x 17 on arches 300lb cold press paper. That said, I also like to use like 4 or 5 other kinds of paper that give different textures than arches, some of it hotpress, some Bristol vellum, some made from the tanned remains of those that have crossed Bob Ciano. Because of this, one of my pieces was a slightly different size than the other 9, and it looked weird altogether because there was no reason for it. It also didn’t fit in my frame. So I had to rework it. Work at a size you enjoy that’s going to allow you to do great work, but realize that if you’re choosing to frame your work the weirder the size the harder it will be to find frames.

I want to start off by saying that my advisors were kick ass. (Randy Chavez and Robert Hunt) That being said, keep in mind that just because you’re assigned a specific two people doesn’t mean you can’t get advice from other instructors and people. I got some great feedback from Chris Koehler when I hit a rut and it really helped me focus myself toward a good direction. I got some great feedback from the two “R”s throughout the semester, and I actually learned some photoshop from Robert. (Which I think is kind of hilarious. “I don’t know much photoshop, but here, I’m going to do some voodoo and use these tools you didnt know existed.”) Randy was brutally honest in telling me that something wasn’t working. (I knew it but I didn’t really want to admit it. I ended up redoing the entire piece.) I pestered Owen Smith because he really doesn’t have much going on at school these days. (Seriously though, I think he’s been sleeping there… ) You have Bob Ciano to pester as well, and he’s got some killer stories and will always have something relevant to show you or some funky idea that you would’ve never thought of.  Use these resources, but also realize that they will not always be right and if you disagree with them then don’t take the advice. Same thing goes for your fellow students. Get feedback, but take it with a grain of salt. Also, its on you to make the effort with your advisors. The easier you make it on them, the better advice and critique you’ll get. Thrusting something in front of them and saying “Um… so here.” won’t really get you much help. Articulate what you need from them and it’ll be easier to get it. I never had a problem getting feedback, because I worked around their schedules and had prepared what I needed from them. I also may or may not have stalked and/or cornered a few people, but hey. I got my critique.

(They cowered in fear of how persistent I can be… and then got restraining orders.)

Be able to admit when you’re rushing something, forcing it, or full of shit. I did all of my legwork first, and got my thumbs knocked out, reference shot and sketches done before I started doing my finals. This is a terrible idea. Don’t do it. I got burnt out and I wound up having to repaint an entire piece because I just wanted to be done and I had been painting for like a month straight just about every day.  It may seem smart to do it this way but what i realized is that it kind of screwed me because I stopped learning and it became much more mundane and mindless. When I realized this, I started to just rework my sketches and reshoot reference for just the piece i was working on, and they became a lot more fun again. All that work I had done previously was kind of moot though, and I wasted a lot of time. So dont be afraid to be honest with yourself in what you can accomplish, and don’t let idealism get in the way of doing good work.  You are not an assembly line in 1920′s Detroit.

(If you were present day Detroit you’d probably have never made it this far anyway. )

I was always way ahead of schedule. Granted, that schedule changed about every other week, but I do kind of wish I had better planned when I was supposed to finish. I had actually intended to give myself about a week or two to get my promos printed and all that (and I actually hit that mark almost exactly), but stuff comes up and it sucks to pay $65 more so you can pick up your promos two business days early.

Your teachers are there because they like teaching. Most of them are humans and will be willing to help you out if you can show them that you take them seriously, and you have the motivation and drive to succeed. They will be your competition and colleagues someday very soon. Use them as a resource, don’t be afraid to talk to them, and ask for help if you need it. I’ve probably gotten more of an education just from the relationships I’ve built with my teachers and the things they’ve told me than I did from some of the classes I paid a lot of money to be in. Plus, I got to be an awesome vampire, a  cowboy, and at least part of my back and hand is out there somewhere holding a scotch glass probably looking very dapper. Don’t be afraid to speak up, and don’t be intimidated. Remember they have a lot of experience doing what you want to be doing, and often can help steer you in the direction you want to head.

With all that being said, the batch of students coming up in the next couple years are fantastic. I cant wait to see what you guys come up with. Big thanks to all of the faculty at CCA. Without any of you, this wouldn’t have been such a fantastic couple of years.

A lot of the personal pieces I work on start out as doodles. I think this is pretty common for a lot of artists, but i thought I’d walk you through, doodle to finish. 

A couple weeks ago, on a really unproductive and lazy day, I found this really awesome photograph of an old man who kind of reminded me of a sailer. Trying to salvage some semblance of value in that day, I started doodling this dude, and I really kind of liked where it was going. So i worked out a nice final sketch for it, whittled it down to the basic linework as a skeleton, and transferred it to a piece of Bristol Vellum. The plan was originally to ink it, actually, but I have all these pastels and colored pencils laying around, and well… it became play time.

So after transferring the sketch, I started by laying down some pretty basic colors. On some of the darker areas such as the jacket, I laid down some pan pastels, but for the most part I alternated layering cooler colors for my shadows, and warming them up in my midtones and highlights. I didn’t want to use any purely “black” colored pencil because it tends to dull the colors out, so for my shadows I would either “mix” my own black or use a dark violet, brown, or blues depending on how cool i wanted to pull the temperature.

After a while, the skin tones really started to come together.  I didn’t want a whole lot of really drastic dark shadows in this area, so it was actually rather easy to blend. I simply layered the colors on top of each other until it was the color I wanted. A lot of the time I actually used a white, pink, light orange, or tan colored pencil to really blend the waxy material together. I didn’t want a whole lot of the texture of the paper to show through, and this is why I used the Bristol Vellum. Its smooth, and a lot easier to control the texture. By putting a lot of pressure and using those lighter colors to blend, it’s easier to get a nice solid surface without any gaps in the pencil.

Here I was just starting to add in some of the darker areas. I opted away from doing much facial stubble because it didn’t quite fit the rest of the face. To do the really dark shadows at the base of the chin and behind the ear, I actually applied a light layer of a dark blue pan pastel first, and built up violets and blues on top of it along with some pinks to keep the skin tone somewhat even. I’ve actually since found that using a small underpainting of watercolor actually works a whole lot better than pan pastels in doing something like this. That being said, pan pastel works great as well if you can avoid going too heavy with it. There’s a threshold you cross with pan pastels and color pencil that makes it very difficult to layer on top of.

The jacket in the front is a great example of using too much of the pan pastels. I caked it on too thick to try and get a nice dark undertone, and unfortunately that makes it harder for the waxy colored pencils to “sit” on top of the page. Luckily, I just wanted this area to be pretty dark, so it isn’t too huge an issue. I also added some of the beanie in the same fashion as everywhere else: layers and layers of colored pencils and probable development of carpal tunnel syndrome. From here, I’ll be going back in to the shadows around the ear to darken it and match the skin tone a bit more evenly, and simply finish the beanie. I’ll also be adding a light tone for the background to separate the beard and glasses, and make them pop out a bit more.

Heres the final piece!

-J

To kick off this blog, and since this has been a crazy productive summer,  I thought i’d show a little bit of my warm up sketches

I’ve been really enjoying experimentation with a whole bunch of different things, from colored pencils and pastels to… well that’s actually really the only thing I’ve been playing with outside of graphite and ink. But that being said, I’ve noticed that if I spend about an hour doing a warm up before jumping into something more delicate then my work winds up looking a lot better and less like it was drawn by a potato…

Here’s some other fun things i’ve done in the last month or two:

I apologize for the quality on some of those, as my scanner seems to have gained consciousness and apparently dislikes me. It’s decided that it will no longer scan for me, but only for my girlfriend, Veronica Lenci. So, while i prepare for battle / write my will / get my affairs in order these lame pics from my camera will have to do for now.

All of these actually started out as “warm ups” that I really put no value into, but a few have evolved into something a bit more finished. For example, the 2nd to last picture is one I’ve actually taken to a finished piece. Most of these, however, got about as far as you see them: fun little sketches done while watching terrible movies on Netflix.

So hopefully I can keep this pace up! We’ll see what happens.

- J