Nice wasser! That better illustrates what I mean by using sketches to quickly work out problems, too. Sometimes you need to just change a few things about the same drawing to make it work, and in going through it a few times very quickly you can find the solution.
I think its awesome that you are doing all this now before the camp, too. I hope you get a ton out of going.
I've been driving myself absolutely nuts going round on all the various storytelling aspects of this prompt. I have gone back and forth so many times on ideas for paintings where the angel is being actively impaled/wounded at the moment of the scene. Here's the conceptual problem I keep running into: if the character is being actively impaled, and I want it to read like they are actually being hurt, I have to draw them like they're being hurt. That means an expression on the spectrum of anguish to sorrow.
I feel like that maybe an unnecessary read of it, You are interpreting "A fatal wound" as "feeling pain" and the prompt seems to imply that the angel is "going to die" but "does not care about that"
Alllll righty. So I think I finally was able to conceptualize this in a way that made sense to me. The scene isn't picturing the EXACT moment of impact. Instead, I imagined it like a scene in the movie that plays out in slow motion, several seconds after the angel is actually speared, at first she cried out but now she's falling very slowly and the emotional music swells, and the angel looks down and contemplates her duty in her final moments, and a sense of peace settles in over her... well you get the picture
from a writerly perspective, "dutiful" and "pained" are not mutually exclusive, and that's where I think Iruka's advice to look to the classics, esp, wrt angels and similar heraldic imagery would definitely give you some visual cues that give you the emotional impact that I think is what you're working toward. The prompt sounds like the angel feels a responsibility to do anything possible to protect the knight, and part of that responsibility is the mortal wound, if that makes sense?
the new approach is interesting but feels a bit more like coincidence than protection because the viewer doesn't have a clear source of the enemy lances? Like it looks more like the protected character is slightly luckier rather than being defended. I'd almost want to see the angel facing the threat--or maybe looking over his shoulder to convey the emotion while throwing his body toward the threat? with a composition like this. It's really cool to see how many ways you have come up with to tackle this question, though!
the new approach is interesting but feels a bit more like coincidence than protection because the viewer doesn't have a clear source of the enemy lances? Like it looks more like the protected character is slightly luckier rather than being defended. I'd almost want to see the angel facing the threat-
Blerg thanks for the input and after thinking about it I actually agree with you. It looks like a coincidence.
The problem is that this is that the prompt is a "fake Magic card" called "The Angel of Sacrifice," so I kind of feel like the angel has to be front and center. The prompt mentions that the angel is "lightly armored" so I think showing the character's design is important. Not to mention that having the angel facing away from the camera wouldn't really do much to convey the character's emotional state.
Having the angel glancing over her shoulder doesn't really sound like a plausible solution to me. Especially since she has big old wings that are getting in the way of so many compostional ideas. And again it wouldn't show off the design of the angel at all.
But yeah, I'm really feeling like the angel has to be facing the threat in order to convey the idea that they are intentionally engaging in a sacrificial act. Otherwise, it just looks like maybe they got accidentally speared or stabbed and maybe didn't even see it coming, and the person being "protected" just got lucky. It's hard (for me at least) to imagine that the angel saw a bunch of arrows falling and though, well, the best option for protection is to sort of flap my wings a few feet away and hopefully I'll catch one with my back.
from a writerly perspective, "dutiful" and "pained" are not mutually exclusive,
The prompt specifically asks for an angel who is "radiating a sense of duty and serenity" and I don't really see how that's compatible with the idea of a pained or anguished expression. I feel like it's just REALLY hard to imagine a scene that includes all of the elements that are being asked for -- let alone one that would read well on a tiny Magic card.
In my despair I spent a while tonight trying to come up with a better way to draw the foreground character in this painting, and I think I had some mild success on that front? At the very least he looks less squished in there, and hopefully posed in a more logical way. I feel like if the sword character was designed to look evil and dangerous, then that would help sell the threat? I dunno. Anyway I'll round up all of my efforts so far in a single post tomorrow so they're all easily viewable at once.
Here are all my sketches I've done, including some I hadn't shared previously. I also submitted these to the teacher of the workshop for feedback, so I'll see what he thinks. You know what though? This has been the first time that I've REALLY iterated on a concept very much at all, and tried to puzzle out a good composition, instead of just going with the first or second thing that comes to mind. So that's something!
Ya know what I want to do, to be honest? I want to forget about sticking so closely to this convoluted prompt and just do something simpler with the angel and the knight only. Sort of like #11. I just want to paint the angel sitting impaled by a sword, on a throne, with the knight sitting at her feet lamenting her impending death. I know it doesn't convey the specifics of the prompt (the angel is protecting the knight from a threat) but it would be simple and abstract enough that I think you could fill in the blanks. Hmmm..
So after showing all my sketches to the workshop instructor and telling him I was having trouble with some of the story elements from the prompt, he encouraged me to pursue something simpler and to just go for an emotional moment between a knight and an angel, after the angel has taken a fatal wound. So after doing a few more thumbnails and some back and forth with him, I went ahead and worked up this, which is the image I plan to work on at the workshop.
Right now I'm trying to finish a tight line drawing so I can focus on just painting and rendering while I'm there. Still prep work to do, the workshop is just a little over a week away!
I really enjoy how you play with composing the wings in each concept. The way they parallel the shoulder line in your most recent piece is very eye catching! Also must give props to the bluetooth keypad setup. I've done some digital life drawing, but it's pretty exclusively linear. Your figure paintings are very inspiring!
Ooookay so I’m finally back from a work trip that I had to take after the workshop. Now I’m able to get back to art stuff. So I wanted to report back on the Watts illustration workshop!
So first off, it's not finished but here’s what I was able to achieve in terms of my illustration that I worked on during the week. Till got a ways to go, I can see tons of things that need work asap. Gonna get back to it this week to continue rendering and polishing! But here it is in its current state:
I actually had a really hard time working on this at the studio, for a few reasons:
1. Painting while people are constantly looking over your shoulder and commenting is an unfamiliar and kind of anxiety-inducing experience for me, I guess!
2. I was working on my little Surface Pro 3 which was just too tiny to spend a whole week comfortably painting on. I had a second computer beside it to display reference and stuff, but it was still rough.
3. There was some bizarre electrical interference in the studio that caused the palm rejection on my Surface to stop working completely! I spent a depressingly long time the first couple of days trouble shooting before I realized that the touch screen worked 100 percent fine when I was outside or in my hotel room. I also eventually realized that I could wrap my palm in duct tape and that eliminated the issue (which was that my cursor would jump around while painting when I leaned my palm on the screen.) Strangely, whenever someone would turn the big fluorescent lights in the studio off for a minute, the palm rejection would function just fine. I have no idea how the Surface touch screen technology works, but apparently this can be an issue in the wrong environment.
So about the actual workshop:
- I was worried about being the only person there who was working digitally, but actually I was one of four digital people (out of roughly 15 students). That was cool since we could talk Photoshop and stuff.
- Skill level of the students varied a lot, a bunch of people were at a lower level than me including a few who were real beginners, while others were much better than me. A few of those were current Watts students. I felt kind of in the middle.
- The instructors there were seriously amazing. Erik Gist, Dave Palumbo, Michael C. Hayes, Lucas Graciano and Aaron B. Miller were all there making the rounds constantly and offering advice on everyone’s work. The ratio of students to teachers is pretty incredible, so I got a lot of feedback constantly.
- The instructors were all working on their own pieces during the week, so it was neat to watch them each work on a painting from scratch.
- One big downside to working digitally is that the instructors weren’t super eager to dive into Photoshop, especially on my little screen with my hotkeys remapped in some ways to suit my workflow. For most of the students who were working traditionally, the instructors would sit and paint over top of their work quite a bit.
- Only part of each day was spent working. Each day there was also a 1 hour painting demo by one of the instructors, and a talk/lecture of some kind. One of the days the art director from Hearthstone dropped in to talk about working as an artist in the games industry, and he stayed for a long time after and did portfolio reviews. I was really enthralled listening to all of the critiques he was giving everyone, it was really on another level from what I’m used to.
- Days were split up: work on projects in the morning, break for a painting demo, have lunch, come back and work for a while, break for a lecture, go to dinner, then come back and continue working until whenever you wanted to leave for the night.
- The BEST part of the workshop had nothing to do with painting, it was just having so many super friendly pros to sit and talk to about my life situation and art goals/dreams. All of the five instructors were incredibly generous with their time and were very eager to listen and offer advice. In addition to chatting in the studio, we all went out to lunch and dinner each day and talked art most of the time. I got many reality checks and pep talks from Erik, Dave and Michael especially. Thanks to them I have so many new ideas and goals to work toward in 2017!
- Overall it was a really wonderful experience overall, 100 percent worth the money.
Very, very cool man. I'm really glad you went. Looks like you really pushed yourself and the illustration. There's something to be said about that sort of high level and concentrated feedback. Thanks for writing about it too, having insight into these workshops and classes really helps people figure out if the experience might be right for them.
Its really interesting that they weren't eager to work with your tablet... Did the time loss make you wish you had a different device? Or perhaps make you wish you worked traditionally?
Thanks for posting about the workshop, very interesting to learn about!
This is just what I think, could be way off, but I guess a lot of the trepidation for instructors to dive into the digital thing is that they just haven't done it themselves. At least here in Europe, most of the traditional painting teachers that are 30+ are reluctant to paint digitally, seeing it as a lesser tool/underestimating it. Only a small minority actually does both, and those are usually people working in the entertainment/animation industry.
I am still alive! Had a crazy coupla months with a move and a bunch of other stuff. Been trying to paint as much as I can squeeze in. here's some of the stuff I've been working on!
First up, here's how that angel painting ended up... well actually it's kind of just a totally different painting that I started because I didn't like the other one!
I was feeling like I've gotten better in the past year so I wanted to try repainting something from about a year ago... which got me to this.
It's a repaint of this guy!
Here's the most recent thing I've been plugging away on... still needs some work.
Some things that started as doodles that I painted
And here's a little self portrait that I could have spent some more time polishing and detailing.
Also recently picked up the old charcoal pencils for figure drawing... mostly been doing portraits. They kind of suck and it's so hard to draw on paper. I'll share some of those soon though! Also planning to start posting back around here some more in general.
That's interesting RTS! I did chat with Mike quite a bit at the workshop. I tried looking up some of his earlier work just now, though his DeviantArt page only goes back to 2013 and all that stuff is quite a bit better than anything I've done if I'm being honest, haha.
Been grinding the head drawing quite a bit lately, finally finished one that I'm pretty happy with! This is from photo reference cuz I need a bunch of hours to polish something until it starts looking decent, I'm too slow to get anything too good out of a 2-3 hour life session. It's charcoal pencil on newsprint.
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I think its awesome that you are doing all this now before the camp, too. I hope you get a ton out of going.
I feel like that maybe an unnecessary read of it, You are interpreting "A fatal wound" as "feeling pain" and the prompt seems to imply that the angel is "going to die" but "does not care about that"
What do you guys think of this?
the new approach is interesting but feels a bit more like coincidence than protection because the viewer doesn't have a clear source of the enemy lances? Like it looks more like the protected character is slightly luckier rather than being defended. I'd almost want to see the angel facing the threat--or maybe looking over his shoulder to convey the emotion while throwing his body toward the threat? with a composition like this. It's really cool to see how many ways you have come up with to tackle this question, though!
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Blerg thanks for the input and after thinking about it I actually agree with you. It looks like a coincidence.
The problem is that this is that the prompt is a "fake Magic card" called "The Angel of Sacrifice," so I kind of feel like the angel has to be front and center. The prompt mentions that the angel is "lightly armored" so I think showing the character's design is important. Not to mention that having the angel facing away from the camera wouldn't really do much to convey the character's emotional state.
Having the angel glancing over her shoulder doesn't really sound like a plausible solution to me. Especially since she has big old wings that are getting in the way of so many compostional ideas. And again it wouldn't show off the design of the angel at all.
But yeah, I'm really feeling like the angel has to be facing the threat in order to convey the idea that they are intentionally engaging in a sacrificial act. Otherwise, it just looks like maybe they got accidentally speared or stabbed and maybe didn't even see it coming, and the person being "protected" just got lucky. It's hard (for me at least) to imagine that the angel saw a bunch of arrows falling and though, well, the best option for protection is to sort of flap my wings a few feet away and hopefully I'll catch one with my back.
The prompt specifically asks for an angel who is "radiating a sense of duty and serenity" and I don't really see how that's compatible with the idea of a pained or anguished expression. I feel like it's just REALLY hard to imagine a scene that includes all of the elements that are being asked for -- let alone one that would read well on a tiny Magic card.
And for reference this was the previous version:
Ya know what I want to do, to be honest? I want to forget about sticking so closely to this convoluted prompt and just do something simpler with the angel and the knight only. Sort of like #11. I just want to paint the angel sitting impaled by a sword, on a throne, with the knight sitting at her feet lamenting her impending death. I know it doesn't convey the specifics of the prompt (the angel is protecting the knight from a threat) but it would be simple and abstract enough that I think you could fill in the blanks. Hmmm..
Right now I'm trying to finish a tight line drawing so I can focus on just painting and rendering while I'm there. Still prep work to do, the workshop is just a little over a week away!
Nicely done, I enjoy the set up quite a bit. I'm excited for what you end up doing with the class, I hope you keep us updated
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
So first off, it's not finished but here’s what I was able to achieve in terms of my illustration that I worked on during the week. Till got a ways to go, I can see tons of things that need work asap. Gonna get back to it this week to continue rendering and polishing! But here it is in its current state:
I actually had a really hard time working on this at the studio, for a few reasons:
1. Painting while people are constantly looking over your shoulder and commenting is an unfamiliar and kind of anxiety-inducing experience for me, I guess!
2. I was working on my little Surface Pro 3 which was just too tiny to spend a whole week comfortably painting on. I had a second computer beside it to display reference and stuff, but it was still rough.
3. There was some bizarre electrical interference in the studio that caused the palm rejection on my Surface to stop working completely! I spent a depressingly long time the first couple of days trouble shooting before I realized that the touch screen worked 100 percent fine when I was outside or in my hotel room. I also eventually realized that I could wrap my palm in duct tape and that eliminated the issue (which was that my cursor would jump around while painting when I leaned my palm on the screen.) Strangely, whenever someone would turn the big fluorescent lights in the studio off for a minute, the palm rejection would function just fine. I have no idea how the Surface touch screen technology works, but apparently this can be an issue in the wrong environment.
So about the actual workshop:
- I was worried about being the only person there who was working digitally, but actually I was one of four digital people (out of roughly 15 students). That was cool since we could talk Photoshop and stuff.
- Skill level of the students varied a lot, a bunch of people were at a lower level than me including a few who were real beginners, while others were much better than me. A few of those were current Watts students. I felt kind of in the middle.
- The instructors there were seriously amazing. Erik Gist, Dave Palumbo, Michael C. Hayes, Lucas Graciano and Aaron B. Miller were all there making the rounds constantly and offering advice on everyone’s work. The ratio of students to teachers is pretty incredible, so I got a lot of feedback constantly.
- The instructors were all working on their own pieces during the week, so it was neat to watch them each work on a painting from scratch.
- One big downside to working digitally is that the instructors weren’t super eager to dive into Photoshop, especially on my little screen with my hotkeys remapped in some ways to suit my workflow. For most of the students who were working traditionally, the instructors would sit and paint over top of their work quite a bit.
- Only part of each day was spent working. Each day there was also a 1 hour painting demo by one of the instructors, and a talk/lecture of some kind. One of the days the art director from Hearthstone dropped in to talk about working as an artist in the games industry, and he stayed for a long time after and did portfolio reviews. I was really enthralled listening to all of the critiques he was giving everyone, it was really on another level from what I’m used to.
- Days were split up: work on projects in the morning, break for a painting demo, have lunch, come back and work for a while, break for a lecture, go to dinner, then come back and continue working until whenever you wanted to leave for the night.
- The BEST part of the workshop had nothing to do with painting, it was just having so many super friendly pros to sit and talk to about my life situation and art goals/dreams. All of the five instructors were incredibly generous with their time and were very eager to listen and offer advice. In addition to chatting in the studio, we all went out to lunch and dinner each day and talked art most of the time. I got many reality checks and pep talks from Erik, Dave and Michael especially. Thanks to them I have so many new ideas and goals to work toward in 2017!
- Overall it was a really wonderful experience overall, 100 percent worth the money.
I'm heading to a schoolism workshop later this year, and I hope it's as good a time as you had!
Its really interesting that they weren't eager to work with your tablet... Did the time loss make you wish you had a different device? Or perhaps make you wish you worked traditionally?
This is just what I think, could be way off, but I guess a lot of the trepidation for instructors to dive into the digital thing is that they just haven't done it themselves. At least here in Europe, most of the traditional painting teachers that are 30+ are reluctant to paint digitally, seeing it as a lesser tool/underestimating it. Only a small minority actually does both, and those are usually people working in the entertainment/animation industry.
First up, here's how that angel painting ended up... well actually it's kind of just a totally different painting that I started because I didn't like the other one!
I was feeling like I've gotten better in the past year so I wanted to try repainting something from about a year ago... which got me to this.
It's a repaint of this guy!
Here's the most recent thing I've been plugging away on... still needs some work.
Some things that started as doodles that I painted
And here's a little self portrait that I could have spent some more time polishing and detailing.
Also recently picked up the old charcoal pencils for figure drawing... mostly been doing portraits. They kind of suck and it's so hard to draw on paper. I'll share some of those soon though! Also planning to start posting back around here some more in general.
Been grinding the head drawing quite a bit lately, finally finished one that I'm pretty happy with! This is from photo reference cuz I need a bunch of hours to polish something until it starts looking decent, I'm too slow to get anything too good out of a 2-3 hour life session. It's charcoal pencil on newsprint.
Welcome back!