Friday, January 20, 2012
CA the seamstress
Wife got a sewing machine, wanted to make her a professional sign. Used coffee to make it look old.
Tracing
A great way to get a nice clean picture of something you are attempting to re-create is by "tracing" or "stenciling" it. turns out most people do this, would of been nice to know that A YEAR AGO!! Let me explain what this means.
Step 1: you find a picture you want to paint and print it out, or if you find it online and do not have a printer, trace off the computer screen (can be difficult).
For the example, I printed out a picture of a guy with a cuckoo bird in his head.
Step 2: Place the tracing paper of the picture and trace all of the lines you wish to re-paint using a fine pencil (I left out the blue tattoo ink on the man and the borders)
Step 3: Get your water color paper and put the tracing paper over it (line it up how you want it to appear on your paper)
Step 4: Slide the black transfer paper over the water color paper, and under the tracing paper (a.k.a. Tracing paper, transfer paper, water color paper - stacked on top of each other)
side note: Dark black side should be facing the water color paper/ down, NOT towards tracing paper/ you)
Step 5: Re- trace the lines on your tracing paper using a fine pencil, remember where you have traced because when you lift up the papers "what you see is what you get!" unless you want to erase it all and start over again! (yes, the transfer paper comes up with eraser)
Step 6: Re-trace the lines of your image on your water color paper with your artist pen/ calligraphy pen. (yes, this is a lot of tracing! but it is a clean exact copy) After you finish tracing with pen, take your eraser and rub down the whole image so the transfer paper image is gone. You should be left with a dark permanent ink outline of your image and ready to be filled in with your talent. Just like a coloring book picture!
Spit Shading for real!
Well, I finally put some real ink to real paper with a real brush! He gave me black ink and red ink and said this was all I would need to get started. Of course I am a suck for color and went out a week later to buy 2 more colors and began mixing away! I got these images out of a Sailor Jerry book my friend brought over and stenciled them out. I will explain what that means soon!
Transition Period. New Essential Supplies
Well, I stopped painting and blogging for a while because it got nice outside and I took a job in Virginia. After moving, my new neighbors had some friends over and one had a bunch of tattoos and I brought up "tattoo art". He showed me all of his traditional flash spit-shading he has done and I showed him my desperate attempt. This was the first person to ever give me a personal tip on how to spit shade. He brought over many supplies I had never heard of and taught me some techniques I had not found in any previous books. He learned from a friend of his that is a tattoo artist in VA Beach. Below are the materials he gave/recommended to me.
Artist Pens (good sharpies, get a fine and medium tip, I even use the bold - Friend uses a calligraphy pen)
Thin tip pencil (I use mechanical)
Calligraphy black ink - "super black india ink by speedball"
Professional Acrylic INK!!!!! - I use liquitex because Dr. Ph. Martins' is expensive
Good brushes - both #1 and #4 are essential - I use Beste round tip
Tracing paper
Essential Supplies:
Good Water Color paper (not mixed media)Artist Pens (good sharpies, get a fine and medium tip, I even use the bold - Friend uses a calligraphy pen)
Thin tip pencil (I use mechanical)
Calligraphy black ink - "super black india ink by speedball"
Professional Acrylic INK!!!!! - I use liquitex because Dr. Ph. Martins' is expensive
Good brushes - both #1 and #4 are essential - I use Beste round tip
Other Supplies:
Transfer paper (black sheet in corner of the picture)Tracing paper
I will explain the use of these in a future post!
Day of the Dead Man and Woman
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Day of the Dead Skull
After observing pieces my artist idol Jason Lambert, my wife said I should paint a "day of the dead" skull. You know me, I'll take any challenge that comes my way, so that is what I did... and this is the result. I really like how it came out. I used the water color tray again, I figured "why mess up a good thing?" I have had such success recently, I feared going back to liquid.
The blue was a pain, it didn't come out very well in the picture. Also, be kind your judgment of the black eye shading, it kept getting wet and lightening up (this was 3 coats of black). I decided to put my name in the background, and figured what the heck, and threw C.A.'s name in there too! I think I may be doing more "day of the dead" theme paintings in the near future... it reminds CA of "Little Big Planet"! holla if your an LBP fan! Until next time... Remember Your Death!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Snake with Water Color
I was inspired to paint another snake when I typed in "Sailor Jerry spit shading" on Google images and my snake picture was on the 5th line. It got me excited, so here is my new snake. I checked out "tattoo bible vol. 2" for the 100th time and pulled this image out of that book. I had a 2 and a half hour lunch break between classes, so I brought my water color tray (travel one with dried paint, not liquid), a brush, a water cup and a water bottle, the book and a piece of cheap watercolor paper and did my thang. I penciled it out, started with yellow and realized, "Holy Smokes! why don't I always use this type of water color!" The tray with 32 colors was 6 dollars at Micheal's and if I do say so, the colors are very controlled and look great. So, yellow, green, other green, ROY G. BIV... oops, red, blue, purple and black lastly.
It really came out great. I am still not very good with lighting and where to put shadows. The snake kind of looks like a Native American warrior (my wife made me use the politically correct terminology) with the random black spots on its face, but they were there in the picture! The water came out AMAZING! And be assured that I will be painting a wave of some sort in the very soon future! Since it is my last piece of paper, I may be adding more to this page! Call it flash if you want, I call it being poor!
Thanks for all of the support on getting my picture on Google images guys. Love ya all!
Cut the Sh*p!
OK, I get it! I am not a landscape artist...yet! I just thought that every artist should be good at painting landscapes and real life, but I don't even really like to paint like that. I would love to sit in front of a building and make it look like a photograph on my canvas, but I'm not there yet. I like tattoo art, and I'm good at painting flash and why not just stick to what you're good at, right!? So, for all of you that missed my most talented flash pieces, they are back in full motion!
For this project, I decided I was going to do 3 different attempts at the same piece of art: acrylic, liquid water color and spit shading of Sailor Jerry's "homeward" flash piece. (pictured above)
My first painting is acrylic, I first sketched the piece with pencil lightly to get the ship where I wanted it. Next, I went dark to light, starting with the water, then the top of the ship downwards. I would like to share that acrylic without water in it drys extremely fast! I mixed blue and brown together to get the darkest color. I then used blue on top of it, followed by blue mixed with WHITE!!!! Yes, I went out and bought white acrylic because I was sick and tired of using 5 colors to make a picture! So, the sky blue followed by yellow to highlight the wood and brass.
Next, I threw some white on some areas to try and pop out the sails, ship bow, brass on top, masts, etc... The flag came out like garbage, but believe it or not, the flag was not really my main focus. I cared more about the stupid seagulls than the flag! Also, I thought it would make the waves pop if I used my shiny silver sharpie ... ummm, in the sun it sort of sparkles and does it, but not in the evening time (so, mixed media piece?).
Lastly, I took out my watercolor sharpie and went over the drawing to give it more of the tattoo vibe. Overall, I am pretty proud of it, compared to my other acrylic pieces!
Onward, to my preferential media, watercolor! As always, I lightly drew the ship and water and even the seagulls. From light to dark, yellow, dark yellow, watered down blue (sky blue), light blue, dark blue, red, brown, black. I love the way the wood on the ship turned out, it fades from dark to light very well. The waves are even pretty fun. I like having the U-shaped cut on the bottom of the piece, instead of it looking like I am attempting to paint an actual scene. The red sunset pops the ship much more and I tried a little more to help out the flag.
Finally, let's get down to what I know how to do and what is going to make this ship look like Sailor Jerry himself did it - Spit Shading with watercolor! I made some tea and painted the paper with 3 coats to get the paper more antique brown. By the way, this paper is the cheap paper, not thick, and not as good quality as the other (ran out).
Then I penciled down the image (for the third time!) and threw it in my work bag. I brought a water dish, paint tray, black, red, yellow and a napkin and painted this during my lunch hour. From yellow to red to black. Also, I did not trace this with sharpie; I painted the outline with my brush. Took about an hour and a half to do the whole piece.
The trick with spit shading (for me) is to put the solid black down, clean your brush, then pull the paint outwards and it should become lighter. When your brush gets dry, use your spit to get a really controlled amount of water on your brush. You don't want water globs on a light painting like this! I tried to get the flag to look a little better... whatever, stupid flag! I think the water came out kinda cool with all of the different blacks giving a rippling effect.
I asked my painting amigo how to fade the sails better, she said that gradation is the most studied and practiced part of watercolor and acrylic and there is no super special trick. She gave me a tip which I will share. Fill with water (from your brush) the area you want to be the color, then dip your brush in paint and dab the water in spots and it should move to the corners and fade by itself... haven't tried it, just sharing the wisdom! Let me know how it works.
By the way,
I used a #3 brush for acrylic and it took an hour to paint
I used a #3 and #1 brush for the first watercolor and it took an hour or so
I used a #1 brush for the spit shading and it took about an hour and a half.
My new insights are:
"Take your time, the final product will come. The most fun is not so much looking at your finished piece as it is dreaming of what it looks like with every little stroke and dab of paint."
"Don't be afraid to try something different, it is just paper, you can always make more, who knows, it may be awesome!"
"Fading, shading, gradating, whatever you want to call it, is freakin' hard to do!"
"Flags are dumb, don't include them in your paintings unless you want them to look worse!"
For this project, I decided I was going to do 3 different attempts at the same piece of art: acrylic, liquid water color and spit shading of Sailor Jerry's "homeward" flash piece. (pictured above)
My first painting is acrylic, I first sketched the piece with pencil lightly to get the ship where I wanted it. Next, I went dark to light, starting with the water, then the top of the ship downwards. I would like to share that acrylic without water in it drys extremely fast! I mixed blue and brown together to get the darkest color. I then used blue on top of it, followed by blue mixed with WHITE!!!! Yes, I went out and bought white acrylic because I was sick and tired of using 5 colors to make a picture! So, the sky blue followed by yellow to highlight the wood and brass.
Next, I threw some white on some areas to try and pop out the sails, ship bow, brass on top, masts, etc... The flag came out like garbage, but believe it or not, the flag was not really my main focus. I cared more about the stupid seagulls than the flag! Also, I thought it would make the waves pop if I used my shiny silver sharpie ... ummm, in the sun it sort of sparkles and does it, but not in the evening time (so, mixed media piece?).
Lastly, I took out my watercolor sharpie and went over the drawing to give it more of the tattoo vibe. Overall, I am pretty proud of it, compared to my other acrylic pieces!
Onward, to my preferential media, watercolor! As always, I lightly drew the ship and water and even the seagulls. From light to dark, yellow, dark yellow, watered down blue (sky blue), light blue, dark blue, red, brown, black. I love the way the wood on the ship turned out, it fades from dark to light very well. The waves are even pretty fun. I like having the U-shaped cut on the bottom of the piece, instead of it looking like I am attempting to paint an actual scene. The red sunset pops the ship much more and I tried a little more to help out the flag.
Finally, let's get down to what I know how to do and what is going to make this ship look like Sailor Jerry himself did it - Spit Shading with watercolor! I made some tea and painted the paper with 3 coats to get the paper more antique brown. By the way, this paper is the cheap paper, not thick, and not as good quality as the other (ran out).
Then I penciled down the image (for the third time!) and threw it in my work bag. I brought a water dish, paint tray, black, red, yellow and a napkin and painted this during my lunch hour. From yellow to red to black. Also, I did not trace this with sharpie; I painted the outline with my brush. Took about an hour and a half to do the whole piece.
The trick with spit shading (for me) is to put the solid black down, clean your brush, then pull the paint outwards and it should become lighter. When your brush gets dry, use your spit to get a really controlled amount of water on your brush. You don't want water globs on a light painting like this! I tried to get the flag to look a little better... whatever, stupid flag! I think the water came out kinda cool with all of the different blacks giving a rippling effect.
I asked my painting amigo how to fade the sails better, she said that gradation is the most studied and practiced part of watercolor and acrylic and there is no super special trick. She gave me a tip which I will share. Fill with water (from your brush) the area you want to be the color, then dip your brush in paint and dab the water in spots and it should move to the corners and fade by itself... haven't tried it, just sharing the wisdom! Let me know how it works.
By the way,
I used a #3 brush for acrylic and it took an hour to paint
I used a #3 and #1 brush for the first watercolor and it took an hour or so
I used a #1 brush for the spit shading and it took about an hour and a half.
My new insights are:
"Take your time, the final product will come. The most fun is not so much looking at your finished piece as it is dreaming of what it looks like with every little stroke and dab of paint."
"Don't be afraid to try something different, it is just paper, you can always make more, who knows, it may be awesome!"
"Fading, shading, gradating, whatever you want to call it, is freakin' hard to do!"
"Flags are dumb, don't include them in your paintings unless you want them to look worse!"
Romance in Acrylic
If you noticed in my earlier water color, I had this image of a couple by the Eiffel tower overlooking the city. I've never been to France, just had it in my mind! So, it sat in my brain even after I painted a quick version of it on water color, so I decided it would be my next attempt at acrylic, a passionate little piece that I could hang up in my home. Actually, it was originally for my parents anniversary, but I didn't want company to come over and say "i didn't realize you had a 10 year old child!"... and my parents respond "no, he is 24!"
Tips i am learning for acrylic:
1)Go from background to foreground
*I started with the dark sky and worked up to the sunset
*Then the Eiffel tower, river,gate, tree and lastly, the couple
My big problem is that i don't have any white paint so all of my light color is super watered down acrylic (the river, which came out with a neat effect)
The other problem is that i was trying to keep a light reflection by the holding rail but it looks more like i just forgot to paint it in!
I am very proud of the blending of the sunset, it came out very well (at least the yellow and red). I mentioned this piece to someone and said "how do you get the dark to not show through?" as has been my problem since the beginning of this acrylic endeavor. They asked how i paint. I said i squirt out some acrylic on cardboard, mix some water in it, mix the shade that i want and put it on paper.
They looked at me and smiled, "you don't mix water into your paint" you dab your brush, but it is not watercolor!" "OHHH!! I get it now... I think"
Tips i am learning for acrylic:
1)Go from background to foreground
*I started with the dark sky and worked up to the sunset
*Then the Eiffel tower, river,gate, tree and lastly, the couple
My big problem is that i don't have any white paint so all of my light color is super watered down acrylic (the river, which came out with a neat effect)
The other problem is that i was trying to keep a light reflection by the holding rail but it looks more like i just forgot to paint it in!
I am very proud of the blending of the sunset, it came out very well (at least the yellow and red). I mentioned this piece to someone and said "how do you get the dark to not show through?" as has been my problem since the beginning of this acrylic endeavor. They asked how i paint. I said i squirt out some acrylic on cardboard, mix some water in it, mix the shade that i want and put it on paper.
They looked at me and smiled, "you don't mix water into your paint" you dab your brush, but it is not watercolor!" "OHHH!! I get it now... I think"
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