“Hey, that’s a direct lift from a paperback cover by Barye Phillips!” And I respond: guilty as charged. I was inspired to do my own version of a Dell paperback cover that Barye Phillips did in 1961 for the novel “The Golden Hooligan”. I loved the way she had the woman hidden in shadow behind the curtains, with just enough material covering her to allow store owners to put the novel on the shelves.
I made a few changes in my version. Her curtains were gold, these are more of a dark blue velvet. Also, I tried to have a look where the woman’s face was just coming out of the shadow and not totally obscured. I experimented with different colors for a side-light behind the curtains (one of the things you have to like when it comes to working in digital art- it’s easy to adjust colors) and finally settled on a lime-green-yellow. It just popped more to me and if it seems a bit more garish, then… cool, it got your attention. But I hope it works, too.
After I finished the image, I forgot who did the original and assumed it was Robert Maguire based on the dramatic lighting in his painting. But doing a little Google (and it actually took a bit), I found it was a lesser known Phillips. There’s no main website with her work; you’ll find a piece here and there, in Flicker pages and pulp cover galleries. But she’s worth the search.
Well, it’s Den and Katherine Wells, the Richard Corben characters! I’ve always loved the older Heavy Metal magazines. Richard Corben always had a unique look to his artwork and hey, “Den” was a good story to boot! I was inspired to work on my own take on his characters and this is the result. Perhaps I could have called the image “Big Boob Alert”, but compared to the luggage that Corben had Kath toting around, I think I erred toward the modest side of things. If the word “modest” can even be used when discussing this image. Well of course it can, as in the comic, Den usually walked around in the altogether. Here, I decided to follow the lead from the Heavy Metal movie when Den says, “there was no way I was going to walk around this place with my dork hanging out!” John Candy, the voice behind Den in the movie had some great delivery, too.
Thus, the loincloth.
Related note: A year ago, my computer melted down and I lost some work. One image I had in progress was another character from the Heavy Metal movie, Taarna. Lost all of it. But it was fun to work on, and I want to get back to it. It was a bit different from what I usually do, as in a “she was seriously kicking some ass” kind of way. So I must get back to it.
But for now, time to get back to some work on another jungle image. Something to do with a woman and a snake. Or something.
Something new, but something that has lived on my computer for an awful long time before I could feel that it was done. It’s gone through so many incarnations; I kept moving things around, adding then taking away snakes, vines, skeletons and clothing. For the longest time, there wasn’t a top I painted on the figure that I was satisfied with. I was sure she was destined to be mostly nude. But then I painted something I thought looked pretty good and worked with the overall green/gold color scheme. I think the original render has been collecting digital dust for at least four years.
Some images you render and scribble, or just paint for a little bit and they are done. This wasn’t one of them. But sometimes the work is worth it. Because this one, well, it’s about all I can do. I suppose I could dwell in the pit of endlessly painting detail over detail that you will never even notice, but I think this is a happy medium- about as much detail as I want to get, maybe even more than what’s needed. I think it works. I appreciate your taking a look and hope you like it too. Thanks.
Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while and have until now only toyed with it. A faux-fifties pulp novel book cover, complete with lusty descriptions to draw you into picking it up and a price that would entice you to buy it. Of course, thirty five cents was the going rate back then, so it’s only attactive to us, not necessarily Citizen Eisenhower.
The woman’s pose is very similar to an image from a couple posts ago, and in fact I used the same 3d file as a basis. I thought that with a small change in her pose, along with some other added elements, I could make something that alluded to a story. Coming up with a suitable design was more fun, along with creating a simple logo for a make-believe company. I’m sure I’ll do more of these, as there’s a lot of fun to be had in playing around with all the elements that make a cover of this type.
In other news, my last post offering wallpaper for your Droid phone is pretty much out of date already, as I got update 2.1 today. Among the upgrades, it has some pretty cool animated wallpaper. Even though there are ways to create “live” wallpaper oneself, I’m not about to spend the time to educate myself on how to do that. That’s way too AV nerd for me, and I’d just rather get back to the art. And in case I haven’t said it in a while, thanks for dropping by and checking out the scribbling. It’s very much appreciated.
As I mentioned earlier in “the skinny” – If you own a Motorola Droid cellphone, here is some wallpaper. I just got the phone and couldn’t resist customizing a few of my images for wallpaper. Shortly after that, I couldn’t resist putting them up here on the site to share with anyone who enjoys adding a little flair to the look of their phone. Hey, maybe you’ll even tell a friend where you got them, right?
Click the wallpaper you want and the full size will appear. Download to computer, then phone (or just come to this website using your phone and download directly- probably the easiest way to do it.) When you go to select the wallpaper, just adjust the crop marks to full size and voila. Motorola Droid paper is a bit different than other phones; because it scrolls left and right, it’s the middle 480 pixels you see at first glance. Of course, how much of any of these images will be hard to see will depend on how many apps you show on your phone’s main page. I’ve tried to center the figures, so if you have your apps to the sides, it should look good. At least they’re owner tested and approved. And I apologize for it getting a bit geeky in here.
In other notes, I’ll have a couple more new (non-wallpaper) images up shortly. One is finished, the other almost. So while you’re waiting (I hope), enjoy a little respite with the wallpaper and take a few minutes to check out Today’s Inspiration. It’s a great website celebrating some of the best illustration of the last century. Peng Leif, who runs the site, is an illustrator himself, and has a gift for appreciating and presenting some fantastic work.
For not posting much in a while, it’s not exactly a ground-breaking image, rather just something that was fun to work on. Inspired by something Robert Maguire did a while ago. A bit of red, a couple odd colors shooting from the side and there it is. Maybe not reality, but pulp never is, is it?
On another note, sometimes there’s just so much going on in the world that trying to comment on any single event is too overwhelming. One could quickly write ten thousand words on any one of the following subjects: “Can’t we just stop the wars?” or “Do we want to live in a society where we take care of others or not?” Of course, the titles themselves, coming from me, are already biased at the start. But you probably didn’t come here for political comment. I hope it was the art.
But on yet another note, I think the album “Campfire Headphase” by Boards of Canada, has creeped into my personal top five albums of all time. It never, never gets old. If you get a chance, find it and listen. You’ll hear something new each time you do.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
How many images must one do before I can say I’m in my “green phase”? I couldn’t help myself here. But I came across this great texture from Share CG. I took it into Bryce and messed around, laying the texture on a few terrains and changing the properties until it got this nice wet, underground look. Sorry for getting technical for a moment there. But I’ll get that part over with- the woman is a Poser figure exported to Bryce and rendered there. After that, the resulting image was dipped and saturated in the Photoshop painting and adjustment layer vat until it got to where you see it now.
Did I forget to say it was a lot of fun to work on? And like many things that turn out to look the way you want them to, didn’t take that long from start to finish. Thanks for taking a look.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
I’ve been working on a couple digital paintings that required me to find some clothing reference for Middle Eastern dance. I came across the site of dancer Laura Selenzi. She’s got quite a gallery there, some wonderful poses, but what really struck me was one particular photo, taken by Mani Mehramooz (it’s in her “studio” gallery). It was one of those moments; when I saw it, I knew I must paint it. So during the last week, that’s what I worked on. It’s oil on canvas on board, 10″x 16″. I just loved the colors from the original, as well as her pose. I was a lot of fun to work on, involving quite a bit of painting, wiping, and then painting again.
I tried something new for the support on this one. I had some high-density fiberboard that I had cut to size and ready for painting. I’ve tried painting on gessoed board but found it a bit too smooth. So I went by Utrecht’s and bought a couple yards of medium canvas. I put a fresh coat of gesso on the board, then laid the canvas on it, folding a couple inches around to the back. Three coats of gesso and sanding later, they were ready for painting. I found I really like the surface, and there’s a bonus: it’s fairly cheap way to get a good, quality, painting support. One reason I tried this in the first place was to get canvas in sizes that I wanted. I really feel comfortable with sizes close to a 1:1.5 ratio. Well, with most brands, if you want a pre-stretched canvas with that ratio, you have to go up to a 20″x30″ to get it. There are no 10″x15″s or 8″x12″s.
And for all the press the Golden Rectangle has received, you can forget about finding good painting supports with the 1:1.6 ratio. So I made one specifically for this painting. And I’ve got more board cut to that size, ready for me to get the canvas on them. I don’t know why you don’t find more canvas with this ratio. Just about every paperback format is close to it. So many classic masterpieces have been anything but the 3:4 ratio you find in many preset sizes sold today. Before this gets me going too long, I’ll save it for another post, another subject line all its own. Thanks for dropping by.
Here’s something that was knocked out in two sessions, with one added quick one for a correction. It’s small, only 5″x7″, oil on canvas board. I Decided one day it was more important that I just paint something, anything at all rather than wait for the perfect subject. I set up a rock and a small skull I found in southern Utah on a green cloth. First layer was painted in a tone of raw umber. I waited for that to dry, then went over it again in color. I tried something a bit different on this one. For green, my base color was Oxide of Chromium. Usually I would mix dark green from Raw Sienna and a blue. To take the edge off the green, I used Cadmium Orange, sometimes dabbing pure orange into the background and mixing it on the canvas.
I’m not overly-enthused as to how it turned out. It was good practice, but I want to paint the skull again by itself, and probably larger. One thing I don’t know… would you have known that was a stone on the left if I hadn’t told you? I’m not sure. Maybe you would have thought it was a sponge. Kinda like that line from the Matrix, where the Oracle tells Neo about the vase he is about to knock over: ”would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?” Of course, with my little painting carrying much less import. I think it’s a problem that all painters face. How does it look to the casual observer? Does it look to someone else how it looks to me? When one stares at the same thing for a couple hours, it begins to look different. It’s like spelling the same word over and over and over. Pretty soon it makes no sense and you have to back away and read it again later. I think it’s the same here. Sometimes you have to finish a painting, and turn it against the wall and not look at it for a couple weeks. Then turn it around and see what you see. And then you realize there really is no spoon. Or something like that.
When you go about updating a website, there are a few things to go over. Usually one is prone to forget a few things. I’ve found a few images I forgot to add to the gallery here. Some of them are fairly recent, like the one to the left, here in this post (click on it for full version with butt cheeks). Another pulpy piece, inspired by one of the most prolific illustrators of the last fifty years, Robert McGinnis (under a site redesign; a better, yet small collection of his work can be found here. Or maybe better yet, just do the Google). Pulp and illustration has been a huge influence for me. I have a lot of admiration for those men and women who worked tirelessly to paint for book and magazine covers, vastly underpaid, and often without credit. Check out a couple other links in the column to the right, under “inspiration” – Maguire and Saunders. I’ll be adding more soon.
This was a fun image to work on, with all the jungly things going on. Like much of my other work, the figure started as a 3d (Poser) model and the rest of the scene was painted in Photoshop and Painter, as were the cheeks changes in the figure.
I do get insprired by much more than just pulp. The other day, I was browsing Emusic, looking for some Middle Eastern beats with a modern sound…. a little bit of Delerium, a dash of Niyaz, a grain of trance, but hold the Enigma. As things happen when surfing, one thing led to another and I found myself on Youtube watching tribal fusion belly dancing (hey, it’s not that far a stretch). Amazing stuff. So inspiring that my first intinct is to want to paint three hundred images of writhing dancers and spinning veils. I’ll settle for far less, but have a few ideas already in the sketch phase. If you haven’t seen anything like it yet, go to the ‘tube and search “tribal fusion dance” or Zoe Jakes, for the name of one dancer in particular who I would swear had frikkin’ snakes for arms.
In other news, there are more images added in the digital gallery, link in the right column, top. —–> Thanks for the visit.
“Hey, that’s a direct lift from a paperback cover by Barye Phillips!” And I respond: guilty as charged. I was inspired to do my own version of a Dell paperback cover that Barye Phillips did in 1961 for the novel “The Golden Hooligan”. I loved the way she had the woman hidden in shadow behind the curtains, with just enough material covering her to allow store owners to put the novel on the shelves. 
