I am an artist with a BFA in Communication Arts and a minor in Art History. This blog is intended to be a casual place for me to discuss my creative journey as a studio artist and illustrator, as well as my general love for art history! I love everything from paleolithic art to abstract expressionism. You can view my illustration portfolio here. You can see my specific posts here. Blog header: Helen Frankenthaler, Pink Fields, 1962.
Hello again! Click read more to read through my process, thoughts, and visual development for my illustrated cover of Emanata's 2022-23 comic anthology RUIN.
Before I get into it, I just want to say that I spent a few hours working on the first draft of this blog post and it got accidentally wiped. That version of this post had a lot more to do with my mental space during the production of this piece in regards to how I felt as an artist post-graduation from Art School. Because all those typed up thoughts are now not typed up, I will be making a separate post eventually that goes into that more. I'll update this post with a link to that when I can. :)
Anyway.
RUIN.
Here's a little thumbnail diagram thing that kind of shows my thought process during this stage.
The general direction I was given when asked to do this project was something like, "more about emotion instead of action," as well as "no reds and purples." So immediately I set my brain into thinking of blues and greens and scenes that I could paint with those colors.
My first idea can be seen top left corner: I imagined an ancient, magical ruin portal standing in a field at night. It was cool, but frankly, didn't make sense and I quickly ditched it. I went back to my blues and greens and was really squeezing my brain for any ideas and that's when I came to top center.
I thought of a lone house, on a precarious cliff, being slowly torn apart by the strength of a raging sea-side storm. I honestly still think this is a good idea as a stand-alone painting, but it didn't really strike me as the cover of this anthology.
However, I really enjoyed the storm concept and began thinking about tornadoes and how deathly afraid of them I am, and the fear humans experience when confronted with the reality of the destruction caused by tornadoes! I looked at lots of beautiful photos of large tornadoes ravaging the country side - the images were very blue, green, yellow... the concept was perfect. I began developing it with a few color thumbnails...
...and immediately fell out of love with it. Har-har.
I still loved this concept of a sprawling yellow grassy plain clashing against a deep, stormy blue sky though! I thought about grassy plains and that led me to thinking about the American Midwest and old, falling-apart houses abandoned in these fields. The culmination of those thoughts led to the final thumbnail you see up there.
It was approved so I got to work! I knew I wanted to do this traditionally and started working in oil pastel. But after a few days of working on it, I realized something: I did not have enough experience in the medium to do a full illustration like this. This is about where I stopped:
It's not bad, but I knew there wasn't any saving this piece as it was. I got too loose with my color choices and in many spots, just muddied my color. It was really disheartening honestly; I felt so stuck.
I had to start over.
Using that oil pastel painting as a base, I moved to Clip Studio Paint. Working digitally is something I'm very comfortable doing and decided that the ability to fix things easily would be a great advantage for myself with this piece. At this point, if I remember correctly, I had just less than two weeks left to finish this project.
I still wasn't feeling it at this stage though and took a few days, despite my approaching deadline, to simply think about it. I felt stuck: even in the early stages, this piece didn't scream that it was made by me. Sure it would have my name on it, but as it stood, I had zero connection to it as an artist other than the fact it was an assignment I was working on. I asked myself, what did I want my work to look like? And I thought back to my time at school and to the pieces I felt most connected to and that's when that spark lit up in me again!
I darkened the sky, made it more foreboding, and it really started clicking then. I carved the shapes out, alternating between working on the clouds to working on the little abandoned house.
I continued building depth and form by layering my values until everything seemed just right.
The house was a doozy though, but I finally figured that one out. DETAIL SHOT!
I hope the detail comes out well on the cover!!
And here is some bonus imagery for you:
The first one is what we went with for the title's type - hand drawn in the final as well by the way!!
Anyway, here's the finished piece again to remind you of where I ended up!
Closing thoughts: I'm proud of how this turned out. I think this cover complements the previous years' well. This illustration (painting?) feels like me and it jump started new artistic growth within me too! All in all, very happy with it.
First things first - I've kind of ditched illustration; for now, at least. I still enjoy it every now and then but I found myself really struggling with creating concepts, sitting down, and executing my ideas. I decided to give oil painting a go again, and WOW - I am in love with it.
I started oil painting during my year at William and Mary and then dropped it when I transferred to VCU since I lived on-campus and there was a no-oils rule. Anyway, I don't live there anymore so I do what I want!!
I pondered what my first subject will be for a while and it struck me while I was walking out of my workplace after my closing shift. This tree was SO beautiful to me:
I loved the contrast between the form of the tree itself and the deep blue sky behind it. I immediately went home and got out an old wood panel I held onto from my time at W&M and got to work!
I started with a loose, simplified form of a tree and then painted the sky around it. Once that dried enough for me, I went in and began really carving my subject out. I took some liberties with simplification as I felt my photographed tree had a LOT of tiny, thin branches that I didn't want to burden myself with. As the painting continued, I removed and added branches until it just felt right.
Here, though, I started to stray by leaning too heavily on white. I pulled the reins back on myself after a break and returned to various tints of blue as I kept carving out my form...
...and this is basically where it ended up! I brought some variation into the tree branches by randomly alternating my tints and shades of blue to build some depth to the tree.
I let it dry for a few days and then I made my first novice mistake: varnishing too early! It ended up smearing the paint in several spots unfortunately. While it isn't terrible, it's not very good either. Womp-womp. Now I know better for my next painting!
So, I've edited it in Clip Studio Paint to help recover my original painting. Since the varnish more or less "ruined" the original, I won't sell that version, but I'm pretty keen on selling prints of the edited painting once I can figure out how to do that. :)
Tadeusz Kamasa (b.1924 - d.2003), ‘Female Nude’, oil on canvas, no date (1900s), Polish, for sale starting from 1,800 PLN in Sopocki Auctions Galeria Warszawa’s auction, October 2020; Warsaw, Poland.
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