Research and pre-production

- I'm just looking at this and thinking that I don't want that one, I mean eventually it's going to look more like hair. And I was just thinking I don't know if i want it to be out that far. So it's not a big deal. It takes two seconds. Because I just think it's funny, obviously that hair doesn't do that, you know, it's part of an exaggeration, but my dad has always had the craziest hair and so I'm kind of poking fun at that. It's kind of an inside thing. He had a mullet for years and now he's ripping off my mustache. It's pretty cool though having a dad as an artist because he's an amazing painter and everyone assumes that when they find out my dad is an artist and they're like, "Oh, now we get it. "Now we see." But he didn't really teach me anything, like he did every once in awhile he would give me little demos, but for the most part he just left me alone. And then you know how kids they blow their parents off. I basically when he tried to show me stuff when I was a kid I just wanted to draw Ninja Turtles so I didn't care about all this stuff that he tried to show me. It wasn't until after I was already working as a professional that I would seek advice from my dad, and so now I'm learning stuff from him. I'm mostly, I use a lot of the normal brushes, but there's a couple like this one that, you'll see when I zoom in, like it's got like a kind of like a canvasy brushy type of a, just a little bit of texture in there. And I like it because it's, it's less perfect. And I like to have, I like happy mistakes and different things I can get from using it. So I'm trying to establish a palette of color that works together and if I create a palette that's all like together it's gonna automatically have harmony. So I'm trying to develop a harmony with the colors and then as I paint I'll probably mostly, I don't use, like I don't use the palettes or like the swatches, I'll just go here and pick something you know by how I'm feeling, what feels right. So it just depends on, you know, what I'm trying to do, what the ultimate goal is I guess. At the beginning I'm kind of I just try and establish a foundation so I'm not really sure yet of how I'm gonna handle the edges or as far as the color. So mostly what I'm going to do like in this phase of things, is kind of in a way I'm just painting away everything and I'm really still only on one layer. So I'm gonna kind of, like some of these lines are gonna still be there and that's fine because I don't mind, I kind of like seeing sketch marks on things. But a lot of it basically now is me just getting rid of everything and I won't really zoom in too much because it's not, that's the one thing, is like I try to keep it as close to traditional painting as possible like by stepping away and looking at it from a distance, blocking it with big brushes, and again, there's no details and there's no need to do any kind of details at this point of it. And it can be really, really easy to get caught up in that. So I try to stay, keep my focus on just the block end right now. And so another thing too is I try to, I try to like have unity with, like everything should feel like it's together as far as background and him making sure that this background color, I don't know how much of it's gonna actually going to show up in the end but by using it working it into everything else it kind of makes a unity, pulls everything together I guess. I kind of also think about painting like it's almost like a sculpting. So that's why I think too like form and then value is just so important for me because it's helping create an illusion that there's something three dimensional when there's nothing three dimensional. And then basically once I have it blocked in then it's just a matter of slowing down the process and focusing on refining those values and the drawing and the temperature, because that's really what it's gonna happen is I'm not going to ever stop fixing or refining until I say it's done. So the whole time I'm working I'm working towards that goal of making sure everything is pulling together and there's no like magic button. So I just want to look at this color that I'm seeing here. See in this I'm noticing things like how this is cooler and all that, so I'm gonna do that, but first I want to start, this is should be a lot more cooler color. A lot of the way I paint too is by I call it bending color, so I try to put something down that feels close and then I spend, I'll spend time adjusting that until it feels right. I don't sit there and waste time mixing and mixing and mixing and mixing until it's exactly perfect. I just put it down until it's right, if that makes sense. It's just like when I paint traditionally, like you know, I'll put color down, I'll spend time mixing some color or a value that I think is right and I go and I put it on my canvas and it's not right. So I continue to work it until it's right. It's annoying to me when people don't consider a digital painting a painting. And like I've been asked before about it, "So is this a painting or did you do it digitally?" I'm like,"They're both, it's all painting." And it's hard I think for some people to actually believe or care enough about digital painting to give it enough respect, but to me it is painting and so I try really hard to keep it that way. I got into doing this because I like to draw and paint. And just because it's a digital doesn't mean that you can't still do that. I mean if you're doing editorial work, illustration work, the end product's digital anyway, it prints in a magazine from a digital file. (laughs) So what's the difference? Maybe it's just me though because when I paint traditionally it takes me way longer. I'm, I think it's just because I love it so much that I just slow down. But I mean digital you know like I said it's still painting, but it allows you to work so much faster, almost as fast as I can think about what I'm seeing I can get that color and put it there and start painting.