Justin Gerard
patreon
THE WRONG DOOR
🕑 Added 2018-09-07 23:49:35 +0000 UTC
This painting is an intricately-layered, cultural criticism, ingeniously disguised as a fairy tale about rediscovering our inner falcon spirit. It transcends social constructs, it defies human wisdom and confounds science. It launches the viewer to dizzying heights of …
Wait.. oh no, wait, that was for a different post.
*ahem*
This painting is about wizards and dwarves and dragons.
Most of the time I spend a great deal of effort on drawing and redrawing my figures several dozen times to work out different poses and outfits. (Boots? Armor? Dresses? A fancy hat? Real investigation work.)
However, for this one, I went more on instinct because I had the holiday MADNESS.
Does this ever happen to any of you guys? The holidays hit and you’re traveling, and eating, and seeing family, and eating, and lighting Christmas trees on fire, and eating; and all the while, you are NOT DOING ANY DRAWING AND YOU’RE SLOWLY GOING INSANE.
So at the end of the holidays I had to do something and this was the first thumbnail on my desk.
I painted this on my new favorite old paper: Arches 140 lb. Hot Press.
The painting is watercolor and liquitex inks (ala Arthur Rackham).
I used much heavier pencil work this time this time than I usually do and I also didn’t spray fix my pencils because I am a dangerous man and that is the sort of thing that dangerous men do.
Comments
Justin Gerard
Good question! I always transfer and never print anymore. This is partially due to the limitations of printers and printer ink, but also because I like to have the freedom to change parts of the drawings as I redraw it. Perhaps I notice a hand is in the wrong place, or a proportion is slightly off or I want to add something extra to a costume, if it is printed on there it is harder to erase and redraw. So I typically use a lightpad to transfer, unless the paper is very thick, in which case I do a very basic carbon transfer by rubbing graphite on the back of a printout. It's not bad to use a printout, particularly if you are very confident in your drawing, I just prefer the freedom offered by a carbon transfer.
Justin Gerard
HI Savina, It is mostly from imagination at this point! I always prefer to get all my ideas down first and only then go looking for reference for costumes/tools and shoot model reference if I need any. Imagination first, then reference!
Savina Francisco
Also (and sorry for the multiple questions!), in the final drawing you've got a lot of shading - do you just transfer the lines to your watercolor paper using graphite paper (or some other transfer method) or do you print it onto your paper? If you print it, how do you get the watercolor to cover all of the shading (do you print it using photo blue ink?)?
Savina Francisco
Justin, at the stage where you're drawing and re-drawing a character dozens of times, do you create/use reference for the various poses & outfits/tools or do you do it from imagination at this stage?
