Flight ready

I swore the arms would be done this week, and they are, just about.  All flight systems are on line and she's taxiing on to the runway - well, hopping would probably be a better description.  Hopping because she has legs and feet, as well as arms.  And as you can see from the picture at the top of the page, she has eyes as well.

As usual I began the arms on a separate layer, which was just as well as I've had to cut them up, and rotate them, and bits of them, and move them slightly back and forth over the shoulder region trying to decide what looked right.  And rub out parts of them and redraw and repaint gaps, and cut areas and generally curse and swear.  Was it worth it?  Hmmm, that's debatable.

As I said last week, I decided to have her holding a box instead of a scroll, because I thought that a scroll of the type I envisaged would be awkward and would obscure parts of the arms and chest of the bird.  And you have to be able to see that she's a bird with arms.  Both arms would also have to be pretty extended so I could show that she was unrolling a large scroll.  My sketches weren't promising.

Arms above the basic lines.  Note the gap at the right elbow where I cut it and rotated the forearm.

Above you can see the underlying lines with the arms placed over them.  They don't look right of course, and I've had to pay attention to the left arm, shortening it at the elbow and darkening it for shadow.  But the arms aren't to my liking.  I mess about with the shape of them, redrawing and colouring but I don't really improve them.  They look like a dolls arms, and even though this is an arch fantasy subject it should still look as real as that allows.

Seeing the arms with the rest of the colour layers.  Still no hands.

The box is now in place as well, and its position has migrated around the image by millimetres while I tried to finalise the arms placement.  I've also darkened the feathers just under the arms.  Then began to apply myself to the tricky problem of hands.  I didn't want to spend forever on the web looking for references, as that task can be endless.  You always think that if you look a bit harder you'll find the perfect image, and end up with masses, only to find when trying to use them that they don't really match with what you intended anyway.  But that means trying to 'busk' your way through it.

First hand in, and look at that box - it's slipped down the layer tree so its now under the hair!  I'll have to drag it up again.

Well, the first hand is in, and I'm not overwhelmed by the result, but soldier on anyway.  I manage to make a slightly better hand for the other arm that covers the box, but neither is brilliant.

The finished arms.  That box is a bit plain, it could do with some hieroglyphics or something.

And the legs, which I haven't really shown much of, are finished with scales toes and claws, and it's about this stage that I begin (in fact quite a while ago) to see how funny the thing is.  And that's the genius of those Egyptian painters that they could with a brush and some papyrus quickly and deftly depict this strange being and make it cool and attractive but not funny. 

The finished Ba bird - with added shadow.  Hah ha - sparrowlegs!

  And that's a lesson about approach and style more than anything else; those ancient artists needed images for a single well - defined purpose, to depict a mystic being in the papyruses of the Book of the Dead.  They needed to be quick, clean and easily identifiable.  They had the advantage of having to conform to a particular style, the flat side - on look of the Egyptians, and the images were small, so much so in fact that it's often difficult to see if it's male or female.  Simple, quick, clean.

So there it is.  The trouble with too many Ba birds is that the feathers get up your nose.  Something else for next week I think. 

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Those mermaids again.

Mermaids are popular girls; images of these leg-challenged ladies always attract interest.  Some of the highest hit rates on my Flickr page are for the mermaid designs, so obviously I thought – I’ll design some more. 

The Art Nouveau artists of the 1890’s were nutty about mermaids, and they went to town on the swirly hair and a type of stringy seaweed, which I think is called ‘Bladderwrack’.  (It is, I just looked it up – Fucus Vesiculosus.  There – don’t say I never tell you anything.)  

Though interestingly, if you put the keywords ‘At Nouveau mermaids’ into Google, then go to the images tab, almost all of the so called Art Nouveau pictures are modern.  What this says about Google or us, I don’t know.  Only after scrolling to about half way down the page do you find any real 19^th century works, and they’re few and far between.

Some of the real swirly girly Art Nouveau by Alphonse Mucha.  Public domain

  So I suppose we like the ‘idea’ of Art Nouveau more than we like the actual stuff.  Which is lucky for me as I now intend to add to the ever-growing heap of fake Art Nouveau.  

For this design I had intended on a circular effect, but I couldn’t make it work.  I’d wanted to rotate copies of the figures I designed around a circle and have them interlock together.  Fat chance of that.  It would need more work on the design.

At the top of the page is a small scan of a rough pencil drawing, one of many, which help to try things out and define an idea.  I then drew on paper a bigger version with both figures and scanned it so that I could use it as a template.  I put the scan on to a layer, and then bringing down the opacity so the drawing was just visible, created another layer on top so that I could then trace the drawing through.  

Left, the line drawing, top right, tracing over the original drawing, bottom right, colouring.

You have to zoom in on the work and draw with a thin pencil tool line, but when you know you can correct mistakes easily its not too stressful.  I used black for the outline, and a darkish grey to put in line shading.  Then, it's just a matter of adding a layer below the drawing and applying colour.  I'll admit its not exactly as I envisaged it but I've improvised a simple background (which I may change) and for the moment its finished.  Here it is.

Finished, with space for a caption.

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Wings, teeth and claws Part 2.

Last week, I drew a dragon, as an exploration of the thought processes that go into creating an image of a mythical beast.  When an image is drawn using lots of cross-hatching and lines for shading, then an artist has to decide if they want the lines to be part of the finished image, or if they will act only as guide lines in the painting procedure.  With a water based medium such as watercolour or gouache, its possible to place a thin covering of paint over the lines, and if those lines are indelible such as ink then this works well.    

Even with a pencil its possible to do this as long as you don't overdo it.  You have to be careful though, and be aware of how these materials effect each other.  Charcoal for example will mix badly with paint and make the colours dirty, this can also happen with a soft pencil.

I have also noticed it affecting the colours of oils and acrylic when these paints are used thinly over soft and dirty lines.

Last week I showed an old drawing of a dragon from about five years ago, and here is the image as I finally finished it.  It's changed somewhat in position (I believe I actually laboriously redrew the dragon on paper which was large and in sections taped together!  I replaced sections that didn't work anymore.) and I took the decision to use solid colour which completely overpainted the original lines.  It was scanned and coloured digitally, and there are, just like real paints and drawing implements two ways to go with digital colour.  You can set individual layers with colour options that make the colours behave like those watercolours I mentioned earlier.  These options have different properties one of which is to allow lines to be seen through the colour.

Here the drawings lines show through the base yellow layer.

Different layers can be added on to this with different layer properties and a 'ink on paper' effect is achieved very like that seen in comic books.

The other option is to paint with solid colour and lose those lines.  Digitally this can be done exactly as an artist might do it with conventional material, they can just paint on to the lined surface with paint, but then you lose your guides immediately the paint goes on.  This was the way painters worked for centuries however, so it's not wrong, just skilled.

Even when I regularly painted with traditional media, for some reason I always favoured yellow ochre as a ground colour, and I still usually start off an image by flooding the whole drawing area in this colour.  Digitally it is possible to have your cake and eat it by placing a floating layer of paint over the drawing, and then by reducing the opacity of the paint, you are then able to see the drawing through the now semi-transparent paint.

Here the paint has been laid over the drawing, and is still at full strength.

As the image progresses the opacity can be brought back up to full strength so the effect of the work can be seen and understood, and so that colours can be chosen at their full strength, and then the opacity slider can be taken down again, so that the lines of the drawing are visible.


This takes place less and less as the picture nears its completion, and as most of the important lines are placed onto the paint layer.

Here the opacity of the paint layer has been reduced so that the lines beneath are visible.

This sounds as if it might be irritating or that it might slow down the painting process, but it's as easy as reaching for paint tubes or sharpening pencils.  Then the normal process of painting a picture comes to the fore, darkening and lightening areas, texture, tone and so on.

Comparison stages from painting in reduced opacity to paint with normal opacity.

I won't finish the full picture here, but have worked up the dragons head in the manner I would use for completion and so here it is.  As to whether I shall finish the complete image, I can't say - maybe.

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