When you put pencil to paper, you wonder if you are going to be able to convey the same vision you see in your mind. Many things can happen when you illustrate freehand without the aid of some pre-prepared program on the PC. Is your hand steady enough to render the thin lines in ink when your penciled work is complete? Is the pen going to cut out with you on rounding that one awkward curve, just as the graphite below collides with the ink? Are you going to have to attempt to redraw broken lines if such a thing occurs? These are things that sometimes have to be dealt with in drawing freehand.
Admittedly this experiment I undertook in the small hours of last night/morning cannot really be considered a “freehand” drawing in it's entirety since. I openly admit using the lovely Christine’s photo both as photo reference and an aid to place the lines (tracing). Despite that, it really depends on the tools you have at your disposal too. This experiment was actually to test out a few pens I had bought, but it actually served as an experiment for a number of things:
My first time illustrating an Asian lady
My first time using a brush pen
My first time using Strathmore Bristol board
My first time (in a very long time) of using coloured inks to colour my work
I’ll probably write more on the pens in another letter. For the longest time i have admired semi-realistic artworks. Real enough to seem slightly lifelike, but "impressionist" enough to give a hint that it is more emotionally/creatively charged than simply an illustrated photograph. You want it to be an artist's perception or interpretation. I grew up being taught in school that to trace or even use photographs for artworks was a form of cheating. As a young child this profoundly affects you. Who really wants to consider themselves a cheater? We all want to be something of an achievement. At the age of 31 i am still reluctant to use photography in my artworks due to this, though in recent times, as can be seen in using Christine's beautiful photo, it can achieve a more polished professional look...which is essentially all that really matters.Coming of age, i began to see that some of the greats, for example Alphonse Mucha, whose artwork i first ecountered in Prague, would use photographs of his female models in his studio. Mucha passed away in 1939, a good forty years before i was born, and yet was a credible respected artist despite his use of photography. I wonder at times if i had ignored the teachers, or had never been taught that it was cheating to use photographs, would anything have changed?
Admittedly this experiment I undertook in the small hours of last night/morning cannot really be considered a “freehand” drawing in it's entirety since. I openly admit using the lovely Christine’s photo both as photo reference and an aid to place the lines (tracing). Despite that, it really depends on the tools you have at your disposal too. This experiment was actually to test out a few pens I had bought, but it actually served as an experiment for a number of things:
My first time illustrating an Asian lady
My first time using a brush pen
My first time using Strathmore Bristol board
My first time (in a very long time) of using coloured inks to colour my work
I’ll probably write more on the pens in another letter. For the longest time i have admired semi-realistic artworks. Real enough to seem slightly lifelike, but "impressionist" enough to give a hint that it is more emotionally/creatively charged than simply an illustrated photograph. You want it to be an artist's perception or interpretation. I grew up being taught in school that to trace or even use photographs for artworks was a form of cheating. As a young child this profoundly affects you. Who really wants to consider themselves a cheater? We all want to be something of an achievement. At the age of 31 i am still reluctant to use photography in my artworks due to this, though in recent times, as can be seen in using Christine's beautiful photo, it can achieve a more polished professional look...which is essentially all that really matters.Coming of age, i began to see that some of the greats, for example Alphonse Mucha, whose artwork i first ecountered in Prague, would use photographs of his female models in his studio. Mucha passed away in 1939, a good forty years before i was born, and yet was a credible respected artist despite his use of photography. I wonder at times if i had ignored the teachers, or had never been taught that it was cheating to use photographs, would anything have changed?
I decided that i was going to create the best portrait i had ever undertaken. i have done a few for friends over the years but this one was going to be different. I was going to create this one with pens i had never used before, on paper i had never sampled. This would also be my first portrait that would be illustrated under a light box. I felt fairly confident. Coming back to illustrating is a great feeling when you have been away from the board for a long time. I had bought myself a few new pencils too. Art wise the past few years had been a little frustrating for me. It was a fresh start and i felt that the best way to "celebrate" that was with some new materials.
I had bought a Pentel Graphgear 1000 made to hold a 0.7 lead...i guess that's just another name for a more fancy mechanical pencil. Like i say...with approaching art with a new mind, sometimes it helps to change things around and remind yourself of the literal change with new materials. The original pencil work on the left, before being inked, probably took somewhere around two hours. I wanted to capture Christine in the way that my artistic mind viewed her. Some people, if they are important to you, have what i would call an "artistic representation" of themselves in your mind. It's all stylized of course, that's what art is all about. I put Christine in what i would say is a natural surrounding. The little branches or vines at the side of the illustrations were created by using a french curve. I love many of the Art Nouveau styles, the details in the hair especially. To me, their representation of women, like that of the romantic ideals of Rosseti and the Pre Raphaelites, is inspirational, especially so in times when it seems they are not as respected as they should be. Women are life givers, nurturers, the gentler of the sexes. Art, in my view, has the ability to represent them respectfully. That's what inspires me. As a young man i used to admire the American illustrator Joe Quesada's artwork (now editor of Marvel Comics, and a very nice guy to boot...at least from my conversations with him years ago). In later years i discovered that Joe was also influenced by Alphonse Mucha and i think that reminded me that a lot of your artistic influences growing up, are sometimes the result of them being inspired by certain artists before them who eventually go on to influence you. I considered this particular artwork depicted here to be an experiment. I honestly didn't know how it was going to turn out. You never truly know, especially in a medium where it's far more easier to make mistakes (no "edit undo" button in sight..you use the wrong colour, there's not much room for a second chance)
Christine has an unmistakeable natural beauty about her and so more precision has to be made when dealing with a portrait like this as opposed to a portrait which can be "added to".( I remember in my young collage years our tutor Rosella remarked that i made her look more beautiful than she actually was though I suspect she was just being nice about the situation )What i was going for with the facial features in this portrait was to highlight the dark in the eyes, but also to highlight the face by contrasting it with a surround of dark ink. At the same time i wanted to stay true to the original photograph. Instead i used broad sweeping lines on some of the hair, and also the dark area shadow on the right side. I was using Pentel's brush pen (the GFKP3-A brush fude pen with man-made bristles. Cartridges contain water and fade-resistant black pigment ink ) to ink in some of the main black areas. It's also a pretty flexible pen as far as using it for inking curved lines and etc.
After having inked the illustration with blacks, here was the experiment i had been waiting for. Keep in mind that i was happy with the inks. After more than a decade of colouring my illustrations digitally through photoshop, i had grown accustomed to being assured that if i messed up the colouring, i could take those original scanned inks and start again. When you colour over your original inks, you sort've forfeit that idea. Still, the very idea of colouring my artworks by hand had been on my mind for years. I had to see if it was possible. I'd bought bottles of ink probably close to twelve years ago, but never had the heart to throw them out. "Someday" i would always say to myself "someday i would use them". I treated them like watercolours, toning down the reds, mixing yellow with a little red and blue to come up with a skin tone which would lend itself to the art, all the while adding plenty of water. the colours can very overpowering if you are not careful.
A comparison to my digitally painted artwork on the right. I am happy now, knowing that there is hope in my ability to have fully finished pieces available for galleries
I finished up around 4:00 AM having lost track of time. I always find it difficult to stop doing an artwork and continue it another day...unless of course necessity demands it. When you're in "the flow state" as Paul McKenna phrases it, you want to keep pressing on. You can find yourself in the mood of a painting, a mood that can fade away the next day. Other artists have no problem continuing on from where they left off. It really depends on the project. I felt really pleased with how the experimental artwork turned out. It gave me hope. For years i had experimented off and on with watercolours to give a more "natural" "homegrown" look to my paintings, but something always seemed to keep getting lost in the transfer from penciled sketch to watercolour. I suspect it was the absence of bold ink lines and the contrasts that can be found in very definite blacks as opposed to my watercolors where blacks were absent.
Click image to see full version There are of course the obvious "faults" or "errors" in such an experimental artwork. Some will be found by the critic, and others will be more noticeable to the artist. That is to be expected. That's not even what's important to me right now. Most of them i already know right now where i went wrong thankfully. Instead i see this piece as valuable to my own understanding that this might be the way to go for me in the future. I feel this is a refreshing alternative to my more brightly "painted" digitally coloured works. In my opinion it looks great in real life. I wouldn't hesitate to hang it on my wall for example, which i must admit i cannot say this with all of my art. What i am implying is that i know i can progress as an artist and i feel i have done, by simply taking a little time and realising it. I would like to say thanks to Christine for helping me see that i can achieve much more when i put my mind to it and for being a great model.
James
James
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