Materials

Here's some of the different material / products I use...as far as brushes this isn't all the different types and sizes of brushes I use, but the two brands I use. From left to right: Tuff Stuff Eraser stick. This is basically like the plastic eraser photographed below, but can be sharpened like a pencil to erase tighter areas and create highlights. Staedtler mechanical pencil with .003 lead. I vary what hardness of lead I use in it, but it's usually either 2H or at softest HB. For my brushes I almost exclusively get them at United Art and Education. I'm not too particular about the quality of my brushes, because as I'll get to eventually I use paint that would probably hurt really expensive brushes. Plus thats just added stress.... But I either use United Art's own brand of brushes (red handle) or Black Silver's by Dynasty. The cool thing about the Black Silver's is that all their brushes are the same price no matter how large or small ($2.69 if I remember correctly). I also use Berol Prismacolor Verithin pencils for sketching. I start off with Non-Photoblue to roughly sketch things out, and then tighten up with Indigo Blue.

Next up, the type of paint I use is Liquitex Basics. These are around $5 a tube and I only use primaries - Napthol Crimson, Primary Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, and Titanium White and just mix whatever colors I need. Sometimes a painting will call for a Cobalt Blue, but other than that I like to just mix it. Over the years working that way has taught me immensely about color. But I just love the consistency of Liquitex Basics.....I can't stand the waterier (is that a word? Spellcheck says it is) paints.....

Here's some examples of acrylic paintings I've done with Liquitex Basics.

For my watercolors I use Dr. Martin's Concentrated Watercolors. Same with the acrylics I only use primaries - in this case True Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Scarlet Red. I was introduced to these by Mark Hazlerig, one of my illustration teachers at CCAD. They are more like ink and you can do some really crazy effects with them. For inking I used to use microns but have switched over to using a brush and Dr. Martin's Black Bombay. I used to use other brands of bottled ink, but Bombay by far is the most consistently black ink I've ever used. Solid as hell.

Also real important for using Dr. Martin's inks is their 30 well palettes....easier to mix colors with and you won't waste your ink as much. Even when it dries like seen in the picture you can re-activate it with a little water....

Here's some examples of Dr. Martins pieces I've done over the years...they're cool because they work well tightly and loosely....if you ever use them though, be sure and spray fix them with Krylon UV Fixative as they will will fade quickly if left in direct light for long periods of time.

Art block!

So I've kind of been going through a little period of burnout/artist block and thought maybe I could resurrect my blog as another outlet, while I figure this shit out. This happens to me every once in awhile and I used to get freaked out about it, until I realized instead of hitting a wall, I was running into the side of a step. Hopefully, when you're an artist what you do or have done in the past isn't enough anymore and you have this need to push yourself to do better and grow. But if the answer about how exactly to do that isn't entirely clear, it can be very frustrating. So I'll either go play video games, take a walk, watch movies, or just push myself to create anything no matter how bad it is. Honestly, I still haven't figured out which of those is the right answer, or more simply whether it's just a matter of taking a break or better to work through it. I do always manage to get through it, but it's scary as hell when it happens. I find myself falling into this cycle of thinking I'm washed up, I've lost my "powers", freaking out thinking my work will eventually dry up, and people will forget about me, etc. But then I'll get an e-mail about a job or from a fan, maybe I'll see a movie or play a video game that inspires me and then I'll get out of my funk. So that's where I'm at right now - right in the thick of one of those funks. I did however do this sketch cover the other day. For a couple months I've had a stack of blank sketch covers chilling in the corner that I have slowly amassed over the past year and have been meaning to knock out. Normally I do them with Prismacolor markers and even though I was getting pretty good at layering different colors to create new ones, you are pretty much limited by what you have/ are willing to spend money on. Some colors I would have to (ugh) go to Hobby Lobby to get them because I couldn't find them at my mainstay, United Art and Education but they jack up their prices on art supplies, because they're dicks. But it dawned on me that I should just say screw it and try actually PAINTING a cover - I could mix pretty much all the colors I needed and also could do some looser style pieces. The only downside I saw is not knowing how the covers would react to wet paint being applied to them i.e. would they get super wrinkled and buckle? But I was sick of seeing the stack and just kind of jumped in. I'm happy to say besides a little bit of warping that will probably go away in time the paint didn't really affect the cover at all. Best of all, by painting it, things went a lot more quickly AND in my opinion, the final product looks more energetic and stands out more than one of my Prismacolor ones. It'll be interesting to see how doing things this way translates to a Star Wars sketch cover.