Step by step Haunting

A pretty long post this time kids, so settle back grab some snacks and a drink because this is a real step by step haunting (painting on that is).
Well while I was cleaning off some of the stuff on my computer, I ran across a painting I did inspired by the Haunted Mansion attraction at Walt Disneyworld. This is probably the only painting that I have ever done where I took photos of the steps along the way, so I thought it would be fun to post the progressive steps that it took to paint it. Below is the first step, it's just pencilled out on the canvas and I barely started to paint the flesh tone. At this stage you have to be careful because you are laying the background colors that will subtly show through the other layers and if you screw this up there is really no turning back. Both beginning the under painting and pencilling took about 30-40 minutes, because the pencilling has to be pretty darned exact.
Next I continued the under painting, and started putting in the highlights and midtone shadows. Because this is an underpainting, the colors will be much starker and brighter than the top layer in order for them to show through to some degree. However, I still do not use pure whites and browns I mix just a bit of the flesh tone into each because it will look too sharp and contrasted though the layers unless you do a lot of over painting, which sort of makes the under layer a moot point.
I then continued to add a bit darker shadows with dark umber and browns thinned down with water (this is acrylic paint) and used it almost like a watercolor. I just barely began some of the shadows on the facial features such as the eyelids and upper lip, where the darkest shadows are, and at this point it has taken about an hour and 15 minutes total with the majority of the time used on the sketching.
Now I started to fill in some of the very basic details such as the eye color, lip colors, and roughing out an undercoat for the hair. You will notice a slight crinkle in the corner of the mouth that is entirely too dark at this point.
The second biggest underpainting block out comes next; that of the suit he is wearing. I used a very dark naval blue, that is close to how dark the top painting will be. This gives it more velvet darkness once I put some much darker almost black shades on top of it. The rest of the suit nearly the same sky blue I used for the eyes. I am making up names for the shades of color that I think people can relate to, I almost never use the exact shade directly out of the tube or bottle I tend to mix most of my own colors. This can sometimes get me in trouble if I don't mix enough of the exact same shade as it is extremely difficult to get the exact same one again, this is particularly true of skin tones. Luckily, I had enough for the hand.
Now came the Largest area to block off for the underpainting; the background. On the surface this may seem that the poor fellow has a giant flow of lava behind his head because of the absolute brightness of the orange red color. This was taken care of later when I blended in the browns over top of it as you will see. I also started some of the shading details on the hand and suit. After this stage I had to take a rest to let it dry before I began to work on the details. This took quite some time to dry, probably because of the thick layering I was using. The labor at this point took about 3 hours, maybe slightly longer I tend to lose track of time when I get in the "zone". The drying took around 4-5 hours which is pretty long for acrylic, good thing I wasn't using oils, it would have taken weeks. Because of the inordinate amount of time it took to dry I called it a night at this point and continued the next day.
So a bright new day dawned and I started working on it again. After looking at the thing from fresh eyes and a different persepective I wanted to make sure this unholy fire background was going to indeed work as planned. As I said, under painting is tricky business and generally you can't really correct it if its terribly off once the over painting is started. I carefully mixed up some brown umber with just a shade of the fire orange mixed in. I started painting from the edges to get a sense of how well it was going to blend and if it was truly going to tame that beastly lava orange down.
I wasn't really happy with it, still was too bright so I had to go back and tame down the fiery orange with a slightly less magma shade. Luckily I had put saran wrap over my paints the night before and the color was still wet. So I repainted over the entire background again with the slightly less retina pain inducing shade, and then used the brown umber and went all the way around to see if it work at this point.
Finally, I added more dark tones overall to the piece and put more depth and dimension into the shadows. I could have taken it farther to make it more realistic, but the original Painting in the Haunted Mansion really seems more like it's between a cartoon and realistic portrait. The entire project took around 15 hours from start to finish if you count the research time (and don't count the time for the paint to dry.) So there you have one of the chestnuts from the really old art in my computer files. I hope you had fun reading this, if you did my name is Jesse Guiher, if you didn't my name is Michael Eisner.

The kids are alright!

I am working on a package of comic strips to send to syndicates, the story is sort of a Hardy Boys detective thing with some supernatural elements called "Cluehouse Kids" (no, not Scooby Doo, much more realistic). Every story arc will have a theme, and this first one is Pirates, specifically making comparisons between modern digital pirates, and the swashbucklers of yore. My point with the strip is to sort of give out questions and let people answer them themselves; for instance what exactly makes a person a pirate, and why do they seem to be more villianized than say... politicians. So with this in mind, I am making promotional little paintings to go with my package and that is what you see below. There will be one painting for each of the three main characters, showing them as a pirate persona, and showing them in scenes that will happen within the story arc. The ones you see here are of Jay (the blond headed kid), and Scott. Jay is sort of the leader so he wound up as the Captain. Scott is a bit of a computer hacker/genius, but tends to stay out of the lime light so I made him a gunner below decks. The story despite being more serious than Scooby Doo, does have its light hearted moments, in feel I would say its something akin to the old 1980's show "Moonlighting". These characters are very near and dear to me, as I have been drawing them in various incarnations since I was about 9 years old. I even published a series of 5 mini comics about them when I was in High school. It was a difficult task to revamp something that I was that close to, but I knew if I was to be able to get this syndicated that it would have to be done. I am almost done with the syndicate package so here's hoping something comes to fruition out of this. It was a lot of fun to put the kids through their paces again, and especially fun to paint them. It's been a long time since I was able to put the kids in a new adventure and its been a blast.

The Return of the Son of the Day of the Triffids!!!

Well I am almost finished with the new design. It turned out a lot better this time, I dropped the entire corner piece of the blind man, its an integral part of the movie storyline but it just clutters up the boldness of the image. I redid the entire thing in a much bolder style once again using only brushes, I ended up with something where it looks like I was trying to channel the spirit of Wally Wood I think. It really reminds me of the old EC science fiction comics, probably because of the deep dramatic shadows. On this not quite finished version you may notice her foot is screwed up. I am correcting that right now by cutting and flipping pieces of it in photoshop. I did the title and cinemascope part by tracing diligently in Illustrator, although I am not sure if they will be able to use the words "Cinemascope", or "Eastman Color" they may be trademarked or something as one of my art buddies pointed out. I can always make them parody names, my art buddy suggested "Enemascope", at which point I cracked up with the glorious mental imagery that evokes. Sorry for the watermarks, I normally abhor using them but figured since this is for a company and possible employer I better use them, as well as make the image a bit lower res. I am still going to play around with the placement of the titles I am not sure I like it overlapping the image, and I think I may make the image more prominent. Plus I am going to add the original poster tagline at the bottom: "BEWARE THE TRIFFIDS... they grow... know...walk...talk...stalk...and KILL!". Having never seen the movie I am not sure how weeds on chickenwire can talk let alone kill... HA HA gotta love those old B movies! I will definately have to find this one to add to my B movie collection. Okay back to work, later!