35 Seconds of Creepy

The Art Critic Contemplates the Artist

Acrylic on canvas, 12" x 30"

I loved 1930's horror movies as a kid--some I love even now. The wonders of modern video technology allowed me to film this painting in '30s style :)

This piece is another in a long line of skeleton/death images I seem compelled to create right now.

This particular piece--like all art--is open to interpretation by you, the viewer. I guess the title is a clue to what I was thinking though.

You can see the preliminary sketch idea here:

Art Critic prelim

Thanks for your interest in my artwork! If you'd like, 

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@tomsarmo_art

A Exhibit Preview and an Artist Interview!

Humpty Dumpty, one of many pieces created for The Endless Stage

Cayce Goldberg, Helikon Gallery Director, created this nice artist interview with me for my upcoming solo Exhibit, The Endless Stage:

My Interview

Thank you Cayce Goldberg

and Helikon Gallery !

Hope you can join me at Helikon for the opening reception this Wednesday, June 14th from 6-10 pm!

See a preview of the show here:

Tom Sarmo's The Endless Stage

Thanks for checking this out!

Preliminary Sketches

I'm working away at a bunch of paintings for an upcoming solo show at Helikon Gallery.

One of my favorite ways to relax away from the studio is adding pen-work to my preliminary sketches for those paintings.

 The original prelims are most often loose, red-pencil drawings on toned paper. I do a bunch, and they simply help me in thinking out compositions.

But when hanging out at home, I like to sit on the couch, pull out one of the preliminary sketches, and then apply outline and value using a brush pen, white highlights, and pen and ink. It's meditative (like fishing!) and a great way to unwind from a day at the studio.

 You'll be able to check out all the prelims and finished art this coming June at the show, and I hope you'll join me!

 

And thanks for checking out my blog :)

Challenges and Surprises

http://tomsarmo.com/index.html

Character design sketch

Kept seeing the "Make the art you want to see" quote on Facebook. Guess it was originally by a fellow named Austin Kleon, and it was actually "Draw the art you want to see".

Just as repetitious ads and billboards make me want to scream with boredom, I get weary of clever quotes quickly. People complain about cat and food photos on Fb, but my top thumbs-down vote is with quote-cliches.

Still, Kleon's phrase sticks with me, because it is a challenge. Doing just that is not easy. 

In actuality, I try to draw the art I see in my head. It's never exact. But enjoyable nonetheless, because the drawings are different enough from the visions to keep surprising me.

And that's about it.

Thanks for stopping by :)

A Creature Design Technique

Blue Creature

A short post on an ink technique I enjoy.  This fellow was first drawn in pencil on toned paper.

Second step: Inking over the pencil lines (which would be the first step) with a crow quill pen and rapidograph ink.

Third Step: Adding white highlights with white acrylic gouache. When working on toned paper, I like to add the highlights before the cross-hatched shadows because I have a tendency to cover up too much of the toned paper (which serves as the mid-values) when I ink the darks. It's a personal problem.

The Fourth Step is the cross hatching.  

The Fifth step is adding transparent acrylic inks for color as seen in the first image.

A big "thank you" to Salvia at Pinzellades al Mon for the kind feature of my monstrous absurdities (visit that cool blog for wonderful, world-wide illustrations):

Pinzellades al Mon

Btw, feel free to email me at tomsarmo4{at}gmail{dot}com or comment here with questions about this fun ink technique!

Thanks for the visit, and for checking out Salvia's blog!

500 Hands Challenge: Done!

http://tomsarmo.com/

I finished the 500 Hands Challenge a bit early, and it feels very good to be done. In this post, I'm going to talk about what I learned.

If you're curious about the origin of this hand challenge, click on this link for my first post about it:

The 500 Hands Challenge

http://tomsarmo.com/

I don't like to start on page one of a new sketchbook. This shows the first 4 hands I drew on a random page for the challenge, then I continued them on page one of the sketchbook. I also realized that I used number 44 twice, so I guess I drew 501 hands.

http://tomsarmo.com/

Probably one of the most important things I learned was that it's crucial to draw the gesture of the hand first, then refine it. It makes the whole process easier, and results in a higher quality, more lively hand every time. The best hands always start with a gesture.

I've never loved sight drawing (otherwise known as Drawing from Life). Thus it's not been my strong suit. But this challenge resulted in me getting better at sight drawing, proportion, and just plain looking.

http://tomsarmo.com/

At a about 250 hands, I was sick to death of them. I was complaining one evening, and a fellow illustrator said "To get better at drawing something (like hands) develop a fetish for them; fall in love with them. Fall in love with the curves, the structure, the nuances. Every time you draw a hand, be in love with it." So I took his advice. It made all the difference, and I wasn't bored afterwards.

http://tomsarmo.com/

What else did I learn? That all the great artists did not draw great hands all the time. While I fell in love with Michaelangelo's fat, blocky hands, and continued my infatuation with the skinny, sinewy hands of Arthur Rackham, I found weirdly lumpy, potato-hands that Michaelangelo and Rockwell fudged on, and a few pretty rough ones by Rackham too. I admit it, those discoveries made me feel better about my drawings.

http://tomsarmo.com/

I admit too, that in the beginning I skipped drawing the more difficult hand positions, but at some point, I quit avoiding them without even knowing when.

http://tomsarmo.com/

I also learned:

-Expressive hands are not always in proportion; proportionate hands are not always the most expressive

-If my copied hand looked too much like the resource, I found I hadn't learned as much. Somehow the act of being too responsible to the resource got in the way of my progress.

-All the great artists relied on  "stock" hand positions they found useful and thus drew over and over.

http://tomsarmo.com/

Since the worst hands were the first hands, were the last few the best? Nope. By the end, I knew I had to get them done to make time for other things, so I rushed them a bit. But I did get faster and better at drawing hands overall, and that was really the point of the challenge.

And maybe the best thing?  By the 300th hand I found I did not hate drawing hands anymore. Hatred's root after all, is fear. Drawing 500 (and one) hands has pretty much erased my fear of them. I will always find drawing them difficult, but I know I'll continue to enjoy the challenge.

Thanks for reading!