500 Hands Challenge: Done!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Screenplay Process: Part Three

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The second painting for the Screenplay series is about the Editor. In the first post about Screenplay, you can see the sketch of an "editing machine" by clicking here:  

Screenplay part one

I'm not one for sticking to factual representations of anything, machinery or otherwise*. 

Here is the new version, penciled, then inked onto watercolor paper. I used a brush and ink for the outline; for the the crosshatching a Crow Quill 102 nib.

I tried out a lot of heads before settling on the one I wanted.

Here's my original composition sketch, but the expression pretty much came from...

...this selfie. Eeesh.

Penciled in and adding ink outline (sorry for the poor quality photo).

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More ink with the prelim sketch as reference. The final piece will be 12" x 12".

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And a cropped detail of the nearly finished ink drawing. There are more layers of cross-hatching to go than I want to think about. Watercolor washes will follow, and that'll be faster.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Next up: The third painting in the series; the Projectionist.

*My resource for the editing machine

Screenplay Process: Part Two

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Cameraman. (Detail)

The first painting-to-be is about the filming of a movie.

This is a detail of the nearly finished, inked piece--pre-watercolor washes.

My resource photos are pretty basic.

For the pillars, I took a photo of a column on my porch.

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In another part of the picture, the Bride of Frank has pencilled-in shading.

My own hand as photo ref.

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After the pencil lines are drawn to satisfaction (notice I didn't write "to perfection") I lightly shade the piece with a 2H pencil. The outline inking is done with a small brush, the shading is done with a Hunt 102 Crow Quill nib...

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...and the zen-like part (notice I didn't write "tedious part") begins. Yes, I love the look--and the process of--layered cross-hatching.

After a constructive critique by some fellow illustrators, I finished the pen-work. Rather than add paint now, I want to ink up the other two drawings first, so next post will be about picture number two: The Editor.

Thanks for checking in!

Screenplay Process: Part One

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I'm charged up to be part of an upcoming show at Helikon Gallery & Studios. The theme is film, and I was struggling to find a subject for the three, 12" paintings requested by the gallery. Luckily my wonderful muse gave me time to verbalize my difficulty.  She listened carefully, and then said "What about paintings that cover the the people and equipment involved in the process of film making; camera man, film editor, and projectionist? In your style of course." Perfect!

The thumbnail sketch above was the first idea for the camera man piece--along with a ghost...

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...then I tried out some characters and equipment. This part of the process--besides getting the idea--is often the most trying for me. The idea's there, but hasn't congealed. It's just an amorphous cloud in my head. Somehow I have to give the idea-cloud form, while researching the actual details. Do I do it this way every time I approach a project? No. My process is all over the board every time.

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 This time around I did more, mostly pathetic thumbnails...

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...and then landed this one. Frankenstein's creature has always fascinated me, so he (and his bride in this case) became the film's subject. Along with some anachronistic Victoriana of course.

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Then I got distracted by the sweet machinery involved with film editing, and worked this sketch up to a finish, just because it was pretty enjoyable. So much for a logical sequence.

Next time, more progress!

 I appreciate your interest--thanks for the visit. Check out Helikon Gallery's site here 

Helikon Gallery

and if you are in Denver, check out the actual gallery!

Maurice Sendak's The Juniper Tree

I love Grimm tales and I love the genius of Maurice Sendak. Finally grabbed my own copy of Sendak's The Juniper Tree, and have been studying and gorging on the drawings all week.

 

This is not only one of my favorite illustrations from the book, but it's also one of my favorite illustrations period.

I could write on and on about the freshly bizarre and claustrophobic imagery that Sendak wrung from the tales, and the near-surrealistic style of each illustration, but I'm pretty sure that's all been covered by many writers far greater than me.

 

But if by some chance you haven't seen this book, Brain Pickings did a post on it with more of the illustrations and you can see them here:

Brain Pickings Juniper Tree

Better yet, buy the book.

And thanks for checking out my blog!

Creativity Sparks: The Twenty (at present)

Illustration to Reynard the Fox and Other Fables, by John Rae 

Scrolling through picture after picture on the internet can be a double edged sword. Looking at illustrations keeps my creativity flowing, but looking too much can make me glaze over sometimes, and I lose the point of examining admirable works.

 The Gruegach, by John D. Batten

I've found that limiting it once in awhile helps. Gathering ten to twenty illustrations that have caught my eye, then sticking with them--examining them for why they arrested me--helps me to limit and learn. 

Illustration from his Bill the Minder, by W. Heath Robinson

So I offer three of my current Twenty here. The reasons for the choices are personal, but when I examine them and think about the techniques, no surprise that they've sparked my imagination.

If you are interested in seeing the others, find them here:

Sarmo's current Twenty

 

And thanks for reading!

Night Scares

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Growing up, I shared a bedroom with my older brother. His sleeping presence didn't help me with my night scares though. I was probably ten years old when these fellows emerged through the wall, marched across the room in line, and disappeared.

Attacking Hands: The 500 Hands Challenge

Hands drive me crazy. I have always practiced them at intervals, but it hasn't been enough to get me where I want to be with them. Wanting to be better (and faster) at drawing them led to a conversation with some fellow illustrators. One fellow proposed the "500 Hands Challenge". The timeline: Beginning June 1, 2015 and ending October 1, 2015. I accepted.

Here are my tentative and awkward first three.  Realizing I was needing more of a plan than just randomly drawing a few hands a day, I came up with the following outline:

June: Copy other artist's hands to learn by studying the masters

July: Continue copying, adding emphasis on gesture along with the study of hand anatomy

August: "Deliberate Practice" using Stan Prokopenko's method of the same name; 

1. Make a mistake

2. Analyze it, imagining what it should look like

3. Re-draw and fix it until it is right 

Watch the video here:

Proko's Practice

September: Apply all the above, but draw every hand from imagination

Here's an early page of hands drawn from those of Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham, and W. Heath Robinson.

And a more recent set from Vilppu and Bridgman. Jumping the gun a bit where anatomy is concerned, too.

After more conversations with the instigator of this challenge, I realized that the gesture piece needed to be put in place early on. His recommendation to check out the Vilppu methods was helpful--the Vilppu manual Drawing Hands and Feet is amazing! 

Find the book here:

Vilppu's Hands and Feet book

This week a few of us are meeting over a beer to discuss our progress, and most of all to share what we know and have discovered in this first month of the challenge.

I'm a fifth of the way into it, and yes, this is pretty much killing me. Finding it very difficult to cram in concentrated hand studies along with my workload, but it's past time to do it--I need to do it.

Wish me luck and thanks for checking out the post!

Cupboard Goblin: Process

Work on a series of paintings for prints led me to the idea of this little goblin-thief, surprised in the act of pilfering something from a household. Here's the road to completion:

 The earliest sketch that's survived shows a bit of my initial idea. But I needed some help with the pose, among other things...

...so this mannequin ended up posing for me--in a drawer.

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My first thought was that the little fellow would be medieval-ish and stealing some liquor, but this bottle would have been goblin-sized, not human-sized. So I modified it to be a ring, and changed the face...

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...and changed it some more. Also bumped the clothing to Victorian.

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I traced up the border and cupboard sketch, with a back door in the cupboard...

 ...which didn't work; too much clutter. So here's the final inked line drawing, without the back door, ready for paint.

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A detail of the lettering, and egg-and-dart-woodwork.

And a closer look at a detail of the completed work.

Had him (and a few others) printed up as affordable, premium-quality posters and cards. If you like them, please click on the link below and check 'em out at my online store--I appreciate your support!

Tom Sarmo's Shop

Thanks for the visit!

Amazing Victorians

 Who's dour and stodgy?

Much criticized, and often stereotyped as a dour, stodgy era, the Victorian period actually exploded with vibrant art and scientific discoveries, fueled by the inquisitiveness and varied passions of the people during that time.

I love the Victorians; their art, literature, and curiosity!
And I especially love the art of Sir John Tenniel, most famous for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice books, but a contributor to Punch magazine as well.

But getting those incredible illustrations transferred to a printing press was a complex task, made possible by brilliant scientific discoveries of the age--in this case, engraving and electrotyping.

Preliminary drawing for Father William by Sir John Tenniel.
(Image from Tenniel's Alice, 1978, The President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Tenniel's illustrations were meticulously hand-drawn, using very hard 6h pencils--especially made for him. He worked in the "facsimile-style" for engraving; drawing directly onto the surface of the wood block before sending it to the engravers.  First, Tenniel worked up his composition, transferred the drawing via tracing paper directly onto a boxwood block, and then finished the detailed line-work. When completed, the block was sent to the talented engravers, the Brothers Dalziel, who carefully preserved the style of the artist while cutting the design into the wood.

 But the demands of high-quantity printing would wear down an engraved block.

The solution: Electrotyping, discovered in the early part of the nineteenth century, and perfected by the Victorians.
It was a fantastic invention--basically transforming the wood engraving into a harder, metal plate. The process: A wax mold (subsequently coated with fine graphite dust) or a lead mold was taken of the engraved block. This mold was then immersed in a bath of metal salts and H2O, along with a bar of the same metal. The mold is the cathode--connected to the negative terminal of the electric source. The metal bar--the anode--is connected to the positive electrical source.

Electrotype Diagram*
When the electric power was activated, the bath gave its metal content to the surface of the mold. The electrical current flowed through the (copper in this diagram) anode connected to the positive terminal of the electrical source, through the bath, and into the coated mold (the cathode). A metal film (the electrotype) grew onto the electrically conducting coating of the mold.

 The result: A sturdy metal engraving plate capable of many printings--amazing!

A colored version of the engraving, from a special edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published by Random House in 1946.

 So, who's dour and stodgy?
(Photo ca. 1883-1886, by Eadweard Muybridge)

 Thanks for reading!

 

*"Electrotyping" by Easchiff - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electrotyping.svg#/media/File:Electrotyping.svg