Are those airbrushed?

"The Lady" Loteria Card

In a word, yes.  This image was harder to do because I really haven't factored in the size issue with the original canvas.  The canvases that I'm using to paint the cards for my loteria deck are small, and so the weave of the material is very coarse.  This also means that there is lots of detail which I just can't get into the image.  There are some stunning effects, don't get me wrong.  The paintbrush wants to add dramatic flairs with the paint whenever it touches the surface.  But as far as detail goes, I'd imagined that as long as I used s fine enough brush, that wouldn't be a problem.
It is.  Size has nothing to do with it.  Add your own artistic pun here.
Even tiny brushes just can't put in the level of detail without looking forced, overworked or just awkward.  There isn't any such thing as having natural picky details after a certain point.
But the painting is one of the best that I've done and I was very excited to put it in the template and make the card.  When I did that, I found out that the loteria banner covers her cleavage!  Now I'm not the sort of person to say that a woman's image can't be dramatic and powerful in a painting without having a cleavage shot.  Also, when using loteria for fortune telling, it wouldn't be a requirement that the card symbolizing femininity and beauty also have a long leer down her top.  But I gotta be honest... the image lacked something.  So I used PhotoShop to pull her dress down so you could see the hem below the banner.  Yeah, it made the card better.  I just wish I didn't feel so dirty afterwards.

Update!:  There is a special La Dama Loteria page!

Green Girls

"The Mermaid" Loteria Card

When I first started out to do this card I really wanted to have something a little different than the normal mermaid design.  I've never been a fan of mermaids, and their boost in popularity for whatever reason has left me cold.  I turned the classic tail into a tentacle and really like the result!  But the face on the other hand eluded me.
I swear I tried to give her a pretty face.  But the perspective was just off enough that I couldn't get the effect that I wanted.  Also, this is a small image so adding details like lips and a nose were almost impossible.  Any details would have likely been lost when the image was scanned in anyway.  You don't want to know how many redesigns her face went through.
Finally in frustration I went for the London "Green Girls" look from Jeter and this is the final image.  Yeah, that ship being torn apart on the waves couldn't have been better and the suckers on the tail look eerie.  The shine off the scales is top notch as well.  But the fishy look, the glassy eyes... Oh well, there are always other cards and other canvases to try again on.

Update!  For a tarot like interpretation of the loteria Mermaid, click here!

Flipping the Bird

 I encountered a strange problem with this card.  When I painted the tree clinging to the precipice, I used my default setting for composition.  I had the spire appear on the left with the tree flowing out to the right.  The lighting source usually would have been in the upper left shining down to the lower right.  However, when I put the banner over the image I got this.

It's not bad, but too much of the spire is covered by the title of the card.  I could have used PhotoShop to have the spire appear over the banner but that would have resulted in too much of the text being covered.  I had to fix it.

"The Tree" Loteria Card

I flipped the painting, but because I painted with the understanding that the corner would be covered and the banner would hide the part of the painting behind it there were big bare patches that needed to be remedied.  You can still see a light streak on the water where I hadn't painted a thing but I liked the effect.  The pencil lines of the template were a more serious problem and required a bunch of fiddily manipulating to blend in.  The end result is much better though, and the composition is more suitable for the card.  So I'm keeping it this way.

Oh, I'd neglected the fact that the deck will have cards with a value of "10", which are two digits wide.  I crunched them together and they fit.  Barely.

Update!  The final version of the El Arbol loteria card can be found here:

Tribute Painting : How To. Complete!

Here it is in all its glory! Yes, it does make you want to peel it off the wall to see if there is a passageway behind it, maybe a gap which leads to a Soviet junkyard...

Tribute Painting, Continued

OK, the painting is done. This is going to be a wedding gift for my beloved sis because my original idea was nixed by Kathy. I really am happy with the way this painting came about and I think it will be a very fitting wedding gift as well. However, in the back of my mind I can't shake the feeling that I was on the right track before. See if you agree with me.

I had first thought to send my sis a painting that I did over the top of Ray's tower painting which I'd fallen in love with earlier this year. That painting was detailed and atmospheric. It showed a tower which is a conglomeration of differing architectural designs rising into the heavens. This tower is done in heavy browns and appears in a tan and sand colored sky. There is very little in the way of background details and in fact only the upper stories of the tower is shown. This gives the viewer the impression that this tower is climbing into the heavens and can be of an only unguessed at height.

I couldn't help thinking that I'd have added some subtle details and colors to the tower if I were going to venture on a similar painting. The idea of adding details to this painting had been floating around in my creative mind for a few months and then boldly asserted themselves when it was suggested that I make a painting as a give for Faith.

So I followed my plan and laid colors and details carefully over the top of the tower painting. The result is pleasing and enjoyable and the only thing that I regret is that I didn't take any photos of the painting before I started. Right now the painting is 'complete', but it would have been very striking to have a 'before' and 'after' image side by side for comparison. I have no doubt that the changed I enacted on the canvas improved the painting. But it would have been fun to see exactly how much was mine and how much was Ray's.

When I presented the painting to Kathy for a thumbs up or thumbs down, she told me that Faith would have preferred something that was 100% me. Humm. I'm not so sure. From my perspective I really do like the end result and the symbolism behind the work, but that's just me. So Faith is getting the tribute painting and I'm happy. She'll like this one for sure.

How to Paint : Part 2 -Tribute Painting

Boy, I must really like you guys to post something like this. Here is the painting as it stands so far. Remember when I said that the painting would look worse before it looked better? Now you'll realize I wasn't joking. It's a rough start, but then again, they all are.

Do you notice how the curtains are sort of... off? There's a reason for that and it's an embarrassing one. In the process of putting on some preliminary shadows for the curtains, the canvas got turned around on the easel. When I stepped back I noticed that the folds in the curtains didn't match up with the screen-grab that I'd taken for this project. I shrugged my shoulders and set about to putting it right. Heck, this isn't that big a deal, I thought. I'm a good enough painter to fix things on the fly. So I grabbed a brush and went to town.

It wasn't until I stepped away a second time that I noticed that I'd had the canvas inverted and had somehow managed to paint the folds upside down. Grrr. It still isn't that critical of a problem because I'll be fixing and tweaking the painting as we go along. But it really isn't something I'd deliberately set about putting in my way!

The painting is a murky specter of what it will look like when we're done, but you can still catch a sense of what it will become. For now we'll let the paint dry overnight and gather up the courage to assault the canvas in the morning.

How To Make A Tribute Painting : Step Two

We're going to skip over the step where you lather a thick coat of Gesso onto the canvas that you've chosen for your painting and just assume that you've taken care of that already. Once the white surface has been prepared, you're ready to go.

Grab a pencil and sketch in the outline of the painting. For this step, it's more important to make the lines visible than to worry about whether the lines will show through the paint itself. It will. Let me put it another way, there is nothing you can do to hide the pencil lines used in the sketch. They will continue to show through the paint, ruining the overall effect and shining like a beacon of amaturishness that will blind anyone in the same room with thing when you're done. You might as well just give up and accept it.
Now there are those who think they'll be able to make the lines dark enough to be visible on the white surface, but light enough to disappear when painted over. The drawback towards this theory is that it is more likely to bite you, the painter, in the tookas. The first coat of paint will totally obliterate the lines which defeats the purpose of having a sketch in the first place. Relax and let it happen. The lines will show through and you'll deal with them when the time comes.

Now, take a good look at that picture I posted up there. See it? That's the best the painting is going to look like for a long, long time. Just like a dinner at Applebees, it's got to get worse before it gets better. The next few steps will seem like little more than deliberate efforts to deface the above image. So enjoy the view while you can.

As you can (barely) tell, I've sketched the full poster onto the canvas, cropping out the fence that was in the original image. "But why would you do something like that?" I hear you ask. Yes, the fence was part of the immerse world which Syberia is known for, but the point of having a tribute painting is actually making something that only existed in digital form before and bringing it into the corporeal world. For this reason, you just want to get the poster, not the scenery. "Yeah, but at the same time the world around the poster is just as much a part of the digitally created experience that I'm trying to capture. While the poster appears in the world as a hermetic element, nevertheless it is joined to its surroundings by tone which merges harmoniously with the experience. Wouldn't that necessitate capturing the fence in the painting as well?" you ask. To which I tell you to put a sock in it.

The various elements in the poster don't match exactly to the dimensions of the canvas, but it's close enough for our purposes. Let's take one last look at what we've got so far, and then go on to step three.

Dragon Queen Timeline

(Click on the image to get the full effect. Dunno why it's not displaying correctly on this page.)

Here is a timeline progression for the dragon in the "Psycho" series of paintings. At the start of the series, almost all the color had been applied with the exception of black. The rest of the images just show the difference that black made to the overall piece.

I did do some color touch-ups here and there, but for the most part, it was complete on day one!

How To Make A Tribute Painting : Step One

So you've decided to make a tribute painting, eh? Good for you! In your heart you know it's the right thing to do, and soon you'll have a beautiful piece of artwork that you created with your own hands, a tribute to a great adventure that you've undertaken which (in some small way, but a real way all the same) has changed you and helped shape the person you are today. Odds were stacked against you, with nothing but your wily mind, quick wit and inflexible determination to guide you, you managed to not only succeed against the trials facing you, but come out with your head held high. You go, you! Yeah!

See that picture up there? That's your blank canvas. Get a good, long look at that thing. You're gonna be staring at it for a long time. Just warning you now.

With your steely resolve burning in your heart, the only question facing you now is determining which of your mighty deeds should be immortalized through the effervescent magic of acrylic? Syberia II, you say? An excellent choice. We'll go with that.

Syberia II has a storyline which rivals a good 75% of fantasy stories out there, and what makes it even better is that you not only lived the adventure, but toughed it out all the way to the end without going online and cheating by peeking at some disreputable walkthru. Not even when you got to that ice maze with the small rat which kept running away from the owl you'd summoned, and you knew that he was supposed to get those berries (I mean, heck. Everyone could see that he needed to get the berries! But did he get them like any good vermin would? No! He just cowered into that dead end place making you shoo off the owl, have him crawl out and then summon the owl and he'd go down the wrong tube again... Yeah, good for you for not giving up at that point and cheating. I'm proud of you.).

Uh, where was I? Oh yeah, how to paint.

Well, before you can paint you need to have some image in mind. And Syberia II has many gorgeous scenes to choose from. You're looking for something unique, but also something that captures the complete immersion of this fantasy world. While prowling around the Soviet inspired town you discover this image:


Perfect!

Now as you're well aware, the perspective is off on this image. You are looking at the image through the eyes of the protagonist, Kate. What you're going to have to do is get her centered in front of the image you want, or at least as close as possible. In this case, she's looking up at the image, but that's alright. We're not looking for perfection, just a clear shot of the image we want to capture. Once you're ready, do a screen grab. Now, close out of the game and open PhotoShop.

Huh? When you pressed the screen-grab key on the keyboard, the game crashed and dumped you to the desktop? Yeah, that happens. A lot. But what's art without a little suffering thrown in for good measure? Anyway, stop complaining and open up PhotoShop.

Now do a quick paste and you've got your inspiration! Correct the perspective, and your image suddenly becomes:



I know that in this example, it looks pretty much like the original image. But there are some differences so don't skip this step. You're going to take a 3D image (from the digital world) and put it onto a 2D medium (your canvas), and to accomplish that in a realistic manner will require you to adjust for distortion. And besides, you want to do it right. I mean, this is Syberia we're talking about here. Such beauty demands your attention to details.

If you get into the habit of always doing the distortion correction, you'll save yourself problems later on. Sometimes you're not going to be able to line up on that perfect screen-grab and this will save you from many frustrating attempts.