Trilobite Boy - gargoyle progress

Continuing the work I showed in Monday's post, of Trilobite Boy sitting on a rooftop near some gargoyles.

Found a bit of time to start laying down colour.

Below, you can see the colour under the sketch layer with the sketch rendered invisible.  The bits of wings and buildings are on another layer entirely.

Here's the original sketch overlayed on top of the colour, below. 

Once I build up enough colour, I'll erase the sketch.  Although...maybe I'll leave some of the bluish lines on top of Trilobite Boy, or just his wings, to give it a ghostly appearance.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

Trilobite Boy - gargoyle sketch

Still working on other Trilobite Boy pieces, but I was in a mood to work on this darker sketch last night. 

Trilobite Boy - Gargoyle.

The wings are intended to be bony and floating above him. You can see a number of arm+hand positions I'm playing with. In ArtRage, I increased the thinners a lot, so the pressure sensitivity of my Wacom tablet will feel more like a wash.

I'm aiming for this to be monochromatic, bluish grey, Payne's gray, shiny streets below.   A melancholy feel.  I just realized, this reminds me a bit of Batty in Blade Runner. But trilobite-ish.


- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

I really love ArtRage 2.5 - I'm hoping to treat myself to 3.0 sometime soon.  It has watercolours, which I used to paint in before university.  I miss them.  ArtRage will be less expensive than buying physical watercolours.  One day...

Art Monday: our hero so far

Click to enlarge.

In-process work for Trilobite Boy Saves the Day. Above, a screenshot of what my desktop looks like while using ArtRage, a digital painting program (I'm using 2.5, and would love to buy 3.0).  I need to add smoke and fire coming from the oil rig. Art Rage feels a lot like real paint, and I may still go into Photoshop and add some atmospheric effects and blurring to the horizon, as well as some texture to the waves. 

Below, an initial sketch of our hero.  His legs will be dripping with Gulf oil. 

I might make him slimmer and less muscular to match other images of the character.  Originally, this whole concept was going to have Trilobite Boy standing on a rooftop with a towel around his neck.  I'm also not sure about the costume logo I whipped up: maybe just the flying trilobite design, instead?

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

Unpacking

We've successfully moved in and owe a huge thanks to our friends and family:  Peter, and Peter's truck (which I'm pretty sure is actually an Autobot) Tim & Sara, Chris & Michele, Sheilagh, Jeanine & the Neph, and I owe so much to my smashing wife Michelle for keeping us all moving and organized.

We walked up and down three flights of stairs to move things out.  Over and over. It lasted about ten hours for our friends, and I kept going all day. Holy monkey I have a lot of stuff, much of it books and paintings. And toys. And we have awesome friends.

Unpacking is going quickly, Michelle and I have moved a bunch of times before and we get kind of addicted to unpacking -just one more thing, move that here, get that out, organize that shelf- so the place is looking good.  Here's my studio space so far.

Unpacked, not organized.

I'm hoping to develop some better habits exercising and drawing in this space.  Once my muscles stop hurting and I've slept.

Here's a quick rough sketch I did using ArtRage a number of months back. It feels appropriately messy and full of hope like I do about this apartment.

Sketch for The Tide-Pool that Time Forgot

It's a sketch for either a children's book or a stand-alone painting, tentatively titled, The Tide-Pool that Time Forgot.  Trilobites, Hallucigenia and other Cambrian critters are found floating in tide-pools by two spooky looking children. 

The blobs of colour in the corner are on a separate layer, and I can colour choose from them again an again to match colours I'm already using. It's a good practice to have when painting digitally, I find, and you simply discard the layer when the final is done.

More unpacking to do.  Hopefully I'll get some sketching in a the next couple of days, and catch up on my email correspondence.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence. Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

Trilobite Boy character sketches

Here's something I started working on tonight using the digital painting program ArtRage. This is a screenshot of the program. Click to enlarge.

I've been planning on doing some paintings with the character on the left, now dubbed Trilobite Boy.  He's based off of the painting I did called Life as a Trilobite (below).

The girl on the right is wearing the anomalocarid dress.  I've never actually finished a painting of that dress:  I usually get frustrated or start working on other things. Here's some earlier versions, none of which were completed.  The circle on her chest would be filled with a leechy, knife-like circular teeth pattern: 

I just want to play with these characters, and have fun. I have a bunch of rough sketches in my Moleskine of Trilobite Boy in various scenarios, so expect to see more of him over the next little while.  (And for Daniel and Peter, one will be under a bright blue sky with bold colours!)

More to come!  I'm working on some more characters. She needs a pet.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Portfolio
Blog
Print Shop

Painting-Erasing a Prophet

I know - I'm a day late.

It's taken some wrestling for me.  I utterly support the freedom of people to draw and say what they like about other people's ideas - and we need to be strong on this - really strong!- in the face of threatened violence.

I can't add a lot in terms of my words here. I completely agree with Dale McGowan on this.  But I also share a lot of the trepidation that Melliferax has.  After all, I live in one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world.  It's also one of the most peaceful and has low crime between cultures. I don't tend to paint things specifically to offend.  Though sometimes they do anyway.

So this one is not to specifically offend.

Is it a painting?  I've done this piece using digital media only. It is a depiction.   Under those layers, and then erased are an image -now largely removed- of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him if you are so inclined.

And peace be upon the artists depicting him.  Let no violence come from those who object to imagery.  All that does is make it more powerful anyway.

Edit: ****  In light of death threats against the originator, I took the non-image I had made down.  If we don't have freedom of speech and freedom of expression, we have nothing.

So here is a post of nothing.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Being an atheist insomniac

Next week on Facebook, the "A" Week begins, asking atheists and freethinkers to display the scarlet "A" on their profiles. There are a lot of people who don't believe in the supernatural out there, and still many who feel somewhat alone in their community.

There are a lot of positives on abandoning superstition and religion in life - how you regard each day as a treasure can be one - but there are also downsides. I want to discuss one aspect of being an atheist that has caused me sleepless nights and how that turned around. With the help of Star Wars.

Recognizing that there is no evidence for an afterlife (and that mainstream religions' claims are flimsy appeals to a sense of comfort) is not comforting. Recognizing, as Richard Dawkins eloquently wrote,

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?"

This is wonderful, and most days I do feel it. However, many nights I can't escape an existential angst so primal I cannot sleep. I feel silly; I feel like I'm failing; yet I cannot shake the feeling I am one day going to die, and sometimes later no one will ever remember me - there may be no one to remember me. I know I have an ego that drives me to be remembered.

I'm an artist, I seek to create things which will be exalted or at least pique interest beyond my numbered days. The street-artist Banksy once said, "The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it." I don't delude myself into thinking people when spend 20+ hours pouring over trilobites with fanciful wings, but I hope more hours will aggregate looking over those paintings over many years than it took to create them.

Simply: many nights I cannot sleep. I feel anxiety over dying. Over things not finished. Over beauty in the world I've heard of and never seen. Of leaving my wife and family behind. I lay awake, freaked out that one day I won't be here. Sometimes I have to get out of bed and pace a little, or play video games to distract myself.

Having moderate persistent asthma doesn't help. Wheezing, tight-chested, thinking about mortality. It's where this painting comes from.

Asthma Incubus:
Once, I was informed by a (well-meaning, I'm sure) atheist Buddhist transhumanist that my fear of dying was not a very mature response that I would have to come to terms with. It surprised me people could come to terms with it: how to do it so you aren't just ignoring it?

A couple of years ago, when the sleep-loss was becoming a particularly acute problem, I read my way through book after book, hoping for some sort of atheism-based mental anaesthetic to help me sleep. Didn't find it.

Until I re-read one of my favourite Star Wars series. Star Wars came out when I was 3 years old. My lifelong artistic fascination with creating living things that don't exist is hugely influenced by Star Wars and the artists like Ralph McQuarrie (and so many more!) who breathed life into ideas.

I was re-reading the X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston (cover art by the awesome Paul Youll.) The series doesn't focus too much on Jedi and the Force, instead it focuses on the pilots that won the war, and are continuing to fight while dealing with attrition in their unit.

I got to Aaron Allston's first book in the series, Wraith Squadron, one sleepless night. I came to a part where the unit's commander, Wedge Antilles was in the uncomfortable position of writing a letter to a deceased pilot's family about her death.

I read this (p 242):

"I no longer believe that the momentum of a life headed in a worthwhile direction ends when that life does...(the pilot) shot down five enemies, all of whom served evil men. Had she not done so, their actions would have led to further evil, but her actions take their place instead, broadening like a firebreak into the future theirs would have occupied...I will never know how much good surrounding me is a legacy of Jesmin's life. Her future will be invisible to me. But invisible is not the same as nonexistent. I will know that her deeds and accomplishments still move among us, phantoms..."

I feel asleep, pondering this immortality.

I still turn to this passage on occasion when the silly, primitive part of my mind looks at the dark of night and sleep and feels fear. I know some of the comfort comes from it being part of a childhood fable I remember fondly.

But that idea, that whatever actions I take may ripple outward into the future, hopefully for the better gives me comfort enough to sleep. As Dawkins pointed out, I have existed, and I'm lucky to rise from the bed, to do good work and enjoy the universe. Allston's writing points out to me that my existence can never be removed the history of the universe.

*zzzz-zzzzz*

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Star Wars: X-Wing: Wraith Squadron, by Aaron Allston is published by
Bantam Books and may be purchased here.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is published by Bantam books
and may be purchased here.

Art Monday: rough dinosaur

The Art Evolved Therizinosaur gallery will be launching in the next 24 hours, and well, I'm not ready to submit. It's been a busy February. I've been taking a few steps to try and balance things better in my life. The work/blog/freelance/school/family time needs to be integrated better, and not in that order of importance.

At any rate, here's what I was working on. Maybe I'll come back to it some time.
After sketching in pencil in my Moleskine, I worked on this sketch in ArtRage.Click to enlarge if you wanna.

The idea was to have a small group of explorers climb down a rope and see this huge feathered therizinosaur sitting in a brass filigree cage - with many damaged bars. Actually, considering how close the therizinosar looks to a Jabberwocky, that may as well be Alice standing there (Yeah, I'm excited to see Tim Buton's latest.)

I based the therizinosaur's pose on my parrot I used to have, Sam. He was a blue-front Amazon, and would often display his wings one at a time, his tail feathers and feathers on his neck.

Here's me and Sam back in the day.
- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Monday: Mountain Discovery

Mountain Discovery
"We're gonna need another Order of trilobites!"

Created for the January time capsule gallery at Art Evolved. This time the theme was a paleo-environment. I tried to make the fossil itself an environment. And to put Isotelus to shame.

This is the first complete fully digital painting I have displayed: most of my digital work involves enhancing my oil paintings, or digital roughs. I feel I still have a lot to learn before I am satisfied with my skill set, though my friend, artist Chris Zenga, suggested I may be uncomfortable with this since most of my work is quite a bit darker than this.

Michelle likes it, and would like to see me produce more landscapes

This was created using mainly ArtRage 2.5, a bit of Photoshop Elements 6 and my Intuos 3 tablet.
- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Evolved gallery sneak peek

The newest Art Evolved time capsule gallery launches today! The theme is palaeo-environments. Here's a sketch of the painting I made for it, done in ArtRage totally digitally. Convincing pencil, eh?It's called Mountain Discovery. Click-y to enlarge-y.

Go to Art Evolved to see the finished piece, fully digital, created using ArtRage with a few last-minute Photoshop tweaks.

- - - - - - - -

Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Monday: here's an ugly fellow

A detail from my in-progress Asthma Incubus II, painted entirely digitally using ArtRage 2.5 and my Intuos 3 tablet.

Hmm. I need to fix the eyelashes a bit. I like them long and pretty on this ugly face though.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

ArtRage news and nephew

The last few months I've been exploring a fantastic digital painting program called ArtRage 2.5. It only cost about $30 Canadian, works beautifully with a tablet, and has a fascinating array of tools. Including glitter.

Unlike many other programs, the interface couldn't be simpler. Most of the things you need are located on the two quarter-wheels in the corners.You can choose the paper or canvas surface you want, and manipulate the thinners in the oils. There's an instant-dry feature. An array of palette knives.


Great news! ArtRage 3 is about to launch for download on December 14th! The new version is apparently going to have tons of new features, including watercolours. And the price of the version I'm using is going down to about $20, according to the announcement.


My 8-year old nephew loves ArtRage too, mainly for making skateboard deck designs.

As you can see, he's much, much braver than I am with the program. I still have an oil painter's inherent caution and planning, but the Neph? He just goes for it! Amazing.
- - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Asthma Incubus II progress

Progress so far on my new version of Asthma Incubus. Click to enlarge.

The original drawing from a few years ago:

A background to inspire the mood, painted in ArtRage using my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet:

I've hidden the background here so I don't distract myself while I play with the details. Using paint, metallic paint, airbrush and pencil tools. Mainly focusing on the Asthma Incubus itself:


- - - - - - - -

Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Some sketchy sketches

Here's a few things I've been working on.

Sketches for my class. The topic is body image. Pop culture and sexuality is popular as a topic, but I thought I'd tackle anthropometry and perfect proportions for the artist. Lots of nodding at Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man here.

With how my lungs have been feeling lately, I thought I'd revisit my Asthma Incubus drawing from a few years back, and dive into ArtRage a bit more. This is not even close to done: the figure is on a separate layer so I can delete it after I paint them in properly.

There's also a new Steampunk Trilocopter on the way, with larger, Opipeuterella-ian eyes for the cockpit.
- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Monday: settling in

Although I haven't had very much time to draw and paint lately, I can feel the beginnings of new routine establishing itself.

The trip to York U is a long one, and I have my trusty iPod Touch with the Brushes app to sketch with while bumped and jostled on the subway and bus.

For the moment, my class on Drawing & Narrative is on Tuesday mornings and I'm taking the whole day off work so I can get in some studio time in the afternoon.

I've started and stopped so many projects lately that I'm actually creating a checklist to keep them straight. Here's where I left off the Anomalocarid Dress that I began for Art Evolved's last group gallery:

I'm using Artrage, and this image on the right is such a massive hodge-podge of techniques. I am still sorting out my workflow, and this image is on many layers while I do that. Painting over top of the existing pencil sketch seems to be less rewarding than if I had completed the sketch in ArtRage itself.

There's a long way to go, and this is deep in the Ugly Phase: that phase of painting where I almost can't look at it. It's essentially an underpainting of colours to support more detailed layers over top. Although ArtRage functions realistically like oil in many ways, I have to kind of lay down a process for myself.

Normally when painting on canvas, I pre-prime the canvas with either a raw umber or straight ivory black. I enjoy the process of painting and watching the figures edge their way out of the darkness. It's like the image reveals itself on black instead of appearing on white.

With this image, I began by painting over the sketch, meaning over an off-white. So I added heavy blacks, and they feel big and globby.And the skin isn't right. I wanted a lopsided smile, but turned it into a deformed mouth. I'll likely need to start over, delete the scanned sketch page, leaving only the drawing, or reverse the values of the scanned image.

Let's see what I can do to correct this image in days to come.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Monday: steampunk trilocopter sketch

My last day before returning to school tomorrow. Had a bit of time to monkey around some more with ArtRage and I loooooovvvve it. For the first time in my life I have a new computer; triple-core, 4MB ram, 750MB hard drive and magic elves. I know this may sound ridiculously provincial, but the screen is awesome. And it takes my digital tablet strokes beautifully.

I used my Intuos 3 tablet to sketch out this rough idea in the amazing ArtRage. I cannot recommend this digital painting program enough. The interface is so close to using real paint & pencil (but with an undo key!) it's stunningly elegant for a greasy oil painter like myself to use.

Steampunk flying trilobites: I've had this idea kicking around since my first year online, and I figure with the technology upgrade in my art I might as well give the little critters an upgraded mode of flying. The big one in the middle is a dirigible (I love that word.)

Here's the first one, sketched to simulate pencil. This is a digital sketch, not something I scanned. Obviously I'm happy with the software simulation of graphite.Here's a duplicate, transformed and re-worked, this time adding some digital paint to it. Again, this is just me goofing around.Tomorrow I'm back at York U, and this term I'm taking Drawing & Narrative. Seemed like a wise thing to take in this portion of my semi-illustrator career.

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Art Monday: sketch for Art Evolved Gallery

Just a quick Art Monday while I try to give myself a crash course in ArtRage.

Over at Art Evolved, the next group paleo gallery (tomorrow! yipes!) is about Anomalocaris. For a long while now I've had an idea to do a series of Precambrian-inspired clothing.
Anomalocaris is supposed to be (in my mind) similar to the whole preying mantis/black widow/femme fatale aesthetic.

This was the original, unfinished painting from a couple of years ago: And here's my new sketch: I had a model pose for the shoulders. Apparently, that is quite an uncomfortable combination of hip and neck tilts. Instead of being underwater as in the original, I decided to make her emerging from it.

Off to try ArtRage!
- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***