Trilobite Boy with Gargoyles (completed!)

© Glendon Mellow 2010
Click here to enlarge: the link on the actual pic is broken. 

“Dammit. It’s raining,” said Trilobite Boy. He sat for a while thinking of her, the rain pattering on his cephalon and soaking his socks. Then he flapped his fossil wings and headed over the city.

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This painting was so much fun to do, and I learned a lot about using ArtRage while I did it. I tried to keep my style loose, and just play with the digital paint. And thanks to Eric T. Jones for suggesting the Chuck Taylor's!  Better than combat boots.

The only part of this that was done in Photoshop, was I realized I had painted a decent sneaker on his left foot, but it was too small. I exported the file to Photoshop, used the selection brush to highlight it, and did a free transform to enlarge it, before importing it back into ArtRage.

There's been a lot of posts of this in-process, but here it is, finally completed.  If you click here, you can go to my deviantArt gallery, where you can click again to get the super-big high-resolution picture.

It's also available in my print shop, as a postcard, greeting card and a variety of prints and framed art.

You can see the in-process stuff here.
You can see more about Trilobite Boy here. 

What should I do next with this guy?
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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Odds and ends

Lots of little odds and ends this week.

I decided for now to go with MOO for my business cards, and selected these 4 images for the backs of them:

The front contains my contact info and the "Art in Awe of Science" tagline. 

I also re-worked Trilobite Boy's face a bit on the Gargoyle piece.  I felt it was too flat, and didn't match other paintings of the character. 

Click to enlarge a bit more.  Character ©  Glendon Mellow 2010. 

A bunch of exciting stuff on the go, and hopefully next week will have a couple of announcements ready!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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Trilobite Boy - gargoyle progress #3

Took a bit of time this morning to work on my Trilobite Boy - gargoyle piece.  I may not end up calling it that.

Click to enlarge a bit.

Played with some gradient stencils in ArtRage, and I think it came out okay.  Still need to finish his combat boots, the gargoyles, rooftop, building across the street.  Originally I wanted to leave the wings unfinished and ghostly, since Trilobite Boy doesn't typically have them.  But I like the sky/horizon and maybe they do need a bit of colour. 

I like this close-up. 

It's kind of a depressing piece, which I wanted.  Lots of blues, and Trilobite Boy just ruminating.

This morning I read this piece by Jonah Lehrer about depression and creativity.  And then I watched this.

More on this painting here.
More about Trilobite Boy here.

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Art Monday: Trilobite Boy faces

click to enlarge

Lots more Trilobite Boy here. 

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Happy Thanksgiving, my fellow Canadians!

Trilobite Boy - gargoyle progress 2

Took some time today to work a bit more on Trilobite Boy - Gargoyle.

Click to enlarge.

An up-close look at Trilobite Boy's face so far.  Click to enlargenate.

You can see the start of this piece here and here. I'm mainly using Trilobite Boy paintings at the moment to practice with ArtRage specifically, and digital painting in general.

I think I might leave the wings looking all sketchy and ghostly like that.

You can see all Trilobite Boy posts here.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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Trilobite Boy - iPod sketch

Inspired in part by the excellent sketches Eric Orchard has been producing the last few months on his iPod, here's a sketch of Trilobite Boy.
I did this using Sketchbook Mobile.

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Oil rig fire painting progress

Still practicing with ArtRage 2.5.

Here's a background that I think may be completed.  This is for Trilobite Boy Saves the Day, which I've previously posted about here and here. More Trilobite Boy posts here.

Click to enlarge.

Nasty oil rig fire.  Perhaps it's time for our hero to make an appearance.

Here's an up-close shot of what the clouds look like.

Click to enlarge. 

ArtRage is a painting program that attempts to mimic a variety of real art media, with the advantages that digital painting has to offer (layers, ctrl-z).  What do you think of this cloud detail?  I left it this jpeg at 95% resolution and zoomed way in.

Another thing that would be great if ArtRage could do, would be to somehow splatter ink.  I tried for that affect along the lower edge of the smoke-cloud, near the right side.  I used a tiny tube of paint and palette knife to scrape the squirted tube.  The new ArtRage can do a lot of new fancy things.  Maybe it has options.  For now, I may try a custom brush in Photoshop.

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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.

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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.


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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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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?

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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iForgot

Yesterday, I put up a "making of" post about Trilobite Boy Rocks Out.

I forgot to include the original colour sketch idea that had those crazy colour lights/bubbles in the first place!

It was made on my iPod Touch using Autodesk's Sketchbook Mobile while I was walking to work through Trinity-Bellwoods Park.  The iPod is a great took for quickly putting down rough ideas when inspiration strikes.  The two best apps in my opinion are Sketchbook Mobile and Brushes.  

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Making of Trilobite Boy Rocks Out

Last spring, I was contacted by Karen about a commission. Her boyfriend is Mike Haubrich of Quiche Moraine, one of my favourite bloggers and a supporter of my artwork since the beginning of this blog.  I've met a lot of people so far in my blogging, but Mike and Karen are somewhere at the top of the list of people I haven't shaken hands with yet.

Karen wanted to get Mike a painting of mine for his birthday this past August.  I was thrilled, and honoured.  Contract stuff out of the way, we discussed what sort of thing he might like.

I suggested possibly something with a young Darwin and barnacles, and drew a bit in pencil.  I also had this idea for my Trilobite Boy character playing guitar or bass onstage:  I knew Mike has worked in radio and is a rock fan, so it seemed appropriate. (I also had a sketch of Trilobite Boy naked on a fur rug by the fire, but that seemed more appropriate for LouFCD. )

I sent Karen this hastily scrawled image done in ArtRage, a realistic computer painting program:

 Karen loved it, and I got to work.

Next, I did some sketches using my plastic Art S Buck male model.  These generic super-heroically proportioned models (there's a female one too) have about as many points of articulation as the average GI Joe or Star Wars action figure and make a great starting point for life drawing if you don't have a real human handy. Sketches below:

Click to enlarge my scribbles.

I liked the thumbnail sketch near the bottom, and decided not to do another looking-over-the-shoulder pose, like this one.

I selected a beechwood cradleboard to paint on, 12"x18".  I gessoed it black while listening to Debaser and Die Antwoord. Next, I cartooned in the image using white chalk. I find the chalk disperses nicely in the oil paint and it won't slowly rise to the surface of the paint film like graphite can after a number of years.

As oil paintings age, they darken and become more transparent, so it really matters what colour your ground and drawn outlines are. 

Look close and you can see a bandana around his right arm, and bracelet on his right wrist. 

Started painting.  The trilobite fossil and ammonite shell (seen below) were there for colour and texture reference and maybe as superstitiousy talismans, I suspect.  Safety blanket.  Or I just like looking sciencey when I post pictures of my process.

You can see this is what I call the "Ugly Phase". Lots of splotchy unblended colour laid down. Originally, I planned to have spotlights on the edge of the stage, but I decided to paint over them.  They competed too much with the bright circles of light.

This was getting later one evening, so I was listening to Massive Attack.  Still some fast beats for me to time my brushstrokes to, but mellow enough not to bother my wife while she works on the computer. 




Below, a partially finished head compared with the completed head. 

I worked and re-worked the head and spine of the trilobite body parts over and over.  Still worry the front looks like a big ol' mustache from this angle.  
You can see there's a lot of glare in the photo on the left.   Photos of wet oil paintings are tricky.  What you need to do is have two light sources waaaayy out at the sides, and take the photo.  Or, if you live in a small apartment, take a picture on an angle in diffuse fluorescent light, and use Photoshop to mess with the perspective afterwards. 

For the musicians out there, note how wrong I have the shape of the bass.  I only noticed after everything was almost done.  I wiped it down with tissue dabbed in solvent and re-did the area.  Throughout this painting, I kept returning to the Toronto band Debaser as inspiration.  My good friend Nevin is/was the guitarist, and I love the way he played.  Mind you, he's never done devil horn's on stage that I can recall.

When I paint, I tend to work on one element at a time, bringing it all up in detail before moving on.  This is contrary to how painting is supposed to work:  you really should rough-in everything then refine, going around all the elements.

I like to see the figure emerging from the darkness whole: first an arm, then an eye, then the neck and back, and so on. It feels more like pulling something out of the blackness than painting a picture. 

The finished painting.

I sent images of the final to Karen and waited.  That can be the toughest wait of the job, seeing how the client will react. I try to keep people I'm working for in the loop throughout the process so if there's a major concern we can spot it early, but the suspense when I send that last photo or the final in the mail is still tough.  Karen loved it!  And importantly, thought Mike would to.  She was right.

Rock on Karen, and Happy Birthday Mike!

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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Trilobite Boy Rocks Out

Click here to see a bigger version.   ©  Glendon Mellow 2010.

Trilobite Boy Rocks Out by Glendon Mellow

Oil on beechwood panel, 2010.

This original oil painting was commissioned by Karen Burke as a birthday present for Mike Haubrich of Quiche Moraine. 

Featuring my trilobite-human hybrid character Trilobite Boy putting on a killer show.  This was totally fun to do, and I took a departure from some of my usual techniques: a "making of" post will be up soon. I've submitted this painting to the Art Evolved Pop Culture gallery, launching later today.

Hope you had a great birthday Mike! 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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Since this was a commissioned work, please do not copy without my permission. 

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Sketch - Trilobite Boy Saves the Day

We're moving pretty soon (possibly sooner than expected!) so not a lot of time to complete self-started projects at the moment.

Here's a sketch for what will be a brightly coloured painting: Trilobite Boy Saves the Day.  I'm thinking bright lime green for the cape. Standing on a red brick rooftop with bright blue sky and fluffy clouds overhead.  I'll probably re-pose the arms.

You can click here for more Trilobite Boy sketches and artwork.  I'm just getting started with this character and his cast.

Don't forget to vote on my poll!  Kthx.

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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.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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