This was done really really quickly to be used as a poster in the set for our animation this year. It also provided us with a way to have the line that was compulsory to the competition without resorting to dialogue cards since we’d pulled silent film.

The intent was to do a Russian constructivist style poster, but also still maintain the style of the animation itself. In fact those of you up on your Russian posters should recognize which one I was riffing off of pretty easily. Not too bad for just a couple hours, I guess.

It’s fun every now and again to draw in a different style. (especially one that is really fast)

A couple portraits of the characters we used for this year’s 48 hour film project.

These were done over the weekend with the intention of having them added to the closing credits. Due to some communication issues, that didn’t end up working out. But I think all told they came out pretty well. Especially for me drawing in a completely different style than I naturally work in.

The characters are based on character designs done by Roberto Rubet. Check out more of his work at www.idodont.com

And since this chapter will focus on the fate of the Prussian Sniper introduced at the end of Chapter One I started by researching images of German posters. With that in mind and some MORE research, I landed on the idea of using the Prussian Eagle and the Totenkompf/Death’s Head badge. At the relative time this story is set in the Totenkompf had not yet been co-opted by the Nazis and was still thought of as the unit insignia of the Death’s Head Hussar. A cavalry regiment dating back to I think the Napoleonic era.

So with a head full of research, plenty of thumbnails and some reference images. I sat down and drew this ink drawing.

Then added the drawing to the type I had done up in the cpu. Did some colors and added some texturing/aging. This is where it was when I first posted it for critique over at the illopond.

After a really helpful round of critiques both online and with folks I know here locally. I did a handful of minor quick changes. And landed on this, which is where I may sign off on this one. Although as always feedback is most welcome. Let me have it!

This was a study warm up, for my participation in the 8: A Steampunk Anthology. An anthology being put together through The Illopond. I’ll be going into more detail as we get nearer to our print/pub dates on this. Until then here is the teaser image put together by contributor Lee Wiley.

Currently with my studio set up I work within a couple limitations. All involving space (likely a common issue amongst most of us). I don’t have anywhere to store gigantic tubs of old coffee, nor anywhere to let full sheets of water color paper dry from being soaked in said old coffee. So for the time being I’ve been mainly using the cut offs from larger projects for this. Sometimes if a cut off is large enough I may cut it down to more uniform (read: easily framed) sizes. But for sketches or warm up drawings I don’t mind the odd bit here or there. Anyway, onto the actual process.

MATERIALS

As far as materials go all you need is a Tupperware container full of old coffee and some bits and bobs of water color paper. I generally use 140# Arches paper which is easy to find at pretty much any art store. Although I have stained a few Strathmore Water Color Artist Cards and they worked fine as well. If there is someone out there interested, I happened to use EIGHT O’CLOCK COFFEE, but I’m sure any brand will do. For the coffee drinkers out there, I definitely don’t brew pots especially for this, if my cup happens to go cold or I have some left in the pot when I’m done I just toss it in the container.

SOAKING THE PAPER

Nothing too surprising to start off. Throw a couple pieces of paper in at a time. I agitate the paper while it is in the coffee. I’m not 100% sure this does very much. It may well be a hold over from the time I used to spend in dark rooms. The paper floats to the top, so while agitating I tend to press it down into the coffee from time to time. The goal here is to make sure the paper is completely saturated.

After a minute or two the paper should be wet through and pliable. It will have also noticeably changed to a warm tone as opposed to the stark white. Now they are ready to move on. At this point the paper is a fairly uniform tone. If this is what I was going after I would hang these to drip dry then tape them to a piece of wood to stretch.

Since that would make for a short tutorial, let’s move on shall we?

WHERE I APOLOGIZE TO MY WIFE FOR USING KITCHEN ITEMS
So now I’ve got paper that has become fully saturated, it’s time to pull it out of the coffee and place it on the surface you’ll be letting it dry on. For now I’ve simply been using a large cookie sheet. All of the paper on this sheet has already gone through the previous step.

Once I’ve placed the paper on the cookie sheet I pour in a bit of the coffee from the container. Not a huge amount but just enough that I can slosh it about and allow it to pool up. Then comes the easy part, I set it under a hot lamp and walk away.

After about an hour or two you’ll start to see how the coffee is being absorbed into the paper. At this point I let it sit over night under an arm lamp, before taking any more pictures.

height="430" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-423" />

6 HOURS LATER
And this is what I came back to the next morning. Now the staining is beginning to become a lot more pronounced. I did separate a couple pieces at the top of the sheet. The overlapping was causing more sticking than I’d like to deal with when the paper is dried.

At this point it looks like there is still too much coffee in the sheet. So I went ahead and blotted some of it up with some paper towels. Excuse the ape hand in the picture there.

And this is the state I left them in for another few hours under the lamp. In this case about 8-9, but I doubt it actually took that long. I was away from home for that length of time.

WHAT I ENDED UP WITH
When I came back the paper had dried thoroughly. By adding the extra moisture to them when I place them on the sheet it seems to cause a bit of adhesion to the cookie sheet. In a way I’d assume it works the same as stretching water color paper, except with coffee instead of water. You do have to be careful pulling the paper off of the sheet when it is dry though.

There is still a bit of warp to the paper, which normally I don’t mind too much. But for the purpose of this tutorial, I went ahead and placed the newly dried pieces of paper, under a half dozen or so coffee table art books over night. Turns out big heavy books are good for much more than inspiration and taking up space. This is a really poorly lit picture with lots of sun ruining it of the newly flattened paper.

The largest piece shown here is Hot Press paper while the others are Cold Press, which I think gives a pretty good illustration of how the two types of papers react to this process. The smoother tooth of the Hot Press is much less absorbent than Cold Press, but both types yield interesting textures to work on in my opinion.

That really about sums up the entire process. Keep in mind the coffee itself is of course not water safe, so it does blend a bit with any wet media placed on top of it. This allows you to gain a range of tones from a single color. Which I really like to use to my advantage.
As a point of reference The GOON and ABE SAPIEN sketches from my previous two blog posts were done on two of the pieces I stained in this batch.

Anyway thanks for reading this. Feel free to give it a go. If you do I’d be really interested in seeing results done by other people. So by all means share up!

Alright folks, getting down to the wire on the portfolio pieces portion of the challenge. (Even if I have fallen slightly behind) This one was done for two fold reasons. The first being to have a concept styled drawing that is finished enough it could also be used as a spot illustration. The other was to design a prop for the sixth and final piece.

I need a ray gun for my last illustration, and thought spending the time to design it before I had to place it in the composition would allow for a more interesting prop. (At least that was the intention)

As far as this being a more concept oriented illustration, that’s certainly true, but it would be worth noting that since this is for a one off image I only designed the view that would be visible in the piece it is for. So while it works for its’ exact purpose for me. If this were for an ongoing project I would have designed multiple views of the gun, but in trade off probably wouldn’t have taken all of the views all the way to a finish.

Anyway less words more pictures. Again these are taken with a camera, real scans forthcoming, as I plan to do a wrap up post when all six pieces are completed.

This was the initial pass of inks on this one. At this point I took a picture and showed it off to a few sets of fresh eyes. It was pretty universal that the grip was at far too much of a right angle to the rest of the gun.

This shows off a couple things. I’d already started building up some of the whites in the piece when the feedback got back to me, so it not only shows how I changed the shape of the grip, but also gives a glimpse at how the whites are built up.

And this is what I ended up with after a handful of passes on it. At about 3/4 of the way through I tend to go back in with more black ink and try to push the shapes a little harder. On this one the biggest lesson I learned was that it is perfectly okay to razorblade inks on stained paper. Thankfully the water color paper is absorbent enough that the neutral tone is all the way through. This technique was used for modeling the grip to the gun if you’re interested in where I did this.

Done in black and white inks, and a bit of white colored pencil to the grip on coffee stained water colored paper.

So to recap 5 of six pieces complete. And Laser pistols are awesome.

Thanks for looking.

ETA: After sharing a link here to the 12 Week Challenge Clubhouse, I received yet more useful advice. One of my concerns was punched home to me that the main body of the gun blended too much with the paper. So I went back in and beefed up the darks and lights there. My intention is to still let the tone come through, but add enough to it for it to seem finished. Hopefully that point is coming across. If not let me know.

This is the beginnings of my Week 5 posts. Coming in at the end of Week 6. There is a make up week coming for this week, so I’ll be drawing furiously to catch back up. Hopefully posts will follow at a quicker clip. This past week saw a day trip up to D.C. to the National Zoo, as well as numerous Mother Day plans. All well worth it for the mothers in my life (My mom, my wife, and her mother) So needless to say drawing time was at a premium. Although I’d like to think I made the most of the time at the table.

In my haste to do so unfortunately my WiP photo is from pretty far into the process of finishing this one. At this point I’d felt my eyes had gone a bit fatigued to the composition so I posted it to the challenge clubhouse to get some fresh eyes on it.

As always I got some valuable insight into it, and with that took this one to a finish. Which I think came out pretty well. This one was done with black ink and white ink using a brush on toned paper. I’ve really become comfortable working in this matter over the last couple months.

Okay, so currently I’m a full half week behind. However I believe I’ve learned a lot of things in my failures over the last ten or so days. The first being I’m not nearly fast enough to work a traditional painting at a commercial pace. Also I may need to hit the old drawing board to revisit my color work. I tend to work with limited color palettes, because for me it’s an easy way to balance tones. I always feel like my full color stuff is a little too technicolor processed. I should have paid more attention in painting classes I guess. More practice needed there I believe. So watch out folks UGLY paintings in the future.

Anyway here’s my latest challenge piece. I did this up yesterday. It’s in response to a story excerpt in the current The Strand Magazine titled SMILES by Alexander McCall Smith.

Inks only.

Finish

Once I’ve collected the six pieces to be done I’ll get them all properly scanned. But for now these are some nearly functional digital photos.

I’ve finally had the time to go back and start reworking this poster project. The previous incarnation to me felt a little stiff, like I’d forced so much stuff into the image none of it had room to move. So beyond a compositional reshuffle I tried to add a little more oomph to the characters. Especially bringing the main figure out more and making him more prominent. It should be noted a logo will be taking up that GIANT empty area at the bottom of the page.

I’ll stare at it a bit tomorrow, and then I’ll start laying paint down.

As always thoughts welcome!