Art in the (not so very) wild!

Do you know what’s great? The outside. Know what’s even better? Doing art in it.

Plein air painting is new to me, but I’m just behind the curve ball by several hundred (thousand??) years– it’s a well honed and time honored tradition among artists. Take your fancy art box, take your paints, and go sit somewhere for a while. Preferably while putting the paints onto a surface of some sort and calling it a painting at the end of the day.

It’s something tremendously pleasing and exciting… and also something I need to practice a lot more before it becomes a proper skill. Good news: practicing means going outside on adventures and making art!

This past weekend I took my fancy pochade box and my tripod and a set of acrylics and I headed out by bike to the local botanical gardens to plunk down and get some real-life practice in painting. I didn’t take a huge number of pictures, but here’s my basic set up– I already know a few things I’ll tweak next go around.

And here’s a slightly better (if over-exposed) picture of the painting itself.

I learned a ton from my first foray, and I’m deeply excited to head out again. I’ve got Sunday of this coming weekend earmarked for my second plein air painting adventure….

Stay tuned!

Homework? For Fun!?

Since coming back from vacation in Germany, it’s become clear to me that my life needs to include a lot more art. And, most importantly, I have a loooooot more to learn. Making art is amazing, and the fact that I’m only scratching the surface of what there is to know about it is mindbogglingly exciting! How sad would it be if I were already bored…

So I’ve decided to get serious about making sure I keep learning about art in my day-to-day life. For me, that means homework. 😉 But homework that’s fun! Homework that I’m doing voluntarily, and that I’m designing for myself.

The lesson plan is very much a work in progress, but this week I’ve been focusing on value studies– something I often struggle with as my drawings or paintings become more complex. But solid values, planned out in advance, make a piece that much stronger. (And values that are weak, suck the life right out of it). So I’m practicing!

Here’s a glimpse of what I’ve been up to:

Random kitchen finds make great still lifes!

This onion has been drawn a lot now

Potential plan for a future painting

Learning (and re-learning, and keeping ideas and concepts and techniques I already know fresh) takes time. And energy. And it doesn’t always look very pretty.

But boy, is it refreshing to be back in the saddle. 🙂

Street Art in Berlin & Bonn

I just (as in, two days ago) got back from an amazing trip to Germany with a friend of mine. It was filled with shockingly good food (Persian walnut and pomegranate stew anyone?), fun adventures, and… also art!

We didn’t travel to Germany looking for art, and in fact only went to one art-specific museum, but something I learned from Berlin in particular, is that art doesn’t need to be put in a concrete box to exist in a city. The street art in Berlin is astounding! There were several instances of entire buildings whose sides were done up in murals.

Here is just a tiny sampling of what we (literally) stumbled across:

(Note, some of these are from the East Side Gallery, which is the remaining Berlin Wall… transformed by art. Others are from Berlin’s streets, and a couple are from Bonn.)

There was something wholly liberating about seeing such vast quantities of street art. It hadn’t been painted over, or scrubbed out. The city embraced it, and that was so freeing to see.

Traveling always leaves me in a different place, mentally, when I come back. It reminds me that the world is very, very big. And (most importantly) that there are more ways to walk upon it than I can even begin to imagine. It’s exhilarating, in a way, to look at your life and realize it could be so, so much bigger.

(And filled with so, so much more art!)

I Moved! + Reveal of the Wacom Cintiq

Did you miss me?

Over the last month I moved out of an apartment, and into a house. It’s been a phenomenal move, but it meant that for a few weeks my art setup was chaotic while I packed everything up… and then for a few weeks it was chaotic while I got everything unpacked. BUT the hard work is complete, and I’m more than ready to be back in the saddle.

Want to hear about the Most Exciting Thing (ever)? You may remember me referencing this in my last post, where I built a new art computer.

(Drum roll please…)

I am now the delighted owner of a (used) Wacom Cintiq!

I’ve been using digital drawing tablets since high school, and Wacom is the king of the mountain when it comes to the technology. But they don’t do it cheap (at all. At ALL.) and they know how good they are. Which means that a Cintiq model was something I never seriously considered, it was just so far out of my price range.

(For those not in the know, the Cintiq model of drawing tablet not only has useful buttons, and an incredibly pressure sensitive surface… it has a display surface you draw directly on, and is the most ‘like’ traditional media drawing you can get while going digital. It’s really cool!)

And then suddenly a local friend of mine (and FANTASTIC artist) Rhea Ewing was selling their used model, as they’d upgraded to the latest version of Cintiq.

I dithered about it for a long time, and I talked it over with a particular group of online friends, who all agreed that while it was extremely nice, I probably didn’t ‘need’ it and saving money was a good plan since I was in the middle of a move. So I resigned myself to getting alone with my perfectly fine tablet, and leaving visions of the Cintiq to ‘someday.’

(Bet you weren’t expecting this story to go this direction.)

(Drum roll please…)

And then that group of friends sent me a letter full of very lovely words. And in that letter was money to buy the used Cintiq. I was speechless (and still am, a bit.)

My first act on this fantastic piece of art equipment was to doodle them all a thank you.

Sometimes the universe tells you to do a thing, go a direction, make a choice. Sometimes your friends do. And in that situation, you listen to the damned message. I am still stunned, and humbled, and exceptionally grateful.

But I bet you really just wanted to see a picture of it, didn’t you. 😉 This is it!

Art space in the new place is my bedroom. Don’t mind the random cat toys!

Working on the Cintiq is not only super functional, it’s FUN.

I have a lot of learning curve to figure out on this machine, and (sadly) it doesn’t magically transform my art into Michelangelo status. But it’s great to work on, and I feel a lot more connected with the art I make digitally.

Thanks for reading!

And From the Motherboard Ashes… (An Art Computer is Born!)

You may recall in my last post that my computer decided to give up the ghost. It is still dead, and did not magically return from beyond the grave.

Remember, too, that pile of boxes containing computer parts…?

(Pictured: a cute case, the motherboard, the CPU, the power supply, a 120 SSD hard drive, 16 gigs of RAM, a box of speakers, and a keyboard and mouse.)

That turned into this:

(Pictured: a half-filled computer case, with the motherboard, CPU, and other fiddly bits still outside the case)

Which eventually turned into a computer!

Several friends and youtube videos were consulted as I started putting together a computer for the first time, and I would have been sunk without them. But other than the learning curve, once you get going it’s not bad. It’s shocking (or not, rather, as I went to great lengths to avoid static electricity that might fry the delicate components during this!) that you can put together a computer with nothing more than a screw driver!

Attempt #1 at building a computer… was a failure. Lights and fans were a go, but no life once plugged into a monitor, and I began wondering if I’d made a horrible mistake by undertaking this plan. Computers are fussy little things, and when they don’t work, it’s hard to tell if it’s because something’s unplugged somewhere, or because you fried the CPU!

So I put it away for the day and took it apart and tried again the next day.

Luckily, attempt #2 the following night (during, I might add, a thunderstorm*) was a home run. 🙂

Check it out!

(Pictured: a computer with the sides and top of the case still pulled off, but fully functional)

That, right there, is a working computer. 🙂

As of this morning, said cute little box of wires and plastic and metal (and cords. So many cords) is running Windows 10 and has my CS6 version of Photoshop installed and running like a dream.

Despite some worries and concerns and a few minor hiccups, operation Build a New Art Computer has (so far) been a total success. I have a computer with 16 gigs of RAM, ready to take on any Photoshop file I throw at it.

I can’t wait to dig in again. I’ve been without an art computer for 2 weeks now, and have missed it.I love drawing by hand and painting with traditional media, but sometimes the answer is to have as many options at your disposal as possible.

PS,

There’s going to be a 3rd installation to this story, very likely in the next week or so, about a very cool piece of technology I’m planning on acquiring…

Curious?

Stay tuned!

PPS,

This entry wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the cat assistance I was rendered during this build. Curious Georgia loves new things to explore with her entire body, and this computer was no different. In addition to my quest to make sure I was safely discharging static electricity before touching any of the components, I also quested– endlessly and fruitlessly– to remove stray cat hairs. 😉

(Pictured: A cat doing what cats do best: sitting on things you don’t really want them to be sitting on)

Footnote:

* Thunderstorm, new life… is it any surprise I named the computer Frankie? 😉

A Game of 20 Questions…

Or maybe not 20. But some questions, nonetheless!

While I was talking about my most recent CC:Otherworlds illustration, and mentioning that I go about things a bit backwards from a lot of artists, starting in Photoshop and ending in traditional media, a friend recently asked me for an explanation of my typical art process. I thought I’d share some of the answers. 🙂

These examples are from my most recent CC:Otherworlds illustration. The prompt for that fortnight (#13) was “Unravel.”

I typically start out with a really rough thumbnail sketch done in pencil or ink. And by rough, I mean *rough.* Things things ain’t pretty. Example:
This little sketchy stage doesn’t last too long, though. Next, I bring the entire thing into Photoshop. I don’t usually even bother to scan my doodle– a cell phone pic works just fine, since I’m not interested in preserving any of its ~beauty~ just its rough content.
Once in Photoshop, I rough-out a layout and composition. This doesn’t need to be perfect, but the ‘big ideas’ need to be hashed out. Where will the figures be? What is at the center? What aspects of “flow” are in place to make sure the viewer sees what I want them to see when they look at it? Also in this phase I do some color studies, and get a general feel for what direction I’ll take the painting once I do it for real. A thing that is sometimes confusing is that all of this? Just prep work. None of this will be in the final painting.
But now I have to get this entirely digital image… and make it into a traditional media painting! That means transferring it onto paper… It’s not as complicated as it seems. 🙂 I just print off the line drawing at the correct scale, and tape it to the back of my watercolor paper of choice (in this case, a hotpress 140lb paper that’s lovely and smooth) and trace over my computer sketch with pencil.
After that, it’s just a matter of painting. For this piece I used watercolors and colored pencils.
And here’s the final painting!

Do you have any questions about my general process, or how I do things? Let me know! I LOVE answering questions and talking about art. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

The Birth of a Dream… (book)

(Forgive the punny title. I couldn’t help myself.)

The Dreambook project is something I’ve had brewing on my (plentiful) artistic back burners for quite awhile now. I’m excited to share that the beginning stages of it are finally coming together!

Back up there, Claire. Dreambook? Say what now?

You heard right! I am the frequent recipient of extremely bizarre, often cinematic, weirdly poetic dreams. They’re not dreams about lost locker combinations, or missed buses. They’re dreams about oceans tides pulling and pushing us towards certain physical destinations, about men lost in alternate universes calling for help through radios, about dragons lurking inside all of us waiting to claw themselves free…

I’ve always known I wanted to do a project based on some of my choicer dreams, but for a long time I wasn’t sure what format. Several dreams I wrote down as short stories. And while they were interesting, they lacked the visual element that is so important to the dreams themselves.

Thus… Dreambook.

Dreambook itself is still a long ways out from being a completed thing (more on THAT later!) But what I’m working on right now is a demo, if you will. A single dream put into one of the several types of formats I would use for the book, to showcase what Dreambook can be. That is what I’m working on right now, and what (soon, hopefully) I’ll be able to share with you!

Want to see my progress so far?

This was my first ever storyboard for the specific dream I’ll be using in the demo (informally called Dragon Scales for the moment):

But a few images do not a story make. So I began to break out more and more, creating a plan for a 6-8 page comic.

A little more work in trusty Photoshop now leaves me with a rough layout and plan of attack!

That leaves me with what’s left: both the fun and the hard part… making the above ‘plan’ into a finished piece.

Despite the clean lines and gray scale of the sketches above, that will not be the look of the final product. My current plan is to use loose pencil lines, watercolor, and gouache, to create an otherworldly, mysterious, and somewhat sinister look, similar to my original test.

If you are curious about my progress on this project, make sure to check out my instagram feed – seeclairedraw. I post there 2-3 times per week.

Thanks for reading!

It’s a Bony Tale…

My go-to medium has been, for the last several years, watercolor and ink. Sometimes it’s watercolor and graphite, and sometimes lately I’ve been playing with gouache, too. But I’ve become a bit predictable.

Which meant it was time to shake things up.

I busted out my oil set (dusted off, more like…) and got to work on something with several components that seriously pushed me out of my comfort zone. The final painting is oil on board, with gold leaf accents. I haven’t touched any of that in years.

But before I got that far, I had to figure out a plan. In this case, the piece is a gift for my mom, who broke her humerus arm bone in a nasty spot last April. I wanted to paint that bone for her in a semi-medieval-inspired style of painting (smooth oil on board) but with gold where the break was… somewhat like the Japanese pottery tradition, where cracks are in-filled with gold, not just repairing a break, but making it beautiful.

My original sketch (made with watercolor pencils on paper) served as my rough template and guide. From there, I sketched out my plan of attack on my final surface — a piece of plywood with several layers of gesso applied as a base.

With my rough-in determined, I started painting with oils. They are a fun, slippery, strange medium, and I’m determined to play with them more! None of my brushes were soft enough to achieve the silky-smooth finish (and that vaguely macabre, medieval look) I was looking for, so I actually went over the original brush strokes with two of my makeup brushes. Weird, but it worked!

Oil paints take up to a week to fully dry, so I played the waiting game before I was able to put on the gold leaf. Once it was ready, I placed white acrylic paint in the places I wanted the gold leaf to end up with a stucco texture, and used a gold ink as a base. Then, I applied the gold leaf.

And this is the end of this painting’s story! Once it cures for a few weeks I’ll give it its final touch: a layer of varnish, and then delivery to its recipient.

Field Trip to an Art Store + Smudge Sticks

Somehow in the course of my life I have lost more erasers than I thought possible. Once again I found myself sans my hard eraser, and my kneaded eraser had become seriously nasty over the vestiges of time (and pencil trimmings). How terrible. I had to go to the art store. Woe is me.

In all seriousness, though, going to art stores is my happy place. It’s my shoe shopping, it’s my dress trying on. It’s freaking delicious.

So of course I bought on-sale brushes, a new notebook, fresh fancy ink to try, and oh yeah also erasers.

I also bought a smudge stick.

Crazy as it is, I’ve never really used a smudge stick before. They’ve been around, and I sort of understand their point, but smudge sticks are not a tool I keep in my box. So I figured it was time to give it a solid try by doodling out some concept sketches for a short story I wrote and using the smudge stick very sparingly to give it that ‘field notes’ look I was going for.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the thing. But more tools in my box is never a bad thing!

December (D is for Dark and Dim) Workspace

This was my morning:

See how dark it is? Yes. Thank you for that, shortest day of the year. Thank you so much.

But the flipside of all this dim is that from here on out the days are getting longer, and there is at least the remote chance that soon during the week I’ll get to work on art in natural sunlight. (Shush, let me have my illusions)

To make sure you don’t leave on a depressing note, here is an out-of-focus phone pic of my cat last weekend gracing my drafting table with her presence. She’s good at that. Notice the piece of 12×18 board protecting my painting in the above picture? Guess why that is? (Hint: kitten paw prints over paintings do not a great look make)

Please note the sunlight. Like my cat, my battery pack is best charged with solar energy.

Sun, please come back. We miss you.

	clairewhitmore on Project “CC:Otherworlds…
	brilliantviewpoint on Project “CC:Otherworlds…
	brilliantviewpoint on A Game of 20 Questions…
	Homework? For Fun!?… on Street Art in Berlin &…
	jofox2108 on The Balancing Act

Claire Whitmore

Illustration

blog post

Art in the (not so very) wild!

Homework? For Fun!?

Street Art in Berlin & Bonn

I Moved! + Reveal of the Wacom Cintiq

And From the Motherboard Ashes… (An Art Computer is Born!)

A Game of 20 Questions…

The Birth of a Dream… (book)

It’s a Bony Tale…

Field Trip to an Art Store + Smudge Sticks

December (D is for Dark and Dim) Workspace