Returning to My Roots

At the urging of my good friend Nick Meglin, I am returning to traditional watercolor in my illustration work. I'll still do digital where digital works best. But there's just nothing like the feel of real brush to paper. For this one, I output my rough pencil sketch to watercolor paper as a light sepia line. That gives me a light image upon which to paint. The Epson inks are soybean based, and are fairly water resistant, so there's no muddying of the color by adding paint to the surface. Type and corrections are done digitally, but the original is pristine and a nice piece of art to archive in itself. So now I have good watercolor originals to donate to charities once again!

all images copyright J.Pittman, 2010

Rough sketch in sepia, ready to color.

Detail

Rough to Finished Art

I'm uploading this rough-to-finish sequence to show the development of an illustration. This was one in a series of pieces done for a Wildlife article on cockroaches.

In some ways, the sketch has a charm all its own that could serve as a piece of finished art. I think illustrators often like our sketches better than the finished art for their looseness and spontaneity.

Illustrations copyright J. Pittman, 2008

You can see the sketch, of course, is pencil, while the finished art is pen and ink. The color, in both cases, was done digitally in Corel Painter. The finished art's color was made a little more intense and using blue reflected light for more contrast. The background was changed to be more of a vignette. Either drawing would have probably worked, but the whole series was done with pen and ink with crosshatching to complement the color washes.

Finished Art

I thought I'd include a follow-up to my July 1 and July 14 entries since I showed the early stages of the work. Here are both finished art pieces.

And here are a couple of close-ups for detail.

Both of these clients are very generous in allowing me to have free rein with the art. And I've won Reuben awards for the work I've done with both of these clients. I think there's a connection-- when an artist is trusted and allowed to do what they do best, their best work results. I'm grateful for that trust.

Digital Day Off

I got a day off yesterday as a paving truck yanked my utility line off at the street, so I was unable to email clients and go about my normal digital routine. This makes about 5 times in 8 years-- you'd think they would raise the utility pole after such an aggravation.

Being without the use of the computer reminded me how, not too many years ago, all of my work was executed in traditional media. I'm glad I can work both digitally and traditionally. I taught a college art class for several semesters a while back, and it was an eye-opener how dependent the students were on the computer to even think creatively. It was as if a whole area of creative options had just atrophied. I would encourage all digital artists to experiment with both approaches. If it's difficult to wean yourself away from the computer, I'll give you the name of a helpful trucker to pave the way...

Emulating traditional media on the Cintiq

illustration copyright J.Pittman, 2008

I've used my Cintiq for about two and a half years now, and a few observations are in order. It's a big relief that I don't have to do oversized illustrations on 30x40 illustration board any more. Digitally, you can just start drawing on the screen and keep adding to your "canvas" as needed. The fact that the Cintiq tilts like a drawing table and swivels like an animation board makes for the nearest thing to drawing on a sheet of paper and rotating the sheet as you draw to take advantage of your optimal swing of the wrist. The pen comes with three different nibs-- hard nylon, soft felt, and spring-loaded nylon. My personal preference is the felt nib as it adds a little drag to the surface, feeling more like pencil on a vellum-surfaced paper. The only problem with the felt nib is it wears out much faster than the nylon. I'm starting to horde felt replacement nibs like I used to horde Gillott nibs, in case they decide to stop making them one day.

I use Photoshop and Painter interchangeably with the Cintiq. Painter is much nicer emulating natural media. But I'm so accustomed to years of Photoshop, some things are just easier to accomplish with it. I've created a custom "crowquill" pen brush in Photoshop that works very similarly to a traditional steel nib pen. (see sample above which emulates pen & ink with watercolor)

Mostly I use Painter to emulate what I used to do traditionally with ink, watercolor, and colored pencil. I prefer the older digital watercolor over Painter's newer watercolor layer technique as I find I have more control with the digital watercolor brushes. One thing on my wish list for Painter would be some way to tilt-control the spread of the wash. Traditionally, I would put clear water on my sheet of watercolor paper in whatever portion of the illustration I wanted to work on. Then, just as the sheen was drying on the paper, I'd touch a loaded brush to it for that feathery-edged bleed effect I wanted. Then, for added control, I'd just lift the edge of my watercolor paper and control the bleed in whatever direction I tilted the paper. With Painter, you get a nice watercolor bleed in the line, but there are no controls yet to "tilt" your paper and let it run in one direction or another. The regular watercolor layers seem to have runny wash settings in some of the brushes, but I haven't figured out how to control their run. Another thing I liked about my traditional watercolor technique was in adding more dilute paint to an already wet darker area. It would yield some nice hard-edged wash passages when it dried as the dilute medium would send the darker pigment to the edges of the wash. Painter and Photoshop both have a hard-edged brush, but they seem to make each stroke hard-edged in whatever width brush you select, rather than making an entire passage into a pool with hard-edged borders. I feel like Painter must have a workaround to accomplish this as I remember reading about controlling the "wetness" of the paper somewhere, but I haven't discovered it yet.
I recently did some traditional watercolor illustrations just to reassure myself I hadn't atrophied from working mostly digital now. I was pleasantly surprised that I'm actually better with traditional media after experimenting digitally. It kind of impacts you in a way that you can visualize what you want to accomplish better, I think, and work more freely with the medium. I also find that my digital work will be better as well, when I switch back and forth, as the traditional work inspires me to emulate the effects digitally. I will say, traditional media is more fun, and there's just something in its directness that is very satisfying. But, no doubt about it, the digital work is way easier to modify and experiment with various color schemes while you work. I'm still much faster in traditional media than with digital, as I find I do more tweaking and retouching digitally where I know the exact effect I'll get traditionally before I touch brush to paper. In that sense, I think traditional media has a spontaneity about it that makes digital media look a bit overworked. The challenge is to capture that spontaneity, and as the digital brushes and effects improve, I think the differences between the two approaches will narrow.