SiDEBAR interview with Michael Kaluta

Once again, the guys at SiDEBAR have added yet another stellar artist to their Barchives.



Click here to hear their interview with legendary comic artist and illustrator, Michael William Kaluta:

http://www.sidebarnation.com/my_weblog/2012/08/podcast-episode-196-michael-wm-kaluta.html

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2012 Hugo Award Winners

Congratulations to John Picacio for winning this year's Hugo for Best Professional Artist!



Having been nominated for years, this is John's first time winning, and deservedly so. This was a particularly stellar year for John, having created 12 new pieces for George R. R. Martin's official 'A Song of Ice and Fire' calendar.

'A Song of Ice and Fire' art by John Picacio

The complete list of 2012 Hugo winners is as follows:

BEST NOVEL

Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)



BEST NOVELLA

“The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s, September/October 2011)



BEST NOVELETTE

“Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)



BEST SHORT STORY

“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2011)



BEST RELATED WORK

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight (Gollancz)



BEST GRAPHIC STORY

Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)



BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM

Game of Thrones (Season 1) (HBO)



BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM

“The Doctor’s Wife” (Doctor Who) (BBC Wales)



BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM

Sheila Williams



BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM

Betsy Wollheim



BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

John Picacio



BEST SEMIPROZINE

Locus, edited by Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, et al.



BEST FANZINE

SF Signal, edited by John DeNardo



BEST FAN WRITER

Jim C. Hines



BEST FAN ARTIST

Maurine Starkey



BEST FANCAST

SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente

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Painting Spider-Man

By Paolo Rivera

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 22. 2007. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Just a quick post today (but with lots of artwork).  By this point in my career (2007) I had settled into what would become my standard painting technique: a monochromatic underpainting in gouache, followed by a thin layer of Acryla Gouache for color, all on top of 11 × 17″ bristol board (standard size for comic book art).  I use mostly gouache these days, but it's still the same basic process.

I've also included some "Wacky Reference" from the weekly feature on my own blog. I'm nearing the 200th installment and celebrating with a contest. Full details here. It's your chance to win an original painting from me, and be featured on my blog. Happy Labor Day!

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 1. 2007. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 9. 2007. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 13. 2007. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 17. 2007. Gouache and acrylic on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 11. Acryla Gouache on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Mythos: Spider-Man, Page 7. 2007. Acrylic and gouache on bristol board, 11 × 17″.

Pencils

Digital Color Study

Layout. Pencil on paper, 4 x 6".

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Sergio Toppi 1932-2012

The great Italian comics artist and illustrator Sergio Toppi passed away several weeks ago. Posting the following artworks is a way to remember him.

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Digital Skin

-By Serge Birault

I think I have to speak about skin because I had a lot of questions about this. Here's a list of tricks to do paint more "realistic" skin with your computer ...

---

I. Skin Tones



Avoid simple gradients. You cannot obtain convincing skin if you only add black and white to a basic skin tone. It's more complex than that.



Of course, all skins are different but you can try this :



- A little bit of olive green on the shadow.

- A little bit of blue under the eyes (lower lids).

- A little bit of red on the cheek bones.



Just work with low opacity (0 - 5%), on a separeted layer and with the soft round brush.



By the way, if the contrast is not good, it will not work. Contrast is more important than color.

About black skin, I never find a good and single way. It's really depending on the color of the skin. As black skin is usually very reflective, the light has a big influence on the tones.

---

II. Influence of lights



Don't forget the ambient and the direct lights could changed your basic skin tones. With a strong light, shadows are very dark and the contrast of your picture has to be high, for example.



The color of the light is  important too. Your palette depends on it too.



You can easily adjust the contrast/the tones/the luminosity of some parts of your picture with your favourite software. It's not the better way to work but it could sometimes be helpful.

---

III. Skin texture



I use the "dry brush" to do skin textures. It works pretty well if you use it carefully. Once again, try to work with very low opacity and on a separeted layer (so you could change the opacity of the layer too).



For the beauty spots and the freckles, I use the soft round brush ... A very small one. Working on a high resolution picture is easier ... It's not very long and you don't have to be very precise.

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Sketchbook 2012 Shipping Out!

by Justin Gerard

Sketchbook 2012: Ents & Orcs ships out today!  

 The first 50 are individually numbered and have a personal drawing in them.  

#1 this year went to Dave from Kalamazoo, who managed to order in the first 15 seconds of it being live somehow. I believe that aliens were somehow involved. Dave isn't saying anything.  Either way, he will be getting a dragon. 

The sketches this year feature a lot of wizards, dragons, vikings, elves and as you might expect, a lot of Ents...

 ...and orcs. 

But there are also dwarves,

 And others of a less than savory nature...

As well as some old friends, 

And the Were-rabbit makes his return for #40:

If you haven't gotten one and are interested, there are still a few left on the Store.

And I will of course be selling them at DragonCon this weekend in Atlanta.  

Thanks again for all the orders and support! You guys are awesome. 

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Touching Up

by Donato

This past week found me on vacation with the family (thus excuse the brevity of this post), but before that happened, I had four uninterrupted days in the studio.  Time which allowed me to put finishing touches on a major commission and luckily find rare hours with which I could revisit a handful of paintings which had been lying around the studio begging for a little love and care.  Why are there unfinished works around the studio? (a laughable question I know!)  Let me make excuses...



As you can imagine, the constraints of commercial assignments place deliver dates above any other factor in the work.  The old adage of an illustrator is that there are three issues at stake in commercial work: quality, price and deadline.  The client gets to pick two of those, the artist the third.  Thus with many commercial assignments,  date and price are the main constraining factors, with the artist left to decide on the quality they wish to deliver.



While I always strive to give my clients the best my skills can offer, sometimes a bit more time is needed on a work of art, time my commercial clients tend not to have.  Therefore, I polish the work so that it is fine for publication, with the intent that I will revisit and put that last 5% back into it to at a near but later date.   Many times those near dates stretch into months and then into years!  As a traditional artist, once a painting leaves the studio you will never get to work on it again, and it is for this reason I will only exhibit and offer for sale original works which are 100% completed.



While I have dozens of works in this purgatory stage, some good news this past week is that I was able to finish eight oils, and they are now ready to photograph and share online and at conventions.  Dan Dos Santos recently posted on how he touched up work for DragonCon, likely with similar reasoning behind the presenting of his works.  Luckily I am not alone in my procrastinations!



Below are two of the oil paintings.  I will post the others when scans are finally ready.  To some of you who have seen these works in other venues, the changes may be imperceptible, but there certainly are surface modifications and detailing which makes all the difference to me...



Enjoy!

Genghis Khan    18" x 24"   Oil on Panel   commissioned by Der Spiegel

Shattered Pillars  16" x 30"  Oil on Panel   cover commission for novel by Elizabeth Bear 

Shattered Pillars   rough drawings

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Menzoberranzan

By Jesper Ejsing

This is a cover I did a while back, that has just been released. The book is called Menzoberranzan - City of Intrigue, and is all about Drows. The assignment asked for a beautiful female drow, flying through her underground city.



Here is what i think is super difficult about Drows: they have black skin and live underground! Which means you are actually painting a dark figure - since they also like to dress black and dark - in a poorly lit environment. As you can see, I chose to do a dark figure against a light back ground.



The steps I am showing are: Thumb/sketch, transferred sketch on board, value version on board and final.



When looking at it now I really wanna change the armguards. they look like something out of a Spiderman Movie.



The original is size 40cm by 50cm and is painted in acrylic. The inked value version I inked with a waterproof filtpen and toned with black acrylic.

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Dragon Con

-By Dan dos Santos

AUGUST 31 -  SEPTEMBER 3,  2012

Dragon Con starts this Friday, and I am super honored to be this year's Artist Guest of Honor.



Some of the AGoH's responsibilities include creating a custom piece of art for the program guide (which I will share with you all in a few days), giving various lectures and demos, and putting on an exhibit in the art show.



Normally when I exhibit for a convention like Spectrum Live or IlluXcon, I rarely bring more than 5 or 6 large paintings. You really can't fit much more than that in a 10' x 10' booth. But being the Guest of Honor at Dragon Con means I have to fill the space of 3 regular booths. That's a LOT of wall to cover!



For those of you who have never exhibited at a large convention, you may not realize how much work goes into actually prepping for just a few days of exhibition. From business cards to lighting... there are a LOT of things to do. I have spent the past week touching up more than a dozen paintings, varnishing, matting, framing, printing, crating, and finally... shipping!



A week's worth of work quite literally came down to me driving 2 crates down the highway at 75 miles per hour, and making the Fed-Ex cut off today with no more than 4 minutes to spare! A feat, I should acknowledge, which would have been impossible without the help of my stellar assistant, Lindsey.



So what was in all those crates? Quite a lot, actually! In addition to the typical prints, books, and DVDs, I will also have with me more than a dozen original works. Here is a sampling of just some of the pieces I will be bringing:

I will also have with me 2, as of yet, unseen paintings... and a limited edition print.



Dragon Con is a pretty large show, and as such, a lot of really talented actors, writers, and artists show up for it. This year's artist list includes:



Justin Gerard

Todd Lockwood

Bill Sienkiewicz

David Mack

Tim Sale

Neal Adams

Larry Elmore

Bernie Wrightson

William Stout

Mark Zug

and....

Stan Lee



But why else is Dragon Con worth visiting? One word... COSPLAY. Dragon Con has one of the most active cosplay communities of any convention, even San Diego Comic Con doesn't compare. It's so big, they literally have a parade. These aren't just your average Halloween costumes. Some of these things are movie quality works of art! Don't believe me? Just watch the video below, it'll blow you away.

I hope to see some of our readers there! If you think you're going to make it, let us know in the comments section.

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