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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Sketchbook 2012: Ents & Orcs

By Justin Gerard

Sketchbook 2012

9 x 6, 44 Pages, Full Color

Each year for the past few years I have been doing a new sketchbook based around one of my personal projects that I am engaged in at the time. Some previous examples are The Silver Age in 2010, and The St. George and Other Works in 2011.



This year, I am delving back into Tolkien. Specifically, I have been working on the struggle between the Ents and the Orcs from The Two Towers.  Apart from being some of Tolkien's most interesting characters, there is a dynamic that exists between Ents and Orcs that has always fascinated for me.

It is a curiously human relationship that seems to exist between these two distinctly non-human characters.  While they are constructions of fantasy, they offer a reflection of our own struggle to both master nature and at the same time care for it.

The Sketchbooks are going live today at 12 Noon EST and I will be selling them HERE.



All are signed, but as with last year, I will be doing drawings in the first 50 orders.

Click HERE to see how some of last year's first 50 turned out.



I will also be selling these at DragonCon in Atlanta later this month. Stop by and say hi if you happen to be out that way!

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Dragon Watercolor and Final

By Justin Gerard

Color Comp

Last time I posted a color comp and a few studies for a recent personal piece.  This is how the watercolor turned out:

 12" x 18" Watercolor on Bristol

As you can see, the watercolor is not nearly as intense as the color comp.  This is something I run into a lot when I do really saturated color comps.  I would like to say that it is a "feature" of my work, rather than a deficiency in my own ability, but I never plan for it.  Somewhere along the way I get taken in by the subtleties and then can't quite bring myself to take it further traditionally.  

Which is where the digital comes in:

Digital work over Watercolor 

The digital allows me to get a lot closer to that initial comp, while at the same time leaving the watercolor alone.  But this, like invading Russia before a winter, leads to its own set of problems. For one, things become more tedious.  In the initial color comp, you are pulled along by the joy of exploration.  There are still mysteries and borders never crossed in the world. But with our comp, we have already been there.  Now we are going back with magnifying lenses and little shovels and rock sampling kits.  It takes a different mindset for exploration. And while I usually love it, it's generally not as exciting as the initial comp for me.

I find that often the only time I ever get excited about a piece again, is after it is printed. Only then can I really judge wether a digitally modified piece has been a success or not.  The digital format can tell awful lies. Sometimes you need to get a piece into the light of physical reality before you can really know. 

Until then, like others whose armies got bogged down in Russia in the dead of winter, I am usually left second-guessing myself and wishing the final was a little closer to the original comp.   

---

In other news: I have been working on Sketchbook 2012.  Preview next week!

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New Work for DragonCon 2012

By Justin Gerard

So I have been busy working on some new imagery for DragonCon 2012. I will have a booth there (as will fellow Muddy, Dan Dos Santos.) If you will be attending, stop by and say hello.



It will be my first year at the convention, and I want to make a good impression.

So I canned my original idea of Ninjas vs. Bears, it seeming out of place for this event, and went with something more traditional. (I am not ruling out Ninjas vs. Bears for next year's Spectrum Live though.)



These are my studies for a more DragonCon-themed image. This one continues the thread of; if I was a player in some fantasy story, I'd probably be the guy who made the really dumb mistake and got us in all this trouble.

In this case, our hero is thinking, "maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all," as he tries to quietly draw his sword. The dragon has its head up, suddenly alert.



Next week: Watercolor and Final.

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The Digital Silmarillion: Joining the Dark Side

By Justin Gerard

So I know I said I wasn't planning on doing (or monkeying with) any of these Silmarillion pieces digitally. But I gave in and joined the Dark Side for a bit to push the Glorfindel and the Balrog piece a little further.  

I can't help it, sometimes I just have to monkey with the paintings. This version of the image is much more like the frame that was in my head originally, with a little more emphasis put on the fire and atmosphere. Hopefully the digital work doesn't affect the overall classic feel I was going for in the original.  Having things turn out too synthetic looking is always a concern when painting in Photoshop. 

In the end, I just love pushing the traditional parts further on the computer. Like the Dark Side, Photoshop can be a lot of fun to work in once you really figure it out.  

But this is where it starts guys. One day your happily adjusting Photoshop dials, the next thing you know you've built a Deathstar and are blowing up Alderaan. 

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Billy Bones Character Design Process

-By Justin Gerard

Pencil Drawing, Watercolor, and then Watercolor and Digital

This was a brief experiment in working more opaquely than I usually do. (Both in the watercolor and in the digital.)



The digital work is very minimal. In CS5 it is just one Color Balance layer and a few normal layers.



Usually I will use hundreds, nay thousands, of multiply and screen layers to finish even a simple character when I am working over a much lighter watercolor.

As for the brushes themselves, they were mostly Photoshop standards and a few pencil brushes of my own. Nothing fancy since the traditional watercolor does most of the texture work.



I didn't do very well getting bright colors in the original watercolor. But if I ever need to paint something so that it looks like a complete mess, then I am pretty confident that I will knock it out of the park.

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Dear Wacom, Where is My Hoverboard?

-By Justin Gerard

Digital Painting is one of the most amazing technologies to hit the art world in centuries. It has affected the very way that people perceive and interact with information on a daily basis. Most of the interest (and money) from the average person for art in this era is largely spent on films and video games.



In 2010 $25 billion was spent on video games, and an unthinkable amount for movies.

And currently the ones that are the most successful are extremely reliant on digital art for their visuals.



Consider this from 2010:

 Source: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/2010.php

How many of these were heavily reliant on digital art?

Perhaps because of this, most of the progress in recent years has been largely in the 3d field. Video games and rendering in movies have progressed at a frightening pace. Games look real. Animated films look really real.



Yet, 2d digital painting tools themselves have remained largely unchanged since their introduction. Even though 2d is where all of it begins, in the conceptual and pre-vis artwork stages.

The Pen and Tablet



For the input devices themselves, apart from pressure sensitivity, (which Wacom doubled from 1024 to 2048 in 2009) we have been stuck on the same technology for about 11 years now, with little or no meaningful progress in the area of actual painting. We have seen the tablets become more streamlined and get more buttons to do fancy things unrelated to painting, but nothing to actually really improve the input process for the pen.



To understand this better:  Essentially what happens is, when working in Adobe Photoshop with a Wacom tablet, what we have is a binary input from the tablet that detects where on the tablet an input occurred and at what pressure it occurred at. This input is transmitted to Photoshop, which then rubber stamps a pattern on the matching area on the screen, and modifies this rubber stamped pattern based on pre-programmed settings.



So in the end, it is synthesizing the look of traditional media by pasting an image where the brush tells it to.

The Wacom Cintiq

For the screens, we have seen Wacom do truly amazing things with the Cintiq, which allows input directly on the surface of the screen, creating the uncanny illusion of actually painting. And the Cintiqs are improving with each iteration. (A thinner screen surface, a faster response time, more pressure sensitivity, and so on.)

But this improvement is limited to the tablet itself, and so far still nothing has been done to make the brush part of digital painting feel more natural.



It could be argued that digital painting doesn't need to feel like traditional painting. That it is its own animal.



 Consider the works of:

 Craig Mullins: 

www.goodbrush.com

 Android Jones: 

www.androidjones.com

Ruan Jia: 

http://ruanjia.com/

These artists are taking the tools for what they are and are doing incredible things with them. They are blurring the lines between digital, conceptual, illustration, and fine art. They are taking the medium beyond itself.

But I still can't help but feel that while all the other technologies, and specifically touchscreen and 3d modeling technology, are progressing; that input for digital painting is still in its infancy. Or at least in a sustained adolescence from neglect.



So, to just lay it on the table, what I want is something like this:

To work at 24" x 18" touch screen,

That is as responsive as the Intuos5,

Which allows me to use brushes on the surface to make the strokes.



I could see this going 2 ways:



1. A Supersensitive Tablet



A tablet like the Intuos5, but that responds to all media that it comes in contact with (such as your hands, or a pencil or a traditional hogs hair bristle brush) and captures all of what feels on the surface, and transfers that to Adobe/Painter, which then displays the brushstroke on the monitor.



Interesting developments along these lines can be seen in devices like the Optipaint.  (Article here)

And in Disney Studios Touché.



Or,



2. A Cintiq With a Fiber Optic Brush



The Brush would have fiber optic bristles, which would transmit light from their tips (and if possible, from several nodes along each bristle as well) to optical sensors on the screen itself. If it were possible to have several nodes along the fiber of the bristles, then it would be possible to have even more input for how each bristle is bending, thus allowing the programs to render a much more accurate representation of the brushstroke you just applied.



Patents for a brush like this already exist. Check this out: http://www.google.com/patents/US5646650



This would allow true to life brushwork and would be what I would consider the Holy Grail of digital painting.



Note: Fiber Optics make the most sense to me, but then again, I failed Algebra 2, so maybe I am not going to be the first person Wacom's Engineering Department is going to listen to on what they should use specifically. I would accept anything that accomplished something similar to this.



The traditional painters who are still reading will be smirking at all these hoops I am jumping through for this.

(Hey Gerard, I have an idea, why not just paint on this new technology called paper with this new technology called watercolor?)

And yes, I am painting traditionally more and more these days as my frustration with the limitations of digital increases.

But I would love to see this technology become fully realized. The possibilities are amazing and I can't help but want to see them become reality.



Why Do I Demand this of Wacom?

Because Wacom has long been the industry leader in this field, and since they brought about some of the greatest advancements in the field of digital painting, I am hereby laying the burden upon their shoulders to take the next steps.



There are already many other companies hot on their trail.  The Flow for the iPad. The Next Window for the desktop.

But these are not true digital canvases.  They leave us with a sense that the technology exists to make this happen, but without anyone who can actually provide it. (The point here being that if Wacom wants to remain the industry leader, it should definitely listen to me on this, even though I failed Algebra 2.)



Lastly, some might argue that this is the job of the programs themselves. The 2 industry giants being Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop.



Here is why this won't happen from them: Adobe has improved a little (for the digital painter) in the last decade. It is overall more stable than it was, and its brushes are on their way to catching up with those of Painter. But with their pending move towards a renting "cloud" model after CS6, I am doubtful that we will ever again see any meaningful progress from them. When a company has a captive user market, that must pay them a monthly fee to even use the product, then that company no longer has any incentive to improve its product. Whereas before, they had to at least have the appearance of new features to entice the market to pay for an upgrade.



With the new cloud model we will be paying more than we were before, with no likelihood of any real improvements. I am not counting on them to have much to do with improving the state of digital painting tools.



For more on this, read: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/22/adobe-officially-unveils-cs6-and-its-49month-all-inclusive-creative-cloud-subscription-service/ 



(Wether the cloud model is a good idea or a bad idea is perhaps a subject we can take up in a future discussion. The question of what to do about piracy is a legitimate concern on their part. The monthly usage fee for a program that may cease improving itself is a legitimate concern on ours.)





Too Long; Didn't Read: 

I want you Wacom, to take the current Wacom pen, which is a marvel, and multiply it times 100. I don't care if you have to do it with nanobots, gel, cold fusion or beaver pelts. Just make it happen.  

We are counting on you for this.  





And for our hoverboards. Thank you.





No beaver pelts were hurt in the making of this article.  Please send all other complaints to: JustinGerardillustration (at) gmail (dot) com.

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Back from Spectrum

-By Justin Gerard

Today's post will be brief as I am still recovering from the awesomeness that was Spectrum Live 2012.



I can't remember the last time I have had so much fun. Apart from how great it is to get together with old friends and see what everyone has been up to this whole time, it was great to meet so many new artists that came out for this event.



It was also really great to see so many of the European artists make it out. There is just so much talent in Europe but it seems like we rarely ever get to cross paths with them, which is a shame.

Jean-Baptiste Monge, Paul Bonner and Petar Meseldzija all came.



Monge did a watercolor demo that I showed up for a half hour early because, well... it's J.B. Monge.

Bonner brought some really wonderful prints, a new sketchbook and a few of his flabbergastingly detailed originals. (I offered him my car as a trade at one point.)

And Petar brought some of the most gorgeous oil paintings I have ever seen.

Every time I go to these events I get extremely depressed at how amazing all the other artist's work is and wondering what I have been doing all these years. But I also leave extremely inspired and eager to try new approaches and start on new images. I am really looking forward to getting started on some new work.

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The Silmarillion: Luthien

By Justin Gerard

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The Silmarillion: Glorfindel and the Balrog

By Justin Gerard

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The Silmarillion: Glaurung

-By Justin Gerard

To see more from the Silmarillion project, check out the rest of the show at Gallery Nucleus.

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The Silmarillion: Fingon and Gothmog

-By Justin Gerard



"Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, high-captain of Angband, was come; and he drove a dark wedge between the Elvenhosts, surrounding King Fingon, and thrusting Turgon and Hurin aside towards the Fen of Serech. Then he turned upon Fingon. That was a grim meeting. At last Fingon stood with his guard dead about him..."



-From The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

More imagery from the The Silmarillion show on display at Gallery Nucleus.

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Show Opening: The Silmarillion

By Justin Gerard

On April 14, I will be having a show at Gallery Nucleus. The show is based around J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.



This piece is from the fall of Glorfindel, which is a precursor to a similar event that takes place in the Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf confronts the Balrog in Moria.

Not much is written about this particular scene in the Silmarillion.  In fact, it lasts only 2 lines, which end in: "...And both fell to ruin in the abyss."  But it is one of the things I love a great deal about Tolkien, that he creates such a rich world, that even really brief passages are loaded with possibilities.

The show will feature watercolor paintings as well as studies and developmental drawings. I will be posting more of these in the weeks to come.  For more information on it check out the post on Gallery Nucleus's website.

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