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Art fun by Craig Deeley
Illustration and experimentation with digital art tools
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By: Craig Deeley,
on 4/22/2016
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From years ago. Colored pencil and Magic Pencil.
Monster designs. Luv to do them.
The best is just going for it. No must try to make it look "good" or like something totally familiar. And no prep. What lines go down are the ones. Sometimes the results are terrifically awkward. But they are also more free of imitation and limiting (ingrained/preconceived) notions of good design.
Both from 2007. Nearly a decade ago!!! Ack!
Or should that be: "Blaeh!", "HEE HEE HEE!", "Hiss!" and "Argh!" and "AroooOO!"
For me a primary and powerful influence, in the past, now and no doubt the future. Carl Barks was both writer and artist and excelled at both.
"The Old Castles Secret", 1948. An all time Favorite!
Carl Barks has had a fundimental influence on my life and art.
I can only acknowlege with gratitute the breadth of this mans impact on my career.
When I was very, very young my mother read to me from the Disney Comics and Stories and duck comics of the time. Mid 60's... Maybe that was unusual. It was definitely influential... My mother read to me when I was very, very young from the Disney Comics and Stories and duck comics of the time. I liked what I was looking at and my mother reading brought the comics to life. That was probably an unusual choice of read aloud material. Disney comic books along with books of all kinds.
Barks has had a huge influence on me from the pleasure of reading and looking at his art - a master of the comic form and character expression that I consciously learned to emulate and unconsciously find myself measuring what looks right by... To the point of having one two page duck story published:
My own adequate effort
Barks was the "Good Artist" for me and my siblings, just like umpteen thousands of fans around the world. We called him the "good artist" before ever hearing the phrase at large and could tell the difference between his art and any other artists. We also knew that Barks wrote a better story than anyone when it came to Disney Duck stories. There were a lot of lazy afternoons spent reading our collections of duck stories. A lot of pleasure got from those comic books.
The intelligence, wit and down to earth-iness that Barks put into his stories resonated with us (me) in a way that no other artist/writer has come close to. Comparing the level of humanity and intelligence in the old Barks duck stories to any comic really casts a harsh light on a large amount of what is published. Particularly material directed to "kids". Barks kept it for kids, assuming that (10 year old) kids were sharp and would know something of what his duck adventures were about. Barks also presented his stories with that old fashioned adventurous spirit and cultural imperialism that was the spirit of the times (til the 70's - 80's when navel gazing, zen = no thought (no statement) and virtual reality became the safe and humane form of adventure and cultural evangelism - that would be a rant for another time...)
What I bring forward from what I learned from Barks.
Staging. Barks built his stories like little plays in a box. This in-a-box style of presentation is something I have come to really appreciate in artists that mastered it. The confines of a box are like the confines of a stage (or TV) making an idea work in a strictly confined area. Telling stories in the confines of multiple boxes laid out in uniform rows - is a super skill. The little stage play that goes on in the boxes is all about the characters. The box format restricts the artist to a focus on character and character in setting. The story has to be about (human) drama.
Barks stages his scenes in a way that sets characters into fields of significance.
Character. Ground. Foreground, middle and background.
Characters are often bent right into the boxes and forced to interact with their environment.
Character personality.
Using more or less standard old fashioned Disney expressions, Barks was able to project emotion with his characters. (Interrupting this train of thought - as an artist learns more about someone who inspires him and WANTS to learn more - digging into what inspired the inspiring artist is important. LEARN who your favorite artist learned from. Learn from them AND learn who they learned from. The old Disney style of creating emotional expressions has been around a long time. Sharpened by smart artists working to create a visual vocabulary that reads in motion and from a distance.) Carl Barks used the standard visual vocabulary for emotions to tremendous advantage and enhanced it with tricks of the caricature trade that have been around for even longer. He did not skimp on putting feelings on the faces of his characters. He knew the "anatomy" of his characters and could have them express emotion from any angle.
Solidity.
Its a funny thing to talk about solidity or mass or volume in a medium that is two dimensional. I am drawn to art that has (implied) volume, mass, solidity. Barks' fields of significance is enhanced by each field having a mass and weight that convinces (me) that there is depth and weight in the world he is drawing. Its not just the black cast shadows. Its the way things look like they might have something on the back side. Or the way scenery and land masses seem to have gravity.
Line.
Barks' liquid line has personality itself that adds to the whole. Clean, thick/thin lines that carry significance... That frame the space inside and have flourish. The tight constraint of that line to the service of the art is also clear. No flyaway gesture lines. Just strong contour with personality.
That would be a virtue of Barks' work that makes it outstanding. Barks did not skimp. He put in more - his readers could tell the difference. The formula artists that drew similar characters at the same time often did so with a few (skimpy) poses and expressions, leaving the viewer feeling unsatisfied. Barks shared freely - the richness of his experience and thinking.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 3/21/2016
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A bad scan of a title page from a set of pages done for an Egmont publisher. Samples of a Disney Duck Story that I am sure is lost and forgotten. This was done in 1993-95 - thereabouts.
I was ecstatic at making a connection with Bob Foster (Art Director at the time for whatever branch of the European Disney publishers this was done for) and was learning a lot from his encouragement and feedback. The possibility of actually working as a Disney comic artist was real at that time. Not long after this the revival of Duck Stories and other Disney comics fizzled out.
I learned several things doing these pages.
I cannot draw small. These were some standard sized comic page dimension. I need to draw at least twice this size.
I also realized that the page rate for doing work like this would not be enough to pay my rent - let alone eat or afford any other modern convenience. I loved the idea of doing Disney duck comics. This was my highest ambition really. I had my heart in it - and I was pretty good at putting together the look and the feel. But… I could not live off it. For better or worse (who knows) - not becoming a new Duck Story artist was a major turning point in my career… I am sure I saved myself a lot of unnecessary stress. I am sure I traded that ambition for one that was better (marriage and family). I am sure I have not suffered much in terms of artistic expression… But I do still occasionally dream that old Duck Story artist/writer dream.
More on this… Later.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 3/16/2016
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A couple more experiments with Affinity Designer
A character design for a food product
a Dragon that needs some serious color redesign.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 3/14/2016
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More experiments with Affinity Designer tools and my own Brushes
The ability to sketch in a pretty robust pixel environment in AD is very handy. The rough sketch:
By: Craig Deeley,
on 3/10/2016
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An ink and watercolor look
Another water like medium look
A more opaque looking approach
A wet ink look
A dry brush look
By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/25/2016
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Experimenting with the application Affinity Designer.
A painterly approach. The bitmap image of the brush mapped to a vector stroke can produce some nice rich textured art.
A more graphical approach - using something like the colors the original comp of this image was made with.
The comp.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/10/2016
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A design comp from the vault. One of the first concept images done for a book of Nursery Rhymes.
This was deliberately a non standard composition with dramatic non specific shapes contrasting with very specific characters.
Searching for a graphical approach that was not necessarily literal - but carried weight and action thru mass and direction.
Color contrasts, again far from realistic - charge the image with drama.
It didn’t fly.
And maybe was not the kind of design best suited for small children… Too adult and intellectual. But fun as all get out!
By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/6/2016
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Testing out
Rebelle - mostly for the watercolor emulation aspect of the application.
The experience of live watercolor like fluid behavior and appearance is exciting.
Tons of potential for watercolor digital art making - particularly for web based (lower dpi, smaller images) type digital art.
Its a challenge learning way to make the application really deliver… Lots of learning to do to turn the mysterious into another great digital tool.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 9/14/2015
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Missed "old" but the villain is the same… Age - the villain = all those uninvited saggy things and lines where smooth used to be!
This done with Studio Artist and home made Presets
By: Craig Deeley,
on 8/23/2015
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Some Studio Artist watercolor like or absorbent paper like effects.
This uses a watercolor paper textured bottom layer and subsequent (upper) layers set to a Multiply-like blending mode.
(presets)
cd_vect_et_bleed
cd_sumi_flyingwhite...
cd_watercolor_bleed...
By: Craig Deeley,
on 8/20/2015
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Adobe Illustrator has come a long way... Particularly after Adobe absorbed Flash.
But for every move I could make in Flash or the defunct Expression3 in a few seconds… I have to drag myself thru some kind of heavy gravity atoms - to get the same effect in Illustrator. Powerful - yes. Quick and easy to use - No!
More and more I am finding the first quick and easy actions (of drawing) carry the core and spirit of what I am trying to “say”(illustrate/communicate)… The sluggishness - and multi step process to the achievement of marking - of old application design (like that of Illustrator) still drags me down by forcing me to be TOO deliberate. Not that I really love the potential lack of focus - lack of statement in spur of the moment, improvisational art making - but I do wish the fast power of first efforts was more available in illustration software.
Rough comps thru Photoshop are the greatest. The heart is in the comp!
More on this later.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 6/22/2015
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Little is Small
The first page of a short comic here:
Little Bridge is a collection of bite sized comic stories. Each story comes from ideas I had as a kid. They are meant for kids (of all ages). Big things from small characters points of view. Sharing some of the little wonders that inspired me. Enjoy!
By: Craig Deeley,
on 5/18/2015
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Some fooling around with vector based SA Presets.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 5/9/2015
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A little:
http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/
A little Studio Artist watercolor like presets
By: Craig Deeley,
on 5/4/2015
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8 bit, title page art from educational software of the early 90's.
Making art with the old applications of the time and hard, square pixels was a skill like nothing artists today have to learn.
This image was made of a couple dozen colors (out of a strict, but at the time super generous - 256 color palette)
It looked good on an 256 color (Mac) monitor.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 4/25/2015
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Tension, Doubt, Performance anxiety… Can he catch it? Can it get away?
By: Craig Deeley,
on 4/23/2015
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By: Craig Deeley,
on 4/6/2015
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Some preproduction images for a project pitch.
Grey tones added 2015 for fun.
These were intended as examples of illustrations the camera would pan over while a story was read.
By: Craig Deeley,
on 4/5/2015
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A fuzzy experiment in raster presets SAV5
cd_watercolor_bleed
and
cd_watercolor_beaut
By: Craig Deeley,
on 3/1/2015
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Experiments with Vector Paint Presets SAV5
cd_vect_cakedline series
By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/24/2015
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Some experiments with a grainy stroke vector presets in SA V5
and silly fun with raster presets
By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/22/2015
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By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/9/2015
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The scene is a hyper idealized representation of a little water runoff "cove" I remember from childhood adventures. The noise of the tiny rivulet of water back under the grass always seemed to invite exploration - but the only way to get back into the cove was thru the water - and I was too chicken to step in and get soaked.
Some experimentation with a very liquid look to vector based presets
These were meant to simulate the gradated tonal look of sumo ink paint strokes and water application to existing strokes
cd-vect_sumi-longsoft series
By: Craig Deeley,
on 2/3/2015
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Fake old world book cover using SAV4 and Photoshop
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