[Rag]

I wanted to ask a few of the more veteran digital artists a question. How can I get control over my painting without meticulously drawing. Let me explain..Take Spooge for instance, in his loose paintings, marker-like scribbles actually convey a sense of light, form, etc. yet my scribbles appear to be scribbles. I seem to want to draw each part of the painting one piece at a time, finishing each part as I go along, screw by screw, nut by nut, hair by hair.etc.. I was never good at underpainting because of this.
And now back to my question.. How does one overcome this habit of "detail first"
I hope you guys understand what I mean. I want to be loose at first and then "finish the piece towards the end..What do you do?
Thanks,
Perry

[xXxPZxXx]

yeah I love that style too. I hate my portraits with a passion so I scrap them. they get so airbrushy. I think it was Micke who had the portraits that had wonderful values with extremely nice brush strokes and texture. that is what I would like to do. Just can't get it to work...

/me goes off to try

-PZ-

[Derek]

Well, you've done the first bit, which is recognizing that you go after the nuts and bolts first. Now, stop it.
Seriously, a friend of mine does the same thing, and I've been trying to tell him to simply stop for a really long time. Feel like I'm beating my head against the wall!!!
What you need is a process that you can fall back on when you start to do this, and probably before that too...
What I mean is, for now, go through your pieces in a fairly meticulous way until you find you've driven this demon from you. Immediately place your lightest lights, your darkest darks (this is of course assuming you've answered every question in your drawing that you can). Decide the atmosphere, the lighting, all the whlie reminding yourself that addressing these issues will let you place your details with confidence and that they can be a reward for slugging it out like this.
As for the looseness... you have to have the faith that you're putting these areas in in the right regions... it's like a great watercolor: you float the color on and let the paper and water do the work. The more you try to 'paint' the more you're really interefering. So with the tablet or marker, know the basic forms, the spheres, cubes, cylinders etc taht your object is built of and paint and create those, 'float' your tone in. They will give you the strength and solidity that you desire. The scribbles... if they are placed correctly actually represent something. They are not as random as one may think, but placed with skill they appear to be effortless.
May seem a bit simplistic, but when you start to see the results of working the broad, basic and necessary first, you'll wonder how you ever got attracted to the details in the first place. Believe me...
Oh, and you may want to consider working in grayscale first, two value areas-a realm of light and dark that are separated, and save your highlights for the end too.

[ October 22, 2001: Message edited by: Derek Smith ]

[Rag]

Hey guys,
Thanks a ton for the comments. They were actually what I was looking for. My mind just doesn't want to think broad and free it wants to examine the minute little things. But I will push myself in the other direction, and if all else fails. I could always strive to become a technical illustrator. Thanks again, I'll post some loose and open work as soon as I can get the courage to create some. I just hope you don't go and confuse my work with Craig's, that would be so embarrassing for him.

[nova]

I've been told my art sometimes should be cleaned up a little, so I guess I'm in this category. I'm not really a veteran, but I've done my share of pixel mashing

I don't know about you guys, but I'll tell my story .. er ya. I started doing fairy tightly-colored drawing and [digital] painting, learning the basics of drawing and coloring. I colored mostly flat shades and messed around with shading and stuff. Later on, I got more comfortable with coloring and drawing, and was able to 'mess' it up a little. I still have control over what I'm doing, and can paint and draw more or less clean/messy or detailed if I want. Right now it's all about the effect I want the art to have, since I can choose Check the most recent work on my site to undertand a little better what I mean: [www.geocities.com/blackpixelss] In figure drawing, it took me a while to figure out how people can make all those circles at first and then go from there. It drove me insane. I practiced more, and found MY way of seeing and figured out a way of percieving that worked.

I usually sketch out very roughly with black paint on a tinted background [grey, tan, light blue, etc] shapes, then start blocking in areas of color [midtones], then add highlights, then add shadows. In that order kinda. It really depends. From there I make forms sharper and add smaller shapes and things. Usually, eventually, the sketch layer is wasted away to very little but a few lines to make the image look sketchier, or structure the painting a little.

I think in the case of Craig Mullins, he has such a good grasp of the structure/perspective/shading/lighting that he can go crazy and sketch like he does. He knows the foundation and technicalities of drawing/painting, and can mess with the rest.

So .. what I'm trying to say is that [most of the time, unless you're really good] you should gain control over basic drawing and lighting before you go crazy. It's kind of like in music. You learn the notes and theory, and then if you want, you can improvise all you like.

How does one overcome the habit of 'detail first'? Practice .. lots of it. You can eventually become comfortable with the medium and your coordination gets better to the point you can more or less whip out a sketch. It all readlly comes down to practice and finding a way of doing things. One artist [www.yazstudios.com] starts with detail and ends with detail. It's peculiar. When it comes down to it, we all find our way of working.

whoa that was long

[ October 22, 2001: Message edited by: Nova ]

[Strawberrysauce]

hi, im definately NOT a veteran but im glad to see that im not the only one who has this problem, id say the answer (comming from an amature) would be practice.

i remember drawing an A2 still life years ago with a technical pencil! i spent days doing the smallest details, and in the end wasn't very happy with it.

look at the bigger picture, and really force yourself to study the basic shapes and colours of a scene, block it in with a big ass brush and dont start narrowing down the details until your happy with the basic shape / composition.

im sure there'll be a lot more concise and detailed answers on this subject to follow...

[Mr. T]

I'm no veteran here, but the principle is, at least how I understood it, to draw first with large brushes, blocking the main shapes, and then slowly decreasing the brush size while adding details. Spooge (i think) once said (rephrased) "open a 1000x1000 pic and paint with 200 pixels wide brush. see how far you can get.".
most of people start with one corner and go diagonally, adding details in interesting parts, ending with a half-done pic which get dumped sooner or later (Spooge's lines again ) and the colors, values, tones... *sigh* i'm still learning too

Some veterans could really help here.

[balistic]

Yeah, the key to a good loose painting is to start general and work towards specific. Block in major shapes with big brushes, and only add detail where it needs to be.

Whatever you do, don't "finish" one part of the image and then move on to the next . . . you'll end up with something that looks disunified.

Don't get too specific . . . suggest a few details and let the brain of the viewer do the rest.

[Socar MYLES]

The best thing to remember is not to worry too much about meticulousness in the beginning stages. Be messy...experiment with colour, line, and form. If you're going to paint piece by piece, start with the background and work forward. (That's what works for me, anyway.) You can get as detailed as you want in the finishing stages, but in the beginning, just worry about composition.

Mr. Mullins' 'scribbles' always look excellent because, although they're loose, they aren't random. If you spend even half as much time planning as you do painting, you'll probably see a great improvement. But if you start with a little eye, then add a nose, and a mouth, and a jawline, and hair, and a shirt, and outward from there, you'll just end up with a lot of parts which don't really add up to a coherent whole. So plan out your colour and lighting schemes first. Even if you don't actually put in every colour that's going to be there, you can set down a pretty good idea of colour scheme in five minutes or less.

I have a tutorial on my method at www.gorblimey.com/tutorials/4.html ...I'm hardly in Spooge's league, but some people have found it useful.