Process: Painting "Alone in the Dark"

Monkey here today, for a quick run-down of my process while painting a very recent piece, which I call "Alone in the Dark." In the photo above, the weird blue light coming diagonally across the upper left is just a lens flare.

So for a figurative piece where I want to really convey a specific emotion, I shoot reference. While others might be masters of expressions without reference, I am not, so I got our digital camera, a little work lamp, a sheet of blue acetate, some masking tape, a black cloth, and asked for the assistance of an awesome model, Seal.

If you don't have someone else you can ask to model, you can always do it yourself. I must admit, it is much easier to work with someone else. If you can't afford to pay someone, ask other artists if they might need a model of their own, and do a trade-sie.


So the above photo is primarily the one I worked off of. I like the hand positions in this photo, but I wasn't completely sold on her head position. I skimmed through some other photos I had snapped in our little 10-minute photo shoot, and after doing some Photoshop work, adjusting the levels, adding a very transparent gradient of aqua, I ended up with this:

With this as my reference, I started to paint. I paint with acrylics, and I like using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics. For this painting, I used my usual palette set-up, which consists of:

titanium white, unbleached titanium (lazy painter's warm white), mars black, yellow oxide, cadmium yellow light hue, burnt umber, cadmium red medium hue, alizarin crimson hue permanent, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue (green shade), veridian hue permanent, and dioxazine purple. I will sometimes add extra colors to the palette if I need a large quantity of a certain color that I don't want to mix (I also keep a tube of magenta and an aqua handy), but usually I just stick with these colors and mix everything.

I also got a tube of ivory black to warm up the black since I was doing a cool light, but you can just as well mix some alizarin into your black to warm it up a bit if you stick with mars black.

I did a direct drawing onto the canvas using watered-down burnt umber. I mainly went for general proportions and gesture at this point. So you can see, I didn't quite hit that target on my first go, but since acrylics dry fast and you can paint over stuff, I decided to fix it later and just start painting.

I laid in a dark black for the shadowy background and mixed up a nice green to really push the creepy atmosphere and emphasize the unearthly lighting situation (which is also coming from below, which you don't see very often and adds to the creep-factor).

I also laid in a green underpainting where the flesh would be. Why? Because I like the effect of laying down a blue-green in my portraits and then layering fleshtones on top, especially if you're putting them in green light.

I then blocked in the lights and darks of the shirt, using a thin black wash to fill in the shirt, as I didn't want to lose the form of the shirt too early, while I was still figuring out the folds and construction and form. If I was a crazier painter, I could probably have gone with some opaque black, but I didn't want to push it, so I took it easy. I hit the light parts with green, since that's the color of the light.

The next step was to paint over the green with some unbleached titanium mixed with a bit of cad red light and yellow oxide. I also added the shadows on the skin, and took a bit of time to carve out the shape of the hand.


So the above photo is taken after about 3 hours of work. I paint fairly fast, thanks to a Quick Studies class I took at Academy, but I had to slow down a bit since I hadn't attempted to do anything even remotely realistic in a while, and sort of forgot what I had learned.

Tthis next photo was taken after about another 3 hours of work. What did I do in these three hours to go from weird chalk-lady to a decent approximation of a scared Eve?


Well, I spent a good two hours or so really studying the folds and buttons on her shirt. For some reason, I get a kick out of painting collared shirts on people, so I ended up devoting a bit too much time to the clothing, but it turned out pretty swell.

I also slowly painted, and repainted, and repainted again Eve's face, working to smoothly blend and capture all the subtle colors that are in her face in the reference photo. I also had a bunch of facial proportions all wrong, so I repainted her nose about three times. The first time it was too small, then it was too low and big, and then it was too high, and then I figured it wasn't worth it to go for a perfect likeness and decided that the nose looked proportional and real to the painting and that was that.

I also took time to start painting the hands. I then realized, while painting, that something seemed funny, and somehow during the painting process I stopped using the photo reference, and fudged the hands quite a bit. After carving a bit away, repositioning some fingers, and generally undoing a lot of the preliminary mistakes I had made, I repainted the fingers.

And after another hour or two, I decided I was finished. During those last few hours, I pulled out some highlights on her hair, softened a lot of the cast shadows on her face, sculpted the eyes a bit more, rendered the lips, added a bit of detail to the hands, and repainted her neck so that the anatomy worked a bit better.



Ta-da! So after about 50 minutes of reference shooting and prep work, and about 9-11 hours of painting, the finished product is here. I saw the painting starting to take a pulp-horror paperback book look early on, and decided that I would try to keep it in that vein as opposed to going for ultra-realism (which I find I just don't have the patience for).

Oh yeah! By the way, I also use Golden brand Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin) to thin my paints if I want to sort of glaze over dried paint to smooth transitions or tint parts certain colors. I used a lot of medium while painting the hands and face, due to the high concentration of blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Due to the green light literally going through the skin, hitting the red blood, and bouncing back, you get this weird mixture of cool pinks and warm greens, with strange transitions in-between.

I hope you learned something from this process post, and feel free to ask any specific questions in the comments. While this isn't the style I'm currently working in, it is nice to bust out a creepy painting that flexes some of my classical realism training that I got in school, and also balances my work so it's also more fun to bust out and do my regular sweaty monsters. Woo!

Keeping Things Fresh

In-progress painting, ~5 hours

Before we get on with our usual blog fare, we just wanted to remind you about some of the many events coming up in the next week or so.

This Friday, Feb. 11th, both Monkey + Seal will be in Wonderland SF's group show "Just Because.." along with 16 other talented artists. The opening night reception is from 6-10pm at Wonderland SF in the Mission, 2929 24th Street to be exact.

This weekend at Big Umbrella Studios, we'll be having a super duper trunk show! There will be vegan fare and baked goods, along with other awesome vendors on Sunday, from 12-5pm at 906.5 Divisadero St (x McAllister). You should also stop on by on Saturday to see an entirely different slate of vendors and show your support. Same time, same place, different food options.

Monkey here.

I recently started taking classes at City College of San Francisco (CCSF, for those in the know). As you probably know, I already have a (expensive) degree from Academy of Art University. Why would I go back to school?

Three reasons. The first, which is NOT what this post is about, is so that my student loans might be deferred just a little bit longer.

The second, more interesting reason (but still not what this post is about) is that I wanted to get back into printmaking (other than silkscreen), and by taking printmaking classes I'd have access to some presses.

The third, most important reason is that I wanted to keep things fresh. While at the Academy, because I was pressured to paint in the style of classical realism (ie realistic paintings, rendering form, strong light sources, etc.), I ended up feeling confined and frustrated and that's how I ended up going into my current style of looser, outlined, messy-background paintings that I do now, even going so far as to sometimes including text.

However, after painting in this loose manner for the past year, I started to get a bit bored with my current style. Fortunately I had been changing up subject matter over the past year or so, but I still saw things getting a bit stale. Because I had been fortunate to have a fairly filled schedule of shows, most paintings were paintings done under a deadline, and I didn't have a lot of time to experiment.

By taking painting classes at CCSF, I've given myself the permission (and time) to paint in other styles. Instead of drawing sketches on canvas with pencil (or completely making something out of random brush strokes) like I usually do for my current body of work, I've gone back to my Academy training of painting from reference, doing quick underpaintings with paint, and (albeit stylistically) rending form instead of using line to create the image.

Painting in this way helps me to keep my speed up and is just a great way of practicing my skill set. Regardless of the finished product, I'm practicing more, which is one of the keys to success. After all, practice makes perfect with art, and it's really all about mileage. While it might not be obvious how painting in different styles helps, there are a lot of things that I can practice regardless of the style. How to get my paint to the consistency I want. Brush control. Color mixing. No matter the task, creating with paint on a daily basis is super helpful if you want to improve your craft.

All in all, I think that it is really important to keep things fresh here and there, in order to make sure that you're not getting tired of the same thing. Experimentation and trying new (or older) styles or themes can be really helpful as even if you don't learn something new that directly applies to your current style, you'll be rehearsing the basics, which will just make you stronger.

Whether taking classes at a community college or going to art school (if you haven't yet), by changing stuff up and making time for a change of pace, you'll be able to keep things fresh and, most importantly, keep art fun. After all, when art stops being fun, then it's just a job.

Seal Process: Tyger Tyger series in acrylics

Above is Seal's most recent illustration. Normally she works in gouache or watercolor, but for the next couple of illustrations, she is trying out acrylics.

She is inspired and repulsed by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster of 1986. Although not a historical accurate presentation of Chernobyl, her piece is set in a similar imaginative setting. She wanted to feature a resilient resourceful young female protagonist, a survivor, who utilizes her art and imagination to navigate through the decimated world. Below is Seal's painting space. She has her inspiring artistic references close by when she is painting: 1) Cannabis Works by Tatsuyuki Tanaka and 2) Revelations of Chernobyl by Nakasuji Jun.


She recently noticed that she also keeps her coffee dangerously close to her paint water bucket. Which is probably a bad idea. Next to her painting on the right is her original thumbnail. Every 30 minutes she checks the thumbnail and adjusts her values as needed. Below: this is what her palette looks like after 4 hours of painting. She has two side by side so she doesn't have to change the palette as often. For the purpose of this painting, she wanted the colors to be muddy and muted. Ideally, it's a good idea to change the palette more often so you have "cleaner brighter colors."

Below is a zoomed shot of a corner of her illustration. She gives herself at least a .25" bleed all the way around and paints beyond the edge. It makes all the difference in cropping if you give yourself extra room for flexibility. All in all, she had fun painting old rusted pipes and the light coming in through the window.

Thanks for visiting!

Process: Monkey and his acrylic paintings

So Monkey has recently come to terms that he does not like painting in the style of classical realism. While there are more musings on that on Monkey's personal blog, this post is about his process when coming up with one of his acrylic painting. So without further ado, take it away Monkey!

Hello! So, first off, I alway start up with some toned canvas or boards.
I like either strange colors (to give me a pre-existing color palette to work with), or a nice mid-tone gray. Working with a mid-tone gray is super helpful, as it allows you to see a better relationship between your darkest darks and your lightest lights. I find if you start with a blank, untoned canvas, I tend to paint my shadows too light, as I'm comparing them to the white of the canvas and not the local value of what I'm painting. More on toning canvas later.

Because so much of Monkey's work relies on the interplay between text and image, Monkey brainstorms a lot. Sometimes an idea will hit him while he's working his day job, and he'll jot it down on a sticky note and put it in his wallet for later use. Other times, when he has his paints ready, he'll start with an image and then use that as inspiration. In this instance, Monkey worked out a bunch of different concepts, and wrote them on an envelope as a guide for his painting session.
Because I hate wasting paint, a lot of times I'll tone some canvases with all my left-over paint that I have at the end of a painting session. I'll usually mix complementary colors to get rich mid-value browns to tone with, or, I'll go with analogous colors to get a nice rich background. If I do this, I'll usually save this canvas/board for a painting where the image will be the complement of the background. For example, if I paint a greenish background, I'll save the canvas for a painting that has orange-red hues for the majority of the painting.

Since I'm going to paint a barn, which has a lot of reddish-browns in it, I pulled out a greenish canvas I had been saving. I start by doing a quick sketch of the main contours of the image. This is mainly to get a sense of composition and scale of the piece.

Then, if I'm not doing a strong lighting statement, I'll mass in the local value. If I am working with strong lighting, I'll first mass in the shadows, then the lights, then I'll add the darkest shadows and the highlights last. Finally, I add the text. Notice that it's a bit different from the initial concept that's written down on the envelope. I wanted the barn to have a soul (as opposed to just being a "talking barn") as it adds some sort of moral implication to the barn's dialogue. Also, I wanted to make it a wee bit more obvious that Farmer Joe is getting nasty with someone/thing in the barn by using the text to really paint the picture in the viewer's mind about Farmer Joe's pants being on the floor.


And that's that. Thanks again for reading, and I hope it gives just a little bit of insight to my thought process when I'm painting. Maybe next time I'll do the process behind a more detailed piece, just for kicks.

Monkey's new work!

So Monkey has been working hard on some new paintings, as well as some new screen prints. Here's the sneak peek photos of a mere fraction of all the new stuff that will get up into the shop as soon as they're finished/better photos are taken.

Seasoning salt is the dark knight of spices...it easily adds tons of flavor to any dish, but is such a cop-out. You can just throw it in soup or whatever, and it's an immediate flavor explosion. I personally try not to use it and actually season my dishes with spices that aren't pre-mixed, but whatever. Actually, if Seasoning Salt is the dark knight, "Italian Herbs" is definitely the Joker. Wait, what?

Here are the preview for Monkey's small but bright line of screenprinted ties. He really likes the bright colors (the hazmat green is pretty awesome), but does anyone besides Monkey wear bright green/pink ties, or does everyone else wear sage greens, silvers, etc? Please comment with your opinions!

Post-modern Pomegranate. I guess the joke only really works if you a)think of PoMo as Post-Modern, and b)call Pomegranites "Pomos." Oh well.

Anyhoo, Seal will be taking a break from her Process Posts on Saturday, and Monkey will go over his method of conceptual painting. Monkey hopes you'll stop by again tomorrow!