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Pencil on bristol, Oil on canvas, 2009. Part of the artwork created for Dan Rhoads' Migrations blog banner last year.
Dan's announcement here.
My posts about the process are here.
At Migrations, Dan has been posting with great clarity and with passion (no small feat) about the illegal trapping of birds in Cyprus. Migratory birds of hundreds of species pass through this centrally positioned country and trapped. Make sure to read up on Dan's FAQ about Illegal Ambeloupoulia. Conservationists are often treated with disdain.
Taking a trip? I'd bet on the Cyprus Birding Tours to be fascinating (look at the huge list on their inaugural trip report!), and it would help support the positive side of the Cypriot economy.
Last weekend was "Teacher Day" at the Metro Toronto Zoo. Michelle could get in free, with one guest (yay me!) and we brought along our intrepid nephew to explore in wonder.Though we had sketchbooks, we spent a beautiful 7+ hours going from sultry pavilion to spacious grassy enclosure to the marsh, just taking it all in and zooming in with a ton of photos. Sketching at the zoo is something I've only been able to do briefly.
Here are a fraction of the photos I hope to use as reference or digital textures some time. Though I've watermarked them with this blog url, I should note I think almost all of these were taken by my awesome wife Michelle. 
A bird we couldn't identify in the Indo-Malayan Pavilion. (Looking pointedly in GrrlScientist's and Dan Rhoads' directions...) 
The air was still cool, (about 15C, if I recall) and many of the animals were really active.
Some of the rocks near the polar bear enclosure have trilobites carved in them, with an explanatory plaque describing the largest so far found, Isotelus.
Colours in nature are often far more bright and outlandish than a natural realist painter can get away with. One of the many peacocks that wanders the zoo.
The Neph seeing of this turtle responds to visual stimuli. (Nope.)
Even an accidentally blurry photo can be incredibly evocative to a painter's eye. Look at this seahorse in motion. Like something out of a Precambrian dream.
Look at the magnificent textures on that lovely face. A reminder from an elephant that an artist can never have too much detail. And there I go anthropomorphizing again. This elephant was making a subtle, powerful purring-clicking noise while she foraged on her own, as close to the humans and as far from the other elephants as could be. The Metro Toronto Zoo also has a fascinating initiative involving Twitter, called Polar Tweets. You rescue a polar bear by creating ice out of words you tweet that are pro-sustainability and environmentally-friendly. The level of ice changes quite a bit during the course of the day. Like a socially-conscious NeoPet. - - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Shop ***
This is Part 2, Final Workflow.Go to Part 1, Concepts.- - - -Recently, I noted to a colleague that it is virtually impossible to become an illustrator today and not have some phase of digital interpretation in your workflow. At the least, it passes through a jpeg phase on the way to publication.It can go far beyond that. Although I may not be up to a fully-digital painting yet, I'm practicing and finding new ways to make use of my Wacom Intuos 3.
The Migrations blog banner for biologist-conservationist blogger Dan Rhoads came together thanks to oil and digital techniques. Here's how I arrived at the final based on this sketch, below.
Dan had a couple of requests for this one, including making the branches olive branches, native to Cyprus where he resides. He had also sent me some gorgeous photos from the coast of Cyrus, so I tried to capture that brilliant blue light. Totally cool - these are the types of detail sharing sketches with someone bring out. Began with the sketch of the Red Knot plover. Luckily,my grandmother-in-law recently gave me some birdwatching books, so I found additional resources at hand beyond Google image search and Wikipedia. If not for that, it would have been a trip to the library. Restricted myself to 8.5x11, the size of my scanner so I can easily bring things together
Began with the hand and arm sketch, using my own outstretched as a model. The fingers are exaggerated slightly to give a more dynamic feel.
Printed the bird and hand out on canvas paper. In particular, I worried about getting the ruddy colour of the plover's neck and breast right. I don't know why I fret so much, most people's computer screens are calibrated slightly differently anyway. In the end, four different colour were used, for that orange-y red, including Naples Yellow Red & Cadmium Orange Hue.
Then the traveller's hand and arm. Added some scratches and pinky patches as though healed from a scrape. That's really what Flesh coloured paint is good for. It's far too pink for any human being.
Painted the background in oil, which then eventually stuck to scanner and created a weird shadow effect in the middle. So I re-painted some areas of the water digitally in Photoshop. I also used Photoshop to punch up the greenish patch of water, the scan was too dark. Used a size of about 4"x12" to mimic the proportions of the final banner.
Another trick for aspiring artists moving from to digital from traditional, is before scanning, take your darkest black paint (I use Lamp Black or Iron Oxide Black) and put an opaque stroke of it in one corner below the scan. Do the same with Titanium White. Then, in your imaging program, use the droppers found in Levels and click on those black and white blobs. This is the fastest way to colour-correct a piece. It will snap all the other colours to the right contract between those black and white blobs, making everything look much closer to your eye.
Even with Micron series brushes (love the one bent like a dental tool!) I had trouble rendering 4" high bushes of olive branches. I tried for a while, and then decided to paint a single branch to lay over top to give it recognizable leaves and olives. That branch took about 90 minutes from pencil to oil to give you an idea of my speed much of the time.
I still find it fascinating to note there is no final physical painting: it exists in my studio as four separate elements. This is a type of painting that a few years ago would not have occurred to me to do. However, it minimizes mistakes, and allows for some flexibility. If the client wishes for a particular element to be nudged to the left, or slightly larger, I have that ability on the major elements.
Assembled in Photoshop, and overlayed the olive branch numerous times. I performed different effects to each one: flipping it horizontally, changing the scale, erasing parts of it, and adding slight drop shadows to a couple of them to give variation. I think in the end there are about five or six of them overlaying the green oil base.
Added the v-formation of birds at the approximate middle, nudged to the right a little because of how the eye sees the center with the olive branches dominating the left.
Done!
This banner was great fun, and thanks to Dan, I felt the visualization of the Mediterranean came through clearly. While painting this, I was mainly listening to the new Prodigy album, The Cranes, and two of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks.
Visit Dan's blog banner ensconced in its proper home!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite: Art in Awe of Science
Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.
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