The Ninety Degree Rule

Sometimes I start a plein air painting and it just doesn’t click. Either the drawing doesn’t work out, or the light changes, or a big truck parks smack in front of me. That’s when I apply the Ninety Degree Rule.

Rather than wasting time searching around for another motif, I just turn 90 degrees to the side and paint whatever is there. In the case of this painting, Jeanette was standing at my side, so I just painted her.

Color movement

I was looking for street scenes to sketch in a little Catskill mountain town. Nothing at eye level inspired me. So I looked up and noticed this false-fronted old building with a utility pole beside it. 

It was a cloudy day, and I wanted it to look bleak, so I used a very limited palette of watercolors and water-soluble colored pencils, just blues and browns. 

In order to balance the detail areas of the wires and the texture of the storefront, I kept other areas simple, such as the side of the building and the far trees.

But simple doesn't have to mean flat. Even in a limited palette like this, it's a good idea to look for color movement—the gradual shift from one color to another within an area. In watercolor, that meant wetting an area, preparing burnt sienna and ultramarine puddles on the palette, and then dropping more cool on one side and more warm on the other and letting them blend.
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Previously:
90 Degree Rule
Color Gradations

Skimmer Chassis

Yesterday Eric Colquhoun of Toronto asked to see the sketch I was doing in the previous post.

I should explain that I’m writing and illustrating an article on concept art for Imagine FX magazine, and I thought I'd give you a sneak peak. You'll definitely want to pick up a copy when it comes out in a few months. I’ll be sharing 25 tips showing how to design a “lived-in” future—a science fiction universe with a believable past.


One of the tips deals with vehicle design. We’ve all seen plenty of renderings of sleek, new vehicles, such as this ground effect skimmer. But how often do you see the rusty hulk of a futuristic vehicle?

I thought it would be a cool exercise to take this skimmer about forty years forward in time and rip off the outer body, leaving only the chassis and the fore and aft stabilizers.

As I sat on the sidewalk sipping my BJ Joe, I stared at the real Blazer chassis and imagined discovering this hulk in the desert, with the antigravity generator still working. Even though it’s rusted out and dented and stripped down, it’s still hovering a foot or so off the ground.

Jeanette didn’t want to draw an old chassis, so she used the 90 degree rule and faced across the street. She drew the scene in ballpoint and watercolor, incorporating a construction worker that she had drawn earlier in the day.
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Thanks to Kevin, the mechanic at Bob's Automotive for your helpful advice on chassis design, and thanks,Eric!