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Costume sketch from life drawing class.
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Charcoal pencil on Strathmore charcoal paper.
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Redwood Shores Goose. Watercolor.
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Compressed charcoal on newsprint.
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Office window view from morning until night. Photoshop, 1999.

I've done many of these over the years from different offices at different times. You can see more here and here or by scrolling back to October 2006.
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Oil demonstration on masonite.

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Rough and final rough.

This is a scene from The Road to El Dorado. It was an important and complicated scene and I wanted to get it right so I did a rough for the rough. It's painted in acrylic with some photoshop work in the final.
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From a life drawing session back in 97.
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Backyard flower. Watercolor on arches paper.
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Currently at DreamWorks we have a specialized department that handles the matte paintings for all our shows, they do outstanding work. In the past though, we in the art department of each show would do them ourselves. Though I prefer color roughs and looser concept pieces, I miss the occasional matte painting. They were a nice change of pace and style. Here's one I did for Shark Tale.

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Toucan. Done in watercolor from photos taken on a trip to Costa Rica.
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Happy New Year!

It's ironic to me that 13 years after we started the Prince of Egypt, the art department of my current show consists entirely of Prince of Egypt veterans: Paul Lasaine (production designer), Christian Schellewald (art director), Marcos Mateu-Mestre (Location design and layout) and Patrick Mate (character design).


Above is a scene from the film for which I painted the color key and background.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

BLUE CHRISTMAS

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Happy Holidays!

This is the ogre Santa arriving in the Shrek household on Christmas Eve; an early concept piece painted for Shrek the Halls in photoshop.
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Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

Painting process for The Prince of Egypt

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Color exploration.
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Color key.
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Completed background painting. Layout by Armen Melkonian.
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Final scene as it appears in the movie.

This week is the 10 year anniversary of the release of The Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks first animated film. All our work for the film was done in acrylic on illustration board or on acetate overlays.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

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Flowers from last Summer. Charcoal.
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Painted for Road to El Dorado (2000) in acrylic.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation.
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Sci Fi_ish sketches in acrylic.

And since we're on the subject, how about another round of Science fiction recommendations from you. You gave excellent recommendations last time which introduced me to writers like John Scalzi and Peter Hamilton. And my favorite of recent reads: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I'd love it if you'd post more of your favorite science fiction novels in the comments.

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Mike. Watercolor and gouache in a 12"x 16" heavyweight craft paper sketchbook.
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40 MINUTE STUDIES

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A long drawn out portrait study is good practice but sometimes the shorter poses are equally so. They force you choose which details you'll emphasize and which you'll leave out. An important skill to learn since a stick of charcoal and a beige piece of paper can never reproduce all the subtleties you can see.

These are 40 minute studies with compressed charcoal on newsprint.
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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

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Mike. Charcoal and white carbothello pencil on strathmore charcoal paper.

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Here's a color rough and the finished scene painted in acrylic for the animated film The Road to El Dorado (2000).

Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

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Photoshop roughs.
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Color Design Workshop on Nov 8, Ten week Head Drawing Course Begins Oct 20

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If you're in the LA area and want to refine your color and drawing skills, you're welcome to join me for a couple of upcoming events.

On Saturday November 8th I'll be giving an all day workshop on color theory for subjects of all kinds including landscape, figurative and entertainment design. Here's what we'll cover:

• The fundamentals of color theory for painters and digital artists.
  
• The emotional impact of various color combinations to create mood and environment.


• Principles for organizing the complexities of color into pleasing harmonies.


• Color exploration exercises.


• Painting from a costumed model.

Also coming soon is my 10 week Head Drawing Course. It will be held each Monday night from 7 to 10 pm starting October 20th.
To enroll contact the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art at 877 LA-Atelier. Their site is www.laafa.org.

Hope to see you soon.

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Fun with acrylic.
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A painting I did for the animated movie Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. This scene is set in Bryce Utah and was designed by our fabulous layout department.
Acrylic on illustration board.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation SKG.
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Karen, compressed charcoal on newsprint. This is a 40 minute sketch using the same approach described in the previous post.
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Head Drawing Demo

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Clark Allen. Compressed charcoal on rives lightweight paper.
This demo will specifically address the challenges of representational life drawing.
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Step 1: A construction drawing that emphasizes the simple geometry of the head and helps properly fit the parts into the whole. For you 3-d guys out there, think wireframe.
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Step 2: Add darks in the features and important lines so as to not loose them as the drawing progresses.
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Step 3: Block in the big simple masses of light and shadow. No detail yet! Most artists use the term "value" for the relative lightness or darkness of the tones they put down. That's the term I'll use here as well.
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Step 4: Work the halftones into the light. Wrap your strokes around the forms to help the illusion of 3-D. No mindless details! Make sure every tone you put down usefully describes the underlying form. I'm using my fingers alot in this particular drawing but technique is not nearly as important as getting the right value in the right place. Pencil strokes, tissues, blending stumps, bristle brushes, finger smudging and anything else you can think of can be useful techniques.
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Final stage: Add highlights and refine the drawing (I'm using a kneaded eraser at this stage). Always compare highlights to each other to judge their relative brightness. For instance, a highlight on a clean shaven chin may look very bright in contrast to the dark shadows surrounding it but don't be fooled. It will almost never be as bright as highlights on the cheek and forehead. The values of light and shadow must always maintain proper relationships to each other. Ignore this and you'll end up with something like the image below.
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Ughh is right, and yet I have never once had a student in my nine years of teaching whose value drawings didn't tend to drift in this direction. Why? Because it's how our brains are wired. We, all of us, most strongly notice "that which varies" (details, contrasts, anatomical bumps, highlights, wisps of hair, etc). And so we unconsciously give these variations undue emphasis which leads to bumpy, out of control drawings like the one above. (Such drawings might get an occasional compliment like "it's very expressive" or "It's a very rugged caricature" but these results are completely accidental and don't come out of any studied skillfulness or artistic intent, watch out!). Don't let yourself be derailed by this stumbling block. These tricks of perception are, in my experience, why so few hardworking students ever develop a full mastery of drawing from life.
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But you can avoid the bad drawing problem by seeking the "simplified statement". Compare the above "bad" drawing to this one: Ahhh, much better. You can put all the fancy, splashy technique you want into a representational drawing or painting IF it's used to emphasize clear values of light and shadow and the three dimensional nature of the subject.
For this image I fussed with the original drawing in photoshop to get the utmost simplicity in how the parts properly relate to each other and the whole.

Good Luck!