Early Work #2 Giraffe

This drawing comes from The Art of Pencil Drawing - -  another Gene Franks book (Walter Foster Publishing).  My wife actually requested this drawing as she thinks giraffes are cool - - I certainly agree.

Early Work #1 Teddy Bear

As this is a new blog, I thought that I would share some of my early drawings and the artists/books that have influenced me.  The drawings in the next few posts were all created within the past 7 or 8 years and represent a cross section of the work I did during that time frame.  This first drawing comes from Pencil Drawing by Gene Franks (Walter Foster Publishing) - - a beautiful little book with a variety of drawings to work through.

Still Life

The image above was created using a 3D rendering program.  Many programs have this capability - Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4d, Maya, etc., each with varying degrees of achievable realism.  Contrary to what many people think - - as you begin to create more complex shapes, the computer does not "draw" the shape for you.  The artistry comes in controlling the infinite number of design choices - composition, color, texture, lighting, etc., as well as the actual "drawing" of the shapes.  These are the same decisions you would make if using any media.  The obvious difference is in the ease with which you are able to edit the scene after it has been created.  I posted this today to show an example of the variety of skill sets available to today's artists.

Baseball

For today's post, I thought I would put up another graphite drawing - - see more on my Gallery Page.  This was a relatively straight forward drawing as one of the first drawings all artists do is that of a sphere.  Adding in all of the stitches is what sets this one apart.  I once did a commission that included a closeup of a golfball - - drawing all of those dimples while still maintaining the highlights, shadows, etc. was quite a challenge.

Old Barn

This is a study of an old barn that I am currently working on as I continue to develop my digital painting skills.  When I began the painting I was originally thinking of a pen and ink with a watercolor wash look, but ....... As I continued to work on it it started to take on a photorealism type of look - - so I'm going to keep working on it and see where it goes.  Photo reference from The Memory Writer's Weblog.

Here's another half an hour or so of painting.  A couple of changes here and there as well as a slight tweaking of the color.  It's important to keep in mind that this is just a study - - an exercise in digital painting - - not an item to be sold.

Orange Clouds

I created this painting on my iPad using Procreate.  It started out as an exploration of the available brushes and textures.  I really liked the way the orange cloud shapes started to come together - - so before I started thinking about it too much I put in a background, some grassy shapes at the bottom along with some ground mist.

Concept Sketch

This is a digital concept scene I painted in Photoshop.  I was exploring values to create the illusion of depth and texture after being inspired by something I saw on Feng Zhu's blog.

Welcome

Welcome to Jim Hartlage's Art Blog.  Please check my Gallery Page for additional art work.  I plan to update this blog with works in progress, new works, art books that have influenced me as well as a variety of other art related topics that I enjoy.