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Black and yellow bird. 15"x 20", Watercolor.
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This drawing is done in vine charcoal, a medium I rarely use because it so easily falls off the page before it's sprayed with a fixative. I tend to prefer compressed charcoal for it's ability to grip the paper and make dark darks, but I find myself coming back to vine charcoal from time to time for it's delicate quality.

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Sunflower. 15"x 20" on arches cold press watercolor paper.
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Color Workshop this Saturday

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This Saturday, June 20th, I'll be giving an all day workshop on color theory for subjects of all kinds including landscape, figurative and entertainment arts. Here's what we'll cover:

• The fundamentals of color theory for painters (traditional and digital).
  
• 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 in a colored light environment.

To enroll contact the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art at 877-695-2232. Their site is www.laafa.org.

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Oil on Canvas. 18"x 28"
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Final frame from the animated film The Road to El Dorado (2000).




Color key for the background painting. It was originally meant to be a backlit scene but as you can see in the final version we brought the light around to the front.



Painted foreground element.





Final background painting. All images Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

And for those of you who have been asking for a gouache landscape sketch demo, I have one up over on Landsketch.

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Mark, acrylic on illustration board.
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Background painting for Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas. Photoshop. Copyright DreamWorks Animation.
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Brush pen study.
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A scene painted for the animated film Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. Acrylic and photoshop. Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

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Charcoal on bristol paper.
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Hillside road in central California. Oil on canvas.

My hope with this one was to have a large brushstroke feel like the small, quick studies over on Landsketch. It's much larger though, 36" × 48"; I used 3 inch brushes and a large palette knife.
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Laura. Charcoal on Strathmore paper.
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Here's a scene painted for the animated film Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron. Acrylic and photoshop.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation.
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Color key for Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas. Acrylic and photoshop.
This was the last painting I did at DreamWorks that had any traditional painting in it.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation.

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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.

And a note to Pasadena Art Center students: I'll be giving a presentation to Richard Keyes entertainment design class this Monday Feb. 16 at 10:30am in room 207 (the bridge). We'll be discussing color and design for environments under the title of Landscape as Character. All ACCD students are welcome to attend.

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.Final painting



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!

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My class is studying the rendering of facial features in light and shadow this month. Grouping and simplifying is usually more effective than excessive rendering. Especially in the eyes where too much rendering can leave them looking like symbolic hieroglyphics.

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Something I did many years ago to figure out how to use india ink.
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This is a scene from the Prince of Egypt. It was designed by layout artist Guillaume Bonamy. I did the preliminary color sketch (top) and the final was painted on acetate cells by three of us (we would occasionally split up big paintings like this to reach a tight deadline). The background was painted by Bari Greenberg, the temple on the right was painted by Donald Yatomi and the foreground was painted by me.

Copyright Dreamworks animation SKG.
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Brandt. Gouache in a craft paper sketchbook.
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Composition Workshop on Saturday August 16th

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If you're in the LA area and would like to refine your composition and painting skills, you're welcome to join me for an upcoming event.

On Saturday August 16th I'll be giving a workshop on pictorial composition for subjects of all kinds including landscape, figurative and entertainment design. Here's what we'll cover:

• Lectures on the fundamentals of effective picture making.
• Discussions on the creation of mood and environment.
• Principles for organizing complex scenes into pleasing arrangements.
• Strategies for solving compositional problems quickly and effectively.
• Composition exploration exercises.
• Painting from a costumed model.

We'll spend the morning with slide shows and lectures and spend the afternoon doing the compositional exercises and studies from a costumed model.

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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Watercolor demo from class last week.
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Pond in Angeles Crest Forest. Watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper.
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Eva. Gouache in a heavy weight craft paper sketchbook.
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Something I painted for The Prince of Egypt way back when.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation SKG.
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Paul. Classroom study in oil.
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Jenny
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Rajive. Watercolor on heavyweight craft paper.
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Class demo. We were looking at making a quick, simple statement of a costumed figure with shape, value, color and composition.
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Eva. Charcoal pencil on strathmore paper.
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After we finished production on The Prince of Egypt, I was asked to paint a series of children's book covers to coincide with the release of the film. Here's an example.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation SKG.
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A watercolor of Clark Allen from a couple of years ago.
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Jenny, charcoal on strathmore paper. 1 1/2 hour sitting.
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Clark Allen, a demo from my sketching class last year.
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Yellow headed bird. Watercolor on hot press paper.

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Profile in gouache
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Fun with gouache.
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Stream in Angeles Crest Forest. Watercolor.

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Color Concepts 1 day Workshop and Sketching from Life 10 week course.

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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 April 26th 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 sketching from life course. It will be held each Monday night from 7 to 10 pm starting on May 12th. For this class we'll study the head, figure, drapery, costume, animals and still life as well as a weekend field trip to study landscape painting. Charcoal, watercolor and ink will be demonstrated though students will be welcome to use the medium of their choice.

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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Bridesmaid
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Back lit trees. Watercolor and gouache on hot press illustration board; done at home in the studio. To see my on location stuff you can click the landscape sketchbook link.
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I've made an honest effort to read the literary classics. I even made it a third of the way through Ulysses. But the genre I always end up coming back to is science fiction. Especially "hard sf"; science fiction that allows any leap of the authors imagination within the boundaries of plausible science. What great fun to read about distant corners of the universe, the far future or explorations of the here and now that are not just flights of fancy. They could in some way really happen.
Here are some writers who do it particularly well:

• Larry Niven (Mote in God's Eye is a must)
• Greg Bear ( The Forge of God and especially it's sequel Anvil of Stars are excellent)
• David Brin
• Gregory Benford
• Dave Wolverton (I can hardly believe that On My Way to Paradise was the first novel he wrote)
• Orson Scott Card (not necessarily "hard" but you'll never hear me complain)
• Stanislaw Lem ( you may have read Solaris, but try Fiasco)
  
• John Brunner ( A Maze of Stars takes an interesting look at where we are and what we're up to a hundred thousand years in the future)
• Vernor Vinge ( A Fire Upon the Deep may be the best space opera you'll ever read)
• Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide)

I could go on and on but how about you? I'd love it if you'd leave a comment with your favorite Sf authors and books.
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I get a kick out of reading some such then splashing some paint around to make a scene inspired by what I read. The above are a few examples.

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We've begun our head painting class. Though we mostly use oils, I'm encouraging students to do much smaller, quicker studies like this one for practice outside of class.

Practice, practice.

This is watercolor with opaque white. To see the setup and colors I use for these, go to the landscape sketchbook link and scroll down to the very first post.

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.This one brings back good memories of sitting out on the shore sketching birds.
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Clark Allen 1925-2008

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Clark Allen passed away last week. He was a delightful man and a favorite subject for local artists, especially me. I started drawing and painting Clark in '92 when I first moved to LA and have been working with him off and on ever since. I have stacks of drawings and paintings of him that I will scan and post here from time to time.

He lived a more colorful life than many of us can hope for, (I thought his stories were tall tales until I visited his home and we looked through his old photo albums) and it was my pleasure to get to know him. He will be missed.
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Nicole. 40 minute charcoal drawing on newsprint.
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I put together this demo page for this Saturday's composition workshop. We'll call it a sneak preview.

So many watercolor books show you how to create amazing techniques filled with "a free spirit" but contain little information about pictorial composition. A well designed composition will look good in any medium, even if you mess up the technique.
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Composition 1 day workshop and 10 week head painting course

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

Next Saturday Jan 26th I'll be giving a workshop on pictorial composition for subjects of all kinds including landscape, figurative and entertainment design. Here's what we'll cover:

• Lectures on the fundamentals of effective picture making.
• Discussions on the creation of mood and environment.
• Principles for organizing complex scenes into pleasing arrangements.
• Strategies for solving compositional problems quickly and effectively.
• Composition exploration exercises.
• Painting from a costumed model.

Also coming soon is my 10 week head painting course. It will be held each Monday night from 7 to 10 pm starting on February 4th.

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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Dad's orange last week; this week, Mom's flowers.
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Orange. Watercolor.

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My dad is an avid gardener and grower of fruit and nut trees. Here in California the oranges ripen around Christmas time. Well, this one small tree, after a great deal of tlc produced one single orange which I memorialized in this sketch.

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Happy Holidays!! Best wishes to all of you.

This is something I painted for "Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron". Copyright DreamWorks Animation SKG.

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Some photoshop production work this week.

After creating several traditionally animated films at the DreamWorks Glendale campus, Shark Tale was our first effort at cg animation. Our goal was to create underwater environments rich with color and light. These are three of my paintings for the "whalewash" location.

Acknowledgements to the outstanding Art directors and artists who set the stage: Sam Michlap, Seth Engstrom, Armand Baltazar, Teng Heng, Zhaoping Wei and many others.

Copyright DreamWorks Animation SKG.

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Mark Snyder. Compressed charcoal on rives lightweight paper.

We've been drawing Mark in head drawing class. As you can see, he has great features to study from.
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These are a few of many "color keys" I did for Shrek the Halls. Their purpose is to establish the mood and lighting of each location in the show.
Copyright Dreamworks animation SKG.
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Happy Thanksgiving from me and the "Shrek the Halls" crew. Shrek the Halls is a half hour TV special about Shrek's first Christmas with his family. It's an absolute gem and I think people will watch it with their kids year after year just like the Grinch or Charlie Brown's Christmas. It will be on the abc network on Nov. 28 and again on Dec. 11. Check your listings for local times. We developed the show here in Glendale and I followed it through production at our Bay area campus in Redwood city.
Here's an image of Shrek out chopping wood as the seasons change and head toward the Holidays. It's painted in photoshop. The image is copyrighted by DreamWorks animation SKG.

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.Mark, demonstration with charcoal.

A note about the process here. I show these elaborate line drawings that end up getting completely covered over by the tonal work. This is done intentionally as an exercise for students. Invariably, beginners carefully render parts of the anatomy but are far less careful about relating those parts to each other. (You've seen those drawings that look like a bumpy sack of walnuts.) In class we start with careful construction drawings that force students to properly fit each part of the anatomy into the whole head. Having done plenty of the bumpy, poorly constructed heads myself, I forced myself to use this method and got much improved results. That being said, for my current tonal drawings I do the line drawing quickly and lightly. Not nearly as refined as you see here but with the idea in mind. I hope these drawings make clear how the construction lines can help wrap the light and shadow around the whole head for a solid three dimensional effect.

You can see more demos if you scroll down to August of 2006.
Happy drawing!

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I've just started teaching my head drawing class so here's a new charcoal drawing for this week. I'll also be posting a few demos in upcoming weeks among other things.
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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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This is something I did for my head painting class way back when I was studying at Art Center in Pasadena. I remember this one fondly because after several completely disastrous paintings, I finally started to understand how to control color and value.
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This is a place I visited last Christmas, north of the great Salt Lake. As always, more travel sketches can be seen at the land sketch link.
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Nightscape
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Another watercolor demo for my sketching class to reference. This one doesn't use any gouache, just some masking fluid to protect the white paper for the flower.
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.This is my demo from this weeks class. Posted as a reference for the students but I hope the rest of you like it too.
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Susan, watercolor sketch.
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Upcoming classes and workshops

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If you're in the LA area and would like to join me for a class or workshop, we have three events coming up.
My next 10 week course is head drawing, starting on Monday, October 22, 7-10 pm.
I'm doing an all day color workshop with lectures, slide shows and painting from a costumed model on Saturday, Oct 27, 10am-6pm.
And Soonest, I'm giving a talk we're calling "From Student to Professional and Beyond" on Monday, Oct 15, 7-9:30 pm. It's for any student or professional artist seeking improvement and will cover the skills, tools, workspace, attitudes and habits of of the successful working artist. I've been working hard on this presentation so I'm gunna go out on a limb and guarantee there'll be at least one thing in it that will make it worth your time and effort. Contact the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art at (877) MY-LAAFA, www.laafa.org. Hope to see you soon.

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Fun with gouache.
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Adrienne. Watercolor on arches cold pressed paper.
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Plaster cast. Watercolor on arches cold press paper.
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Warthan Canyon tree on highway 198 in central California. Watercolor.

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My time at PDI/Dreamworks in Redwood City has come to a close. It's back to LA for my wife and I. We loved the area and the studio, especially the PDI art department. You'll never meet a more solid group of artists. These are the people who designed the Shrek world and Madagascar and I got alot out of my time with them.
This gouache sketch was done from the back parking lot of the studio building at sunset. To see more sketches from around the studio at lunch breaks and such, click the Land Sketch link.
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I continue to sketch the waterfowl here in the bay area. I'll post more of those later. This one was done in the studio.
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Here's another acrylic painting from a life drawing session. This was done during the same time and circumstances mentioned in the the last post.
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Wanda. Acrylic on cold press illustration board.

This image is from what feels like a lifetime ago; a life drawing session while we were working on The Prince of Egypt at Dreamworks. Acrylics flowed more easily off my brush in those days; we were working with it 9 or 10 hours a day. Though I do like photoshop for production work, you can see from this blog that it still feels good to splash paint around.

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Some friends let me stay in their beautiful home on a painting trip to Hawaii. I did this gouache painting of the place for them as a thank you. To see more click the Land Sketch link.

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Here's another sketch of the iguana at the LA Zoo.

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Iguana.

The sketch was painted at the LA Zoo and the finish was done from photos. For another view of this guy scroll down to the first post on this blog.

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Lara

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These 3" x 4" sketches are from a recent weekend trip on Highway One North of San Francisco. This particular stretch of road runs along the coast from Muir Woods to Fort Bragg and is a stunning drive if you ever have a chance to take it.
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Brandt. This is oil on canvas.

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I recently moved to Redwood Shores in the Bay Area and have been amazed at the abundance of waterfowl here. This weekend I got out the watercolors with the birds in mind. They don't stay still so you have to be quick but I did coax the swan to hang around with a handful of crackers.

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Redwood City street corner

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Jenny
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Sketches at the Natural History Museum.
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Neighborhood flowers. I've included some pictures to show the painting process. This is watercolor on hot press illustration board.

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Acrylic on cold pressed crescent board.
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Rotunda, charcoal sketch.
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Off the California Central Coast. A small gouache sketch in a heavyweight craft paper sketchbook.
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Switzer Creek. Watercolor on arches cold pressed paper.
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Plaster cast drawings. Compressed charcoal on Rives drawing paper.
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Felicia

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Cow. Compressed charcoal on rives drawing paper.
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Carmel point, central coast California.
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Iguana
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View from my office window at night. That's the glow of downtown LA over the hill.
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Laura, Gouache sketch.
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We had a great time at the landscape sketching workshop last week in Eaton Canyon. Here are some sketches from that and previous trips to the canyon.
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This bird flew down and all but posed for me while I was landscape sketching out in Hawaii. I like this one better than the landscape I had been working on.
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More views out the office window. I did 50 or 60 of these over the course of a year.
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View from my office window, different times, different days.
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More reference for the drawing class. These are done with B and 3B Ritmo charcoal pencils and Carbothello white pencils on Strathmore charcoal paper.
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Compressed charcoal and white nupastel on strathmore of Clark Allen. A reference for this weeks drawing class.
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Sci fi gouache quicksketch
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Golden barrel cactus at Hunnington Gardens, LA.
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The strangler fig
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Watercolor sketch of Clark Allen
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Butterfly

More drawings of Clark Allen

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A quick sketch of Trace Devai.

Clark Allen, charcoal demonstration. (click to enlarge)

These demonstration posts are here as an online resource for my drawing class. For more information go to www.laafigart.com.

Laura, charcoal demonstration

The previous charcoal and this watercolor sketch are of a sculpture at the Hunnington Gardens in San Marino Ca.

Thumbnail of Pasadena City Hall. I had just been excused from Jury service, so I sat out on the lawn with my sketchbook while security watched me suspiciously.

Thumbnail of the hills near Coalinga Ca (where I grew up).

This and the two previous posts are pages from my travel sketchbook. (Watercolor with white gouache)

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White cow. A page in my watercolor sketchbook
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A drawing of Clark Allen I did over at the Art Academy.
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Sketching in Los Gatos canyon

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A page out of my sketchbook from the Natural History Museum.
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Clark Allen
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The old city, Jerusalem
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Flower growing out on the patio.
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Iguana
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