A Half-tone Job

Hey everyone, just wanted to dump a few things on this blog, mainly spot illustrations I've been enjoying adding looser textures to, one of them a secret, organic looking halftone that I'm just crazy about. Live long and prosper.

The Wizard Gandalf

So much for keeping this blog post serialized. Here's my newest piece in full, from thumbnail to final painting.

This painting pretty much followed the same steps as the previous Frodo one. Just alternating between paint and colored pencils. I've launched my Youtube Channel and have 5 videos of my progress through this painting. I go through my process a little more thoroughly as well as my materials. Please feel free to comment on my videos, subscribe, and ask any questions you'd like me to answer on future videos. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlXF1Y0baSWGZIMIEw4nvA/videos

3. Tight Colored Pencils on Illustration Board

10. Framed up. I think I'll put them in nicer ones later though.

9. Final, with minor photoshop adjustments

Frodo of the Nine Fingers Part 3

Here we are at the final. Instead of scanning the picture in I took a photograph of it with a good camera. However it still took some work in Photoshop to get the image to look as it does to the naked eye. After that I refined some edges and played with the color just abit. All in all I'm super pumped about working traditionally for this series. Check out the second photo in the post to see a sneak peak of who's coming next!

Frodo of the Nine Fingers Part 2

Watercolor Freak Out happens immediately when I start painting. My once pristine drawing becomes a wet and wild mess of colors. Shapes are flooding over their lines, stuff is mixing, no one's behaving themselves down there, I start to question why in the world I'm working traditionally.

What do I do now? I just look up one of those dumb Keep Calm and Carry On flags online and remember not to panic. I proceed calmly with more opaque layers of Holbein's Acryla Grouache. I then get into light prismacolor pencil action, subtly shading and lining where I need to.

In all honesty working traditionally can be a really relaxing endeavor. It allows, or rather you have to allow, time to think and evaluate your piece as it slowly takes form. I think of digital work like an action movie and traditional work more like a drama. Working digitally is expedient and puts tools at your fingers so fast that you simply can't say no to the "special effects." Working traditionally is can be more of a thoughtful narrative driven approach.

I think an answer to good picture making isn't so much concerned with the medium used but instead with the time allotted to make that picture good, make it say something and mean something. Next time: The Finish.

Frodo of the Nine Fingers Part 1

I would love this blog to be more "serial" like so I'm splitting this painting walk through into a few posts even though many of you may have seen the final product on instagram. Hopefully by doing this you all will see more current work and process from me.

To explain this piece and (hopefully) this Lord of the Rings series I'll give a brief intro starting with a question. Have you guys seen those old animated Lotr films? Weren't they awesome and slightly ridiculous at the same time? I love them. And as I think back on them I miss the obvious fantasy they portrayed. The Peter Jackson films were of course monumental in my middle school life and I appreciate the realism he brought to the stories. I hope however to go in a different direction, a direction that doesn't laugh at the ridiculous dog face orcs in those old animated classics, a direction in which fantasy can be fantasy and child like imagination can have it's say.

Why the Lord of the Rings? Every other illustrator has had a crack at them, what do I bring to the game? I don't know, but I don't care either, they're amazing books and I've got alot of love for them, so here it goes.

Thumbnail sketch and color study. After I finished this color study I really thought, "eh, should I even do a traditional work of art? It takes so much time and I have to get all my paints out and whine, whine, whine." Thankfully everyone on instagram was like "do it already!" So here goes:

Tight colored pencil drawing. Next post: Watercolor Freak Out and How to Address It.

Patronage

Hey everyone, as always, it's been so long since I last posted. As I look around my office there are of course many comics, art books, and illustrated children's literature. All of them wonderful and equally inspiring visually.

However, I've come to appreciate most of all those pieces of artwork that I've had a personal interaction with the maker, whether that's doing coffee and hanging out, meeting them at a convention, or even just hearing about their work and talking to them through social media. I love being a part of the fabric of the present art/illustration community in a very active way, by contributing work and inspiration to fans of that community and by supporting the endeavors of my peers in that community.

There are a lot of online venues for patronage today, Patreon and Kickstarter being maybe the most recognizable ones. I personally love just visiting the artist's online store and purchasing there, if you can't make it to a convention and meet them in person. Here are some of my favorites: original art from Cory Godbey, Warwick Johnson Cadwell, and Kent Ambler. Comics by: Sam Bosma and Joey Ellis. So get out there and "shop local," you'll be glad you did and so will everyone else.

Old Sketchbooks - a Great Resource

Hello! It has been so long, sorry I'm just now dusting off the neglect from my blog.

Recently I've been fishing for ideas. Ideas specifically that I can take to a final oil painting stage actually, but that's another story. I of course want these ideas to be dynamic, engaging, and completely original to myself, I know, a very tall order. So after gazing at all things Pinterest I felt completely frustrated, this was not getting me anywhere closer to my goal but was instead retarding my own imagination and discouraging me to the point of exhaustion.

I pulled out my current sketchbook and doodled around for awhile, I was on the right track but everything I had just visually consumed was still too close to me. I began looking at my older sketchbooks, in them I found pictures that my own hand had drawn but now I was looking at them with fresh eyes, separated from the initial thoughts that spawned these previous sketches. There was a wealth of new ideas to pull from, and though I'm sure they weren't completely original to me they were the closest things to it.

I suppose it's like a seed that's planted and eventually turns into something bigger than it was. The real ingredient needed in many cases of thoughtful work is time. So dust off your old sketchbooks today, there's a lot of potential in them.

Christmas Season Tips and Tricks

1. Go to the Indie Craft Holiday Fair, it's usually in early December, tons of fun and loads of great gift ideas for exactly everyone you can think of.

2. If you experience car trouble first check the gas tank, it may be that there is no gas in it, in which case all you need is a gas can and gas. You do not need to go to AAA car care for them to tell you that your engine is destroyed and you need a new car, you don't need to go to Master Tech Automotive either for them to tell you that you need a new fuel pump, all you need is Iain Fraser, I can give you his number, he'll save you dollars.

3 + 4. Hand painted and dipped Christmas presents are really fun and easy to make.

5. When entertaining your father make sure he has the necessary tennis guides to occupy himself.

6. When shopping for a Christmas tree try to get the biggest and nicest, even if you have to cut it in half to fit in your house.

7. When having a sleeping wife nearby make sure you can cup her head with your hand so she sleeps peacefully as you listen to the new heavy metal album you just purchased. Just kidding, heavy metal is ewh.

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Seraphim Cars and Couches

You can usually find Karen and I working at night in our second bedroom/studio, last night we tried the couch and it was really great just to switch places and routine. Instead of client work I focused on getting a theme and idea for this coming year's Hodgepodge: Volume 2. While doing this I happened to digress into an admiration of my wife's awesome ability to mix design and illustration so well, check it out.

Karen's stationary business Paper Loop Troupe just released a bunch of new cards for the holidays! Check them out at www.paperlooptroupe.com

Christmas Promotional - Process

Fantastic morning everyone! I've been trying my hand at backgrounds since my last post and have gotten some really great feedback from you guys asking for alittle peek into the process. It's alot like my usual process except with alot more Shift key usage. Probably throughout my entire life I've avoided straight lines, which has caused me to throw out architecture entirely... I know, what a tragedy! Well I've faced my fears, grappled with one and two point perspective, and realized it's not as hard as previously thought. Check it out by scrolling in the downward direction! (note, the pictures are alittle fuzzy for some reason so click on them and they will appear as crystal as that first day you realized that professional life is not at all like college life.)

Thumbnail and tighter drawing, these are done pretty small since I don't care too much about details at this moment, just need to get a good composition.

Flat geometric shape layer. I get all the straight lines by using the shift key and then transforming and distorting that flat line into the angle and thickness I need, it is time consuming, but not too bad.

Full colors with shadows and highlights. By this time I've already created my lines which have obviously determined where to put many different items and light breaks.

Line added. Same thing for the straight lines here, using basically a 1 or 2 pixel line and then transforming it to get the angles right.

Here's the background of the background. I really loved treating the colors under the line in a looser way, it's on one layer and treated in a painterly way, not worried about getting outside the lines.

Just add snow! The weather is on a different layer, you're seeing some grain brushes used as well as a plain round brush for the bigger flakes and then motion blurred to the right consistency of moderate blizzard.

Here they are added together, the cliche' warm to the cool, cozy to the freezy. I will say that the hardest part of this image was to separate the outside scene from the interior as far as values and colors. Color balance and hue/saturation were again my go-to couple.

Curious Asian child that looks alittle like my wife with not so equally curious reindeer that looks alittle nothing like my pet reindeer or the reindeer references I used to draw him.

Santa in his day-off heather grey sweats puttering about the kitchen.

All in all I wanted to make this image to send out to my client list for the season as well as give Santa Klaus an upgraded environment, he's been at this game a long time, he's probably worked his way into a posh city flat. Oh and also to give you all riveting content so you come visit my website way more than you should! Have a blessed one!

Background as Character

Hey everyone! Wow the days are so dark so early! If you know me much at all you know I have absolutely hated this my whole life. I found out once that there's such a thing as "seasonal depression," I must be that right there.

I've also learned that much of life is how it is because of your perspective so I'm trying to see this winter gloom in a positive light. It's given me a new perspective on how our environment really plays a roll in setting the scene, it is a very, very powerful character. So I'd like to share with you a trove of incredible animation backgrounds I found today at the wonderful Living Lines Library blog. These are all from 101 Dalmatians.

Weren't those awesome? Check out the Living Lines Library link I have in the previous paragraph and see about a hundred more, maybe even 101 more, there are a ton. Tee-Tee-Why-El.

Excuse me - Process

Hey everyone! Haven't posted a process piece in a long time it seems. As you can probably see I've been trying alot of new ways to make images, though still trying to keep things stylistically similar. I recently bought Kyle T. Webster's Megapack Photoshop Brush Set and man are the incredible, painting is a blast with them. I had previously bought Shiyoon Kim's Inkbrush Set and used one of his brushes to do the line work in this image, it's wonderful to have both but if you're on a tight budget I'd just get the Megapack, it's about a hundred different brushes that include inking and all types of painting brushes. (click on their names to go to their websites, and click on the brush set names to go to their respective online stores)

So my thumbnail(above) really does look that bad, but I just wanted to get the composition and basic attitude down the minute I had the idea.

At the same time I drew the thumbnail I did tighter drawings of the faces and placed them on top of the thumbnail and shazam, you have a tighter thumbnail. I did actually trace over all this with line to get my tight drawing though I seem to have deleted that layer after it became irrelevant. I used it to get all of my shapes correctly, one the shapes were down I just drew with new line over them.

Backgrounds are important, they can be a whole career if you're really good at them so I didn't want to skimp. I got this idea when I was at a gas station so I searched online to find something I liked the look of to start from.

I wanted the background to feel like a matte painting and so...I painted, not the whole thing of course considering these characters are static.

Our baddies here. My mouth waters over those painted textures and edges.

Our heroes here with the inquiring alien, which actually was added as an afterthought, I didn't think of him in the thumbnail but as the piece progressed I knew the composition needed him there, and it made sense with their eye lines.

The finished flats without the top layer of atmosphere.

The atmosphere added, as well as some proposed dialogue. Hope it's helpful guys! TTYL

Hodgepodge Volume 1

In tandem with the previous Indie Craft Parade blog post I wanted to write about my experience in make my first sketchbook, which debuted at the parade.

Alot of illustrators produce a sketchbook that chronicles their personal work over a certain time period, whether that's a year, or....more years. I've come to really admire the ones that can make something complete happen in a year. Some, like Cory Godbey, use the sketchbook to start and finish a whole new personal project within a year. Though I admire that approach I wanted to keep things kind of free for myself to play around with technique, theme and media, closer to what Cory Loftis has done with his personal sketchbook which can be bought at Gallery Nucleus.

It was a great experience to collect alot of work that I had done without any real thought to where I would put it. It's really freeing to doodle and dream without thinking about audience, deadline, and money, remember, you can always edit down.

The book is 7" x 11", perfect bound, soft cover, contains 44 pages of artwork, and if you order it before the end of September 24, 2014 I'll sketch inside on the title page just for you.

Volume 1 is dedicated to my wonderful Dad, whose middle school photo is proudly displayed on the back cover. I intend to use all child photos when dedicating any more future books.

Exhibiting

This weekend follows the first weekend I've exhibited at a show, no, it wasn't at a comic con like one would expect. It was at the lovely and amazing Indie Craft Parade! I confess that I am a padawan when it comes to shows in general and comic cons especially, the first one I attended was Heroes Con in Charlotte only a few months before. I didn't quite know what to expect as far as sales, printing costs, booth setups, et cetera et cetera. I especially wasn't prepared for the overwhelming excitement it was for me to meet alot of you in person and to be able to talk about my work yes, but also what you guys are up to and what you find interesting in the world today, literature, arts, et cetera again. It was a blast talking and sharing with all who could come out and I want to say a huge THANK YOU. As well as a ginormous THANK YOU to the wonderful creators and administrators of the Indie Craft Parade.

This weekend I also got to take the short trip up to Asheville, NC to see ACE(Asheville Comic Expo) with my wife. Pretty much for the sole purpose of meeting this guy, Joey Ellis, and buying his wonderful Leaky Timbers. In the same way that I was excited to meet and talk with fans of my work and fellow illustrators and artists I could tell that Joey was very willing and happy to talk to me and my wife about his work, and about ours as well. He gave me some great and much needed advice in the developing of characters and stories department. He's a super nice guy with a really great vision, check his work out and follow him on all social media.

joeyellis+benjaminschipper+karenschipper

Check out this swag! The book cover really does feel like melted butter and the pin can and should be worn on all clothing.

Buckbeak - Process

Just another process blog if anyone is interested. Really liked making this one for the tumblr site Wizarding Wednesday, check it out, and if you're an artist you should definitely contribute!

Original drawing and gouache painting stage.

Color masking stage, where your graphic design sensibilities come into place.

Trimmed version of the original painting. Once trimmed to the color mask shape I use the stamp tool to "push" the inside color out to the edge, hiding any hint of a contour line.

When selected I can paint freely without going outside the dotted line, I used some very light multiply, overlay, and normal layers. I also color balanced it abit.

Done. Added some hand lettered type that I've been learning from my wonderful wife Karen, find her here.

Visual Aid

As a visual artist it probably should've been clear to me that watching someone else do something gives me more than just inspiration, but actual tools that I can replicate and use. I've been getting more interested in comics these days, largely inspired by Mike Mignola's beautiful work, and like most things that inspire me I wanted to have a go at it. So the drawing part was pretty natural to me, the inks however were a different story. I had shied away from ink ever since I realized it didn't erase, the unforgiving nature of it boggled my early mind and I have only just now started to recover.

So to learn how to ink I looked at alot of comics and some un-inked pages to see where the inker was coming from, that only got me so far. Youtube should have been my first destination. As I watched videos of some pros ink their work I gained incredibly valuable knowledge of how to do the same with my drawings.

Since working at home I've found many websites, videos and podcasts that really have become my new teachers and instructors. It's quite amazing how much free, and good, information is out there for illustrators, entertainment artists, and conceptual designers. If you need a place to start I highly recommend Sidebarnation and Muddy Colors, as well as You Tube of course to search any tutorials, here are a few good ones:

After seeing these videos I promptly tried my hand and look where it got me

No real story is attached to these images yet, just doodling around, obviously playing with different styles. To make these images I used a variety of Micron pens, and Winsor Newton brushes with Higgins Black Magic Ink on Canson Layout Marker Paper.

oh AND if you do nothing that I've said previously you HAVE got to check out Feng Zhu at his FZD School on Youtube. He's an amazing conceptual artist and a constant talker on his videos, giving some really great advise from the entertainment arts industry.

Chesed's Order - Illustration 1

The social side of things over here has been slipping recently, I know....but it's because I've been working hard on an exciting project I'd love to introduce you to!

Chesed's Order is a short story by a friend of mine J. Aaron Culpepper, we're teaming up on this project to make one great book. It's due to come out this Christmas from Ambassador International. The book is a fictional account of The Advent from the eyes of the angels in heaven, the heralds of this great gift to man.

So I get the chance to illustrate heaven, which is pretty exciting, but of course mostly subject to my imagination. I do believe heaven is a real place and because God made it, it will be beautiful. I don't know what type of architecture it will have, what kind of flora and fauna either, but I do know beautiful things that He has made here on earth, through the work of His own hands and through that of man as well. And so this book will contain many things that I personally find beautiful, I hope you don't mind.

Here's a look at my process for the first illustration.

The book is planned to be a horizontal 8.5" x 11", so I'm looking at a 22" spread. I drew it full scale, minus the text to the right, scanned it in parts, and pieced it together in photoshop.

Here's my first layer of flat colors, this gives me a base for each part of the painting, allowing me to build secondary colors, shadows, highlights and textures on top of them when they are selected.

Secondary layer of flat colors as well as some texture in the sky.

Here are a couple layers of shadow, one normal and one multiply.

Here's a layer of blue shadow, set on overlay.

Highlights on overlay.

Color Balance layer, making the highlights more red and yellow, and the shadows more cyan.

Finally finishing off with a warming red photo filter set at 49% density to unify all the colors.

Will heaven have hobbit-like holes? Maybe, maybe something better, I just think they're too beautiful of an idea to keep out.

For more thoughts and great insights of what God says in the Bible about heaven I'd strongly recommend you reading Heaven by Randy Alcorn.

Honeymoon Cruise

I know what you're thinking....

Is it actually socially acceptable to post honeymoon photos? I'd say it's a case-by-case basis, so I hope I kept it classy and discreet enough.

All in all I'd say a cruise is a great way to go for your honeymoon! We chose Royal Caribbean and it was good, but if we were to do it again we would definitely upgrade to the Disney cruise.

In Honor of a Birthday

In honor of friend Katie Klaiber, who has always been fond of my clouds, I dedicate this little one to her for her birthday. It may also appear in on a few Thank You cards in the near future.

Editorial Illustration - Deeply Rooted Magazine

A few months ago my wife and I came across the Deeply Rooted Magazine, a Biblically sound publication that's also concerned with good aesthetics. This is a really rare bird to find and we are privileged to be considered contributors to this new endeavor. So periodically you'll see me posting these editorial illustrations on different articles, this article is about the Holy Spirit and the Christian.

For a chance to get the first print edition of the Deeply Rooted Magazine please visit their site and order!