Spraypaint

Learning to use spraypaint on Friday nights.

Belton Molotow & MTN 94.

My apologies going missing like that.

quick

I'm positive it's a wig. Charcoal & pastel pencils. Need to find some gray paper.

Master copy

Study of a favorite Rockwell piece. I learn something new and remember something I forgot every time I do a quick study like this.

Drawing with my son tonight and wanted to try some charcoal & white pastel pencil. It's always been frustrating to me that fixative wrecks everything it touches. I bought a new one that worked, but it cost me $20 for the can! Latour Sennelier. If it makes charcoal/ chalk/ pastel a viable medium to keep in a sketchbook, it would be worth it.

Another zombie, this time in CS5

I was trying to find mixer brush setting combos that would work for me.

I didn't even know about the HUD palette back when I did this. Now it's hard to work without it.

At the same time, I'm really irritated that it feels designed by an engineer without regard for or input from the customer.

It's a horribly designed 2 part keyboard chord that terribly thought through - as is the earlier CS4 right mouse button brush size fail.

I've resorted to using autoHotkey, a free hotkey management app, to avoid future RSI issues with these tools. I can post my script if anyone wants it.

CS5 does have some amazing features and I am already crazy about it.

Photoshop CS5

I loves the new brushes and I'm getting used to the new HUD palette. Slooowwly. 

Still trying to find brush combos that work for me. 

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://markbehm.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://markbehm.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Blog moving : http://www.markbehm.com/blogger/

http://www.markbehm.com/blogger/   

Had to migrate as blogger is shutting down ftp serving. Update your RSS feeds!

PS Night sketchy. My money isn't on the under-dressed girl.

Calgary Comic Expo 2010?

April 24th & 25th. Anybody going?
I needed new cards.
I'll be at the BrandStudio booth.

Been a long, long time

Help the Hodges Benefit Auction

For an old friend. It's been my honor to know and learn from this man.

If there are any industry artists out there that haven't heard or been able to contribute, the deadline for submissions is coming up very soon: http://www.helpthehodges.com/

It's the first acrylic on canvas I've done since ...possibly high school? I'm struck by how much easier the predictable texture of the surface makes things. I don't have to worry about any of my previous acrylic issues. I've been painting on smooth surfaces for too long. It begs more playtime.

This is such a bad idea

How does he always get talked into these kinds of things?

showdown

Just playing with some custom PS brushes.

Gogogo!

PS

Time to paint

been too long

roughly how tired I am.

Live demo Nov 5th in Bellevue WA

unused illo for a WOTC D&D project from last year.

If you are in the Seattle area, I'm going to be doing a demo next Thursday in Bellevue.
Even better - BROM is going to be there giving a talk. It's an opening for a new school called 3d Training Academy. I'll be teaching a couple of character design/digital painting evening classes there soon. See their site for the demo location http://www.3dta.com

out for a stroll

Been so busy lately. Lots of partially finished stuff that's just not ready to post.

huntsman

Photoshop.

acrylic + photoshop

zbrush "PaintStop" doodle

Downloaded it today. Just playing w some of the tools. It's not one of those things I was hoping or expecting from zbrush, but I found it kinda fun.

Shoe Salesman

Photo"painfully slow"shop CS4.

No idea where I was going with this. It's really hot here.
Can anyone tell me why this plays so fast?! It's 13 minutes @ 30fps on my machine and plays just fine til I upload it.

Digital Painting 01 ~ Shoe Salesman from Mark Behm on Vimeo.

the pass

Friday mug

It had been a while since I last used painter. I needed some down time at work and had installed painter 11 some time ago. Now I remember why it was so fun.

landscrape

I feel dirty painting waterfalls. Like a lens flare.

tradigital

Started as a an oil over pencil. Painted over it and added more color in PS. I haven't done that in a long time.

To top it all off

Bernard's breath was bad too.

wipeout

Another Nightwork interior. Alkyd over fixed prismacolor. For those not familiar with the idea this was done entirely transparently. A loose value drawing, then a quick wash of black and burnt sienna, then lights wiped, scrubbed and/or picked out with a dry cloth, dry q-tip, or brush with turps. I used to love the luminous quality, textured feel and raw speed of this over-done technique.
See Bernie Fuchs, C.M.Dudash and David Grove

Bad white point, first 2 steps.

Nostalgic

I sometimes miss the little patch of woods next to where I lived in Northern California - on a huge bluff above the ocean. It didn't really look like this but it had a similar personality to it.
The place could be breathtakingly beautiful and scary at the same time. My favorite times were the crazy red light it often had about it at sunset and the absolute darkness and roar of the ocean at night.

TrollGeeks

For Drawergeeks this week. PS.

Exercise

Painter. More quickie palette knife randomness.
I'm aggravated by the lack of decent angle control.
Tilt is useless to me. Bearing is confusing. Direction doesn't work (spins).
Rotation with my 6d is more or less random (only seems so w pknife) and only seems to want to read the pen's angle when it chooses to.

palette knives

Painter. Loaded palette knife and a soft airbrush.
Love that knife for blocking.

sketch

A late night 42 minutes. PainterX. Here's the image.

Emerald City Con 2009

OK, who here has stalked a campfire?....Hello? This started from the same abstract goo the last one did. I feel it might have a dozen other compositions locked in there somewhere.

I won't be at the Emerald City Con in Seattle this weekend (April 4 & 5) but my co-worker Wade Schin (site)(book) and BrandStudio Press will both be there and my Nightworks book will be available at one of those booths. Stop by both and say hi!

old wreck

Nap

Photoshop over pencil sketch.

Another shot: Golden Opens

On the advice of Erik I decided to give Golden Opens another go but without water. I used only a gloss medium I had, only enough water to barely wet the brush to start.
I have to say that it was better - no ugly 2 stage drying that turned me off last time- but still very stiff. I think I need to find a more fluid (and thinner) medium for them. Maybe that would do the trick.

Yarg. Pan Pastel

2 days before the con I was in the art store and found these panPastel things. They are little trays of pastel that have so little binder in them that they don't hold together in a stick. You apply them with what look like makeup sponges on sticks. This is my first shot, done during Wondercon. Extremely fun stuff. I'm not a pastel guy, but I can see why painters are drawn to the medium. This stuff in particular is as much paint as any wet medium I've tried.
There's a quick guache wash for a base and prismacolor under, over, etc. It's all done on this great Wallis pastel paper which is really expensive sandpaper.

reset

When I'm stuck on something it often helps me to take an hour or so out and step away from things. Do something different. Brain reset.

Wondercon!

I will be at Wondercon this year! It's this coming weekend in SF. Feb 27-March 1.
The gracious and talented Pascal Campion is sharing his booth with me. I'll be pawning Nightworks and collecting commissions. See you there?

gnarled viking

This is pretty much how I used to paint everything albeit spending more time.
Value drawing.
Transparent underpainting. Acrylic and then Alkyd here.
Opaque, thicker paint for painting light. Alkyd in this case.
I think I'll do more like this. I'll tape at least one of them.
This one's yours, Jack.

I still like oil better

I don't know why that disappoints me.
This was alkyds but I consider it oil.

Golden Open Acrylics. First shot.

The jury is still out on these in this house. I do like that they stay wet for so long and that I can dry them w a hairdryer when I'm ready. I do like that when they are dry, they are tough, like regular acrylics without sealing them.

But there is a lot I really didn't like. Keep in mind this is after one session of play.

They stay wet for a while, but "set" to a strange consistency right away - after the water evaporates. Once they are in this stage they have a really odd "pull" to them that I didn't like at all. Not tacky, exactly, but gooey. Glycerin-like.

They are exceptionally translucent and you need to use a LOT of paint to get any real covering power. More than other acrylics I've tried. I only used Titanium white and burnt umber on this. Other colors to come next.

Right now, I'm leaning toward the Atelier Interactives, I can let them dry right away, or keep them open with water (or slow drying medium) or open them later with water. They aren't the most potent pigments in the world, but much stronger than the Golden Opens of the same color. I suspect it has to do with the whatever vehicle they are using to keep them open.

More play is needed.

oil sketch videos up

Had to split it up into 3, 10 minute sections. It was very late when I did the overdub so you'll have to forgive me. I should have written an outline to talk to.
Edit: The blog I mention on color is http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/

Alkyd roughneck

I will have a video of it up in the next few days. Seems it's 30 minutes total. I will keep it real-time and do a shoddy voice-over. Hopefully it will address some FAQ. So if you've asked a question (or do in the next day) I'll try to get to it.

Narrow escape

Painter.
Something is wrong with my painter at work. Every 10th stroke or so, I get a horizontal streak going off to the left and fading out. Like an old Bob Peak painting! It worked fine a few months back. This happen to anybody else? I even got Corel's service pack. No good.

nails

Quick, aimless thumbnails inspired by Marco Bucci's recent posts. Brain reset.

Sorry it's been so long! I paint all day now, so I must be getting it out of my system! At least a little.

More posts on the way.

Atelier interactive demo

Tried to get the palette in there. The only thing of note is that I'm occasionally spraying the thing with water. This somehow re-hydrates the already dry (but not cured) acrylic. Making it workable again.
I also only used a big flat brush. Even with fast work, there's little reason to go smaller. It makes you think in planes and directionality and helps prevent excessive noodling.

oil speedpaint 4

I added raw sienna this time and it took me way longer to do. 35 minutes. Why raw sienna? Why? Maybe it was because I had little idea where I was going when I started.

Oil Speedpaint 03

13 minutes for this one down to 7 something. I will eventually post the finals. Enough of this for now. Tried to get the palette visible, as limited as it was. All of these were done with

• Ivory Black
• Burnt Sienna
• Titanium White

Just to get a warm cool mix.
I think the hardest thing about these was the fact that I was doing them flat on a table and I couldn't get around to the left side because the camera & light were in the way! All my brush strokes kinda went from left to right. Unexpectedly frustrating.

And another oil

19 minutes compressed to 7. Better white balance this time.

Alkyd & Oil

10 min, down to 7.5 min. Should have a few more like this soon.

Don't even look at his sister

Wasn't til the end till I saw the Earth Worm Jim'ness. Ah well.
Also I did an interview with SideBar that was just posted. At the very least, go look at the list of previous podcast interviews they've done. Tons of very cool stuff.

interior quickies

sloppy oil wipe-out over prismacolor

sloppy acrylic