A Few Days Ago, The Damn Fine Coffee! Kickstarter Ended With Wild Success! I Just Want To Send Out A

Toecutter!! #madmax (Taken with instagram)

Gouache Process

There have been a lot of very kind responses to my gouache paintings recently, as well as a few requests for tips, and so I've decided to do up a little process post.  I'm very flattered, and a little intimidated!  So, please bear with me as I expose all my clumsy painting techniques.  I should say that though I was taught the basics of gouache painting and dry-brushing, I took those and sorta ran off with my own methods, and they may not be the best way of working!  Like any artist, I'm always adjusting my process.  No doubt my next painting will be created completely differently, but at this point, this is what I do:

So here are my gouache tubes, disposable palettes, and palette knife (and juice!).  I don't know if many people use a palette knife when mixing gouache, but I like to so that I can preserve my brushes just a little more.  I also save all my palettes throughout each piece, and I've found that I can reuse the gouache pretty easily even on these disposable ones so long as you're patient enough to scrape and break up the dried bits with your knife and water.  I've never liked using porcelain or ceramic plates for my palettes, even though they are easier for reusing your dried gouache, only because I run out of space too quickly when I'm mixing and I can't save my colors.

Starting from the beginning!  I always try to preserve as much of the energy of my sketches as I can when I pencil out my piece so I'll usually blow them up and light-table them.  Our light table has become a hugely valuable tool when I paint.  It's homemade!  I hate to pencil directly onto the nice paper I'll be painting on, so I'll usually work over the pencils on the light table, like so:

If you think about it digitally, I typically treat this part like it's all about laying in the flats.  I'm going to have a relatively dark background, so I'll paint that in last so my lighter colors don't pick it up and get all blotchy from the retouching that would have been required in that case.

I can't ever leave that light table on and step away! Doesn't that look scary with that jar of water, and the table a little askew, and my laptop right there..........? 

No harm done!  My cat is dainty, and I'm lucky. 

So I've gotten most of my girl painted in and I've already started dry-brushing on parts.  Usually most of that detail work I'll save till the end, but in some cases it helps to do it before hand.  For instance, layering her dress over the dry-brushing I did on her arm (as you can see in the last photo) helps keep things crisp.

Starting on the background, I'm using this as an opportunity to smooth her shape out a bit and clean up any wayward brushstrokes.

It's almost there!  Now I get to dry brush!  The absolute best part.  Plus! I can abandon the light table now and just go to town adding details and cleaning things up.  This is where I go back to my palettes and reuse a lot of my gouache.  I've made the mistake of mixing too little at the beginning and only realizing it at this step and that is no fun!  Gouache can be finicky with color matching, so I try to avoid remixing a color from scratch at this point because of that.  Also, different colors may dry darker or lighter than when they're wet, which may depend on the brand you're buying.  I use Winsor & Newton and Daler Rowney (cheaper!).  Some colors work better per brand in my experience.  For instance, I hate Daler Rowney's yellow ocher.  It always dries in the tube on me and has a weird semigloss, whereas Winsor & Newton's is great.  Conversely, I've found Winsor & Newton's turquoise blue to be super oily, like, oil with some blue in it.

Anyway, heading towards the finish...

There she is!  All done.  I've added my line work for the little firework sparks, and dry-brushing the light and shadow has carried it home.  I hope this has been neat and informative.  If you want to talk more gouache techniques or what not with me, feel free to ask!  Thanks again for all the encouragement, guys!

I did this piece for an article in the New York Times about how a survivor of domestic abuse is drawn to listening to true crime podcasts. You can read the article online here.

It's a little snowflake sprite!

I desperately want it to snow, and would like to inspire a little mythical assistance.

"I'll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a popsicle."

The Warriors. is. my. favorite. movie. of. all. time.

This is my tshirt design for another Pizza Party Printing movie night at the Ottobar here in Baltimore. On Sunday, April 28th, they'll be presenting the best movie of all time, The Warriors, along with another best movie of all time, The Road Warrior so you'd best soldier over to this one. Admission (and pizza) is free as always, and BASEBALL TEES of my design as well as regular tees of Jimmy Giegerich's utterly rad Road Warrior shirt will be on sale. SO...

Come out to playy-ayyy!

"Hold me."

"I can't."

Here's my latest tshirt design for Pizza Party Printing: Edward Scissorhands! 3-color screen-printed on soft black cotton, for you gentle romantics. You can preorder your own shirt here (Pizza Party offers more options during preorder, so say you want this on a hoodie? you can get that!), and if you're in Charm City, come to the movie event at the Windup Space on the 21st.

Something foul has stepped into the garden...!

The full illustration will have to wait until November.  In the meantime, working on a new alphabet chart that I'm excited to show very soon!

Lucky! ... It's been awhile, friends. I have been busy drawing, writing, and teaching. All good things, but I've been absent too long, so expect to see more from me real soon.

For Valentines Day I give you a galactic prince reclining on a nebula. Space flowers are perfect for pondering the timeless "She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not..."

"Severian and the Undine" a scene from Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

I painted this piece for Seb Mesnard's upcoming gallery event in Paris "The Book Show." Thanks, Seb, for inviting me to participate! You can check out some of the other awesome work on the show blog here.

Book of the New Sun may be my favorite book series of all time. It's so astoundingly good, I don't really have adequate words. It transcends science fiction, fantasy, novel, whatever you want to call it, and is more an epic prose. It's just gorgeous, riveting, mind-blowing imagery and world-making by Gene Wolfe, a writer whose stories change and only get more amazing with each read. Just wow. You guys. You guys need to read it. Jimmy Giegerich introduced me to it. Check out his Severian!