Caricature Sketching

These days, I use Instagram a lot to share my art, so my blog has been quite vacant. But it's time to update again, let's see if I can keep it up. I'm doing caricature sketches as warmups. This was a sketch from last night, and added color today. I love doing google searches for photos of people. I looked up "old latino" and found a great wrinkled face I used as a reference for this illustration. Really had fun drawing his unique shape of his wrinkles, and the big ears. Handsome people are boring to draw, it's the people with uniquely shaped facial features that make it fun to draw. Its also easier to draw caricatures with people who have interesting or pronounced facial features than evenly proportioned perfect people. I can zone in on a big nose or unique head shape, and the caricature will look more spot on than someone with a classically beautiful face with nothing unique about their face.

You can find me on Instagram as @JesJosAcosta and Twitter as @JesseJAcosta.

Some sketching

So, this weekend was pretty fun, though I had to work. I stopped by a local comic shop, met up with some friends and fellow artists, and shared my mini comic. Then I got home, and packed a lot of giveaways of my comic. I was glad to end up with eight people interested in the book! Can't wait to mail them out tomorrow morning. It's been nice to have the Clashing Swords mini comic (see previous blog entry) put to bed. I'm probably going to wait a week before starting any new projects.

The first person who chimed in for a book also got a free sketch. He says Master Chief is his favorite character, so this is what he got! I hope he's pleased.

 Master Tenzin from Avatar: Legend of Korra. I actually tossed this one up in my Etsy shop. Loving the show so much right now!

Sick Blog

So I've been sick for the last few days. Horrible allergies, then a cold, and now I believe its turned into a sinus infection. I keep drinking juice, gatorade, and hot tea to keep myself hydrated. Its not fun. Yesterday I slept almost the entire time. As soon as I'm done writing this, its back to bed again. I hate sinus pressure!!!

Anyway, I've been unable to draw the last few weeks. Perhaps its due to the oncoming sickness. But I can't draw anything worthwhile, all the poses and gestures look stiff and ridiculous. Right now, I'm just drawing quick gestures in a cheap sketch book, hoping to break this funk.

Well, back to bed. I'll probably take a shower first. Steam is a big help. BTW, I've been reading Arturo Perez-Reverte's Capitan Alatriste. Its quite good! It reminds me of Isabel Allende's Zorro and Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo.

Back to the dungeon...

More Caperucitas Rojas

Still working on a look for the little hero:



I'm having trouble with the face and hair... Children are difficult to draw.


*update*
I drew a face, and I like it. But I still don't like the hair quite yet..

Joker Painting Tutorial Pt 7

Sorry it has been a while since the last update. I never realized how draining it is for me to try to think of painting in steps, it really slows me down and makes me not want to paint! Step by step is hard, because I generally don't work in one fashion. I like to fool around a lot with the paint, sometimes I work on more interesting parts when I get bored with the monotony of some parts of the painting.

Okay, so now I'm going to introduce a new acrylic additive, a retarder:

This stuff is really nice, it thins the paint a bit, and it lets it sit longer before drying. This will be useful for wet on wet blending action.


This is where I left off last. I was fooling around with water and darker greyish blues to make shadows on the bottom of the strait jacket. I didn't like the outcome so much, so I went out and bought the retarder since I knew it would be easier for this effect.




Here's I've mixed my Payne's Grey (the darkest background color) with Azrilian Crimson to make a purple. I mixed about a dime size amount of the color, and added about four drops of the retarder to it and mixed it in. Then I painted the upper portion of the face with it. After that, I used some titanium white and the purple together to make a lavender middle tone:



This is where the excitement begins! I can now use that retarder to make my paint take longer to dry. I can have a wet dark purple, and a lavender, then blend them together on canvas using a swirl motion with the brush. I try to keep a lot of strokes in the look to give a real painterly look. I'm heavily influenced by the old pulp covers and movie posters of the 40s, they really had a cool painted look to them.


After a good transition of purples, I add on top of it a small amount of titanium white and retarder to get some bright white on the forehead, and cheek. This is really my favorite part of painting, its about building volume. I add dark colors, medium colors, then lighter colors, then I can darken it if need be, or brighten it more, until I am satisfied.


Here's the whole thing at the moment. Yes, Joker's face is very purple at the moment, but I'll be lightening it up a bit later on, after I get the face and everything else finished.


That's pretty much it for now. I'll probably be finishing the face, then going back to the strait jacket again. After that, I'll be working on the pants, then I'm going to have the pants fade back into the background by adding some more Payne's Grey and impasto. From there, it will be about tweaking little things and making minor adjustments.

Joker Painting Tutorial Pt 6?

I can't remember what part I am up to now in my painting process of The Joker, but here's another update. Also, a side now, this is my 50th blog post! Yay! Now if somebody actually read all this, it would be worth celebrating :D

I finally picked up a light, but I'm unsure if I like it yet. My lighting is still uneven, but its at least better than before. I'm about to put 5000watt daylight bulbs in the whole basement just to work properly. I'd imagine the police would be stopping by though, expecting a grow house. The den is pretty poor to work in though, its the worst lighting in the house, but its the only room with enough space to work in. Here's my new setup:


You can also see the easel I built.

So now, I've decided to start on his straight jacket. I used some naples yellow, neutral grey, and payne's grey to make a slightly yellowed greyish tone. I'll probably have to play with this color a bit before I'm sure I'll be satisfied with the color. I originally wanted an off-white / cream color for the straight jacket, but it was a little too bright when I tried it.


Oh yeah, I also was playing a bit and colored his mouth for the heck of it. Cadmium Deep Red with a little black for the tongue. The mouth is ivory black with some payne's grey.

So, that's it for today. I'll be working on the rest of his top, adding some highlights and shadows next. Not too much after that, his pants, his face, and a lot of finishing touches to round it all off.

Joker Pt. Part 5

Continuing the Joker's hair! This time I want to add some darker and lighter tones of hair to give a sense of volume.



There is about four different variations of green for his hair, some lighter with olive green, burnt umber, hooker's green, and naples yellow. I just keep adding strands of hair, until its like this:


I may add more hair later on, depending on what I feel about the piece when its closer to completion.

That's about it today, sorry its so short. I need to stop at a store tomorrow to pick up a better lamp for painting. I had some people make several suggestions, I'll see what I can find.

Joker Painting Tutorial part 4

Now its time to start the hair. I'm using a Hooker's Green for the base coat, and I fill the whole block of hair:


Now I'm going to use a smaller brush, like one I might ink with. Whenever my brush strokes have to be smaller and more precise, I make sure my small brush is pretty damp feeling before dipping into the paint. I think it helps the bristles move and flow better when I make my strokes. I'm just starting by adding some locks of hair with a mix of Hooker's Green and Naples Yellow. I like using this in the mix for a lighter green instead of using titanium white because it looks a much more vibrant:


Now that my layer of light hair is done, I'm going to mix less yellow into my hooker green and make slightly different shaded locks. I'll make about three layers eventually with different shades of green to make up The Joker's wild hair:


That's about it for today. Its been pretty difficult for me to paint recently because the sun is setting sooner and I work late in the evening. I have a few lamps at the easel, but its not enough quality for me to work with. Regular bulbs give an ugly tone to most of my colors. I also have a day lamp which is good, but its a reading lamp, so I'm not getting enough light over my whole canvas. I just need to buy a good lamp for painting with, if you have one you use for painting, let me know!

Joker Tutorial part 3

Continuing with my tutorial on painting, I'm going to start talking about dry-brushing. Dry brushing is a technique where you load the brush with just a little amount of paint, and even brush it until its 'dry', meaning there is almost no paint coming off the brush. Once you get the brush ready, you lightly brush your painting, and only the impasto part of the painting that sticks out will get painted on. This will give the piece an even more raised effect.



I mixed my Payne's Gray with just a little zinc white, and prepared my brush for drybrushing. I painted around, and I especially painted around the Joker to give him a sort of haloed glow around him. After I highlighted with the drybrush, I mixed more zinc white to make a whiter light blue, and continued the process. I did this about three times to give a nice gradient of brightness.


This is the first drybrushing layer. You can see that there isn't too much of a difference between the original Payne's gray background and the lighter blue. I want each layer to be a subtle change.


This is about three or four coats of drybrushing , each getting brighter and brighter.



Now that I'm done, I peeled away the frisket of The Joker, leaving his silhouette. See how the frisket protected the Joker illustration below? Actually, if you look closely, you can see I had only one spot of bleeding, and that was a small spot on The Joker's nose, but I can paint over that just fine. Now its time to paint The Joker!

That's it for tonight, I hope someone out there is learning something from this tutorial!

Painting Tutorial Continued

I worked a bit more on my Joker painting and took some more photos. Remember, this is all my rough thoughts, I'll be much more thorough when I actually compile it into a proper tutorial. I believe I'm going to make this into a website and a DeviantArt tutorial.

This segment of the tutorial will be on my impasto technique, its nothing fancy, but good to use. If you look at my Grim painting or my Automaton of Mars painting, you can see the impasto technique being used. I got the idea originally from Brom, no secrets there. My first painting I actually ever completed was Grim, and it is deeply rooted in Brom's work. I think I have separated myself from that quite a bit though. That's what I believe artists do, they see something they like, they imitate it for study, take what they want from it, and build their personal style.


Okay, first up is the Impasto medium. Actually the brand I use is called Molding Paste from Golden's gel mediums. The photo I found here says Light Molding Paste, but I prefer the regular molding paste, its a bit heavier, more sculpting, and feels a bit tougher and longer lasting. I think it takes longer to dry as well, which in my book can be both a plus and minus.



This stuff is kind of like mud. I use a palette knife and just go wild, making marks, slashes, splatters, whatever. I'll impress the knife into a bunch of medium on the canvas then pull up and down a few times to get a real textured look.


I'm applying amounts of the paste all over the areas of the background for this piece. I want the background to look something like a stone wall, lots of texture. Once i get the paste where I want, then I start messing it up.


This is where I press down with the knife and lift repeatedly to make a messy texture.


I'm trying to get it everywhere except on The Joker. I want it to look like a maniacal prison cell in the end.


Okay, I have the paste how I like it for right now. One note, I used to paint flat on a table when I started painting a few years ago, before I built my easel. Yes, I said I built my easel. I like to build whatever I can, so its to my specifications, and generally much cheaper. I also built my light box for transferring sketches onto bristol board. Anyway, when I painted flat on a table, the impasto technique would actually start going slightly flat as it dried due to gravity! Now that my canvas is standing straight up, depending on how thick it is, it has the potential to run down. I'm going to let this dry, its not too thick for me to worry too much. But when its dry, I'll take another photo, and then possibly add some more paste if need be.

That's all I have for now, hopefully tonight I'll get some more work done, which means more photos and blogging. Tonight I am going to see the new Star Wars movie with an old high school buddy whom I haven't seen in almost ten years.


*Update** 9:35pm

Okay, so I'm back from the movie and I worked some more on the painting. BTW, the Star Wars movie was pretty good. I didn't like that the droids were really stupid though.


Okay, one of my tools I use is frisket. Frisket is generally an airbrush artist's tool, that's actually where I learned to use this first. Frisket is like a giant clear sticker than you can put over your painting, then cut out shapes with an exacto blade and paint over it. Once you're done, you can peel it back up and the covered area is protected from your paint job.
I'm going to use the frisket to protect The Joker, while I get wild and paint the background. I want the background to have some gradients and drybrushing effects, so as I wildly paint, The Joker will be safe behind the frisket.



I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but I cut a square piece of frisket around The Joker. Now its time to use the exacto blade to carefully cut the silhouette of The Joker.


Here, I have The Joker cut out, and ready to paint.


I am using Paynes Gray here to start a base coat of the background. I want the background to be a very dark blue with lighter blue highlights. Paynes Gray works well for this because its almost black. One thing I'll have to remember is that when this dries, I'll have to rotate it and be sure to get the bottom of the canvas completely covered with paint as well.
A note about painting over frisket. Always try to paint going away from the frisket, not towards the frisket. If you paint towards the frisket, you potentially can lift up the frisket and accidentally paint into your covered area. If you paint going away from your frisket, you'll keep pressing the edge of the frisket down, ensuring a safe bond to the canvas.

How I paint, the beginning of a tutorial

I think Im going to make a tutorial. I'm taking photos and scans of each step so far with my Joker illustration. I haven't seen too many traditional acrylic painting tutorials here, or anywhere, perhaps it will be useful for someone.

I kind of made a quick rundown so far:


My first sketch of what I wanted Joker to look like


First sketches to figure out the pose. didnt like this, because it was
to directly forward, very boring and undynamic. I drew a little sketch
below to figure it out.


Another idea, this is going into a better direction.


My first sketch.. its okay, but it needs more arch in his back and a
bit more madness.


This is now really getting somewhere. but its drawn in my pocket
sketchbook, and needs to be redrawn much larger to make better
details.


Larger paper, very early stage


Final sketch, ready to project with my opaque projector, onto a canvas.


This is my opaque projector. It takes 4"x4" illustrations, so I scan
my final illustration, and reprint it at a size that will fit. Then I
fit it inside and project it.



This is in the process of the projection. Note, I didn't take a photo
of my Joker painting while I was transferring it with my opaque
projector, so that's why the two other photos don't match. I was going
to do this some time ago with my St Jerome painting, but then set it
aside to work one some more imperative things.



Now that it is aligned to the correct size and focused, I can sketch it over. The reason I do this process, rather than just freehanding onto the canvas is because I get very nervous with a giant blank canvas and lose direction, a sort of artist block. I feel I can be much more creative and loose onto sketchpaper without worrying about screwing up a big canvas.


Now its on the canvas, ready to paint. The canvas I believe is 18"x24"

I'll keep taking photos, and writing. I want it to be pretty thorough so people can maybe learn something, or even teach me a few tricks to my process of painting.

The Joker - Daily Sketch

I'm really wimping out on these daily sketches! I haven't had enough time to put into something really cool. I spent about 15 minutes at work, and came up with this Joker:

It could be better, but the little sketchbook I have is so small, I get timid about drawing full bodies because there is little room for detail. I need to get over my stupid ocds about drawing, and just draw til my pencil falls off the page.
Anyway, my Joker is taking a lot from the cartoon series, then I also added the Chelsea smile, just like from the newest movie, which I saw again!!! Just as amazing on round two.

Other than my daily sketch, I bought I new t-shirt today. Its a Comic Book Shop t-shirt, but it has the Danzig logo on it, pretty impressive stuff. The CBS shirt was $8.00, if I were to buy the Danzig shirt at Hot Topic, it would have been $25.00, the CBS shirt could not be passed up.
I also went to the annual Baroque festival in Riverfront Park yesterday... For some reason, many women were confusing baroque with Civil War southern belle. What the hell?! They needed to be beaten, but not as badly as the people trying to do an accent, announcing the events on the mic. They were speaking softly, or gently, hard to describe, but in their mind that equates to a European 17th century accent. It sounded a little closer to gay than baroque to me, but I never lived in the 17th century so what do I know?

Oh, I also bought a few used books a couple days ago from abebooks.com, for those that don't know, its a network of used bookstores across the globe, and you can find anything you want at great deals. I picked up two Burne Hogarth books (Dynamic Figure Drawing, Dynamic Anatomy), Drawing a Likeness, and Drawing Animals. Hoping these might add to my arsenaul of art skills.
Well, that's about it for today. I'm seriously trying to put together some nicer stuff for a daily sketch, just you wait!

Dark Knight and THREE Daily Sketches

I saw The Dark Knight today, it was the best movie this summer! I was kind of grumpy that people were suspecting Heath Ledger to be receiving awards for his role before the movie was released, but now I say he deserves everything he can obtain for that role. I feel bad for his passing because he deserves the hype. The film was phenomenal, the movie is like a great crime drama plus Batman... Amazing, watch it again and again!

Secondly, at work I put together a couple daily sketches. First two about 30 minutes each, the last about an hour and a half.


This is some crazy dude staring in the sky while smoking. I was thinking of awful office jobs while drawing this.



Someone said something about Dead Pool, so I drew a shaved headed zombie with goggles and a gun.. makes sense, right?


Lastly, I tried imitating Mystique's pose from an X-Men cover by Humberto Ramos, from memory. I did pretty well if i do say so myself. The arms are slightly funky, but the overall piece contains a sense of attitude.

Its hard to put together daily sketches, since some days I don't sketch at work or home due to just being busy. So I feel these three made up for some missed days. Also, I'm trying to work my way up to longer sketches. Its just hard, because most of my free time is only during my breaks at work, so I'm just drawing on my little pocket sketchbook which is hard to render details on.

Second Daily Sketch in one day?!

I felt since I skipped a day or two, trying to keep the daily sketch going, I'd double up for today. This took about 45 minutes as well, again, its a friend's character, but my own take on it. My friend, Heather, draws with a heavy manga influence, I thought I might try to introduce that a bit more this time.

Daily Sketch, and some thoughts

So I sat myself down at a local cafe for close to an hour today to draw a friend's character my own way. By actually noting start and end times for the drawing session, I realized I am the sloth of illustration. This is what I came up with:



I think a lot of it has to do with confidence with pencil strokes and the capability to move on.. I spend a lot of time loosely sketching, erasing, redrawing, erasing, redrawing.. I also noticed certain things I hate to draw, namely foreshortened limbs (the hand and arm coming up front), bars of a bird cage (I think in part because I had no reference to a bird cage), and female clothing. I think I grew too comfortable with comic book women who just wear lycra.

How does one speed up their drawing? Is it by just drawing religiously, or forcing to move faster?