SKETCH-BLOG

Muddy Swamp Monster

2012-01-28T18:46:00.001-08:00

Characters on the Subway

2012-01-27T10:13:00.001-08:00

I commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan everyday on the subway. The diversity of commuters in each car is like a microcosm of humanity and an endless source of inspiration. I don't reference people entirely, but instead I put them together like Mr. Potato Heads. Since the commute is so kinetic and transient its the only way to work. For stability I make my important marks when the train makes a stop.I work in a small moleskin sketchbook that easily slides into my my pocket then snap photos of the work on an I phone. It's an extremely portable process.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Cowardly Lion

2012-01-11T09:09:00.001-08:00

A quick sketch of The Wizard of Oz character from L. Frank Baum's books.

Painting Everything: Baseball, Basil, and Oaf

2011-07-06T19:07:00.001-07:00

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Painting Everything: An Italian Grandfather

2011-07-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

He's quite proud.

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Painting Everything: Mostly Vegetables

2011-07-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to eat these. I sometimes paint them too.
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Painting Everything: Strange Fruit

2011-07-06T18:39:00.000-07:00

The supermarket can be a great place to learn to draw interesting textures and color combination.

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Bob Dylan Illustrated

2011-04-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

In this portrait of young Bob Dylan I chose to accentuate his hair. I achieved this by simplifying details in the face and making the hair as busy as possible.

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View more of my artwork at: www.spencerhallam.com

Reflective CMYK and RGB surfaces

2011-04-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

Using Photoshop I made multiple copies of the the Chrome study from an earlier post then colored each of them in a variety of hues, including CMYK (top row) and RGB (middle). I used a over layer set to the "overlay" blending mode then adjusted the opacity of the layer until I liked the result.

I find this to be a good representation of how reflected sky and ground affects the local color of a highly polished surface. It will be good reference for future illustrations.

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View more of my artwork at: www.spencerhallam.com

Keith Richards

2011-04-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

As a departure, I've been doing some studies using famous musicians. A caricature of Keith Richards from The Rolling Stones almost draws itself. What a face! This could be a good way to start learning to draw leather or craggy rock formations.

Just kidding.

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View more of my artwork at: www.spencerhallam.com

Car Thumbnails

2011-04-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

Car thumbnails from my imagination...

So far, it's seemed easiest for me to draw the wheels in more or less accurate perspective first in order to "ground" the car. Afterward I conceive of the larger shapes as simply as possible, then begin to fill in the details.

Since I don't draw cars very often I'm a little naive about the details and conventional proportions of conventional automobiles. So these ideas look a little outlandish after my slap dash guess work. This is all okay since repetition and creativity counts at this stage while I get a "feel" for it.

Cars from photo reference:

This makes a big difference. Since these cars already have their details in the right spot I only have to render them more or less faithfully. Each of these cars took about the same amount of time to draw as the thumbnails above, but are now much more rooted in observations in reality.

I often flip between drawing from observation and drawing from my imagination. Both methods influence each other in a positive way.

Media: pilot pen toned digitally.

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View more of my artwork at: www.spencerhallam.com

More on Rendering Chrome

2011-04-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Chrome is a three dimensional mirror-like reflective surface. Chrome adopts its color entirely from its surroundings. To render chrome from imagination you must choose the environment surrounding the object being constructed.


Blue sky and asphalt reflect clearly on the surface of chrome.

Since we usually see chrome on cars and since cars are usually outdoors and on the street, we commonly see the asphalt on the ground plane and blue sky above reflected onto the surface of the metal and reflected sharply back to our eyes. A different environment would create a different colors. For example, our car was parked in a grassy park during sunset (see below).

left to right: sunset w/grass, snow w/blue sky, and sunny day at the beach

The brightest light reflects of upward facing surfaces from the sky. The sun, if visible, creates a bright white highlight. On downward facing surfaces we see the ground reflected. Distant objects reflect dramatically less light than the sky and appear almost black; the ground closest to the tire reflects light of brighter value, but still much darker than the sky.

Real world reflections are almost always more complicated than this since since any nearby object could be visible on a surface. When rendering from photo reference or from real life, this knowledge can help you understand and even simplify your observations.

Now that we've talked about chrome, we can begin to talk about how reflective, colored surfaces react to their environment.

Try it out!

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View more of my artwork at: www.spencerhallam.com

Reflective Surfaces: Chrome and Automobile Paint Jobs

2011-03-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

To render chrome effectively you must first choose an environment to be reflected onto the surface of the chrome. In the photo above you can clearly see the earthy color of the road below and the paler blue sky above. Downward facing surfaces will reflect the ground and upward facing surfaces will reflect the sky. Look closely at each ring on the hub cap and guess the angle by what is being reflected.

A reflective colored surface will do the same, but the effect is dramatically influenced by the local color beneath the reflection. A darker color will reflect its environment more clearly than a lighter finish, especially white.

All the lighter shapes on the surface of the above vintage automobiles are reflected images of the sky above. The local color is shifted toward a blue hue (making it more red-violet or violet) and lightened (desaturated with white) where the reflection is visible. These details are hard to invent, but we can begin to make some generalizations.

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THE RAT RACE: Drawing and Painting Cars from Imagination

2011-03-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

I was never much of a car and truck lover as a child so I tend to naturally shy away from drawing mechanical things. More recently I'm trying to be better at this, because it's a pretty big deficit if you don't have the ability as an illustrator. Luckily, many of the principles are the same as with painting a still life, portrait, or landscape. However, it does require a more slavish adherence to the rules of perspective.

Below are some steps I took in my process. Notice that I started with a horizon-line, rough 2pt perspective lines, and a gray background. Also, I worked out my value structure before I started adding color. Once these foundations are in place, the details are easy to place relative to the larger perspective and value structures.

Ultimately this was a successful piece for me. The biggest was to render the reflective surface of the car. In the end I arrived at a matte finished surface with some reflective elements added in to suggest the environment reflected onto the surface of the car. Reflections, are so variable, but I can find some tricks to inventing them. I'll post some new renderings as I do.

Below you can see the warmer color, higher value contrast, and greater level of detail used on the foreground edge of the car as opposed to the cooler, duller, soft-edged, low contrast relationships used rendered the back end. Since this transition occurs slowly over the surface and stays in the red hue family (red-orange to red-violet) our eye/brain perceives it as the same local color under varied lighting conditions.

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The Effect of LIght on Local Color

2011-03-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

I made the two diagrams below to help anyone trying to understand how color changes under different lighting conditions. I've started with a local color at top (sort of a dull red) and shifted the color to show it's possible variations under different color and intensity of light. Here are some vocabulary words to start.

Four "Dimensions" of color:

Hue: Generally this just means the "color." Blue, Red, Yellow-Green, and Magenta are all hues. White, gray, and black are not hues.

Value: The relative lightness or darkness of a color.

Chroma: Sometimes called color intensity, saturation, or brightness. This is the relative dullness or vividness of a color. Colors with low chroma are closer to gray while color with high chroma are colors in their unmixed brightest state.

Temperature: Colors are often referred to as warm or cool. This is a relative term and usually used to describe colors in comparison to each other. Orange is the warmest hue while blue is the coolest. Yellow and red are somewhere in between. White, neutral gray, and black are also considered cool while browns and warm grays are considered warm. If this is a little confusing it's because this concept is a little less measurable than the three above however it's often useful when comparing colors.

Gray swatches on the far left is there as a colorless value reference. The strip on the far right is a gray local color under warm light conditions.

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When employed this understanding of how light effects local color gives convincing results. The three strips on the right depict the same local color under cool, white-balanced, and warm lighting conditions. The descriptions at right describe how the reddish local color shifts dimensions in each zone.

Also see my post about how lighting conditions effect a range of different colors.

Hope this helps!
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Simpifying Values and Value-Key

2011-03-04T18:21:00.000-08:00

I created this post to discuss how an artist can think technically about achieving an intended value key discussed in the previous post. This method helps to simplify an overwhelming number of values into a more workable structure at early stages of a painting (a digital one in this case). The loose renderings below are quick head studies from my imagination as they might be lit for dramatic and compositional purposes.

I began with this basic head drawing which indicates some of the major planes and proportions. This step provides some structure on which to guide my value decisions.

Here I've used only four values to establish the primary value structure of the entire image. For this exercise I ignored any differences in edge quality between shapes. In this low-key image values 5,7, and 9 dominate while value 2 acts as a contrasting accent on the light side.

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For this high-key image I used the same drawing and angle of light as a foundation, however, I've used values 1, 2, and 3 as the dominant values and value 6 as an accent in the spots that even in bright sunlight would remain relatively dark. Note that value 6, though used as a "dark" accent, is still in the middle of the scale. A darker value would appear EXTREMELY dark against such a light composition and appear much less realistic and thus more 2D or "graphic".

Thinking about value in this way also gives the artist clearer choices about where to simplify or otherwise edit out extraneous detail. In the darker study, the variety, detail, and focus happens in the light and the reverse is true for a lighter work.

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Low-Key vs. High-Key Paintings

2011-02-28T15:29:00.000-08:00

In order to create drama and a strong value structure structure for a painting, artists often choose to work in either a high or low "key" in which to compose their work. Thinking about a painting or drawing in this way helps to simplify value choices, emphasize areas of focus, and create a pleasing a pleasing interaction of shapes when the painting is considered abstractly.

In a high-key painting, the majority of values are in the lighter than middle gray. Then, dark accents are used to lead the eye around the important areas of the painting. High-key paintings feel light and airy.

The Tiepolo watercolor above is a great example of a high-key composition. This style tends to mimic daylight by brightening the shadow side of the form and only darkening the areas that even strong ambient light has difficulty penetrating.

In a low-key painting, the majority of values are darker then middle gray. Light values are saved as accents to highlight the important elements in the painting. Low-key paintings feel mysterious and contemplative.

In this Rembrandt painting the elderly man's white hair face and hands command our attention since they stand out so dramatically from the darkened background. It appears that the man is lit by a torch or from a distant window opened up to reveal the sun low in the sky. The painting is composed almost like a yin-yang. The black keys stand out against the lit ground at bottom right adding a secondary focus to the work. Also noticed that the shadow is simplified by jointing the dark side of the man's shirt with the cast shadow extending into the background.

Interestingly, the color scheme for both works is essentially identical. They are both rendered monochromatically in a gradient of burnt sienna or brown. The choice of key brings a distinctly different "feel" to each painting.

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Atmopheric Perspective

2011-02-27T16:05:00.000-08:00

On a sunny clear day in Manhattan you can see the effects that the air has on the value contrasts of the distant buildings.

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Through rain and fog this effect is made more apparent and the graying effect happens at a shorter distances. Droplets in the air cause light from the objects to refract and lose any distinct edge. Notice that foreground shadows are dark creating a balance of light and dark throughout the image.

As we zoom in you can see the objects become gray and diffuse.

At this depth the values hardly get darker than a 50% gray.

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Chiaroscuro from Observation

2011-02-27T15:42:00.000-08:00

I took a walk today in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. I couldn't help taking a photo of this decorative cement sphere that guards the top of the steps. It shows nearly textbook chiaroscuro. Also, if you look close enough you can find the Empire State Building in the background.

On the brightness of the reflected son has overloaded my wimpy cellphone camera and therefore bleached out the light side of the value range (my eyes could). A core shadow is hardly visible because the dark side is illuminated by the ambient light from the clear blue sky. Also, there is no visible highlight since the surface isn't smooth enough to reflect an image of the light source.

You can see that the texture of the surface is most apparent between the lightest lights at left and the shadow at right. This is so for 2 reasons: First, at nearly tangent angles of light, the surface bumps are casting their own tiny shadows. Secondly, the mid-tone gives us the most detailed look at the surface since less light would limit the amount of light reaching our eyes and extreme daylight can bleach the light side.

At bottom right you can see a little bit of reflected light bouncing into the underside of the ball. Also, since there is so much ambient light, which lightens up the cast shadow, you can see that the occlusion shadow on the ball becomes emphasized. It looks like a black line around the edge of the ball.

Visit my Chiaroscuro Lesson to find out more details about drawing spheres.

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A Children's Book Character

2011-02-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

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Megacerops with a Mechanical Pencil

2011-02-15T15:32:00.000-08:00

I drew this Megacerops (Paleo-Rhino) from a life size sculpture at the American Museum of Natural History in New York that houses the extinct creature's fossilized bones. I thought this was a great example of drawing technique using only a mechanical pencil and a kneaded eraser. In the detail below you can see how each line of shading wraps around the form and the thicker outer lines work to differentiate the major masses that make up the beast.

This drawing started lightly with the biggest forms being outlined first to orient myself. I darkened the important edge lines as a went and understood that the foreground edges and the lines underneath his jaw would get the most weight. This and a number of other tricks resulted in a successful drawing.

Here's the same sculpture being carved by a sculptor that I found in a quick Google search.
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New Pencil Drawing Lesson

2011-02-14T18:43:00.000-08:00

Click the link in the Main Navigation or...

...click here to view the new lesson!

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2D to 3D: A Lesson in Chiaroscuro

2011-02-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

I've broken basic chiaroscuro into 8 steps (+1 step for that "colorized" look). Toward the end of this lesson I try to connect this painting method with fundamental drawing techniques and how to make choices about appropriate line quality in a pencil or pen drawing. Click the link to below to take to the lesson page.

How to make a 2D surface into a 3D illusion
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The Selfish Giant- Illustrated

2010-10-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

I received a lot of interest in this watercolor illustration after posting it over 2 years ago (I painted it almost 6 years ago!). Since viewers seem to like it, I thought I would post all 3 illustrations I designed along with the appropriate excerpt from Oscar Wilde's story in sequence below.

Note: There seems to be a little Homer Simpson in my character design.

In The Garden:

The Selfish Giant finds children playing in his garden.

"'What are you doing here?' he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.
'My own garden is my own garden,' said the Giant; 'any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.' So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board."

TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED

Winter Comes:

Characters: Snow, Frost, Hail and The North Wind from The Selfish Giant

"Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. "Spring has forgotten this garden," they cried, "so we will live here all the year round." The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came. He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and blew the chimney-pots down. "This is a delightful spot," he said, "we must ask the Hail on a visit." So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice."

The Death of the Selfish Giant:


A good life.

"And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."

"And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms."

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Read the entire short story of The Selfish Giant
View more of my artwork at: www.spencerhallam.com

Expressive Chroma: Gangster Judo Shake Down!

2010-10-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

The digitally colored drawing above was primarily an exercise to study wrinkles in clothing and foreshortened/overlapping anatomy. You'll notice very little value value rendering of form. Instead I've chosen to use grays and browns throughout most of the image and then use high chroma flesh tones to call focus to the grappling characters. It's one way to limit the palette for expressive effect.

Mary Cassatt made a lot of beautiful work with great sensitivity to chroma and a lot more subtlety than myself (image from Wikipedia's article on Cassatt):

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How to Use Color Intensity: 3 Digital Studies

2010-10-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

Here are 3 rough photoshop studies I completed with my little Wacom Tablet that demonstrate some of the color chroma concepts I wrote about earlier this week. They really show clear color gradations. I hoped this might apply the idea creatively and also be a little more interesting than the cubes.

The first (just below) was a study I referenced and caricatured from a Dean Cornwall painting that was posted over at the Gurney Journey. I loved the color and key of the painting so much, I had to investigate. You can see the bleaching effect best in his white shirt sleeves where the shadows have more chroma than the light side. More subtly you can see where his beard is slightly more brown in the mid-tone before the light's begin.

In the digital study of the face above is lit from above by low red-orange light. For the lightest lights I used the most saturated orange I could find. In the two brightest highlights (in the nose and top of the head) I added white to lighten them further so they would punctuate the form stand out beyond the rest.

In this last invented face and lighting scheme, you can see the flesh tone graying toward the dark side and intensifying toward an orange in the light side. The man's shirt goes through the same gradation.

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Breaking through Color Rules

2010-10-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

What's this thing? Read on to find out!

It can be difficult to improve at realistic color when good (but incomplete) rules of thumb are repeated over and over like mantras as though hearing them again will make one understand something new. Since I find this troublesome I wanted to talk about a couple of rules I hear over and over and attempt to provide a deeper description that might help get a painter past some of the more cliched rules that teachers and introductory books often dwell on. Here goes . . .

GOOD RULE: The light side and the dark side of an object have opposing color temperatures:
I often hear the common rule of thumb when rendering form in color essentially it states that warm light will cast cool shadows and that cool light will cast warm shadows (see earlier cube study). This generally seems like a good rule, but I have always felt that this rule often becomes confusing when considering the appropriate chroma (or saturation) of a chosen color plane.

CRITICISM: Much confusion can occur when local color transitions toward the shadow side of a form and thereby loses saturation. Since more neutralized shadow color is usually going to be more cool than the local color, then the relative saturation can confuse the above rule about color temperature.

How about this blue cup placed in the cool light of a window? Are the shadows here clearly warmer?

Is this shadow warm?

Another downside to this rule is that it causes a novice painter to immediately mix in orange into the lights and blue into the shadows. Though, this is a start, it will often result in very exaggerated, acidic color.

Lastly, light can be balanced and therefore neither warm nor cool. Bright cloudy days can be like this. How do we deal with relative temperature then?

GOOD RULE: Color is more intense on the light side of an object
Many times this is repeated as "color obtains the light" (which sounds like it was first said by some one in a big floppy beret and moo moo-like painting smock). If that were absolutely true then the more light on an object then the more color saturated it would be. Maybe this is true in physics but the receptors in our eyes have limits and bleaching of the light occurs.

CRITICISM: Most painters discover this problem when they mix their light side colors. If the light source is warm then as the object becomes lighter it should increasingly adopt the warmth of the light. However, when mixing paint an artist runs out of bright (saturated) colors that are also light in value and must mix in white to lighten, which ends up cooling off (by neutralizing) the highlights.

So how can we conceptualize the gradating colors on an object from it's shadow side through the mid-tone and ending on the highlight? Does color really "obtain" the light? Do warm lights cast cool shadows and vice-versa? These are good basic rules, but I've been thinking of another one to help out. This rule should tell us which part of an object gets the most saturated version of the local color?

Here's what I've come up with:

SUGGESTED RULE: Chroma is highest between the effects of bleaching and shadow.
Local color achieves it's highest chroma when sandwiched between areas of intense bleaching intense light, and the beginning of the shadow side when there is little reflected light. This rule seems to hold true in a variety of circumstances. See the cubes I've made below to see what I mean.

Which plane of each cube above has the greatest chroma?

The highlight has greatest saturation in low light/low key environments (like candlelight) since there is no bleaching effect

The mid-tone is the most saturated at medium light levels when the local colors the light side begins to bleach yet there's not so much light as to reflect very much of it back into the shadows (like in a well lit room or on an overcast day.

The shadow side however becomes the most saturated when the light source is so bright that even the mid-tone begins to bleach and enough light begins to reflect back into the shadow side to fully illuminate it (like on a bright cloudless summer day).

The planes on the cubes with the highest chroma are indicated.

What do you think? Can this be true? I can't be the first one to have looked at this as a rule.

Please leave a comment and let me know if you'd like to add to this topic or can link to a similar discussion of this topic elsewhere on the internet.

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view my portfolio: www.spencerhallam.com

Sketch Night at the Society of Illustrators NYC

2010-09-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

This Tuesday I attended a figure drawing session at the Society of Illustrators in New York. The inexpensive class has 2 live models, live music, and a full bar decorated by a large Norman Rockwell painting. It's a pretty amazing venue, especially for a drawing class.

Here are some of the sketches of 5 to 20 minute poses using a ink brush/marker. I really enjoyed the dry brush effect when it worked in my favor. I posted the image below so you can see the texture close up.

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How to Create Color Harmony

2010-09-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up post to color game I posted earlier. I wanted to show how to see and create the illusion of different colored light. This illusion is particularly notable when looking at objects whose local color is the compliment, or opposite hue, of the light source. I've also given both images the same neutral background color to make comparisons more easy.

As with the previous post the top 4 cubes are in warm (orange) light, while the bottom 4 cubes are in cool (bluish) light. Both rows are depicting cubes of the same color (white, blue, orange, and black).

Notice that the color saturation (also called intensity or chroma) of the blue cube is more intense when the light source is of the same hue while the blue looks more neutralized and gray under a complimentary light source. You can see the same phenomena occur by comparing the orange cube on the top with the orange cube on the bottom.

* an advanced note, I originally created this post for my own purposes so I ended up using paint mixing compliments for the steps of hue. In the future I'll recreate this demonstration from the more accurate visual primaries (RGB+CMY) as well.
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An Artist's Challenge: A Color Theory Exercise

2010-09-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

A Color Theory Exercise: Colored Cubes in Warm and Cool Light

Above is a demonstration of the effects of warm and cool light on cubes of primary and secondary colors. I created this a few months ago after some intensive color theory study of my own. I created one cube in Photoshop then copied and pasted it rows of 8 across. I selected the proper color for each plane of the cube to depict the accurate color in either warm or cool light and filled each side. The idea was to put any reference aside and try to predict how the colors would behave. After more study and advice I intend to adjust the colors as I begin to see mistakes.

This is a challenging exercise I'd recommend for any professional artist and/or student with Photoshop savvy to create their own version. I'll post the basic cube so you can do it yourself. It's like a Rubik's cube for artists!

Also, if you're a more experienced professional than I, please comment below and tell me how I could improve my color relationships with a short critique.

-Are the relative values correct?
-Is the background color hindering or strengthening the effect?
-Do the warm and cool versions of each cube seem like they are identical aside from the relative warmth of their lighting?

Here's the scrambled cube if you'd like to test or improve your skills:

Good luck!

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An 8"x10" oil study in 45 minutes

2010-09-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

This is a quick study was done from some photo reference. If I remember this one was completed in about 45 minutes some studies are finished in half that time. Paintings done this way can end up with a "flying by the seat of your pants" unfinished aesthetic. This one fortunately turned out to be a surprisingly nice little painting.

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A Modern Psychopomp

2010-08-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

A psychopomp is the name for a mythological spirit guide that escorts souls to the after life. Similar characters exist in many mythologies. In the ancient Greek tradition Charon would accept coins placed in the mouths of the dead as fare to ferry their souls across the river Styx and Acheron.

Here I've depicted Charon as a bus driver. I thought it might be funny to interpret the Purgatory as attempting to maintain an updated transit system (and failing at it). As though it was good to keep every thing somewhat familiar to the dead souls it services.

The page is drawn with graphite on paper then digitally colored after it has been scanned.

For more on Psychopomps and Charon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_%28mythology%29

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One of those Days

2010-08-24T12:21:00.000-07:00

A single panel excerpt from "Transit" an in progress graphic novel I've been illustrating about a business man trapped in purgatory. I thought this landscape was nicely atmospheric.

Hound's Tooth

2010-05-31T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've been showing so much work with watermedia in the Sketchbook I wanted to post some work in oils. So in spite of the uneven sheen on the underside of her ha I decided to post this study. This is a portrait of my friend Marjorie who was gracious enough to pose for me in her hound's tooth coat and vintage hat. Though she was distracted by an episode of Desperate Housewives playing on the TV during our photo-shoot I was still able to get some classic looking photo reference to paint a satisfying study.

Quick Study from Photo Reference

2009-12-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick study in watercolor from a magazine photo. Mostly this was done just to keep my skills sharp. I liked the dynamic geometries that develop from using a flat brush rather than a round or a filbert. More like these to come.

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Seeds

2009-12-04T01:21:00.000-08:00

These are exploratory thumbnails for a public sculpture project I'm involved with. I enjoy the idea that a simple 1x1 inch drawing can communicate a form that could take months to finally bring into tangible fruition.

Tiger Study

2009-12-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

This is a small sketch of a tiger I did as a demonstration to show a student on how to draw from a photograph. I thought it turned out nicely and wanted to share it. Tigers are somewhat easy to draw since their stripes imply their form so well. Pattern on any surface can make a rendering less dependent on chiaroscuro to indicate the form.

Mamita Lupita!

2009-09-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't love good salsa? I recently completed this illustration for Mamita Lupita's Salsa. The logo and label design were created by SoCal WebWorx (www.socalwebworx.com).

Dinner with Picasso

2008-11-25T13:11:00.001-08:00

This acrylic work is based on the first chapter of "Life with Picasso" a novel by Francoise Gilot (mother to 2 of Picasso's children). While I don't feel that the style necessarily fits the tone of Gilot's writing, my interest was to complete an illustration in a graphic and curvilinear retro style.

A detail of Gilot:

Across the Universe

2008-11-21T01:34:00.000-08:00

This acrylic work is inspired by the Beatles song of the same name.

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View my portfolio at: www.spencerhallam.com

Seven Words: more than just gutter talk

2008-09-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

The late, great George Carlin! If a picture is worth a thousand words, many of them would have to be bleeped to fully describe the man in this portrait. Carlin showed everyone who listened to understand how trite our culture's notions of profanity are. He was one of the first people allowed to swear on cable TV when HBO was new; and he swore intelligently. Censorship is highly political and hypocritical. Carlin valued language so much an we owe him so much to help liberate it. If you don't know who George Carlin is then do yourself a favor and find him on youtube or DVD.

Red Eye

2008-08-31T12:52:00.000-07:00

Smaug again. This is an intended 3/4 head design as well as a style study for a future, full figure illustration of Smaug reclining on his treasure.

the great worm

2008-08-03T23:50:00.000-07:00

After a great character in literature gets slapped with a design in a big budget motion picture, it gets harder to see that character in any other way. Since there is a new feature underway based on Tolkien's Hobbit (one of my favorite books), I wanted to create my own interpretation of the dragon "Smaug" before another illustrator's fully fleshed out CGI monster could alter any vision I might have had. I don't want to look back and wonder "What would I have done?" Anyhow, this is my shot at it. Hopefully there will be a body design to come in the near future.

tree abstract

2008-07-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

Dragon and Forest

2008-07-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

The Selfish Giant

2008-07-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant

View other illustrations I created for The Selfish Giant.
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View my portfolio at: www.spencerhallam.com

Shadowman

2008-07-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

Roman

2008-06-18T18:41:00.001-07:00

The Ant and the Grasshopper...again

2008-06-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

In the fable, Grasshopper is rebuked by Ant for his idleness and not given any food. While I see Ant's point of view, isn't he being a little severe? I wanted to leave some hope for Grasshopper, so I chose to depict Ant in the midst of his decision to give or not to give. This gives the image it's tension and allows the viewer to consider his/her own point of view.

This is the final version of the illustration I first posted in January. I've done a lot more rendering on the computer since then and this finish represents many of the solutions I had to invent through trial and error. This included adding texture selectively, careful layering, and better managing my digital brushes. Most of the work was done with photoshop.

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View my portfolio at: www.spencerhallam.com

on the bus

2008-04-28T03:08:00.000-07:00

Some days everyone on the bus looks like this.

"Kali"

2008-04-28T02:36:00.000-07:00

This is a character concept based on the goddess Kali for the graphic novel I'm working on. It's a refinement of the photoshop style studies I've been working on so far this year. I'm interested in ways to marry representational form with graphic pattern motifs. This means I geek out on a lot on Klimt paintings. The subject matter, a goddess, lends itself well to this since there's so much in Buddhist and Hindu art to draw on for inspiration.

"Ladies of Dolores"

2008-04-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Sunburns aside, this was a seriously beautiful day at Dolores Park SF. Some would even say "Dolorious!" You know who you are. Thank god I have paintagenic friends or I wouldn't have gotten my work done that weekend. Oh, and Nina, remember, you are not a giant, you are in the foreground. :)

Whooosh!

2008-03-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

If I had a band this would be our album cover.

Many Styles

2008-03-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

I've found myself attempting a range of styles. These two early paintings were made within a year of each other. The first was a Mary Cassat inspired pastel drawing. The second is one of my early (and better) attempts at representational oil painting.

Satyagraha

2008-03-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

A fine art piece from my undergrad. It's oil paint over mesh screen and collaged strips of canvas. I did this years ago and it still stands out as one of my best.

Figure Study

2008-03-01T18:26:00.000-08:00

My friend Audrey posed for this some time ago and I recently used it for this oil study.

an experiment

2008-02-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

On Giant Gondrills...

2008-01-14T18:44:00.000-08:00

This is a creature design I completed recently. It combines my study of real animal anatomy to create a more mystical creature. Animals with strength and/or intelligence have always inspired me. They give me a sense of reverence.

Being an illustrator gives me the opportunity to imagine and then create images which convey or satisfy a certain emotion. It's difficult to quantify, but, with time, you can come close. It's something an artist chases but never catches. My development, process, and technique are vehicles to keep the chase exhilarating.

Below is a similarly massive creature. The hanging adventurer and the japanese manga style speed lines create the sense of momentum. I originally named this one "Titan's Canary," but it became a "Geier" (a german word for vulture). Exotic, no?

The Ant and the Grasshopper

2008-01-14T18:08:00.000-08:00

A work in progress! This is an intended for a children's book version of Aesop's fable. I'm sure you know the one. It seems crude as it's missing cast shadows and the modeling I would have liked to have finessed for another day or so. However, I'm pleased with the characterization and cool light/warm shadows scheme. This was also my most ambitious project using Corel Painter. Though unfinished, this piece represented a leap in understanding for me.

Below is a detail of Ant's anthropomorphized face. Some wondered if this is a self portrait.