Art Tips and The Dark Side....

Hello my friends. The top two illustrations are a work in progress, for a story called "The Obsidian Stone", written by J.T. Carney for the book "Dark Karnivale" to be published by The Evil Nerd Empire in late November. I want to share some art tips with you today. The 3rd illustration is one I did during my Masters training, and I will share more with you on that here shortly when we are talking about art techniques.

I just want you to know that I do enjoy doing this blog, but sometimes I get very pressed for time and can't do all I want to do, or just can't blog as often as I feel that I should, and with me deciding to write a "How to" book, and finding out that it is not easy writing (my hat off to all of my writer friends) Things are really picking up in my life and my career, so I am finding that I don't have all the time I would like to have. With my recent illness, as we have discussed in past blogs, I have come to relised just how important and short my life on this earth truly is. I mean we all work hard to better our lives for our loved ones, but in reality we could have only a day left with them. To me it has become more important to make that day as wonderful as possible and that has and will stay my main focus for the rest of my life. I finally found Cheryl after all these years of looking, and I do want to enjoy every moment I have with her, the kids, and my very dear friends.

My art is my love too, and it will remain a huge part of my life and I will continue to paint as much as my health permits. My health will be getting better in time and will not be an issue forever, but for now it is. But for the next year, I have some really exciting assignments coming up, and a lot of promotion from some wonderful people. I'm not sure what changed from this time last year, but something truly has and folks really want to talk about my art now. I am planning several of these interviews to coincide with the release of "Darc Karnivale"

Okay, let's talk a little art. The 3 illo's I posted above. The bottom one of the flowers first. When I was training under Master Daniel Horne, one of the exercises he had me do was to learn about "Texture" and seeing Values as well. Kind of a mixed assignment that I still do even know when I do interior illustrations. Most of the time Interior Illustrations are printed in black and white, but i will paint them in color just to see how well I handled the values in the painting. When you convert it from color to b/w, you really can see how well you did. But I want to talk about Texture for this time, and we will talk values in much greater depth at a later time.

Daniel had me do several of these little b/w paintings in oil's using a color photo as reference or the real thing from nature. He wanted me to learn 2 things. One being that lines and detail do not make the image look like it does to the eye, or in a painting, but it is the texture and the shape that make it look the way it does. This also makes a painting have life, depth, and did I say life? For instance, if you focus your eye on a field of flowers and grass, where your eyes are focused, you do notice some details but the further your eye sees away from where it is focused, the more you only see just the textures of the flowers, instead of the details. An the future you eye goes, the more texture you see. When drawing and painting, always remember this rule. There is also this thing called "creating air" around your subjects. If you look at the tombstones above, you can see that I am already doing that, but I am not finished. You can see in the second or middle one that the back tombstones are starting to blur into the "air" around it. This is done by using the texture, and soften the edges (creating air) You need to learn to do this in pencil as well.

If you really want to learn and grow as an artist, you should do this exercise. Pick different things such as flowers, stones, trees, any thing that has a different texture, fine a color picture, or the real thing, and do a black and white painting of it. Do this, and keep doing this, until you "get it" and then do it some more. By "getting it" your skills as an artist will improve 10 fold. Your artist eye will improve in leaps and bounds. If your serious about improving your skills, then get serious my friends.

In January, I am going to be doing a large fantasy, pencil project that involves 10 drawings, so we can cover a lot about doing pencil work at that time. I am really looking forward to that because I really love doing pencil work. I want to promote a new friend of mine before I go to watch Ghost Hunters. This is a website/blog that really has awesome interviews, reviews, and just everything cool about the people you love the most in this fantastic industry of imagination. Go here and bookmark it because you will want to visit a few times a week while drinking your coffee. Tell Sarah hello, and become a follower.

Peace and Blessings my friends. May your dreams be dark and wonderful!

Sorry, I almost forgot. The flower piece above is by me, back when I was using my christian birth name, William Johns. During my training, I choose to use it, then when back to Nick Rose afterwards. I had went by the name of Nick Rose for 30 years, and I want to stay with it. It is my artist identity and it always will be. Sorry if I confused anyone.