Daily Drawing 52: Starting a New Series and Finding My “Style”
This is the start of my new series. But it doesn’t end here. Read until the end to see how I painted this bad boy!
New Series: Wild Caught
I am still going strong on this daily drawing project. Today I am starting a new series titled “Wild Caught”. This is a humorous and light hearted look at the silly side of bears catching Salmon, honey, berries, and naps! I am really excited about this one as it is the first time in a while that I have felt like I finally landed on a style that I like! How did I arrive at this style? Let me tell you!
Early Days of Drawing back in 2017
I wanted to make art for a living, and I had tried so many different ideas and directions until 2017 I discovered (or rather rediscovered) my love for inking. I learned through trial and error and YouTube how to ink using different types of inking tools. I used a Pentel Pocket Brushpen the most, and below you can see one of my early drawings…
This was me attempting to use the brushpen for bolder strokes while I used a fine liner for the inner parts because I did not have control over my pressure and I was too timid to try.
The Next Phase of my Style: Digital Work
I was still fumbling around with my style and playing with ink, but I began to go more digital in my process. This was an important time of development for me as I began to experiment more freely without concern for messing up a piece of paper with a badly inked line. I began to work with more detailed work, hatching and cross hatching, and then I began digitally “etching” my line work which was just erasing portions of my line work to added depth and interest. This will be important for my current style as you’ll see later. Below you can see one of my early playing card designs back in 2021 using this technique.
Here I’m starting to lean in more toward fantasy, and I was trying to be more “realistic”. I was close, but it is still unrefined in my opinion. I like texture, but if it looks haphazard then it really bothers me.
Moving Away From Digital
Here is where things start to get interesting. I really wanted to move away from being on a screen (I still struggle to do that even today). I wanted to make more physical drawings and paintings and I had no idea where to start. I thought the most natural next step was to learn watercolor and use that to color my ink drawings. I taught myself different tricks for achieving different effects. I also began to learn more about color theory in terms of illustration and setting a mood for my work. Eventually I experimented with gouache to layer on top of my watercolor layers and add even more depth and “realism” to my whimsical scenes.
“Pipe Dream”: at this point this one my largest physical piece I had ever done and was done using ink, watercolor and gouache on 18×24 Arches Coldpress Watercolor paper.
Finding the Perfect Surface: My Discovery of Claybord
Ok, so at this point I had tried out ink, watercolor, gouache, and dabbled in acrylic painting. My surfaces were limited to paper or canvas. These surfaces are great for learning on, but here is the thing that I really don’t like about either of these two options…there is way too much prep work!
Don’t get me wrong, I like the slowing down that making a physical painting allows me to do, but I also really like to finish a project quickly and move on. I can’t tell you how many times I have either stopped mid project or not started at all just because I knew that I was going to have to stretch my watercolor paper or prime my canvas 3 TIMES before I could even think about starting a painting. I needed something different that would reduce the barrier to starting for me.
Then I was introduced to claybord.
If you don’t know what claybord is, it is basically a wood panel that has a thin layer of white clay ground that is smoothed very finely. The result is a very smooth white surface that can be painted on immediately and is completely archival (which means it won’t yellow or fade the artwork over time). I was in love with this surface especially after experimenting with its strengths and weaknesses.
Now all I needed was to find a way to create inked drawings on Claybord which I could also paint over top and not lose the essence of the linework. This was a challenge for several reasons. One reason was that it wasn’t a great surface for watercolor which is ideal for building up colors in layers. The water color tended to pool in places and just sit on the surface taking FOREVER to dry, and when it did dry it would get easily picked as soon as a wet brush came in contact with it.. Acrylic also had similar issues. As a water based medium, acrylic is great because you can build up layers very easily, but the water tends to pool like with water color leaving very uneven splotches which didn’t look great. Also the acrylic tended to dry a little TOO fast which made it difficult to blend and manipulate my colors not to mention that it when it dried it dried darker than the color I intended. I will say it makes a great base layer to tone my board one even color.
So if I can’t use watercolor, or acrylic what’s left? Oil paint. Now this, as far as I can tell, is not a typical way that oil is used (I have tried traditional oil painting and it’s a beast of a learning curve), but I have found a method that allows me to use oil paint in a way that behaves like watercolor and offers a little more flexibility for playing with colors and brush strokes that I couldn’t get with acrylic. Its a technique called glazing. Now you do this in any painting medium, which is essentially thinning the paint down with water (or in this case oil/alkyd resin) and laying down thin layers of paint waiting for each layer to dry before applying another layer. This technique is cool because you can see all the different brush strokes in the different layers which adds texture, depth and interest. Best part? I can see my ink work. It gets covered up, but if I want I can scrape the paint off with any kind of small scraper (I use little clay tools) and paper towel or simply spread the paint around more area to make the cover as thinnly as possible. The result?…
I am still working on this technique to make the best results possible, but this feels like a great step in the right direction for a style that is somewhat unique and different especially in the way that the oil paint is used.
When it comes to finding style it boils down to your taste (what you like or don’t like in a visual art form) and making choices on how to combine those tastes and interests together. It takes a lot of experimentation (and many of those experiments WILL fail), but it is part of the process of making art.
What are your thoughts on this first painting and what do you think of this process? Let me read your thoughts in the comments!
