"I like Craig Elliott's artwork..." There's an App for that!

Well, soon there will be! I have been putting together a special collection of images for the iPhone and iPad this past week and just submitted the final set of pages and icons for approval:  

Bring inspiration and guidance on how to draw the female form with you wherever you are!  "Craig Elliott: Pinup"  is a collection of large studies, well suited as wallpaper images.  The studies have been rendered in many colorful mediums of expression such as watercolor, pencil and pastel. (31 pages, full color)

My hope is to continue to release these book Apps under different themes, as long as they do fairly well.  Keep an eye on this spot for final release dates etc.  I am shooting for a Comicon 2010 release! 

I went to Scotland... Or did I?

Last night and this morning I did a little world travelling.  On the internet that is.  There are a fascinating number of public webcams pointed at pretty places all around the world.  Paris, Alaska, New York Africa, Etc.  I thought that these cameras would make a fun way to watch light and color change in these distant lands.  Below are my first experimants of a town square in Scotland.  This is "The Cross" in Kilmarnok Scotland around 6 am (the cooler painting) and later around 5pm (the strongly light one). These took about 20-30 minutes each and are sketched in one brush with no pressure sensitivity in Photoshop. 
          

Portraits anyone?

I don't do many portraits, but I have done a few.  I think I have only done a limited number of them because I like to know something of the person before I feel comfortable doing one.  I think you need to know what the person is really like to know what to draw- otherwise what are you really doing?  you don't know!  You might accidentally get it right, but you might not.  

Here are a couple drawings, one of my friends Melissa and Peter De Seve.  Melissa is a very kind energetic and very smart girl with a bright outlook on life (this drawing is meant to be more realistic).  Peter has a big heart, has a fun and nutty side (just like his characters) and a very keen eye (Peter's drawing is meant to have a bit of caricature).  I hope all of these qualities come through in my portraits!  
 

Icon6: A Labor of Line

 

I will be having a couple paintings in the ICON 6 show at Gallery Nucleus this month. The opening reception is July 16th at 7pm.  Go to their website for a map and directions to the gallery.  if you have never been, it is a great gallery and bookstore/ art print store.  There really is nothing quite like it, and I think we need many more like it.  Maybe they should open more of them?  Hint, hint....

Bristle Brushes

I have been asked what kinds of brushes I use for oil painting from time to time, so I thought I'd help people understand a bit more about them.  Bristle brushes are what I use for most of the painting and for all the beginning stages of my oil paintings. 

Here is a scan 3 of my bristle (hog hair) brushes as a demonstration of their longevity and quality.  The left is a brand-new, top of the line Windsor and Newton bristle brush. In the middle is a 15 year old and VERY high quality bristle brush I have been using, and at the right is an unused low quality bristle brush.  

The Windsor and Newton and the older brush both should have a nearly endless life unless you are painting on sandpaper!   The cheaper brush MIGHT work for a single painting ok, but will never have the kind of control, flex and shape that a good bristle brush does.  

The key differences between these 2 qualities of brush are interlocking, and hair arrangement.  Interlocking is a term used to refer to the way the bristles are carefully arranged by the maker to have their natural bend curve toward the center of the brush.  This is most easily seen on the middle brush because the stains from the old paint, but it is there on the first brush too.  Manufacturers will try and trick buyers who do know that this is a mark of quality by one simple trick.  They put soap or some other washable stiffener in the hairs and shape them TEMPORARILY to point towards the center.  The best way to find out if this is the case is to carefully knead the stiffener out in the store and see if the hairs still do this. The other factor in quality is the way the hairs are arranged to form the shape of the brush.  Filbert and round brushes are the easiest brushes to look for this type of quality.  Good quality and good performing brushes have whole hairs carefully arranged to make the pointed shape, of say, a  round brush.  Individual hog bristle hairs all naturally come to a sharp taper and each have a very fine point.  When a brush is arranged well all the pointed ends of the hairs will be at the tip of the brush, none will stick out in a stray manner and none will have fuzzy or blunt ends.  Cheap hair arrangement (if you can call it that) will have a combination of fuzzy, blunt and sharp hairs.  These brushes are often just stuffed with hair, and then SANDED on a power sander to shape them. this creates a terrible brush with hairs that stick out everywhere, fall out on to your painting and have very little control.