The painting is done with oil paint, thinned with solvent and Liquin on illustration board that's been sealed with acrylic matte medium.
The image is from Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time. It also appears in my workshop on "maps and cutaway views" for the fantasy artist in the current issue of ImagineFX magazine.
13 comments:
I am waiting patiently (or trying to) for that issue of ImagineFX to be released here in the States since you announced that your article would be in it. I'm sure the people at B&N are getting tired of me asking when it will be in.
Sara, sorry if I sounded the gong too soon. I haven't been by my local B&N in a while, but I received my subscriber copy about a week ago. Have other people seen subscriber or newsstand copies of issue 79?
Hopefully it will be worth the wait.
Oh, I'm sure it is! S'ok though; anticipation will just make it that much more awesome when it does get here. My family got me a subscription for Christmas, but it doesn't kick in till after February for some reason, I think.
I'm mostly curious what they'd taste like...
Do you ever use oil-based colored pencils, such as Faber-Castell, and if so, can they be used on top of the matte-medium? I do use them on illustration board, but I don't seal it prior to working. And, I use Gamsol as a medium, but I'm afraid I'm destroying the longevity of the drawing that way. Would appreciate any readers' input, too.
Janet, haven't tried oil pencils or crayons. I usually use tube colors with Gamsol and with another medium such as Liquin to give the paint a bit more body.
Janet, what works pretty well is using the Faber Castell's on top of acrylics. Poster artist Drew Struzan uses that technique (he's using colored pencils by Prismacolor)and you can do a very fine and nice rendering with them. It's real fun. (softening edges in contrast becomes pretty hard then).
He did a very good instructional DVD (James did a post on Drew's process too: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/01/drew-struzan-paints-hellboy.html )
I tried to use the oil based color pencils on top of oil colors, but that was a rather discouraging experience. It should be fine when the oil colours are very much dried up though but doesn't allow much of an intercation between the two mediums but rather a possibility as a seperated step.
Doing a wash in with acrylics and the renderings with coloured pencils works pretty well.
New ImagineFX comes out today! Ironic that I was commenting on it here just yesterday.
James, every time I read of your use of Liquin, this question crosses my mind. Isn't Liquin - like other alkyd based mediums quite...er, pungent? I know when I have briefly tried Galkyd, I found it so. I was also concerned about the toxicity of the vapors. How do you deal with those issues? To what extent are you concerned, if at all?
Along those lines, one often reads warnings not to paint with oil over acrylic paint, including (I assume)over acrylic medium, citing archival dangers, especially delamination. Have you ever run into an issue with that? So many isllustrators and artists do paint contrary to this suggestion, and I often wonder if those fears are exagerated and just hypothetical.
I'd appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks!
Tom, there's no problem with adhesion in working with oil thinly over acrylic on a solid panel. It's the reverse you want to avoid. I only use a small amount of Liquin in a palette cup, so the fumes are hardly noticeable.
Thanks James. I did know about the dangers of the reverse - of working acrylics over oil (Thin over fat in the extreme). From what I understand there are some (purists?) who insist that oil doesn't bond mechanically over any acrylic base and so delimination can occur. But I believe they would also caution against oil over an acrylic gesso - which seems way to cautious to me.
Thanks, Christian! The acrylic would act as a sealant for the board and prevent the Gamsol leaking down into the layers. I'll check out James' post, too. I love this site.
I guess I am late on this discussion. There is an old artist who paints (painted?) with oils on board and etchings by sealing them frst with Liquin - his name is Patrick Woodroffe. The book describing this appeared 1986 and is not in print anymore.
Any experience with that? What is the difference with acrylic medium?
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