You guys! This Saturday is the Twin Peaks 20th Anniversary Show in LA. Artwork inspired by Twin Peaks. An amazing list of artists that i feel honored to be showing with, including David Lynch himself! I cant wait to see what that dude does. He designed the SITE for it.
It has been awhile since i did a little making of sort of thing, so let's do it for the piece that i have submitted to the show! It is called "Concentrating On The J's", taken from one of my favorite scenes in the Twin Peaks series. A pleasant forest scene with Agent Cooper and his friends. Let's take a walk down memory lane and see how it all went!1. i started out by watching lots of clips and gathering many images from the internet. i love this stage because i get to experience the show again. I also get pretty addicted to reference in a sort of procrastination way.
2. i doodled little thumbnails of the piece and the characters and elements for the painting. just blue pencil on copy paper.
3. i scanned everything and composed it all in photoshop and added rough value ideas. i like to just use the initial doodles all loose like that so i can keep the energy of those dogs. and loose is better so i don't feel too committed to the renderings. then i printed them out and taped them all together because my printer only prints little normal sheets of paper. you know what i mean.
4. with a hard 4h or 5h pencil i traced the image lightly onto rough watercolor paper. arches probably. pretty loose still.
5. i like to start painting back to front, starting with the background sky because it gives it the basic color mood and makes me feel like i just accomplished a lot of painting. even if it is just a color wash.
6. i do the wash by covering the space with light color and water so the whole surface is wet, then i can touch the colors to the wet spots and the colors run and spread in sweet ways. i really like when there is texture and color variation like this. especially when there are lots of sloppy watermarks...
7. adding the ground, i paint around some areas like characters and main objects. so the colors can be more vibrant with those. and not all yellowy... in this instance.
8. all of the background washes are in there with the characters left out..
9. the back level of trees come next. i just paint simple stripes for those.
10. i dont stay in the lines as you can see. i'm pretty sloppy at this stage. it's ok because the lines will make everything tighter later anyway. but my paintings are never super tight as it is. it's how i do things, you guys.
11. all the background trees are in. sweet job.
12. the closer trees are next. so i paint those darker. darker stripes, everyone.
13. there they are. and then i add the basic branches. i wanted it to sort of look like a wallpaper pattern.
14. now that the background colors are all done, i get to do the character and object colors. an enjoyable part. i paint the little dude in the tree like a little cherry. (i know he's not in this scene in the show. but there he is in this painting anyway.)
15. here are Agent Cooper and his buddies with their loose colors all in there.
16. Ok. time for the linework. i make sure i have the printout there to remind me how i did the lines the first time. (that's another project in the background. don't look at that project.)
17. i mix an alizarin and burnt sienna color for my linework. but it varies depending on the object. the bark gets pretty dark with the lines.
18. i go over lines a number of times if the values are sweet. and give an extra thick outline to the characters silhouettes to pop them.
19. after the lines are in, i go back and punch up the values where it is needed. and that's it!
...and here is the finished painting like a magical spell!
"Concentrating On The J's"
THE END
So go see the show! there are some amazing artists with work in this show. Daily Dujour and Hi-Fructose did pieces on it. I will not be able to attend unfortunatley, but i highly recommend you go check it out!AND if you havent seen the GREAT SHOWDOWNS EXHIBITION... you SHOULD. I'll be painting the CONTEST WINNER SHOWDOWN soon... i'll let you know how that goes..
