https://www.icarianstudio.com/on-the-easel daily 0.75 2025-04-05 https://www.icarianstudio.com/on-the-easel/bones-of-the-titan monthly 0.5 2025-04-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/bf22dda6-cb94-43a8-8d28-f5ad96b7f48e/PXL_20250330_172340704.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out Messy watercolor sketch - my favorite way to start things off. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/e7db688e-60a5-43d1-925e-710fec7ea6cf/PXL_20250331_041153149.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out When I got home, I kept thinking about the piece so I got out a piece of Bristol board and grabbed a pencil. I thought it would look pretty cool in a graphic, comic-booky style so needed something like Bristol board for markers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/120437be-65f9-4009-92a2-3ca02e071ab8/PXL_20250331_055640781%7E2+%281%29.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out Inked up the sketch with a G-Pen nib (its a dip pen commonly used by manga artist - it has really great line weight variation). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/e6332ca8-631a-4c31-a1c6-7d0a25113b35/PXL_20250331_170239226.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out It was a fun yet stressful process getting the base color down. My markers kept running out of ink and I had to pivot to a similar color. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/e02fd1ba-94c7-47d1-ba78-1823614350e6/PXL_20250331_174013889%7E2.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out The final result was really satisfying - can confidently say its my best marker and ink piece to date. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/994e96ff-d5be-4ef3-932f-c9a6d64473f0/PXL_20250401_040517489.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out I liked the composition so much, I decided I wanted to take another run at it, this time in watercolor. So I grabbed a sheet of cold press and got started with another pencil sketch. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/49cc5d1d-706f-445e-b147-a38a50c5ce38/PXL_20250401_043859367%7E2.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out Underpainting. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/6e608086-d718-47a1-af89-44d0da26d5b0/PXL_20250401_064238528%7E3.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out Really was enjoying the process on this one, even more than the marker and ink version. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/f1819780-1144-4060-91f0-7fd7abbbe3d9/PXL_20250402_032920304.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out At this point, I was pretty sure I was done. However after vigorous testing (aka having friends critique it) I decided it needed a final push. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/23f5f0b2-7589-4877-9c24-0a1d394a4f66/PXL_20250402_154003032%7E2.jpg On the Easel - “Bones of the Titan” - Make it stand out Threw a couple of lines in to clean up silhouettes and draw the eye to the subject better. https://www.icarianstudio.com/on-the-easel/light-amongst-the-clouds monthly 0.5 2025-03-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/bd3c5cfb-8cde-4412-b3db-1e4e3b8b8f33/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-sketch.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out Watercolor sketches are almost always my starting point for an oil painting. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/c60db954-7b67-4601-bf44-bf4af802c4de/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-1.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out For this piece, I decided to go with a 11”x14” birch panel. It was an unfinished panel, so I had to throw some layers of gesso on first. Once the gesso was dry, I started with a rough sketch. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/de549292-94d5-44ae-9cd0-751ca007a7e2/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-2.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out Next I threw on some basic color, keeping everything very loose and brush-y. I start out very fast and loose so that I don’t lose the original energy and keep things expressive as I refine things throughout the process. It also helps me to not be too precious with the piece. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/cfa0ca9e-5ac9-4418-9639-5899e4a05577/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-3.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out At this point, I’m trying to figure out how to express the forms of all the various subjects and starting to introduce variation in color. I think this phase is always where I start questioning if I even know how to paint. The early middle stages end up looking like a kid’s 4th grade art project (at least for me). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/9c4c18e5-db34-45f6-bfef-200f0ed10dd3/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-4.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out At this stage, I’m adding more color variation in and just generally refining what I’ve already blocked in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/ab27777c-2d1e-4370-acee-83fe70aa04c2/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-5.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out Late middle phase muddiness. Always happens for me working alla prima (my palette is an absolute mess of colors and ancient dried paint). I like when it gets muddy and dark because you can start introducing saturated highlights back in and they start to really pop. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/1a322e72-81dc-435b-bc06-3983459d8832/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-6.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out And the saturated highlights for the win. They really work to pull the subject (the top of the island) forward from the background. Introduced cool blues and warm greys to the rocky underside of the island with big brushy strokes to better express the form of the shadow shapes. Also I thing that adding in the other floating bits of floating rock really helped this composition make more sense and added that initial energy back into the painting. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/7143207c-8c05-4ea8-a5b2-272de5a53c77/Light-Amongst-the-Clouds-process-final.jpg On the Easel - Light Amongst the Clouds - Make it stand out The final steps are always fun. Finally decided exactly where the light is motivated from (upper left) which let me add in the final shadow shapes and highlights. Spent probably an entire hour just smearing paint around while I figured out what I wanted the sky-ship to look like. Towards the end of that process I pulled out my palette knife and just scraped away what I’d been doing and within 10 minutes I had the finished ship. Never be afraid to erase, scrape away, or paint over. https://www.icarianstudio.com/on-the-easel/in-the-palm-of-her-hand monthly 0.5 2025-03-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/c192f00d-0bda-4fdf-82a4-65eb6849f7b4/In-the-Palm-of-Her-Hand-process-1.jpg On the Easel - In the Palm of Her Hand - Make it stand out Recently I played a visually stunning video game called Gris. Its a platformer that explores the stages of grief. The game starts out in black and white and slowly adds color to the world as you progress through the stages. The developer, Nomada Studio, really impressed me with the art design - the style is a very graphic watercolor vibe that was so fun to explore. The blue stage was very aesthetic and really inspired me, so I decided to do a piece in oils to follow that inspiration. I picked a small 5”x7” linen faced aluminum panel and quickly blocked in the shapes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/5060b342-7261-44cf-b0cb-092b4ef3c472/In-the-Palm-of-Her-Hand-process-2.jpg On the Easel - In the Palm of Her Hand - Make it stand out I think this piece is my first attempt at a monochromatic style painting, at least in oils. I only used three paints for this - manganese blue, ultramarine blue, and titanium white (which was only used for tinting and color mixing). I often use brush strokes to emphasize form, but this style forced me to really lean into that technique, since all of the color is so similar. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6717c61c46affc6e7ae45498/71dd1c4f-d287-4468-9091-33088ddbb2b9/In-the-Palm-of-Her-Hand-process-3.jpg On the Easel - In the Palm of Her Hand - Make it stand out At this point, I’m really liking how it looks. 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