Just wanted to say "hello to everyone. It has been a frantic few weeks, here's a sneak peek into the current goings on:
Self-promotion stamp making
Spectrum 21 art competition brainstorming. Entries due THIS saturday!
A wedding to this girl in 7 days....one week!
It's a sad but true statement that one of my biggest obstacles to making art is...making art.
It's that beginning, that resistance that Steven Pressfield so accurately describes in his book The War of Art, the start. It is rare but sometimes I really don't want to get out my pants and set up my art space, it's laziness talking I know but we all know how tempting it can sound.
But to the point of this blog, I wanted to create a few paintings, but I didn't want to spend too much time in the painting stage, so, shortcut = make them smaller. Each painting here is about 3in x 2in, I doodled, applied paint and done, extremely fast. I don't really know if this is succumbing to laziness, or defeating it...I do know that I liked the results balanced with the time it took for me to make these images, and I hope you do as well, because, lest I and other artists forget, this is for you, the audience, as much as it is for me, the artist.
These are essentially puzzled pieces. That blue, abstract square is the background of the portrait, the orange, simplified shapes are the pattern on that background and the bust is, of course, the portrait itself. I hope you like the landscape, they're not something that I do too often, but I do think that will be changing. The singing figure is a sneak peak at a Christmas book in the making, scheduled to release this year! More to come about that.
Sorry it's taken me awhile to get around to the New Years Saturday Submission!
The holidays have been wild! This one is a shout out to Jeremiah and Sydney Dew as they expect to see their new baby in April of this new year! Here is to Johnnie Leigh Dew's debut of life!
I've heard and read several times that Tolkien wrote when there was a respite in combat during his tour of duty in WWI. Maybe some of his characters were inspired by fellow soldiers, maybe the thought of them comforted him in battle. We do know for certain that the war impacted him heavily and that his writing is predominantly about death, and not necessarily from a bad view, it's a solemn but beautiful element in his writings.
As always I start out with a post-it, this time it took me about passes, tracings, to get everything where I wanted it.
Tight, blown up drawing, 9x9in on series 500 Strathmore bristol, vellum surface.
Progress of the gouache stage, I usually paint everything around the characters first.
Masking phase, this time I masked in more detail, more sections.
Collage stage, using the stamp tool to push the image in each section out to the edges, giving it a clean, no-show-line.
Quite a jump to here, didn't save very many digital progress shots.
Done.
Whenever I read Tolkien's works I invariably end up reading a Tolkien biography as well. It's really impossible for me not to wonder about the man who wrote such beautiful things. His life and times are just about as interesting as the imaginary lives and times of his fictitious characters.
That train of thought leads me to further wonder just how much of Tolkien's actual life made it into his books. Maybe he, like our friend Bilbo, had queer friends that often visited him in Oxford? Maybe they relieved him for a few hours from the monotony of marking school papers? Did they give him some real conversation over a pipe instead of the boring subjects professors talk about over a dinner party? I wonder that if someone were just lucky enough they may have caught a glimpse of grey robes and a blue hat.
It seldom works out that my first sketch will go without revision, but that's what happened this time. I drew it while on the phone to my mom.
Tight, enlarged drawing, done on 500 series Strathmore bristol, vellum surface.
Starting the gauche painting.
Completed gauche painting, good enough for digitizing.
Under masking.
Alittle too dark.
Done. Next post will feature Gimli and Legolas giving their author alittle help in the trenches of World War I. Stay tuned!
One of my favorite things to do come Christmas time is sing, carols or popular christmas music, it doesn't matter. So i'm very happy to be able to honor Jared and Heather Stanley's entry this week. Jared and Heather are part of Greenville's newest chorale ensemble, the Rivertree Singers. It's a tradition of the group to offer open performances in downtown Greenville's Second Presbyterian Church. I've gone for the past two years and loved every second of it. I usually take a post-its and pencil, music is of course very inspiring, here are some doodles from the concert.
Initial Drawing.
The masking process is tedious at best, but does bring great results, I would never skip it. While listening to audiobooks it can be really enjoyable actually.
The background is a composition of only two drawings, whose various parts I replicated and transformed abit before putting all together. The shading is done with the same technique as above.
Final.
Don't forget to check out the Rivertree Singers whenever you can. They are honored by being selected to perform at the American Choral Directors Association Southern Division Conference in Jacksonville, FL on March 7, 2014. They were one of the 15 choirs selected from 77 submitted auditions, a great representation for Greenville, South Carolina! You may consider getting involved and sponsoring them here.
Today marks the Grand Opening of Saturday Submissions!
Thanks to all who participated in the the quiz and submission. This weeks lucky winner is Mrs. Shawn Arnold MacDonald of Greenville, South Carolina. Her submission entry is a photo of her father, the late Eugene(Gene) Arnold, a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy.
Mr. Arnold was a fighter pilot in WWII, a man who served his country well and loved his family passionately. A man remembered on earth and known in Heaven now. I recently watched Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers , a movie portraying America's first step into the Vietnam War. There was a very strong connection in that movie between the wives and children at home and their soldiers/husbands/fathers fighting countries away. I can't help but believe every soldier's first thought going into battle is of their families, as well as their last thought should they fall there. It is a courageous thing to fear and to still fight.
Whenever coming to a portrait I have a mind to bring something new, something that speaks and has it's own narrative. I worked from Mrs. MacDonald's picture of her father and an image of a Navy pilot's wings, for a hint of symbolism.
Thanks again for participating in this weeks round! Check the SubSat now for next weeks category and questions.
Here's a quick video highlighting the day I asked Karen Chung Yan Kong to marry me. Filmed and edited by Luke Cleland of Cleland Studios.
Here's a first look at my process, from start to finish.
I'm currently reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, a book that I had previous strong notions of disliking. I think years of exposure to really lame Halloween decorations made me averse to the notion that there might actually be a great story behind Dracula. First of all I wondered if the pictures of slick haired and clean shaven Dracula were even true to the book? I began reading.
The story is told in journal format from the perspective of a few characters, the first being Jonathan Harker, a London based solicitor(attorney) acting in the role of real estate agent for one Count Dracula of Transylvania. In his journey to the Count's castle he is warned again and again by various townspeople not to visit the Dracula, he is given rosary beads and garlic in abundance. However, being a man governed by responsibility and duty he therefore continues on into the dark heart of the country.
Dracula is first seen and described by Harker as, "a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere." Later Harker describes him in more detail saying, "His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bush hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks were firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."
Illustrators love getting to passages like that, real, concrete descriptions, with enough space for creativity. It was gratifying to read that Dracula, as written by Stoker, was very different from the pop culture version, that he is in fact old in appearance, with white hair. The sketch above was my initial vision for the character study.
I then began to research the novel's background and Bram Stoker's life. It was very clear early on in the research that Stoker was envisioning Sir Henry Irving, an english stage actor and personal friend of Stoker, as Dracula's visage. This changed a few things for me, I could either stick with my original interpretation or develop it into a realization of Stoker's original vision for the character. This side profile of Irving sold me on the latter.
Sketches quickly developed into a 4.5 x 6in painting. Working small allows me to execute the physical painting faster and also lets some paper texture show through more than a large painting would.
The painting is scanned in at 600 dpi, the color is fixed, and I begin to paint in the mask for each section.
These pure color masks allow me to paint only in the selected areas, the foreground profile character, the midground tree line, and the background sky. I move the masks behind my image, and each color is on a different layer. I then can select an entire layer to work on that section only.
I primarily use the stamp tool to paint, instead of the brush. By using the stamp tool I'm able to still use what's already been painted physically, giving a reality to what is essentially a digital painting. I use the brush primarily for shadow "washes", layers of darker color, and multiply.
Example of a selected element/area. Using this selection method I also cut out the figure and made it larger to fill the frame better.
Example of underlaying section masks with painting opacity turned to half.
Finished painting.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
My Thanksgiving celebration went alittle different this year. Normally I would be with the parents in North Carolina, it would be a nice time of sitting and reading, cooking and eating, not alot of activity, which is how I usually like my vacations.
Before we graduated however, a group of my close friends committed to a 2013 Thanksgiving reunion. Our plan was to jointly rent a place somewhere between the northern and southern factions of our group, we therefore landed in West Virginia, Davis, West Virginia to be exact. Unless you're from Davis you probably don't know where it is, it's a town in northern West Virginia with a population of 660, according to the 2010 census. Perfect place to "get away" right?
Right. We bought all the food that we would need for the five days there because the closest shops were an hour or so away. When the topic of Black Friday shopping came up the distance quickly quelled most desires to go, and the coziness of our lodge was only magnified. Our location finders, Hannah Stanley and Ryan Thompson, used Vrbo.com to preview and secure the destination.
Daily activities consisted of: waking up late, cooking, eating, hiking, sitting in front of the fire, playing games like Settlers of Catan, spoons, and sardines, late night jacuzzi stargazing, and watching movies on a large projector. All in all a great vacation experience but mainly because of the excellent people to share it with. I highly recommend this idea to anyone interested in a family or friends getaway.
Featured in the photos and on the trip were: Ryan Thompson, Luke Cleland, Katie Klaiber, Karen Kong, Brady and Emiily Hollenbeck, and Karen Kong. Regretfully our good friend Kaylan Whitaker was not able to come, but we don't begrudge her, she's working in an excellent cause at Starfish Project, a Beijing located organization established in 2006 to empower exploited women in Asia.
Methods and Materials, let's talk about it.
I, like most artists I'm assuming, get giddy when the prospect of investigating the local art store is on the horizon. There are just so many artistic tools on those store shelves to accomplish so, SO much art! Right?
Don't you just love feeling all the papers? the brushes? reading all the subtle variations of oil mediums on their glass containers? Rifling through endless pen and pencil combination packs? I recently visited the Blick and Utrecht stores in New York City, by far the largest art supply venue I've ever been in, my head spun. I'd like to address a misconception that I found myself falling into as a younger artist, and practically every time I enter an art store. It's the myth that great art supplies equal great artists.
First of all I'd like to say that if you are going to buy art supplies, which is a must, you should go for the best if you can. There is alot to be said about quality over quantity. There is also alot to be said about experimentation, it isn't wrong to make a go with as many kinds of tools as you have access to, you won't know if you'll love something until you try it. However, if you're painting with the finest Windsor-Newtons you could purchase but your underdrawing is crooked then you might as well trade them to a classmate that can draw in exchange for his number two pencil. I know that's definitely what I should have done many times in the past.
When I think back on my college experience I really chalk it up to experimentation. I had a senior show that was semi-coherent in style, but deep down I knew that I hadn't reached a professional portfolio yet. After college I worked on a few collaborative projects, some of them weren't the most creatively stimulating, though I learned much at the same time. In one of these projects I worked with some pretty large files and it sometimes took up to ten minutes to do minimal tasks, frustrating right?
Definitely, but this boredom caused me to grab a stack of post-it-notes next to me and draw on it with a mechanical pencil. I tried to make my forms as simple as possible. The three inch square surface made me justify every stroke, made me think first and visualize before finding the shapes in a typical, sketchy way.
I loved the freedom from setting out all of my paints, my palette, my pencils, my vine charcoal, my erasers and chamois etc. I loved the transient nature of the post-it, easily drawn on and easily discarded, not getting attached to the first good drawing but moving on and making a small body of work in the process. I had cast off the myth of art product success for the truth of a coherent artistic vision starting with only a pencil and paper, the world was new and the next finished piece only a sketch away.
To sum everything up I realized that I had succumbed to the art supply myth, when all I really needed was time, the one and most important art supply you can't find in any store. Time and determination to use that time in a profitable way will get you farther than the possession of any art tool.
One of the biggest things I hear aspiring artists talk about is- individual artistic style, or the lack there of. I myself have only just reached what I feel comfortable calling "my style" so please take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
I believe that personal artistic style is a culmination of many different artistic influences that work in you, the melting pot, to create a consistent artistic vision that is slightly or hugely different from anyone else's. I want to put to rest the notion that any artist is operating wholly free from the artistic influences that surround him/her. We as artist enjoy looking at art, plane and simple, and there are artist's were admire more than others of course. These are our heros, our influencers without a doubt.
Ezra Jack Keates
Seeing that artistic influences are a reality, there needs to be some advice on escaping plagiarism of style. My best advice in this area is to have as many influencers as possible, variety will help you for sure. Secondly don't doubt your own creativity, if it's easy for you to draw a hand one way and you like how it looks then just do it, and get better at it. I've heard alot of artists say that style is just something that finds you after awhile; keep producing work and you'll eventually get to a place you can call your own, I definitely agree with that.
A last, but large, bit of advice would be to make sure your influences are in the artistic world for the long haul, you probably don't want to get into the "trendy trench of death" a place littered with cute bubble letters, and owl drawings. You want your art to stand the test of time, so follow in the vein of timeless influencers.
The images above are from artists that I believe have had some significant, though silent, input in my own work. They are my influencers and inspirers. Check out the links to their respective blogs and online presences as you hover over their images.
The other day I had the privilege of helping Mr. Henry Tsuei trim up his yard abit. Mr. Tsuei (Ts-way) is a Chinese-English literature translator working from his home here in Greenville. It was a pleasure getting outside, putting the pencil and tablet down and working with my hands.
Among many talents Mr. Tsuei is an engineer. He showed me how to move a whole tree using a single rope. Depending on the size of the tree it may be best to use this technique multiple times, remember the tortoise and the hair, "life by the inch is a cinch but life by the yard is hard."
Hello,
Being my first post I thought I would make this one an introduction of sorts. Introducing you, The World, to myself, Benjamin J. Schipper.
I say that not in a cold way, as if you were this giant, faceless orb of water and stone, but as one of the billion humans to walk upon it. You and I, I believe, are met with similar trials, temptations, and infirmities, but also with similar aspirations, hopes, and dreams; and are therefore uniquely gifted in understanding one another, simply by being human. So as I write and post with you in mind, dear individual, I would like for you to have me in mind as you, in turn, read.
Here are a few photographs to show you who I am, where I live, and work.
Luke Cleland of Cleland Studios
My fiance Karen Kong
At exactly twelve noon there's a particularly magical piece of sunlight that invades my house. About once a week I stop to take pictures of it in vsco, I highly recommend the iphone app, and buying the additional filters. Featured in these pictures are, in order, Luke Cleland my neighbor, Wenry the German Shepard, and Karen Kong my beautiful fiance.
