PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Practice painting for tomorrow’s Catalina painting trip. Experimenting with using pre-made shapes that can be stamped and rotated around to make other shapes.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Abalone Cove in Palos Verdes. – 3hrs in the field and 2 hrs. at home tweaking colors and details. The girl was added from a photo afterwards and painted over to match the style.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting near and abandoned shack at the Old Zoo in Grifith Park – 2 hours in the field.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting off of Topenga Fire Road – 2.5 hrs in field – Eytan sitting in the distance http://ezdraws.blogspot.com/

Our setup and some incredible locations

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5 / 12ux Cintiq for touch ups.

Pideras Blancas Lighthouse Area

Pfeiffer State Beach

Sur Ranch Vista (off of Highway 1)

Point Lobos, Cypress Cove

A 5 day painting trip along the Pacific Coast Highway that started in Los Angeles and ended in San Jose. Each day Eytan (http://ezdraws.blogspot.com/) and I stayed in a different city, enjoyed a gentleman’s breakfast, and head out to find a place of immeasurable beauty. We painted each day on location for about 3 hours, often in wind rain and cold, but never all three. Each night we found a restaurant that would humor our 8 plug digital campsite, where we would finish, touch up, critique and color correct the paintings done that day.

The next trip will be Moab and Utah, so if you are an artist at any level, and interested in joining us for several days of Plein Air Fun feel free to email me at shaddysafadi@yahoo.com.

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5 / 12ux Cintiq for touch ups.

Life painting at the edge of Morrow Bay California, 2 hours in the field, 2 hours at home on a 12ux Cintiq on loan from Wacom. Thanks Guys! The small Cintiq is great for painting trips like these where lugging that giant Cintiq isn’t practical.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at the top of the Ski Lift at Mt Baldy – 1 hr in the freezing bone chilling field, after which we retired to Chipotle.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting of Downtown LA, on 6th Street overlooking the 110 Freeway. – 2.5 hrs in the field – 2 hours at home touching up. This was an attempt to paint architecture in a painterly way. It seems in such a case, it is the parts of the overpass that are catching light require the most precision, especially the curved bridge which was done using the path tool. The edges were slightly distressed later to prevent the bridge from looking too graphic.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life Painting at the Turkish Delights III drawing workshop hosted by the Gallery Girls. Trying again to keep the “Jaime Jones Vibe” http://www.artpad.org/ by paying attention to each stroke. They started with a careful drawing followed by an attempt at super economical mark making. The downside, 25 minute poses were rarely enough time to make any traction:)… Substantial level adjustments, color adjustments, overlays and soft gradients were added at home.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting of Santa Monica off of Stunt Rd. – 2.5 hrs in the field – The goal here was again a painterly technique, but also to observe how the onset of sunset effects the colors. In this case low lying clouds were blocking the sun near the horizon producing a more reddish light.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting in Zuma Canyon – 3hrs in the field – Again focusing on keeping a more painterly style by using one carefully crafted custom brush designed for painting. The left painting was done first and as the sun was setting another quick sky layer was added with minor color balance changes to the terrain to help it match the sky.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting in Santa Monica – 3hrs in the field – Focusing on keeping a more painterly style.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at El Matador State Beach – 3hrs in the field – 3hrs at home adding details and color correcting

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Icehouse Canyon Creek. An attempt to work more painterly and to use fewer “job specific” custom brushes – 3hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at the Sunken City in Long Beach 3hrs.

HISTORY:

In 1929 a sizeable section of land in the southern tip of San Pedro began to unexplainably slip into the sea. The 600 block of Paseo Del Mar began moving seaward in 1929 and continued to slip until the mid 1930s. Movement was measured as high as 11 inches a day. Due to quick action, all but two of the houses on the seaward side of the street were moved before toppling into the sea. The eastern section of Point Fermin Park was lost and the entire area is very unstable, yet not moving at the present time. Geologists have termed this phenomenon as a “slump” and this area has been featured in many geological studies and books.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Temescal Creek, Samurai added from photo reference afterwards 3.5hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Wailea Falls Kauai, 2hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Queen’s Bath Kauai, 1.5hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Hanalei Kauai, 2hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Tunnels Beach Kauai, 3hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Eaton Canyon, Pasadena CA, 3hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Marina Del Rey 1.5hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life painting at Temescal Canyon Creek. 3hrs.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Life Painting at Vasquez Rocks, Agua Dulce CA. 3 hours laptop painting in the field, 2 hours in the Studio adding at adjusting details. The latest Photoshop brushes can be found under “BRUSHES” above.

HISTORY:

Vasquez Rock was the site of a battle regarded to be one of the most heated in confrontations in TV history

VIDEO: Kirk-vs-Gorn

PROCESS/TOOLS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

1. The first step was to pick a composition that would show as many varied layers of distance as possible.

2. Next a bright textured red-orange base was put down to compliment all the desaturated blues that would be in the scene. On another layer all the major compositional elements were roughly painted in.

3. On a third layer, after making the second layer semi-transparent, solid flat silhouettes of the forground rocks were painted in. Careful attention was paid to the variety and energy of their shapes as well as their realism.

4. The transparency of the previous layer was preserved and a quick wash with a rock textured brush (see Download for brushes) was placed over the rock shapes previously drawn. Light painting and cracks as well as some attention to the direction of the ambient light started to create their forms.

5. A similar technique was applied to the middle and background layers until completion.

6. Generally the goal is to find custom brushes that naturally express the materials in the scene with out literally looking like them.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

1. The horizon line is placed usually on the top or bottom third of the picture.

2. Next a quick mess brush marks to get the general colors of the whole image but making sure to include some odd opposite colors to add variety.

3. Ocean detail was added on a layer using squashed and scattered custom brushes and all the pier parts on another layer drawn carefully in perspective with the polygonal lasso tool and corrected along the way

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Point Dune surf with newly acquired custom brushes which can be found under the DOWNLOAD tab.

Figure Model “Mala” at Bickart’s Sculpture Studio. 8-12am the last Sunday of every month.

http://www.sculpturestudio.org/index.html

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Architectural elements created with a square shaped brush with no rotation and the shift key held. Brushes can be found under the DOWNLOAD tab.

PROCESS/MATERIALS:

Dell Inspiron 1525 / Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet / Photoshop CS5

Painted on a Laptop from life. See previous figure painting post for details.

Attempting to make custom brushes for a very simple palm tree. This image had two, one for the leaves and one for the trunk. The custom brushes did the %80 of the work and then last %20 was adding randomness and details.

AND… After a 7 year hiatus from “figure” painting I attended a figure drawing workshop at Jonathan Bickart’s Sculpture Studio. I was going to bring charcoal and keep it super real and then I decided that if I’m going to use photoshop for a living I should us it for everything.

Materials/Settings
Adobe Photoshop CS4 with a Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet
Brushes: See brush swatch above. The tip has an irregular
shape (that I stole from someone) and the other important
element of it is that in the Brush Settings/Other Dynamics/Opacity Jitter that you set the Opactiy Jitter to “Pen Pressure” this give you a nice soft brush you can blend with.

A Naughty Dog group show at the Gnomon Gallery
http://www.gnomongallery.com/

Opening Reception
Saturday, March 6th 7-11pm
1015 N. Cahuenga Blvd. Hollwood, CA, 90038

(Everything bug related is mine:)

After two long years and a brutal home stretch, Uncharted 2 finally hits shelves this Tuesday.

We knew it was fun and we knew it looked good, but it’s always a surprise to see how all the pieces come together.

Hats off to everyone at Naughty Dog because it really was the staggering collective talent that made this game happen.