Magasin Sennelier

Undoubtedly, Paris figures as an amazing city to see artwork and learn about art history - but what about experiencing modern Paris as an artist? What does Paris have to offer its citizens and tourists as far as art materials? 

Magasin Sennelier at 3 Quai Voltaire is the place to go for art supplies and for learning about what materials are available and loved by artists in Paris. 

The store had a great selection of drawings tools, including pastels, chalks, and other mediums. 

The paper curation was to die for. I've never seen a more diverse or unique collection of artist papers from all across the globe. Chinese papers, paper from Nepal, and handmade paper from France itself adorn the shelves of the second floor. The availability of oversized handmade paper added another point of uniqueness into the store - usually it is easy to find handmade paper in small sizes, but the glamorously large sheets of handmade paper had me swooning. 

Even the testing grounds for pens and markers seemed more interesting in Paris, where a seriously good artist scribbled out a few studied faces. Usually in the States all that these say are "Kylie loves Jace" and so forth. 

The easel section surprised me with a showcase of the very same easel model that I have back home in the States - it was wild to see a new and unpainted version of the easel I have trusted for more than ten years. Julian easels have my recommendation as I have had no problems with mine so far. As a revolving door of computers, sketchpads, and canvasses turn through my life, I can always count on my trusty easel. 

Knowing how difficult it might be to fly back home with paints or chemicals, I ended up purchasing watercolor pencils and a few books of paper. 

I ended up using the paper above to make this fish: 

I am not sure what I will make on the rest of the paper! It has the quality of being "Too good to use" but I am sure I'll come up with something good. 

Visit Magasin Sennelier's website here!

Other Paris art adventure writings and photos: 

The Egypt Wing of The Louvre

The Sainte Chapelle Royal Chapel

Closeups at the Orangerie

And the watercolors I've been up to

December 2017 Studio Update

Before moving to Maryland I made a couple final paintings in Houston, including this piece of a Fairy Slipper Orchid: 

I will miss painting in Houston and I will miss the weird ideas that swooped down upon me while stuck in traffic. 

These pieces will be available at http://www.harper-rose.com/ in Leadville, Colorado. 

Right before moving I had the chance to visit Paris, France, and see some of the greatest paintings of art history. I was interested to capture the self-portraits of painters and paintings of painters.

"What do you mean, the painting has to be done by tomorrow?"

There were moments in the Louvre that surprised me, such as my own awe at sculpture. 

After the Louvre I tried a quick drawing of the sculpture with the photo as reference. The statue had too many admirers in the museum itself - I would have never been able to get close enough and have enough time to make a drawing there! 

While in Paris I was also able to pick up some water color pencils (more on those soon!) and very special paper.

This paper turned out to be so special that when I searched for it online, the website seemed to be defunct. 

The art store in Paris that I visited was this one: http://www.magasinsennelier.net/ I was amazed by their selection of handmade papers, along with many other fine art materials such as pigment, pastel crayons, and easels.  

That is December on the studio side! Catch you guys soon. 

October - November 2017 Studio Update: A bit of everything

This month I began working in a new format - miniature paintings!

A miniature of Mt. Elbert in Leadville, Colorado

Another miniature of Mt. Elbert - about 3 x 3 inches

Myst!

These mini paintings take about as much concentration or more as a larger painting, say an 8 x 10. Decisions just have to be better and more precise. 

I'm still working through painting my memories, many of which involve video games from the 1990s - up next is a painting of an Arcology from Sim City 2000. Here is the underpainting and the original Arcology: 

On the other side of the studio I have been finally working on something that has been in my to-do pile for months - lettering my comic, Tilted Sun. 

I'm accomplishing the lettering project in Clip Studio Paint (Formerly known as Manga Studio). Although learning Clip Studio Paint took a few painful failures for me and several Googlings of how to get text to work the way I wanted, it's been worth it. (I might try illustrator for this too, soon?) 

All in all lettering has made the comic more real. I've set up about 60 pages of the comic so far without any words, just scribbles of notes of the words that I wanted to use. Ironically this has worked to make the images more expressive - the images were working almost like a silent film until now. 

The font I am using for the comic, Sequentialist, which is a pretty rad font! 

The first part of the comic also took different turns than I expected - I had most of it written out but then decided to discard a lot of the first, second, x drafts, in favor of what felt better, or indulging "what the comic really wanted to say". 

It continues to take me a long time to work on this comic because writing and doing art for and lettering a full color comic takes many hours of thought at different levels. Oil painting feels like a break compared to it. It works for me to spend time on both, especially since paintings emerge into the world as physical objects, and the comic just lives in screens (for now).  So, painting is the day-by-day mini reward that helps me keep going through the comic. 

All in all October was a solid month and November is off to a great start! Thanks for stopping by on the blog, and catch you soon! 

September-October 2017 Studio Update: Ideas happen when you least expect

I've had kind of a rough fall season. 

I blogged a bit and kept track of everything that happened during Hurricane Harvey. While we suffered no damage, the mental stress of Harvey was tough on me. The sky was dark for days. We lost the internet. We ran out of data on our phones and got charged for it. At one point there was just no food left in our area, there were looters, and people became kind of dangerous.

Right after life was sort of getting back on track after Harvey, I was downsized from my job. It was probably for the best overall, but still came as a shock. 

One lesson I have learned in these recent weeks of being unemployed (which hasn't happened to me for over ten years) is that the ideas that I create as an artist during times of stability and times of uncertainty are very different.

Occasionally while driving in Houston to my software implementation day job, a relentless art idea would just close its jaws down on me.

One early morning, while stuck in a gradually-budging chain of traffic, I stared at the bumper of the car in front of mine and had a vision of a woman magically transforming herself. She was holding out her hands and some kind of energy was forming between her palms. 

I worked all day at the office, sketched the idea in my calendar notebook, then I went home and started drawing it. It took me about 6 hours to finally finish the piece over a weekend: 

I had several art ideas like this over the past year while driving in Houston. The ideas would just emerge out of the diffused humidity and demand to be made. If I didn't make them, I would feel like I was stifling some part of myself.

Lately, without a daily traffic jam and endless bumpers to stare at, I realize my process is a bit different. Yet, I'm definitely creating more. I've made over 50 pieces since being downsized, and they're all  just as deep as what I was creating during a time of stability. 

Hurricane Harvey also kind of stopped my progress on my comic, Tilted Sun. But the good news is that I am finally able to think about the comic again and also make a few panels. 

I just couldn't think as a director for a while - I had to get back to a stable place. To make a comic, I've realized you HAVE to think of the process like a film director. There is really no other way. Though comics may not have music or sound effects, it still helps to think in terms of what kind of music a certain panel might have. Overall I guess what I am saying is I continue to take the comic's production very seriously, which takes time. 

When I did have traffic-jam stability-born ideas that just took over and demand to be made, such as the woman transforming herself, I can bring those ideas back into the comic or larger projects as a whole. Though ideas happen at different times for different reasons, they don't have to exist on their own  - they are all a part of the story to tell. 

There is probably still a myth out there where the more tortured an artist is, the better their artwork is. This is a myth. Stability is good for art, not being in a hurricane is good for art. The art created is just different, as far as I can see. You be the ultimate judge :) 

Art Journal: Elder Scrolls Online for Art

I never thought I would like an MMORPG.

Growing up, I watched friends play Everquest, World of Warcraft, and even Second Life with only a minor interest. Sim City, The Incredible Machine, and Myst were more up my alley as far as computer gaming. When I went to college, a laptop was my key study tool, ironically (Facebook arrived in 2004, the year I started school, and thank God, at that point Facebook was still incredibly boring and Wikipedia was not yet to be trusted). Games were on consoles, and computers were for writing papers. I didn't get the whole computer gaming thing as a whole until Elder Scrolls Online. 

At first, when I saw Marc playing Elder Scrolls Online, I watched his steel-plated avatar hustle across the landscape and thought:  "This sorta looks fun, but it is not for me." Suddenly, a player rode by on a giant tiger with a pet dragon following close behind. "Actually this IS for me," I said "I, too, want to ride a giant tiger and have a cool dragon!" We signed me up for an account and the rest is history. I've been playing Elder Scrolls with Marc for about a year now, It's been a fun way for us to play games together, but not necessarily fight against each other.

Check out my cool Sabre Cat, my rad bellbottoms, and my rockin' antler helmet

As much as I like Elder Scrolls Online, fortunately I don't think I am at the point where I am needing MMORPG detox - I still get outside a bunch, and like with all games I struggle to find time to play ESO. When I do find time, it is a fun escape. 

What is cool about Elder Scrolls Online is you can use it for character art resourcing. Yes... that is right ... I found a way to take a game and use it for artistic purposes! 

Sometimes when I need to draw a comicbook character at a tough angle, I start up Elder Scrolls Online and position the camera above one of my avatars. 

Averle the elf is a great figure model :) 

As strange as this sounds, it is far easier than searching on Google for the perfect reference photo and finding piles of weird and depressing stock art.

Resting elf face, ESO is handy for drawing faces at tough angles. This one is a work in progress still :) 

I've also learned a bit about landscape artistry from Elder Scrolls. Since I am an artist who is much better at illustrating people, things, and animals than landscapes, it takes tons of extra work for me to make landscapes be interesting. 

While traipsing through Morrowind and Rivenspire, I thought about how hard it would be to be an Elder Scrolls Online landscape artist, and how you would have to make the landscape interesting and believable from all angles.

Heck - this goes for any game. Painters are lucky because they just have to make one angle of their media look good (usually). Not every landscape screencapture in ESO is a winner, but, there are interesting ideas afoot with grass, rock forms, tree variation, and clouds.

This video game is lifelike in that if you slow down and take time to smell the roses, you start to see some really interesting things.