Horoscope Honeys Part 5

Today I'll demonstrate my painting process for the calendar a bit. In an attempt to save time I actually painted all the pieces simultaneously, production line style. So for instance, I would mix my first color then apply that color to all of the pieces that would contain it, then I'd mix the second color then apply it to all the pieces that would contain that one. And so on. I think it really did save me time, and it gave the calendar a nice uniformity to all the pieces.

I usually make an enlargement of my pencil drawing to transfer onto the watercolor paper via light box. I then like to take that copy and draw on top of it a lighting study which will be my guide when I paint the shading.


After all the art is transferred I paint all the line art.


As you can see, I completed all of the line art across all of the pieces (reusing as many of the colors as possible) before moving on to the next stage.


Next is the underpainting. I use acrylic wash to slowly build up all the shading and values.


Again, I do this for all the pieces.


Lastly I apply Luma concentrated watercolor. It's completely transparent so it retains all of the acrylic shading perfectly.

Capricorn

Pisces

Of course this whole process took me weeks because there are twelve pieces (plus a bonus) but I finished them all at the same time!

Horoscope Honeys Update

Calendars are now available for pre order on the Gallery Nucleus website! Click here.

Horoscope Honeys Part 4

And now the next set of roughs for my horoscope themed pin up calendar published by Gallery Nucleus.

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

Libra

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Horoscope Honeys Part 3

So to recap, I've made a Horoscope themed pin up calendar for Gallery Nucleus called Horoscope Honeys. It's a 2014 calendar and should be available at the end of June. I've posted all of my thumbnail exploration in the previous two posts. This episode I give you the next step, pencil roughs!

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Horoscope Honeys Part 2

I'm letting air the dirty laundry on this post. There are some stinky drawings in here. All part of the process I guess. The stinky part.
Anyway, now that I've figured out my pin-up concepts for each horoscope sign, it was time to start the character designs. In addition to finding lots of personality profiles there were also tons of information regarding the physical appearances associated with each sign. You can see in my notes below I went a little crazy with all that information, but I think it really helped me to come up with unique body types for each character.



To help solidify my design thoughts and to make sure everyone looked unique, I drew this line up. Interestingly I found some information that ranked the bust size according to sign so I let it inform my designs too. I set the line up the same way, with Aries being the largest and Libra being the smallest. I have no idea if it holds any bearing on reality but it makes it fun at least.

Horoscope Honeys Part 1

I've always wanted to do a pin-up calendar, it's probably the most classic vessel for the pin-up that I can think of. Well I've finally gotten my chance to make one with Gallery Nucleus called Horoscope Honeys. It'll be a 2014 calendar and there will also be an exhibition and release party on June 29th 2013 at Gallery Nucleus.

I thought I'd take you through the process from the very beginning this time. It was my wife's idea to do a horoscope themed calendar, which I thought was a great idea. Since horoscopes are basically personality profiles, I thought it would be great to imbue each pin-up with the personality of each sign and try to come up with a pin-up concept that represents that character instead of doing the typical thing of dressing her up in the superficial trappings of that sign. For instance, I didn't want to dress up Taurus with bull horns on her head or have Pisces riding a couple of giant fish. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I've just seen it done before.

So I started to do a bunch of research and made lists of personality traits, then started to do thumbnails to search for the concept of the piece. I usually had to try to boil it down to one over-arching trait that would make for a clear pin-up idea. For instance Cancer became "the nurturer" and Leo became "the center of attention".

Here are all of my original notes and sketches. In future posts I'll take you through further steps of completion.

Spring is in the Air

I've done a small sketchy painting which will be for sale at Tr!ckster's "Spring is in the Air" show this Saturday March 30th at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

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