My IMC 2013 Painting Process

The Illustration Master Class happened in the middle of June; sorry for the delay!

It was my second year at IMC and it was amazing just like the first. Although this time I knew what to expect, I felt more organized, and actually knew people this time!  It was great seeing friends from last year and meeting new ones.  So many fun things happened throughout the week that it would take many posts to cover it all.  This post is mostly about the painting I was working on throughout the week. For more thorough IMC 2013 coverage, head on over to Christopher Burdett's blog; he created a post for each day, which is awesome. Also, James Gurney created a great video during the days he was there.

The dream team faculty

Back: Scott Allie, Scott Ficsher, Greg Manchess, Irene Gallo, Rebecca Guay, Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo

Front: Donato Giancola, Iain McCaig, Dan Dos Santos

Special guests not pictured: Mike Mignola, James Gurney, Peter de Seve, and Mo Willems

We had to choose out of a selection of assignments to illustrate which were sent to us about a month before IMC started. We had to show up prepared with some thumbnails and a sketch of what we wanted to work on for the week. Out of all the assignments, I picked "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  I drew up some thumbnails for 2 of the scenes.  Below are a few from the scene where Oberon puts the "love potion" into Titania's eyes as she sleeps and also the scene when she wakes up and is about to see Nick Bottom for the first time (and then falls in love with him even though he's a man with a donkey's head).

I ended up going with the second scene and created a sketch of my favorite thumbnail:

I had my crit with Rebecca Guay, Greg Manchess, and Mike Mignola.  I got some great feedback on tweaks to make. Luckily I didn't have to make any huge changes. I drew up a final sketch that I could continue to work from:

My plan was to scan in the sketch and create my painting digitally like the previous year but things took a different turn...  On the first day, I set up my station in the digital studio with my new Cintiq and was ready to go for the week.  I mentioned to a few instructors that I might want to try a different style focused more on the line work (think Arthur Rackam-ish vibe).  Iain McCaig suggested I tryout inking and watercolor and said he'd do a demo for me - how could I say no to that!!  I've been wanting to learn watercolor for a while; what a perfect opportunity to learn from such an inspiring Artist!

At around midnight on day 2, I believe, Iain did a demo using Nick Bottom as a subject. He sketched it out using donkey photo reference and one of the students for the facial expression; it was entertaining! He then inked it using India ink and his trusty series 7 sable brush. After it was dry, he broke out the watercolors and let me try as well.  I thought I'd destroy it!  Almost did, but it was less scary the more I tried it out.

 I learned a ton; Thanks Iain!

 I headed to an art store the next day with a couple classmates and bought some India ink and fancy small series 7 sable brush. And I spent most of the day inking.  I found I could get a HUGE range in line width with the brush as compared to a brush pen.  I definitely want to use a brush and ink more in the future.

 

I headed back to the digital room to do up some color comps.

The teachers and students that I asked, seemed to mostly like the top left the best.  That one and the bottom right were my picks so I went with top left.

I just went for it and did the best I could. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for a first full watercolor painting.  It was a lot of fun so I hope to do more!

Some other IMC highlights:
- Just hanging out with everyone and geeking out over art stuff; the group of people who attend and teach are so awesome.
- All of the lectures.  There were 2-3 lectures a day and we learned so much it's hard to process it all!
- Checking out Mike Mignola's portfolio of original inked art.
- Watching everyone's paintings take shape; there were so many great ones!
- Watching painting demos by the faculty.
- Getting advice on my graphic novel story from Scott Allie.
- And basically everything else!...

For more photos, you can check out my IMC 2013 album on Facebook.
Thanks to Gene Snyder for the demo photos!