MARCSCHEFF

ILLUSTRATION

Last night a group of illustrators descending on the East River bar in Brooklyn. I had organized this night initially to celebrate the one-year anniversary of my figure drawing for illustrators group, and then extended the invitation to any illustrator who wanted to come.

We had a really great turnout, with a great mix of catching up and meeting new people. As happens, we all brought our sketchbooks and had an impromptu session. Tim lent me his brush pen to try on my new moleskine. I was inspired so I used my own brushpen at our figure drawing session tonight (shown at left). I think that’s what I love most about this group of people. They’re not only talented, but they are generous, and honest. The folks at Art Order just did a piece on the importance of community as an artist, and it’s great to see this one grow.

It was a great success, and we’ll definitely do it again. If you’d like to be alerted about the next one, you can become a fan on my facebook page, or sign up for our figure drawing group.

Here are links to urls of those in attendance (email me if I left you out!):

• Tim Piotrowski
• Liam Collins
• Tony Palumbo
• Winona Nelson
• Dave Palumbo
• Rebecca Solow
• Scott Murphy
• Elisabeth Alba
• Owen Weber
• Frank Stockton
• Steven Bachan
• Rhiannon Price
• Anton Kolyukh
• Scott Brundage
• Andy Swist

And my wife, Chloe Cockburn, also swung by to pick up our dogs for a walk.

The iPad looks awesome, but I’m not going to buy one. You might want to though. Here’s why.

First, I have an iPhone, a MacBook, and a medium Wacom tablet that I can toss in my laptop bag. So what I was waiting to hear was how the iPad was beyond those things. It kind of isn’t:

Where’s the camera?
What about full apps like Photoshop?
Can you chat? Again, where’s the camera for video chat?
There’s a long list of what the iPad doesn’t do here

Then there were the “oooh, almost”s.

The e-reading capability is neat. But just “neat.” The Kindle and Nook crush the iPad’s on-screen readability since they reflect rather than emit light. I’d go blind if I read all my books on that thing.

The concept of a mobile digital sketchbook is, well, awesome. You know I’m a Brushes fan, for sure, and even though the iPad doesn’t have Photoshop, I actually like the limited tool set of Brushes. Check my iPhone paintings. But if I’m going to upgrade to a mobile digital sketchbook I want a pen with pressure sensitivity at minimum, full Wacom tech in the ideal case. This actually exists, but Apple didnt’ do it. The Modbook is the Apple Tablet for me, but at $3k it’s too much for something that is just enhancing my current tech studio. See the Modbook here

In the end, the iPad just enhances, giving me a little more mobility than my laptop, and a little more screen than my iPhone. But since I have those things, and since there are drawbacks, I’m going to wait until the iPad offers me something truly outside my current capabilities.

That said, if you don’t have a smartphone, and/or a laptop, and don’t really want one, then the iPad is the great portable multimedia device you need at a price that’s pretty good… but will probably drop in 6 months. I’m just saying.

Here are a few more finger paintings.

It’s been a minute since my last post. The good thing about that is it means I’ve been busy.

In the most recent news, I had my solo show in Boston last weekend. Held at The Roxbury Latin School, where I went to high-school, the opening was great fun and a good chance to catch up with old friends. My art teacher, Mr Buckley, is still there and helped organize the show. He was an incredible teacher and inspiration and I was honored to show back at RL at his request. I also sat in on some art classes and taught the students a little about my process. While I was there I helped a few kids out with their junior and senior self-portraits. I simply love teaching, in just about any form, and will be back up in Boston on January 25th and 26th to help out at RL.

Above are my dad, me, Mr Buckley, and my mom.

I recently got a slew of new card assignments. Once these are done, and once they’re public, I’ll post them here. These assignments are typically fast deadlines, and great opportunities to work on some new fantasy pieces for my portfolio. The clients are AEG and Fantasy Flight Games. The funny thing is, I did some cards for FFG about 5 years ago when I was still in school. I’ve definitely improved, and I’m glad they seem to have misplaced those files…

I also got a chance to see the Waterhouse exhibit in Montreal. I’ve never traveled to see an art show (including into Manhattan), and this was worth every ounce of effort. I have had very little exposure to J. W. Waterhouse’s work, and had no idea what an incredibly deft painter he was. His ability to render, in the briefest range of value, a distinct figure with a complete and unique personality was second to none. Not just that, but his subject matter actually appealed to me. He painted scenes from myth and legend, and quite a bit from the Odyssey.

The image below is of “Miranda,” one of my favorite pieces in the show. It was perhaps one of his loosest pieces, but afforded such incredible emotion and detail despite it’s lack of realism when looked at up close.

In the near future, I’ll be posting up some figure sketches, and some new iPhone paintings. I just got a moleskine, so there should be plenty more coming in 2010!

As always, if you want all the good stuff in 2010, become a fan on the facebook page.

I think that if you’re going to do a job, you might as well do it the best way you know how. Doing less means you’re not only selling the client short, but you’re cheating yourself out of an opportunity to put something you love in your portfolio.

Still, sometimes you finish a job and you’re not happy with it, no matter what you put into it. But illustration is a business, and if the client is happy then you’ve technically done your job and sometimes you have to move on to other work. You can always go back and improve/finish the piece if you like.

And sometimes you really like what you did. These are two pieces I really like, and now have permission to show. Both were made for Zynga Games, Pirates and Dragon Wars.

Click to enlarge.

Jack runs a pretty cut and dry kind of shop. You lose something, he finds it. He likes his bourbon neat and his dames strawberry-blonde. You might wonder why his logo has a dragon on it. You probably wouldn’t ask. Just like you might not ask why Jack wears his winter coat in the summer, or why he never seems to leave his office, or come in for that matter. When you need to find something, and when you hire a guy like Jack, you’re not asking a lot of questions. Jack likes this just fine. It makes life a little easier to be in the line of business where questions aren’t asked and he’s the one whose job it is to notice things.

His last client just left his office. He puts on his coat and lights a cigarette. He flips the dragon seal on his desk and steps through.

These are a few color sketches from last night’s figure drawing session. I was having a hard time getting into a long drawing so I did some short color studies, where I focused on pushing saturation. The first one was done on my iPhone, the others are Photoshop.

You can see the previous version here, and the original sketch.

The image and video above are of a painting I did using Brushes on my iPhone. I don’t use a stylus, just forefinger and thumb.

This week we did a series of 5 SECOND poses, at the suggestion of my friends at Drawn Today. Kimberly, the model, was great, whirling through each pose with grace and precision. It was fun and definitely challenging. I’ll scan some of those drawings soon, and suffice to say they are very simple. After the 3 minutes of 5 second poses, the minute poses seemed an eternity. I felt like I could take my time and not rush the 5 minute poses. Tim commented that this was his best 20 minute pose yet. I highly recommend the exercise. If you don’t have a figure drawing session, goof around with your friends and have them do it. 5 seconds is easy to hold a pose and it might be fun and silly for people while you’re getting good practice.

(photo of The Trapeze Loft by Tim P)

Round 2, DING!

I also test drove the Cintiq 12wx (pictured here, image courtesy of Wacom.com), the medium-sized tablet with a screen like the Cintiq. It works just like the big Cintiq, but is on a tablet. Fun and portable, right? Well, not quite.

As I mentioned in Cintiq vs Intuos4 I have a large Intuos4. I was taking a trip to LA in part for work and was tired of hauling that behemoth on the plane. So I hit the Apple store to get something I could use more easily for travel and on the plane. I ended up buying the Cintiq 12wx, went outside, had a think, and went back and bought the medium Intuos4 as well. I bought both because the clerk at the store informed me that the Cintiq required power, so I wouldn’t be able to use it on the plane (except for Virgin or in first-class). That said, I gave both a shot and here’s what I found.

The Cintiq 12wx like the 21ux is a great experience. Physically drawing on the image is awesome. The Cintiq tablet actually beats out the Cintiq monitor on physical usability because it’s down in my lap, and it’s easier to look up and down to my laptop screen. I can also switch my hand from the tablet buttons to the keyboard like I do with my large Wacom. Where the large Cintiq requires a left-right body shift for the second monitor, the tablet version is an up-down head nod which is much easier. The Cintiq tablet still has the Intuos3 style buttons, and I’m not sure why they didn’t make it Intuos4 style out of the gates.

It has two major downsides in the portability category: it needs power to work, and it has three big cables (monitor, power, usb) with a connector brick for both power and the video/usb. The power thing means no plane use on non-Virgin airlines. Ok, no big deal, I can switch to Virgin from JetBlue. However, it’s still not usable on the plane because it’s an awkward setup. With the cables and bricks, I’d be packed into my seat and getting up would mean almost full dis-assembly, or at least more cooperation from single-serving-friends than they probably want on a 6 hour flight.

I brought the medium Intuos4 on the plane and that worked perfectly. It’s slim, and the single USB cable fully disconnects from the tablet to be stored separately. It was easy to use and put away and that’s what I needed from a portable unit. I’ll wait for the tablet Mac for a touch-screen solution.

Again, the Intuos4 beats out the Cintiq 12wx for portability. Thanks to Mark Winters for recommending the medium Intuos4.