Looking Back...

     I want to start this post off with saying that learning to draw, to paint, to see, has never come easy for me. It's not a talent. In fact, I would say that throughout my artistic life there's always someone just a few chairs over that I felt outshone by: A girl in middle school that could draw perfect portraits when I could hardly draw an eye, a cousin whose lines and ideas came effortlessly, a friend in college who saw colors that didn't exist to me. Looking back, I see myself struggling constantly to be like them.
 
   I've always been competitive, and I'm glad for it. That sense of competition got me where I am today, though I hate to admit it. I saw someone draw a portrait and I'd try 1,000 times to do the same. If someone was better at color or composition, I'd stare at their paintings for hours on end- comparing them to my own and the old masters I admired. There never was a day that it clicked. Even today I think I struggle daily at the smallest things that I should know how to do effortlessly, and even today I find the most unbelievable things in the crudest drawings. How could someone do that?!

     I wonder if a 17-19 year-old me would say the same about who I am today? I wonder if I'd take the time to teach him or if I'd even like his work. I wonder if I'd see myself in the things he scribbled in his sketchbooks. Well, thankfully, I don't have to wonder. Hidden in a closet at my parents house I stumbled across that person. There he was! Just sitting inside of sketchbook after sketchbook trying just as hard as he ever was!

    I thought it would be nice to share some of our drawings with you....

     Well, here are just a few things I found. My third painting of all time, a giant drawing of a hand (30in tv in the background), an unfinished armored girl, a portrait of a friend, and some guy doing some thing? Who knows! I spent so much time looking back at these the other night. In each I remembered where I was when I drew them and all the thoughts and feelings I had at the time. It's for that reason I keep things like this for the future- like some sort of living memory. One look and there I am again in that moment. It's a pretty good movie idea if the butterfly effect hadn't all ready done it. 

 

     Here I can easily see myself trying to design some unbelievable armor around this tough and elegant character. I can still see her in my head with her sword and lance. 2009 saw me diving into interesting characters, trying to get into their heads, just as I do now. Nothing, to me, is better than capturing that person, bringing them from that initial thought to the surface and meeting them. I'm not sure why her blacksmith decided to draw so much attention to her cleavage, though...

     I remember this one. I had just stumbled upon some Final Fantasy concept art and was crazy about it. I loved the sense of effortless movement and unrealistic proportions and costumes. I could take my time needling out all the small details of the costume and I thought I was something drawing just the smallest part for hours on end! That style at the time seemed everything I'd ever wanted. It still leaves an effect on me today, as you can see. There's very few paintings in action that I don't try and put that thrust to the character or scene, and I still fall in love with the little things.

     Finally, I think these are the most telling, if not my favorites. It was always easy for me to just sketch up a character and say they were mine- but it was never quite right. I struggled with the real: proportion, mass, light, shadow. It wasn't until that last year of college that I really started to get it. After number 10,0000000000000, hands and faces became not challenges to me, but my favorite things. There's so much in a characters face. I feel like you should be able to tell the entire story from their expression and I try and capture that. Hands, on their own, could be an entirely different portrait of that same person. They show just as much emotion. 

    To me, I can say that I've gotten better now. I can see it in leaps and bounds. I love it and I'm proud of it every day- like beating some fell beast. At the time, though, it didn't feel easy and it never will- but you should never forget the struggle that brought you to where you are. It's easier said than done, but if you can just think back to those times it can help you to reach forward just as much into the future even at the hardest times. You might say, "well, here I am, but there I was."

     Thanks for being a part of my own here, and sharing a part of my own there.

     -Allen

Constant Practice

     I think, as an artist, you never stop learning. When you travel and see different culture, adventure, meet a new person, notice a new color on a brick, even experience new technology you store it away, consciously or no, to the file cabinets of your memory. But more than that, there is no better way to train your artistic hand than to use it. Art is skill, not a talent, and much like any other skill it can wax and wain with time. Like taking 6 months off from the gym, 200lbs isn't as easy to lift as it once was- and the same is true for painting/drawing.

    Yes, with every new big painting you learn and grow your skill, but daily I think one should do quick studies of a thing. It is in those moments of seeing a problem before you, setting forth to solve it, and learning from it that both your hand, muscles and mind grow. Action begets action begets experience begets wisdom, I say! 

     Personally, I adore figure drawing. I held a pencil long before I held a brush. At times this has come back to bite me, as a painting and a drawing are not the same thing, but done together and thought of as one and you begin to change the way you think. Different aspects of what you want to get on the page become important and not so much the problem itself but the way you go about solving it evolves into something new. 

     After months of absence from figure drawing I've recently taken it up again digitally. The Croquis Cafe channel on youtube offers a weekly challenge on different models and timed drawing sessions. I've fallen in love with it and thankfully I'm working my way back in the videos so I've got plenty to choose from! 

     I'd like to share some of my favorite pages of sketches over the past few months from these sessions, none taking longer than 5 minutes. I hope you enjoy  and remember that it's the journey and not the finish!

Chasing the Dragon

Hunted   8" x 12"   Digital     2015

     In case you didn't get it the first time, Dragons are one of my favorite things: to paint, draw, design, read about, figure out, and see.
     If I'm being honest, I have no idea why. Maybe it's the challenge of making what doesn't exist seem real or maybe it's that in games, books, movies, you always see them at the end like this big hurtle the hero has the face, the ultimate fight. They're these mythical embodiment of awesome power- the immovable object and the unstoppable force (unless you have a black arrow).
    But that's all imagination, metaphor, storyline. We're here to talk about painting.

     Back during the summer I had some free time and did a sketch that I really enjoyed that kind of encompassed this hero figure avoiding a dragon. For about a month on and off I've been trying to tackle that piece in between commissions- and let me tell you that leaving and coming back to a painting after sometimes weeks on end is not as healthy as you might think for the creative process.
I turned it over in my head a lot, from this idea that dragon riding my be a sport in this world, to someone escaping from capture, to a group of dragon riders out like hunting foxes, to a war fought in the sky. All of it sounded exciting to me, but didn't capture the initial feeling of the sketch I'd done.

I really did like the rest, and I'm working on another one right now!

    In my mind's eye I had this hero- and that was the important part. It was this portrait and the story of this man at that place and time. Who was he? What was he moving away from/ toward? It wasn't so much about the dragons as what they represented to the character- his past and his future.
     It was still exciting, if a little cookie cutter for an image. I really liked the idea of the whites robes separating and leading into his form and the atmosphere in the air. I think subtlety speaks volumes often and that was my idea with the initial scheme.
      I kept working on it, hoping everything would come together, nothing feeling as right as I wanted it to. I still liked the little parts of the painting, but I didn't like the narrative. It wasn't saying anything and it didn't look good.
   

     

      It wasn't working for me. I ended up taking it back down to thumbnail size, because after working on a piece (even digitally) it can start to feel precious with every stroke, like you might mess it up. I did sketch after sketch on top of it in color, and then started playing with the values more, thinking about the background and the relationship between the opposing characters. I'd always known I wanted the guy to look like a wizard with his flowing robes and neat hair and I thought the white was a nice touch to his good nature. But maybe he wasn't so good. Maybe he was more drastic than subtle (he is riding a dragon after all). I took a leap and ended up giving him some actual character with his fine red cloak, ran it past some good friends who liked it, and came down to the final you see up top.

     In the end, it came down to the story of a man being hunted down. He's chased and they're on his heels, but he's moving forward despite what he's done or what he's running from. His hands are steady, one open to face what may come, and his eyes look toward the future, as we all must. 

   

    I hope you'll enjoy seeing my process in the GIF below as much as I enjoyed painting it!

You can always see more of my new work at: http://allenmorrisart.com

or follow me on Facebook 

On Dragons

I remember it clearly.
     There I was just getting home from a day of school. I was on my fifth or so Legend of Drizzt book at the time, and I all ready knew I'd be immersed until I'd read the last of the series. I'd always known of Drizzt, the dark elf with his two scimitars, since my first days playing Dungeons and Dragons at the age of 12 or so. Today would be a different kind of day, though. Today was the day that I would turn to the inside page, see the words "cover illustration by Todd Lockwood," and become lost late into the night staring at Todd's webpage. Before me stretched not only every cover I'd ever seen featuring the dark elf, but also the concept art of Dungeons and Dragons that I'd grown up with- the lines and colors I would mimic in my own sketchbook designing my own characters.

Drizzt detail from The Orc King
 by Todd Lockwood

    I had never heard of Todd Lockwood before that day. Hell, it had never even crossed my young mind that someone might be able to make a career creating for fantasy, but seeing his works spread before me felt like coming home. It felt like a second family I could come back to anytime I wanted- and I did.
    But you know what else I found looking through his work? I found dragons. Dragons upon dragons upon dragons! Red and gold and blue and silver dragons! Big and small dragons! Long and short dragons! Each sharp tooth or edge of flame meticulously rendered, each scale part of an elegant frame whose whole made the creature come to life!
     I was hooked. From that day on, when the urge strikes me, I am apt to sketch a bat-like wing, or fire breathing maw. As the years went by I started art school, and from there I sought to understand the anatomy of what made a dragon. How did they fly? How could they breathe fire? Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that they don't exist, but the challenge of designing what doesn't exist so that it might better exist inside my and your imagination is a challenge of my dreams!
Dragons have always held a place in the back of my mind, from my first days watching the Pagemaster, to reading Harry Potter and playing D&D as a kid. I do not think I've ever reached a personal excellence for creating them, myself, but I can still enjoy them. I'd like to share a few of my favorites with you. There are many different kinds, which you'll see, and many different styles for visualizing them.

Spellbound
 by Todd Lockwood

Tyranny of Dragons
by Tyler Jacobson

World's End
by Cynthia Sheppard

Adventurers
by Donato Giancola

I love each piece for different reasons, but I'll keep them to myself. There are many more illustrations of dragons out there, too many to count or list. These are just the ones that have stayed with me, and I know will be in my mind as I continue figuring out what makes a dragon to me.

Have a happy new year!

Remember, time is short and art is fleeting!

-A

Slaying the Dragon

Every painting starts with an idea, and with this one I got a call for the cover of the Dragon's Hoard by Flaming Crab Games.  I had a while to work on it and get the idea, and even started a separate painting that didn't flesh out to what I wanted to achieve. I ask questions like, "should it be a battle scene with a dragon? Should I focus on the treasure? Should it be more action, or more peace after the fact?" There were a lot of neat ideas, from a view of adventurers picking up new gear, to the dead serpent fuming on the ground. 

So I start exploring those ideas with these abstract thumbnails in 2 and 4 tone designs until I get something that I think flows well and says what I want it to. Sometimes these thumbnails are just lines and other times they are as detailed as full drawings, but it always comes down to what I want to achieve. 

As great as all of these ideas were, FCG and I thought this was the strongest piece for the cover. This was the second attempt at the piece and on this run I really knew almost exactly what I wanted, (which would come back to bite me later!) It's strong and simple at the same time, plus I thought that the armor would offer a good contrast to focus on, and the helmet would be an interesting object to recognize as opposed to a face. 

So I both shot my own reference and gathered ideas from google images if I could without straying too far from what I wanted and went forward with the drawing. 

I usually do much more detailed drawings, but for this one I knew the metal and reflections would be a big part of the image, so it was more important to keep an idea of the landmarks and planes of the armor. I'd do most of my tonal work with the paint, but kept the thumbnail and reference up on the side to give me a map of where to go with it.

Even though I do most of my work digitally these days, I try and keep the process almost exactly as I would when working with oil paint. Here, You can see what the initial lay in looks like on top of the drawing. I'm being loose, and lay down my mid tones first before establishing true darks and highlights. Color relationships at this stage are incredibly important, setting up a language of warm/cool interacting. To me, this is often more important than tone, especially when painting skin.

This is a time where a lot of happy accidents can happen, such as the where the top of the helmet really appears to blend backward and glow! 

 Here, I've established my focus of the painting. Even though it will evolve as I go, I always feel I need something to work with to start pushing and pulling from different areas. I would have no idea what color to make of the cloak or hands without understanding first what they were playing off of. This stage can also be done backwards, working from least important area to most important. Either way- push,pull.

I handle painting digitally with a simple formula, lay in what I need and then blend it together with the blend tool. it's that simple. sometimes I drop down the flow of the brush I'm painting with and I can get away with just slowly painting layer on layer with no blending. 

According to my thumbnail, I felt I was almost done, but thankfully I have a cliff that I climb sometimes when I'm in a pinch to speak to wise men and an oracle about the right path in life (thanks, Todd) and this time the gods spoke that I might do with an alternate light to separate the pieces, and something to help separate the helmet from the armor. 

This is where having that exact idea really hurt me. Sometimes you go into something thinking you've got it, when in reality you close yourself off from the flow of ideas. 

I ended up remodeling a lot of the piece, including the idea that he was wearing plate mail at all. I figured, "So what if it's a spartan-ish helmet. No one said that the treasure you find in a dragon's hoard had to match your outfit." Now he's much more simple with his chain mail and tabard. I knew instantly that it worked and allowed me to better control with pinpoints of light where to lead the eye. It wasn't as hard as you might think because, again, I am pushing and pulling what I'm doing constantly to resolve with the focus. 

So to finish it up, I did some deepening of the shadows and added some grit under the fingernails. I changed with some color "glazes" (layers) the vibrance of certain areas, and ended up with a piece I can be proud of!

If there's any questions or anything I missed, feel free to let me know in the comment section!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allen.morris.3152
Email: allenmorrisart@gmail.com

SPECTRUM FANTASTIC ART LIVE!

 or My First Convention

me and Donato Giancola
everyone's best friend

Sometimes I like to view myself as a vagabond, traveling from place to place and experience to experience, returning to my dusty studio to recollect through paint before setting out again on another great adventure, whether it's through road or brush. I've traveled through Italy, Washington D.C., New York, and New Orleans just to name a few- but nothing has been more fulfilling or more exhausting than traveling to Spectrum in Kansas City!

As the last four years passed I looked on from my computer screen as the first Spectrum's happened- seeing what seemed like old friends by now coming together for a family reunion that I never quite made it to. We stand on the shoulders of giants and in my eyes these were Goliaths and wasn't ready to stand in the puddles they left behind. It was a driving force for me every year to become better than I was. To me, just being able to see their shadows and, god forbid, shake their hands would be a blessing! So finally, this year, I made a decision, packed my bags, reminded myself in the mirror that I was, indeed, not a 5-year-old, and rode to Kansas City (with my friend Eric Summers who was kind enough to drive! Thanks Eric!)

me and Tyler Jacobson

I have no idea what I was expecting. Maybe there would be a lot of clouds and cities of gold. Maybe Gandalf would attend. Definitely Donato would be there slinging spells. What I got was far and beyond. Not only did I shake their hands but I spoke to them and they even spoke back to me! What were nerves at first soon turned into a calm and warm exhilaration. I made friend after friend, exchanged card after card, and drank drink after drink surrounded by the world's largest family. It felt like coming home and I would like to say here that I have never been so genuinely humbled and welcomed in my entire life.

 I tossed a lot of my own work around while I was there, and got the feedback everyone hopes for. I was told not just the changes I needed to make in my own work but the practice I needed to implement. I am inspired that I never need to stop learning and honing my craft, pursuing it to a degree of understanding that makes it a tool for answering my questions. I've always said that I like to use my art to explore other worlds, and to be frank it's like I've been walking these roads half blind with converse and then someone's handed me hiking boots and some binoculars. I will try not to forget them.

me and Captain Morgan/ Greg Manchess
(he painted and posed for the logo)

There was an awards ceremony, where all the winders of the gold and silver medals were announced, and I remember thinking to myself, "I never thought I'd be sitting in on a REAL awards show!" It was something else entirely, akin to the academy awards or the globes. In every artist that won, and in every artist that spoke, I could see not only how far they'd come and their own humility, but a small bit of myself too. That feeling was all around this past weekend. I speak of family but it was a sense of creative humanity- that we were all there for the same purpose and that we were all walking the same path. I could see myself as a child picking up books just for the cover, or stepping into art school for the first time, and I can see myself in another dream standing on a stage at Spectrum one day not as a winner in a competition, but because that huge family wants me there. I shed way too many tears.

So thank you all for taking the time to talk to me, and thank you for taking the time to support me and what I do. Thank you more for inspiring me and taking the time to do what you do. Thank you for following your own dreams and showing me how to follow mine. This weekend I met more giants than I thought I would, and I walked with them. I will never be able to repay that.

-Allen

 

me and Alex Stone

me and Justin Gerard
the world's friendliest man

me and Andrew Cefalu

me and Paul Bonner
the only man to study real dwarves

all my new friends, in card form