Robert Morris University Magazine Spring 2009 cover

TGIFF

Thank Goodness It's Frickin' Friday! So today starts out pretty nice actually; nice day out, it's jeans day at my job and the moment I walk into work my coworker hands me a BIG bag of over 30 fresh apples right off the tree! What am I going to do with 30 fresh apples?! I still don't know, but one of things on the list is make a homemade apple pie. 

Yesterday I whined up canceling my Hot Yoga class, I was at a coffeeshop drawing and I was inspired to stay and work on a drawing. All and all it was pretty worth it; all i need to do now is ink it then color. On today's agenda for fun; one of my close friends is having some kind celebration and wants to have a drink. So this particular Friday considering the weather is suppose to be absolutely amazing from morning to evening seems like a good idea to go out and cut loose a little.

Robert Morris University Magazine Cover

Backstory: Well a year ago my oil painting instructor from Matthews Art Studio in Bellevue, PA informs me of an art commission that needed to be done for RMU magazine. So she hands me contact info and I have a chat with the art director for the magazine. A very nice person I might add, one of the best commissions I had the pleasure of doing. The details of the assignment was they wanted it to look like that old classic "Uncle Sam wants you!" watercolor painting, but with Robert Morris. It was in honor the GI Bill, because RMU was one of the first private universities in the country to support the bill. (it's pretty frickin' big deal, incase you're thinking, "yeah so, and?")

I felt I did a good job with the watercolor, don't you?...haha believe or not, it's actually digital. Don't get me wrong I actually know how to use watercolor quite well and better outside Photoshop; But working with very sharp deadlines this is one of those examples of where knowing a thing or two about 21st century technology comes in handing folks.

I was able to make changes in the matter of minutes and send a email versus setting up a meeting to discussion a doodle on a tight schedule. To get "yay or nay" with-in moments and not wait long is pretty efficient I think. I think there might have been one time I actually was emailing changes as they where having a meeting about it.

So to all you hardcore traditionalist out there be a little more forgiving on technology, it may just save you time and materials you don't have at moment. (BTW, I'm a traditionalist as well don't think I'm being bias)

For this particular piece I drew it in regular graphite pencil and used a watercolor tool brush in Photoshop to color it. My first attempts of drawing it looked more like Benjamin Franklin, it took a lot of fine tuning and thumbnails.

I tried to match the style of the original painting as much as I could, and I intentionally place "mistakes" like bleeding and even a couple of "misplace drip mistakes" through out the picture. One of the ironic things with recreating a style on a computer is you want to kill perfection out of it.

The thing people imagine with computers is perfection, so naturally someone's reaction would be is, "well he must of use watercolors, because why would there be bleeding outside the line in a computer program?" and this is 100% true!
Why would there be bleeding outside a line or drip marks on the canvas or coloring mixing mistakes or all the things that can go wrong with watercolor in a image on a computer program? You can easily fix them with just a click of the eraser tool; and that is the reason why people will believe you didn't do it on a computer.

The term, "we're only human means/implies: we're not prefect. In my opinion is what makes us human; we make mistakes it's how we learn. On the flip side of the philosophy we're also taught that machines don't make mistakes.

So the illusion created in my piece is only a psychological one not so much visual.

That's why this picture is one of my favorite ones; not so much on matching the style of the original artist. But creating an illusion without using costly materials I would've use doing it the exact way traditionally. Plus the money I got is all profit that cost me no additional purchase of supplies needed. ;)