Animation Background Painting Made Easy

Friday Fun

Today will be a little different from the usual Friday Fun but we are still going to have some fun. We are going to replicate an animation background painting from a Chuck Jones cartoon. I love cartoons from this era, they had such fun backgrounds and the music was great. Just not the same with today’s cartoons. Before we get started let’s take a quick look at Chuck Jones.

Chuck Jones:
An American animator, director, cartoon artist, screenwriter, and producer. His career spanning over 60 years, Jones made more than 300 animated films, winning three Oscars as director and in 1996 an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.

Supplies:
acrylic paint (phthalo blue, purple, orange, lemon yellow, black, and white)
canvas or heavy duty painting paper
brushes

Ok let’s get started. Get your supplies ready and let’s go…

Start with painting the back ground first. Using phthalo blue, purple and a little white paint the entire canvas and let it dry.

Add stars and moon. Flick the white paint to simulate stars in the sky. Paint the moon with white and lemon yellow and let dry.

Draw the houses and T.V. antennas and then paint them black. Let this dry and then paint white for the windows. (we do this so color will be bright and show up when we are painting over another color)

Finish the the windows with orange and yellow. There you go you now have your own animation background painting.

Thanks for stopping by, see you next time. Remember to follow and like for more art lessons like this one.

See Your Skills Improve

Monday Motivation

Feel like your drawing is a failure? It’s ok to feel you’re not where you want to be in your art career, but don’t dwell on it. Work towards your goals and practice your skills with intent. If you just had a bad drawing take out one of your older drawings and take a look at it. I like to keep a drawing or painting of a time I thought was successful and then go back and look at it again a year later and compare it to what I’m doing today. Wow such a difference in my approach and what I thought was successful. I try to do this every year so I can really see the improvement and it keeps me going.

Thanks for stopping by and see you next time. remember to leave a comment and like our page.

Inexpensive Canvas for Beginners

Thrifty Thursday

So you decided to take up painting and started looking for all of your supplies. You walk into your neighborhood art store see the prices of painting supplies and almost pass out. “What?!,” you say. “Are you kidding me?!” Yes painting supplies can cost a lot of money but it’s ok you don’t need the most expensive supplies to get started. Canvas ranges in value and types so lets take a look at your options.

Canvas Types:
Canvas paper - heavy weight paper that is coated to handle paint (make sure its made for your paint type: oil, acrylic or watercolor) Some may need to be prepped before painting.
Canvas panels - thin heavy weight cardboard that is covered with primed canvas on one side, ready to paint.
Masonite - thin wood pulp panel (needs to be primed with gesso before painting)
Stretched Canvas - wood frame covered with canvas, usually primed and ready to paint.

Canvas panels in a value pack for beginners is my suggestion. This will be the least expensive option but still have the canvas feel. You will be able to get several panels to work on. Keep to the smaller sizes to keep the cost down and your motivation going, working on a big painting and not finishing because of the size is not what you want.

Stretched canvas in value packs is my next choice for beginners. This gives the real feel of canvas and you can get a few canvases to work on. Once again keep the size on the smaller side.

Thanks for stopping by, see you next time. Remember to click the like button and leave a comment below.

*This is not a sponsored blog these are just some of the products that I personally use. You can always explore and find other options.

Value Basics for Beginners

Tutorial Tuesday

Let’s get started with some basics for values.

Value: how light or dark something is.

Value Is used in drawing and painting to depict light and shadow. These values define form giving the illusion of depth and space.
Value has the ability to define: Mood, atmosphere, composition, and the believability of the image. If your values are inaccurate your drawing or painting falls apart. If you have correct values in your drawing/painting you can use any color you want and it will look correct.

It’s a good idea to practice a value scale, white to black scale with each step filled with grey getting darker the closer to black the square is.

Try it out: make a row of 1 inch squares, 5 to 10 squares long, keep the first square white and the last square black. Each square should be darker grey as they get closer to the black square. Try to keep a consistent change in value between each square.

Another practice is to create another value scale but this time smooth transitions from light to dark.
Try it out: make another value scale next to your previous value scale and start with the dark side and work you way back to white.

After you done a these scales try a small drawing using value only. As you are drawing have the values scales you have completed next to you so you can refer to them as you draw.

Thanks for stopping by and see you next time. Remember to click the like button and leave a comment below.

The Magic of Follow Through

Monday Motivation

When I was in art school I had a life drawing class. I was completely intimidated by this class, I had never drawn people before. In the first few weeks we did a lot of quick sketches the gesture and I was getting comfortable drawing people.
In the middle of the semester I noticed I was still having issues with drawing people and I didn’t seem to be improving. I was doing all the quick warm-up sketches and watching the instructors demos but that was all I was doing. I never did follow through with the rest of the drawing process and so had no practical skills just theory from watching the demos. I realized I had to face the hard part of drawing and follow through to the end of the process.
The last part of the semester I made sure to not just do the warm-up sketches and watch the demos but also complete the drawing, mistakes and all. I would love to say that by the end of the semester I had mastered figure drawing but that is unrealistic. I did however really understand the drawing process, learned what I needed to work on and could practice and I did improve much quicker.

Decide what it is you are going to learn. Example: I’m going to learn portraits or hands

Follow through to the end. Example: After I sketch the gesture I will continue with the form and anatomy.

Practice and stick with it until you know it. Example: I’ve drawn 100 hands but they still look off, I will continue to study the hands until I can comfortably draw them

Shape Basics For Beginners: Draw Through

Tutorial Tuesday

Shape Basics: Draw Through

Draw through objects as you draw. When placing an object behind another don’t just draw the parts the viewer would see, this can cause miss alignment and have a weird effect. Drawing through helps you line up and place the objects you are drawing properly.

Add more details using the shape structure lines as guides to add eyes, nose or other details.

Clean up your structure lines by removing the lines you don’t want to see in the final drawing.

There you go well done!

Paper Owl Fun

Friday Fun

Today we will make a cutout paper owl for Friday fun. Remember to keep it simple and have fun. You can use construction paper if you have it otherwise find some thick paper you can paint with basic acrylic paint.

Supplies Needed:
construction paper (heavy card stock if painting)
scissors
pencil (to draw your owl shapes)
glue (multi-purpose works best)
paint (if not using colored construction paper)

Start with drawing out the shapes you are going to use for the owl. Circles for the eyes, ovals for the head and body, triangle for the beak. You get the idea. There are no wrong ideas you can make your owl look anyway you want it to.

Cut out the shapes of the owl. Don’t start glueing just yet, you want to make sure all the pieces will fit together first. Once all the pieces are cut fit them to together to see if you need to make any changes or cut new pieces.

Glue the large pieces together and then glue on the smaller pieces. Just like when you draw, large shapes first and work your way down to smaller shapes.

Wow great job! Enjoy your new paper owl.