1. First, about process, I’d always say that I try to strike a healthy balance between  intuition and process. Both have importance and value. Sometimes process takes the lead and sometimes intuition takes the lead. I try to listen as carefully as I can to my paintings…if it’s not going well, I’m either not being intuitive enough or I need some support from improved process. However, all I’m attempting to outline here is my process.

2. Opinion about good practice can vary from artist to artist so I’m not speaking for anyone but myself and what I consider good practice.

3. I’d be lying if I told you I followed this process for every single piece of work. Impossible….deadlines change, plans and budgets change, direction is changed. Any number of incidences can crop up that prevent me from doing it any other way than by leaning heavily on experience…’cause I’ve simply got to get it done by yesterday. But, that doesn’t stop good practice from being there or being useful.

The brief;
Some clients will give me a comprehensive ‘everything you’ll ever need to know’ brief…others will give me a few words. But right there is my very first clue….some clients balance direction with creativity…some will simply need me as a tool to put down exactly what they want to see. Neither is wrong I hasten to add, but I mention it now as it is important to react accordingly…meaning, the ‘sub-plot’ of a brief is actually telling me as the artist the balance I must strike between what is being creatively decided and what has already been decided. So, importantly…I try to pay attention to what has already been decided because it will have been decided for a reason.

Reference;
Consider who the piece of work is for…is it to communicate mood to a director? Is it for a 3D modeller to build from who’ll need much more visual information? Is it for the money people who want to know exactly what their coaster ride is going to look like? I should ideally know, because reference is important in different ways to different people.
Either way, ‘good practice’ would be to get as much reference as practically possible. Some for me and some for them.

Thumbnails;
Creating thumbnails is simply good practice in my opinion. Establishing the overall direction for ideas, composition, colour palette, mood, lighting and shape is essential. Even this early on in the process I can get a good feel for where I’m heading. Creative leads, art managers, production designers etc will all want to see these. Time really is money and nobody wants to be paying me while I’m merrily creating artwork which is going in the wrong direction. Most often black and white, loose and fast. So, thumbnails..good for me and good for them.

Initial sketches;
A direction has been chosen and yI begin to explore along that route. It’s not a bad idea to return to ‘who’s this piece of work for’…thinking about the end user helps me determine what angle I should be looking from, or what I should or shouldn’t be paying attention to. So here, it’s like the second round of thumbnails, maybe introducing some simple colour, but still keeping it loose and fast and about delivering artwork that is useful to the end user. Of all the art work I produce the end result or how much visual ‘polish’ is given to an image relates directly to the end user. Sometimes it will need to be polished so everybody who needs to get information out of it can do just that and then sometimes a sketch will do. Again, it depends who the end user is.

Developing artwork;
There are so many things an artist simultaneously tackles. Sometimes I find it useful to remind myself of some of the key visual elements, which I’m attempting to list in the next part of ‘how I work’. Of course, it’s a little artificial to try and separate these out and it would be better represented in a way that communicates how one affects the other. Then, even beyond this list, there are so many external considerations….to quote Iain McCaig  “…Create something that is familiar but new, epic but on a small budget, from the heart with a great toy line…”. So, the kinds of things I need to consider simply on a practical level –  composition, colour, form, tone, texture, space, mark making, balance, light, edges, variation, rhythm, directional lines…but then I can consider things like the cost implications of what I’m drawing (if it’s being made into an environment at a theme park for one example). Ultimately I need to remember that my artwork is meant to do a job…I remind myself of what that job is to keep me on track.

Here’s a piece of work I did for myself. I heard the phrase ‘ships that pass in the night’. Immediately I thought of naval ships…but what if they were separated by 1000 years of technology? So I had that hook of interest that I wanted to explore visually. I like to think that because it’s raining so hard, everybody is below deck singing and are never aware of what’s outside. I think the spaceship is utterly uninterested by the sailing ship and is just doing what it’s there to do. I’ve painted it like the end of an enormous Swiss army knife, at the end of an epic arm that is reaching from the mother ship in orbit.

1. All of these visual elements can help tell stories visually…obviously the better I try to become at using them the more efficient and effective my story telling can become. You can see in film how directors can use visual metaphors, use light, or shape, in fact all visual elements as a language to support their story. They create mood, manipulate expectations, communicate character, express change…so many things from using this visual language. I love to quote Francis Glebas when he says “Composition is visual subtext”.

2. On a practical level there are so many things an artist tackles simultaneously as part of their process. Sometimes I find it useful to remind myself of some of the key visual elements, which I’m attempting to list here. Of course, it’s more than a little artificial to try and separate these out and I’d be better off representing these in a way that communicates how one affects the other. But, for the meantime here’s a shot at listing some (what I consider) important visual elements….

Composition:
I often use underlying geometry and shapes (each with their own qualities that can be used), the fibonacci ratio and fibonacci ruler (great if you need to tighten things up but shouldn’t become a rod for your back), balance (creating harmony and disharmony), always consider eye level and p.o.v. (which massively affects the viewers’ attitudes), golden section, lead in and out lines, directional lines (especially if you want to ‘point’ at a specific area), cropping…All these things can be used to define narrative. Composition can help me tell stories effectively and efficiently. Yeesh, don’t get me started or I’d be here all day.

Positive and Negative Space:
I try to use these to great affect. I’m a big believer that negative space is a useful tool for the artist to use to do lots of jobs from direct attention to even express character, or signify change or mood. In “Jaws” look at the shot of the Orca literally sailing into the jaws of death. There couldn’t be a clearer visual message for where these characters are heading! Or look how a father’s relationship with his son (and in a few minutes their lives) can be efficiently expressed in “War of the Worlds”….broken and shattered! There are loads of examples, but the most recent one I’ve seen is in the latest Batman movie trailer and teaser poster….the space between the crumbling buildings of Gotham creates the logo.
 

Form:
Shape is an essential tool communicating to an audience. It can express character, make visual connections and disconnect too….Look how shape is used to represent character in Pixar’s “Up”. I’ll sometimes use a shape several times like a rectangle or square, just so when I use a circle it helps ‘pop’ it out!

Tone
Tonal contrast can be used to pull attention towards areas of importance or simply to give ‘bite’ and entertain the eye..here I’m just using it wherever I can for “Dead To Rights:Retribution”(2010). But it can help direct attention, like in this example from “Lord of the Rings” (top right)...but there are literally hundreds of examples you can point at that do the same thing.

Balance:
I try to balance an image in different ways…between two characters for example to express harmony or equality, through shape, through colour or, as in these examples – tone….think of the ying and yang counterchange of black and white….light introduced into dark and dark introduced into light. This Vermeer painting is a great example. The original on the left of course, then a black and white example which makes the tonal values easier to judge and then a filtered version of the painting to show the portioning and balance of tone in it’s simplest terms. My concept sketch underneath tries to pull off a similar balance of tone…there is an exchange of tone with an area of dark tone (cowboy and rider) on a light background and light tones (the head of the machine) against a dark background.

Colour:
Subjective, local, desaturated, modelled, flat, expressive or heightened…complementary, split complementary…colour is a minefield. However, in terms of story telling it is again, a staggeringly efficient tool for the expression of mood, character and change. Of course, colour isn’t quite the universal language we can sometimes assume as different cultures can interpret colours in varying ways. That said, we can of course, as always, use it to support story telling and in the example below it shows how immediately straight forward it becomes to tell two stories in two images.

Texture

Mark making
The eye will dance to the same tune your mark making does. Fast or slow, rough or smooth, angular or soft…the eye will absorb the qualities these marks possess. If your mark making is laboured and tired then the image as a whole will probably look a bit dry and laboured. So,  I try, whenever possible, to keep my mark making fresh and lively as this is far more seductive to the eyes. But..the real trick is to be able to keep your marks fresh while simultaneously describing a rooftop, a shoulder, the bonnet of a car or whatever.

Directional lines
I’m sure eyes dart around and travel all over an image, scouting for interesting moments. However, I think you can ‘point’ as well to areas of importance. There are loads of examples in advertising, in gaming and in movies…but here is one example…another Vermeer painting.

Light
Reflected or bounced light, ambient light, warm/cold light, time of day, artificial light…light to express character, light to create mood, counterchange to entertain the eye, attract attention…there are a lot of ways to consider light in a piece of work. What fits best though, meaning which will support the direction of the artwork?

Variation and edges:
Light against dark, hard against diffused, smooth against scumbled, scale, speed, warm and cold, clean and dirty…visually entertain the eye! I’m always trying to use this…it’s obviously not always possible but enjoy it when I can.

Rhythm and pattern:
Echo shapes and lines to create harmony…or deliberately create disharmony.

Space:

I use Painter 12 . I don’t use that many brushes actually and tend to favour the same half dozen or so…the 2B pencil, the palette knife, the chalk and a digital airbrush occasionally. I’ll tend to spend most of my time in Painter to do all my painting. However, I’ll flit across to Photoshop for any editing that’s needed.
Photoshop CS4. Always open alongside Painter and is only used to edit my images which is considerably easier in Photoshop than Painter (although Painter 12 has made significant improvements in this area and have recently found myself spending even less time in Photoshop).
Wacom Cintiq. I used to use one of these every day and it was gorgeous. But with such a big price tag I’ll have to save up first before I can buy one for myself. It made a very positive difference to my work. It enabled me to paint more intuitively and (literally) more directly which encouraged my work to become more painterly. I’ll get myself one just as soon as I can.
Pencil and sketchbook. A lot of my work is digital, but I’ll always have a regular pencil and pad! Going out and sketching is still as exciting and satisfying as it ever was.