Wednesday. Still hot. Not as blazing as yesterday where even breathing made me sweat. But still definitely summer. Lots more good stuff with the business of illustration. Today we talked about copyright, rights, negotiation and the tail end of marketing your business. The wonderful Chris Payne spoke briefly about the impending orphan art bill--and then delved into big issues illustration and the visual world is confronting. He is an impassioned man with great talent and a good brain. He has done a lot for the business through his talent and spirit. A true inspiration.

His process:
Strathmore 500 board
First develop the drawing. Transfer the drawing to the board (opaque projector) with a hard pencil to get basic lines. Then use a burnt umber prisma color to lay in the tones. Lay in a fleshtone in acrylic over all (Chris uses acrylic gesso in place of white to give it texture. Dry it until its really dry (Chris uses a hair drier until the paint is no longer cool. Lay in a burnt umber/brown watercolor wash on in the face area. Allow that to dry again. Using water and a paint brush, pick up the highlights out of the watercolor. Allow to dry. Then lay on a very thin oil wash (Chris used a neutralized purple) over the entire surface of the image.Pick out more detail with a kneaded eraser. Let dry. Chris then sprayed a retouchers spray lacquer over the image. Dry again. Then develop the drawing with peach/flesh etc. prisma color. They he begins to work in the shadows in acrylic, building the image from there. The acrylic kind of mooshes and smoothes the prismas. Its a cool process--that Chris handles very quickly and deftly to wonderful results.

Need to get the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, and The Legal Guide for the Visual Artist. I have a pretty good seat of the pants knowledge of all this stuff, but having some books making it real would be good.

Image is of Edgar Alan Poe finished today. Doesnt look like it, but the bird/raven was the hardest part of the piece.