[vebjorn]

...that is the following question.
Well as some of you already know, I used to do most of my work with real oil on canvas. Nice big originals to frame on the wall etc.
I just did a new one, but since it`s not even dry yet, I can`t show it here yet. But what I can do is show an older painting, scanned from the cover. I still don`t have a 61cmx45cm scanner yet;-) So I had to use the print..with logos and all. What I would like to know is..what do you guys think looks the best..the oils or the painter. The oils definitly gets richer in tones and sharper.
Bear with the fact that these oils images are about 4 years old and look very much more Frazettaish. But`it`s more the overall quality I`m looking for..so whats your guys opinion? Do the fairly ok printed and scanned oil images kick ass on the digital painter 6.0 stuff or? Also ..please take a look at my site for more oilpaintings so you can see a few more samples before you pass the judgement... http://home.telia.no/vebsart and I also posted a few new sketches too. Here comes some major big images;-)

[CapnPyro]

i like the conan better, its obviously more 'real' looking, the huntress looks more smoothed and blended, the conan one looks mor egritty and real i guess, its either the canvas showing through or the print. i dunno i pretty much prefer everything original, so id go with oils, thought its nigh impossible to tell sometimes

[Frost]

Hey Veb. Looks as though your Painter stuff has much less detail... brush sizes too large. I guess you spend more time on your oil paintings because it's the only way to do it. Because Painter might be so easy to use, you might end up spending less time on it thinking that it is proper because of the medium. I could be wrong here... I never painted on canvas, but if I did, I assume it would require much more time and fine tuning than a digital painting. Just a psychoogical issue I think -- spending as much time on a digital-based image should yield equally good results (aside from the natural paint color changes which you don't have in a digital format).

eh.
Good work though. I always love looking at your work. =)

frost.

[LoneDragoon]

Id be interested to see the chick with a painter texture of canvas in the background, it'd be easier to judge then. They both look very cool, though without the canvas BG, its really hard to say which is better.

[samdragon]

I think you can take painter a little further veb. It's just getting over the technological hump. I know you've done digital stuff before, but to get painter to do what you want it do, you have to really understand how the brushes work and how to set them up for your own use.
To go from traditional painting like you have to the digital world is a great example of why people should have strong traditional skills before jumping into the digital stuff.

It looks like your painter image is showing some signs that your style is changing. This may be a great time for you to build up on what you already know and explore new styles, I think you mentioned that before.
The great thing about painter is that you have many tools to work with and it's a great environment to switch back and forth from oil to water color to anything. You could be working with the camel hair brush and decide to switch to water colors, all with the ease of clicking a button, no mess now smelly thinners.
I'm willing to bet you didn't spend as much time with the painter image as you did the Conan cover.
The bad side of working in digital art, is that you don't have the time away from the image. If you're working in oils, you have to spend some time away from it for areas to dry. In the digital world there is no waiting. so you don't get to come back to the image with a fresh look on things.
I can't wait to see more of your stuff, I love it. I'm trying to move my style of work more towards what you're doing now.

Of course, you could always do both, traditional and digital, just scan in your paintings and finish them up in painter.
have a look at Rick Berry's stuff.
http://www.braid.com/bnew.html
He does both traditional and digital combined.

[Fred Flick Stone]

veb-you have a lot of nice stuff on your site. My biggest comment, and I mean this whole heartedly, is to learn how to draw and paint hands and feet. YOu have a nice sense of the anatomical make up in the figure, but all the figures suffer in their extremeties, the hands and feet, the way they connect to the form, the way they rotate, etc. There is alot of rythym that can be acheived all the way out to the finger tips and the toes. But you have to know the physiological make up of the limbs to identify with them a bit more. Also, by practicing these areas, you will be painting them more, and with that kind of mileage, the hands and feet in your images will start to have the same freshness and sponteneity that the rest of the paintings have in them. I also really like your oils. Keep cranking away with the painter program, I garuntee you you will eventually find your hand with that program. I am still fudging with that one. Just too many interfaces, so many routes to get one result. Kinda overwhelming in the beginning...

[vebjorn]

Fred..you`re mostly right and you know what you`re talking about, but did you look at all of them? I know all my old oilstuff suffers. I can`t really find them all flawed(specially those that where done from models) I still do prefer to "plant" feet as a habit from those Frazetta days.
But no excuses, I know I suffer in that department, so it`s nice to get some attention to it. It makes one want to make an effort to improve;-)

As for comparisons. It`s hard for you to compare images of even different styles, but I cannot exaggerate enough how much better the oil painting looks in real life. Those of you that have seen them know this(Joachim,Micke)About twice as good I`d say..cause a bad print thats scanned loses even more of the depth og hues and richness found in original oils.
I might be easier when I get up some newer oils scanned from a slide rater than a print with logos and all... with more similar style.

I will not do either or. I`m gonna do both. Also the all the oilpaintings execept the blue mountain one on my site, where conan is hacking away on some guys, was done on hardboard so there really aint no canvas texture. Just the scanning and just the texture of the paint. Adding canvas texture is not really a point considering it might look like bad when printed. I know the editors I`ve worked with did not like canvas very well. You need a really good print to make it work. Or a photographer that manages to take the picture without the paint shining in the canvastexture..that really looks fucked up. Most artists paint so thick anyway so you can`t see it anymore. Try seeing the canvas texture in a Nerdrum picture.

Onscreen one can make a painter image look very real. I use alot of tools in painter, I also use the "thick" paint on some areas, but that got lost when I scaled down the the image. The huntress is not exactly me most detailed image. Maybe I should have used another image. Even when I print them, you can hardly see them.

It`s more like this; compare a print..no matter how good to an original oilpainting and it will look dull and flat, but compare prints of both..and the oilpainting will be "dulled" down to the same quality as the print. So for printning reasons..well it does not matter much,just get the job done, but if you want to have an original,that will hang somewhere when youre gone, or can be sold.. well then you have a problem with digital stuff. I hope someone takes care of my files when I`m gone..passing on those .psd files to the generations after me..lol.. But thats a different point.

My wife had a great point; She called painter "cheating" When you use a different medium to achieve the effect of another, she called it fake. It`s like using acrylics and trying hard to make it look like oils etc. Instead one should just call it what it is..oils are oils, watercolors are watercolors, digital is digital. If you`re trying to emulate something with it, youre a fraud. So she wondered why I spent som much time trying to make fake oilpaintings on my computer.

Lets just say my wife is a hard critic, and don`t start up any flamethrowers yet, but what can one say againts it? Like the portrait I made of her. She likes it, but it won`t have any real value for her until I make one fullscale with oils on canvas and frame it. This might go away in few more generations..or it wont.

I`m not going to turn this into a digital vs traditional discussion. For even if you don`t get the kind of image with a computer as you can in real life, it`s more a matter of wether you want an original piece to hang on the wall that maybe if your good enough will be worth something or you don`t give a rats ass about it.

End of the day it`s both art, question is the matter of having an original or a file.
So for commercial work..the editors don`t care what I used to make the image. They just need the image. It`s more a personel matter.

This was long, and deviated a bit from the point, but my mind started working after a cup of coffee

Anyway..Thanks guys. Keep pumping the feedback. It`s greatly appreciated.


-Veb

[lotor]

My main concern is the lack of attention to the backgrounds in you pieces. I know already that you are very good at figures, but I don't see half the attention to the background as I do the figures.

I think that if you try to give equal ampount of time to each aspect of the painting that you will have even better works of art.

As for oils or digital. I love working in oils and digital. When I work on the computer my drawings seem to suffer a little. I am trying to fix that.
I don't know if you have this problem or not but you should work in both.

One thing that you might enjoy is trying some new angles for your figures. They all seem to be at the same eye level. Its just an idea.

I hope my comments help. Oh and I agree that sucks that oil paintings don't look as good on screen as in real life. I know how you feel.

[vebjorn]

Thanks Lotor. You understood;-)

As for backgrounds..well I agree. I should focus more on them. I did more out of the backgrounds that with my 50 or so oilpaintings(you guys have seen very few without the logos and such) But again..since I do conan work..they usually cut away alot, and place logos over the areas there are no characters. If you look at the images with all my covers as thumbnails onto 2 images you`ll see they have focused on the characters and cut away the rest. Apparantly conan has to cover most of the cover for it to be visible in the stores:-(

But I should do so for my own satisfaction and improvement and sometimes do.

Always room for improvement

-Veb

[This message has been edited by vebjorn (edited June 16, 2000).]

[freddy flicks stones]

Wow, Guess I got the juices flowin for you Veb. I hope you didn't take offense to what I said. I am merely pointing out one little area, I'd say about 10% of the canvas that needs some practice on the side. The rest of the work is beautiful. You really know your stuff. But I focus on this issue because right now I am even training to just study feet and hands, as they are equally important in detail, expression and emotion that the face has, and I am nowhere near the proficiency that I need to be to claim "ok at what I do"...in fact I don't even talk highly of what I do,just that I have done it once, maybe a couple more times after that, and enjoy what I do. Art means the world to me as it does you, or you COULDN'T paint with such passion, even if you happen to be influenced with inspiration from another great. Painting like your favorite artist early on is doubly rewarding . You learn to paint with a look that is hailed as one of the best ever, and if youare good, you'll figure lots of his phlosophies out. The other is a starting point to a recognized career. Recognized meaning that you will catch the eye of an art director immediately with a comfortable style, one he recognizes easily, enjoys looking at, knows it reminesces one of the greats, you aren't him so hiring you isn't going to cost him an arm and a leg, until you become known, then the tables turn on him and he's gotta pay up or you move on to bigger and better things...Drifting a bit. But as you paint on, your hand(style) begins to speak for itself, such as your later paintings show clearly ...You are coming into your own quite nicely.
I happen to be a great admirer of Frazetta. Had the chance to meet him. Grouchy, cynical, funny, relaxed, all at once. Real intense...And when I look at your newer stuff, I see more Veb than Frank. Like Huntress and GrimReaper. I like the chain saw, more his style I would think. Way more carnage...I am also very impressed with Solveig 8. Dont understand the title, but the work is beautiful. She really truly looks happy. That is the first thing I see. Then I see the painting. And my friend, the crown in kullthulsa is to die for man...is that digital or is that traditional? You crossed the line on that one, I like that I can't figure. I know you can get oils that smooth, but that smooth? These are all about Veb's art. And that is what I would want to see. I would be sad if your art career ended at the great impersonator of Frank Frazetta. You want your own hand back now, not the hand the editors wanted, and the work is saying it...I just want all of it to be great, and you will never have to stress over areas in your paintings that you aren't that well versed in again(i.e. the hands and feet)I will get to this in a sec, and free your mind to concentrate on the personalities of the characters, and their disposition, their poise, wit, charm, yada, yada, yada..The things that make paintings talk back for eons, like Frank's will, and hopefully yours will too...
The hands and feet-They are definitely showing improvement. But they still need work. A hardy suggestion, one given to me by a great DC Comics Cover artist and one of my figure instructors, Glen Orbik, copy the hands of J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell, and Mead Scheaffer and you can't go wrong. But never substitute studying them(still glen speaking) forthe real deal. Learn the anatomy. Know the knuckles as you do the eyes. Know the palm of the hand as you do the cheek of the face. Draw them from models, friends, family, your own in a mirror. Then act with it, and draw the results of what you see then. A whole new hand to learn. That is where the said artists come in. End of story...I am going through it now, and will be till I kick the bucket. And I LOVE IT
One more point I really want you to get thinking about. I would have mentioned more favorite paintings, but I am mostly attracted to the design of the characters. As paintings of powerful people, I don't see power in them. I fear it might be the problem many of us learning to draw comics fell into, copying muscle mag poses to closely. The poses aren't heroic. They are posed. You have heroic characters of days of yore all over your page. They should be proud of their heritage and show their true colors in pose...One great painting comes to mind instantly when I think great, timeless character. The painter is late 19th early 20th century Russian artist Ilya Repin. The painting is "Zaporozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan". I am sure in russian the title sounds very poetic and shorter than that. But no less, it was painted in 1880-81, and has so much life in its 203 x 358 cm size canvas, that I fear they all might turn to see me looking at them, and want to cut my head off. Them meaning the 28 Cossacks in the immediate foreground sitting around a table writing the letter. I could live in front of this painting for too much of my own life...I am not near a scanner right now, but tomorrow I will post it. I really think you will like it alot, All of you...
Back to my point, the paintings you have been doing seem to lack the proper character in respect to the beauty you have put into the construction of their appearance. They all look a bit staged, like looking at muscle mags for the pose inspiration, and sticking too closely to it. Frank Frazetta says in one of his books that he lives the life of each of his paintings. He feels the way that character does as he paints them. He puts himself in the pose, with feeling. The mucker, he wrestled himself around to feel the motion of the pose, the direction, the muscle tension and relaxation, yes some muscles are relaxed even in battle...crazy ain't it? If you start thinking character, character, character, and identify more with the person on that canvas, that person's going to be back for more paintings. Cause you can't get enough of him/her...like Frazetta with his Death Dealer. He did more than one painting of that character,(and not his recently bad ones because he no longer has interest in that character any more) way long ago, before most of you guys on this forum knew how to speak yet. He painted and inked a whole slew of this guy cause he talked back to Frank. This all may sound too zen-ish, but it really happens. When you don't have to think technical issues, especially in the layout process, you automatically personalize yourself, identify with, and become the theng you paint. You have no alternative. It is the next step in progression, and the mind will assume the position for you long before you know why...Because you can...
I want you to get to this level of ability, as much as I want you to be a great painter. The advice I am giving is truly legitamite, and sincere. In no way do I want to offend. I want to help, it's in my nature. It's why I am up now till three or four in the morning typing in an art forum of hungry, eager, talented artists in the making. Sleep and I love each other. But I love helping more. and Ilove art too much.. If their are artists who want to learn, I will find the time to help. Too big a disclaimer for my liking, but then again it's three in the morn, and my mind is slipping to bed before i am. But, this is real stuff. And if nothing more, ifyou didn't think much about it before, you will now. Only because it has been brought to attention. I like this kind of advice. Once you start thinking about things you might be blind to, wow, look out!!! Great things really begin to happen...

Keep plugging away, and keep posting the new stuff. I enjoy looking at your work, or Iwouldn't have bookmarked the site because god knows how much space bookmarks take up j/k...Anyway, charge into theunkown withyour own approach, it's scary, but I think it's supposed to be...no more training wheels.......as I go wobble wobble wobble away... Good night...

Veb, sorry, I just saw how much I wrote, and I don't drink coffee, go figure...



[This message has been edited by freddy flicks stones (edited June 16, 2000).]

[freddy flicks stones]

I can't get to sleep, so one more...I also agree with what you say about scanning paintings to digital. They aren't as beautiful as the canvas says. Thats called brush work. Raw thistly brushes. The real deal...I don't know if you have had a chance to see any of the stuff on my cheap and cheesy geocities free page(til I get my site up and running)Dave H. help me Davey Won Kenobi...your my only hope j/k Telling you, no sleep hurts the brain... Learned a new one
It is, if and if'n you even care, not much good stuff on it, and it is laiden full of forum stuff. Most of it is. If I didn't start that page, there are three, time to make a few more, with stuff that isn't here on the forum, i would never be able to show anything here. Or any other forum. By the way, not that I would ever leave here, but are there any other artworthy Digiart or traditional art forums to go check? I really want to see what other art groups are yakking about, go stir up the pot a bit j/k big time just kidding...
My web address as I tried to say before is http://www.geocities.com/lemenayd/
I am going to scan a bunch of my landscape paintings in an post them on the page over the weekend, so long as they aren't wet, and before they become base stands for more clay scultures. And I have a bunch more charcoal drawings and some more comic book work to post there too. Have no time, but it will get there somehow...There are a few of the oils I have done there, I have hundreds more I could put up but why...just pick the better ones,and the rest of great shelves for all the books I am getting covered up with...
And Veb, I really like your work. I wouldn't be writing all this if I didn't. I like my sleep, but I want you to understand what I am talking about, and unfortunately, typing is theonly way to translate the thoughts, and I am way too slow at typing...so I stay up all night typing the word "I" night night...zzzzzzzzz

Your gonna need patience opening my pages. They are friggin huge, too many images, too cluster fu@%ed...need to organize better. But the forum is too damn spontaneous..I am really going to go now...


[This message has been edited by freddy flicks stones (edited June 16, 2000).]

[vebjorn]

Holy...your ..d..post is actually bigger than mine;-)
Great post. I know more or less all this, the problem is actually getting my mind todo it...but that time will come. I don`t always get images in my head..I just let scribble away and cool shapes appear and I want to make the picture. I need more "zen". I also need to be less lazy. I have studied hands over the last year..not very much feet though, but it`s one thing knowing them, how they work, sketching them out etc, another is actually getting the paints to do it..it`s hard, getting the shadows and highlighs in addition to some serious had angles to look right. I`m lazy and find shortcuts like making them less defined.
Yet again, thanks for seeing the part I need to work on. Nobody else has, not even the AD`s from hell(conan) have commented my handanatomy lately. Maybe because they sucked even worse before;-)

No, I`m not offended in any way. Definitly with such great constructive critisism. I don`t think any of you guys can.. after having my art put in the line of AD fire for som many years has created a pretty hard shell. No comment here has come near the kind of shit I`ve gotten elsewhere.

Well..now things really has taken a different turn.
Anyway, thanks for some excellent pointers Fred! Keep it up. You help people. It`s very easy to get on the defensive side when people comment ones art. I`m used to it,try to avoid it as much as I can, since I have learned that there`s really no defense for flaws in your work. If it`s not good it`s not good.

-Veb

[vebjorn]

Just saw your work Fred! Very very good! Many based on photos..I have a good deal of airbrush pinup babes made from photos from my good old airbrush days.
What size are you doings the ones in oils since you can scan them. When I do Oil on canvas or board sized about 24"x18" and try to scan them in 4 parts it looks like shite.
I need to take photos/slides and scan those on a scanner that can.

-Veb

[sfr]

vebjorn, for what it's worth I think your wife is absolutely right about it being silly to try to emulate natural media in digital. But that doesn't mean Painter is a bad program.

You should remember that Painter's brush engine is just a mathematical tool at heart, although a complex one, and all the "natural" tools are just pre-made parameter settings for the brush engine. So if you pick up Painter expecting things to work like they do with real tools, you're probably going to be disappointed. Think of it this way... when painting with real oils, you have to take into account many physical and chemical effects that occur in the real world. But when painting in Painter, you have to be aware of the mathematical effects that are happening in "Painter world", and they are quite different.

So, my opinion is that you can get more out of Painter if you forget about the natural media approximations and just focus on learning what makes the program tick and how to adapt it to yourself. This can take some effort because it's a rather complicated program... But in the end you can have a painting tool that feels like you designed it for yourself. That's something Photoshop can't give you; with PS you're adapting to the software and not the other way around... (if you Photoshop painters disagree, flame away - I'd like to hear your view on this issue )

Saffron / Sunflower

[Frost]

Hey Saffron!

I don't know Painter well, but you're right about it being an art medium emulation program. Unfortunately, I only know photoshop, and although I have tried Painter, I couldn't get anything done with it.

Although I am strictly a photoshop, uh, 'user', I don't think I could flame you for what you said. For me, Photoshop answers my needs, as my only "art" backround is from pixeling, so I am not used to having 'texture' aside from the one I add in myself... something I don't "miss" because I've never had it before in the first place in a traditional paint/etc medium.

Anyway, back to the painting thing, it is definitely two completely different mediums, I think it's up to you to decide which one(s) you want to use for your own personal reasons -- all have their limitations and advantages.

Heck, I need to spend more time in Painter...

[Rinaldo]

Wow....this thread is like a ray of light, to my mind these posts are what this board needs more of, I didn't think there were other people in the world who were this obsesed over pictures.

vebjorn- your paintings are truely fantastic I agree with fred in that you have managed to incroporate that fraztta vibe into your work without it feeling like a rip-off. it's very subliminal but you have managed to break away from the slew of frazetta "Inspired artists".

On the subject of digital art I feel that for comercial purposes a computer offers a lot of perks, especialy when dealing with un-sympathising Advertising people. Basicaly Unless you're like frazetta in his later years when he baisicaly painted whatever he wanted whenever he wanted for whomever he wanted, its to damn painfull not to have the editability of the digital realm.

I was extreemly interested to hear you description of frazetta fred... it's sorta how I pictured him... a true artist. He would do his painting in a flurry of artistic outlet. This is to my mind how it should be. Instead, the current norm is to do a slew of concept sketches, arguing, compramising, until the picture you are suposed to paint is old and not your own. Some artists seem to have gotten into this rythum, one that comes to mind is Darrel K Sweet. I remember vividly having every preconception about Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series ripped asunder by his utterly abismal disreguard for what the book was about. people like Sweet need to take a lesson from artist's whom are truely pasonate about their subjects. Often I wake from the trance of creation to find that my face is contorted into an angry scowl, only to find that it is an exact match for one my subject wears.

there is more than a jovial connection to zen and art. I have read a little on Zen archery, and despite the cliche's "become one with the bow..become one with your surroundings" etc. there is a lot of power in the concepts. One needs to understand their subject, become the subject. It takes a truely large amount of technical knowlage to make up for a lack of inspiration. while somethihng that just has that feeling of being alive can make the viewer look past the technical flaws.
when technical knowlage and true inspiration intertwine the consequence is one of the artists we all talk about and aspire to become.

the problem that faces most aspiring artists is that these two traits reside in different parts of the brain resulting in a dificulty to mix the two.


There are so many fantastic artists on this forum. but a lot of time is spent on subjects such as technique when I feel there are other topics that are just as vital to the creatin of good pictures.
It may be that people don't want others to comment on what goes on inside their head, opting instead to seek help with technical problems only, in which case I'll have to just plain shut up.


It is unbeliveably good of people like fred to put in the time for tutorials and other help, and it is especialy fortunate to find a persion who is so acomplished at being a good comunicator as well as an outstanding artist.

What I long to see on this forum is in-depth descussions about the non technical side of art, as well as possibly some advice from people who are working comercialy. for instance, never book a print job in your name:)

I'm not sure if this is going anywhere. but nonetheless...... sometimes stuff just comes out.

[Plop]

Oh wow, Repin was mentioned! Very pleased to see you know about him Fred. A went through entire literature classes back home staring at his illustrations in school books.

My favourite of his is probably "Barge-Haulers on Volga"

[sfr]

Frost, actually the point I was trying to make was exactly the opposite: that Painter should _not_ be treated as an art emulation program. Heh, well anyway... nice images in your recycle bin thread btw

Saffron / Sunflower

[Frost]

Saffron: =) Well, that's just like me to get the wrong meaning and f*ck everything up, really. =)

Painter, also as the name implies, tries the best it can to simulate painting and other traditional and physical mediums (brush bristles, charcoal, etc.). Obviously to someone who's trained will see the difference right off (not me =), but the basic point of painter I think is to get more of an artistic style and texture you'd get from these other mediums into the digital dimension(?!). Photoshop is just an enhanced version of MS-Paint.

Bah, ... thanks for the compliments on the drawings... I almost felt myself improving just a little. (a little is too little...=)

cheers!
frost.

[Digital Genesis]

I have far from realised my latent art god abilities, but my virgin eyes -have- noticed a few things.. (this will be simple, so you advanced goons can skip flaming me for stating the obvious

This is concerning oils(or other natural medium) vs. digital images.

A monitor is evenly and self lit. It doesn't matter whether you're in a lit room or a darkened room. The image will always look the same. It does on my lcd screen anyways, and used to on my regular monitor too.

A printed image is dependent on external lighting. That's why a picture by X-artist, just doesn't look the same on your wall, as it does on your friend's. Also - when a picture is painted at a certain degree of light, be it lightbulb, halogen, gas driven or whatever, it'll obviously look different when scanned with full frontal light, which is what a scanner does.
All in all, it looses its original touch.

A photographer, I have a lot of respect for, actually produces his books with the aim of being read at regular room lighting. - instead of having no clue (like the majority of publishers) and instead of relying on how it looks in a well-lit photo reproduction laboratory environment.

Gah, I'm babbling. The point I'm trying to make is that you -can- get great results either way. Whichever medium you choose to work in, that's preference. The final result, whether you print a digital image or scan an oil painting, can be excellent too - provided you have sufficient expertise and properly prepared for it to make the transition.

Like the shoe commercial says. Just do it!

[vebjorn]

Ok ..I`m gonna wrap this up eith this simple ending. If you`re gonna make just commercial work..it does not matter what medium you choose. If you eant an original, that someone might actually buy and hang on their wall(offcourse people will hang up a good print too) But I doubt Odd Nerdrum would sell his work for aorund 100000-200000USD if they where just digital images printed ones.

-Veb