OK, so after months of asking by my Malaysian friend Mr Alan Bernard, i've got to compiling a shoddy step by step guide on how i made the painting 'Dolly.'

It's not meant to be a tutorial or anything like that, there are probably much easier ways to accomplish the steps i take, i do work a bit spazzy i think sometimes,but whatever, it works for me. I love reading these things when other people do them, hopefully you will enjoy this one too.

if anyone has any suggestions on things i could be doing better or easier, then please email me or something to show me the light. ( info@lowercaseindustry.com )

Right, so first off, before any sketching, i thought it might be interesting to show you some of the stuff i draw with. At this point i should make you aware that i am a proper art supply geek, apologies in advance if i get over excited on this bit.

The main drawing pencil i use is the steadtler mars technico clutch pencil. If you have never used one of these then i suggest you give them a try. Ihave two of them, one with HB lead in, one with 4B, I mainly user the HB one and i would be lost without it now, if you buy one, you will be better off buying the specialised sharpener that goes with it. Trust me just buy one.

Also because i am shite at drawing i erase alot so i have alot of erasers, you cant go wrong with the mars plastic, i reckon its the best one out there. I also use a putty eraser alot to ghost down the pencils if i ink them up. The one on the top right is a soft eraser by Mitsubishi and its black, which i still havnt got over, a black eraser! brilliant!

OK, enough nerdiness about erasers, onto the drawing.
here i am just doing thumbnails, trying to get a feel for what it might look like. I am terrible at this bit, i should do lots of thumbnails but i get excited and impatient and once i have a decent idea down i want to just start making it. I have no idea what i was doing with the stupid little taped on bits here, there you go.

I will first concentrate on getting the girl drawn and vectored up, i'll add the otther stuff in the background later. This way i can print off the vectored girl and draw the other stuff more loosely and it doesnt matter if i mess up, which i will.

Here is me refining it a bit, i can see allready that her left arm is too far away from her body, it looks a bit wierd. Instead of drawing it all again though, i'm confident i can sort it out whilst in Illustrator vectoring it up.
Here i have ghosted back the pencils with a kneadable putty eraser and have inked it up with micron pens. i have left the stripes on her dress and hair lines in pencil, mainly because i'm not sure about them yet, so leaving them in pencil will leave them naturally lighter than the ink lines, like a guide for later.

You are probably wondering why this girl has no feet, well they wont be on the final piece, they will be cut off, so i just didnt draw them, its probably very lazy of me, i'm just trying to be more concious of the time i am spending on each peice nowadays, stop judging me.

Here I am Vectoring up the drawing in Illustrator. There is no rocket science here, just alot of donkey work by tracing the line art with the pen tool and punching the different bits out of each other with the pathfinder tool. I hate the auto trace tool, it allways looks messy, i know if i do it all by hand i have total control of every single curve in the piece. Its not essential to vector the drawing at all, i like to though because then i can make a sticker or print or whatever out of it aswell, its just alot easier to work with and its worth the extra effort.
Remember i said the arm looked wierd? well i traced the arm seperatly and moved it into a slightly better position.

So now onto the frame-type thing that i sketched out in the thumbnail at the beginning. For this i made a small pattern then turned it into a brush which i then applied to an oval shape and then expanded. Easy, allthough this will be a bitch to paint, but you shouldnt not do something just because it will be hard to do, just do whatever looks best and worry about how hard it will be later.
Dont smoke crack.
After playing round with what i have so far, i decided that she would look better within the oval frame shape, so took the oval added the pattern to and used it as a clipping path to contain her within it.
I have also added some other stuffon each side, exactly the same technique used, drawn in pencils, scanned and traced with the pen tool.

It looks far too busy at the moment with it all being black and white. I will deal with that next when i take this into photoshop to mock up the painting.
Right, mocking it up.
By introducing some colour i reckon i have calmed down the bits on either side of the girl. My plan with the colour is to have a base colour then drip a slightly darker shade down it to get a nice texture, then paint the black and white on top of it.

I have also pasted some of my graphics from an old piece round the black exterior to see what it would look like. I love it so i will apply this black on grey bit right at the end of the painting.

Now is the time to show it to friends and stuff, i pestered everyone and asked them to pick which colour they liked best, i was hoping they would say blue and most of them did, so i am going with the blue.

I am all set now to start painting it now woohoo! its allways the best bit.
One final change. I made her face look slightly less evil by mellowing her frown by shortening the eyebrows and removing the forehead creases and making her left eye smaller. much better.

Righto, definatly onto the painting bit now.
I am going to be painting this piece on a wooden panel, 1 metre high by 70cm wide.

I tend to use these panels for most of my work nowadays, they look really nice and are perfect for projecting your work on as it has no give like canvas does.

i buy my panels here

They are not massively expensive for what nice objects they are, i would reccomend you give them a try.
I first need to prepare the panel for painting.
I will be masking of the sides of the panel with cheap electricians tape, then applying some gesso.
I not only tape round the sides, but also on the back as pictured here. anything that touches the work surface i tape up basically.

Its amazing how dirty things get while painting, so i can now not worry about that as when i am done with the painting, i can peel off the tape and everything will be really clean, with nice clean edges on the sides. These panels have a few layers of plywood on top so this gives the sides a nice pattern.

I would reccommend getting a big pack of electricians tape off ebay. Its perfect because its not too sticky and is elastic to some degree.
Onto the gesso bit now, I like to water it down until its the thickness of double cream, then give it a few coats.
Being an artist for me is 5% hard work, 5% talent, and 90% resisting the urge to draw gigantic cocks on everything, so i got the cock thing out of the way here.
All done with applying the gesso, lovely.
I'm now going to apply a rough coat of base texture, for which i will use Buff Titanium and Taupe acrylic colours, roughly mixed and with some water added. If i keep the two colours roughly mixed then it will help with giving an interesting texture. Ive also splodged a raw puddle of Taupe next to it so i can make it darker in places if i so wish.

Another thing to bare in mind at this stage is to use a really good quality fine brush. i want texture on it, but not physical texture, i want to keep the paint as flat as possible because i will be dripping stuff down it soon. if its too bumpy it will send the drips of in wierd directions, which is not what i want. So i'm using a fine bristled brush.
So here is the panel with the rough layer of brown. next up, i'm going to start building up the blue. It may seem a bit odd starting off with a layer of theis brown colour but bits of it will poke through and keep the texture interesting.
I'm now mixing the colour i will use for the blue. I'm using pretty cheap Inscribe acrylic craft paint here, these are like £1 a bottle and come in a zillion different colours, the reason i like to use these sometimes is that it leaves the surface slightly more porous than alot of other acrylic paints, this is good if you are going to be drawing in pencil over it as i will be doing Also, these inscribe paints take really well to markers drawn over them which i will use to add fine detail in the last stages.

Again, i'm not mixing the colours to a full blend, keeping it a little bit rough.
I have forgotten to take a picture of the first blue layer, but its pretty straightforward, you aint missing much, here i have added more dark blue to the paint, watered it down alot and dripped it down the panel. see how most of the drips are really orderly? thats because i kept the texture really flat.

tip: put a piece of cardboard down if you are doing this indoors to keep the paint off the floor and in turn keep from getting annihilated by your girlfriend.

A quick word about these panels. Be careful not to apply too many watery washes to them as it Can cause a split in the wood. this has only happenned to me once but its worth baring in mind.

onto the next bit.
I have added a thin layer of the same blue mix as before, but more watered down this time, this makes it look a bit misty and ghosts down the drips a bit as they were too strong
To get my drawings onto a canvas or panel of this size i usually use a light projector like this one.

Its just a case of printing out your drawing, putting it in this projector and pointing it at the panel.

I then turn off all the lights, and trace the light with a pencil. One thing i will say is use a hard pencil for this as softer ones will smudge all over, i use a 3h pencil

You can pick up these projectors on ebay for not a great deal of money.
Here is the result of the projecting, its allways a bit rough so i have to clean it up when putting the paint down. I'm about at my limit here of what my crappy projector can handle, detail wise. Looks like i might have to get a better one, i really want one of these but thats some major price tag attached to it.
Now its just a case of filling in what I have pencilled in with the projector, Keeping a printout of the original graphics to help correct dodgey pencil lines.

I allways take my time on this step, making sure all my lines are super clean and neat, I paint a bunch in, let it dry, then do another bunch, if i try and do it all in one sitting i allways end up smudging wet paint with my arm or hand.

I have filled in the entire area around the frame with a dark grey, if you remember back a few steps i am going to paint stuff in over the top of this area in black, so it makes a nice subtle yet complex border area.
A little tip here and is probably obvious, but when you mix a colour like this grey, make too much of the colour so you can save the leftover in some wrapped up cling-film or something, if i mess up putting the black on, i can then use the backup mixed paint to cover it up. It makes alot more sense than trying to re-mix the exact same colour, which will be pretty much impossible, impossible for me anyway, i'm an idiot.

You can see from the last pic above that i have started to put white on too, i'm not familiar with this brand of white paint so i used it on the frame first to get a feel for it before filling in the girl.
Here i have finished filling in the white. This took ages as it took quite a few coats to get a good opaque white.

You can see from where the lights hit the canvas that i have started to add the surrounding bits.
It turned out that the grey i initially put down was far too light and there was too much contrast between the surround and the darker drawings that are going on top of it.

What i did was use two different brands of black paint. Raven inscribe paint and a slightly deeper, glossier Mars black. the difference is subtle, you will only see a difference if you look closely or when it catches the light.

I have not vectored the surrounding drawings, this is just painted straight on, i will redraw it later and vector it up so i have it if i want to make a print out of it or something.

Not long to go now, i'll finish painting in the surround, and add final detail to the girl.
Ok here it is all finished! woohooo!
Ihave finished it off by adding in the eye colour, adding detail to her hair, and other small things like the lines round the frame edge.

Its taken quite a while this one, i'm quite pleased with it, i think generally the drawing of the girl is a bit sucky, but i'm really pleased with how the drippy background looks,

Anyway, i hope you have enjoyed reading this, its been wierd recording the steps, it kinda makes it out to be more complicated than it really is i think.

Dont forget to visit my shop: www.lowercaseindustry.com or my portfolio site www.michael-latimer.com for more prints and tees and stuff.

any questions or whatever, email me at info@lowercaseindustry.com

Cheers!

Michael


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