Larry Elmore is working on a commission painting for a client called "The Women of Dragonlance". He posted a pencil sketch on his FB page. I thought I would share. He talks about the painting on his page. Sorry, I really want to finish it. I will start this new painting tomorrow, and there will be times I want areas to dry for a day, so I will go back and work on my stormy sky painting.
So, here is the drawing , on the board and ready to paint. The Four Women of Dragonlance (the first three books, it’s a large one– 24×32. Started a new painting today, it is for myself….but I do have a really big one, a commission piece that I have to start also. I will start it Monday or Tuesday. Got the drawing all worked out and the board gessoed….it is the “Four Women Of Dragonlance”.So what I am going to do is work on two at the same time. The commission piece will have priority, so while I have to let parts of it dry, I will work on my painting. I have done this before.Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. At our house, we always have all family together, running about 40 or more people…but this time it was just Betty and me….really quiet , we didn’t know what to do !!Ok, here is day one….I probably will not post every day, because I will most likely forget to! But this partial sky gives you an idea of the mood…well, It does me, keeps me aware of what kind of colors and “feel” that will affect the overall colors of the painting. OK, here is the sky in the DragonLance painting. This is 5 days of work, and I have two little places yet to work on before it is finished, maybe three more hours at the most. Man, that sky was hard! The colors gave me fits. Anyone out there that thinks the sky is blue and clouds are white, just haven’t learned to use their eyes yet!OK, the past few days have been a little hectic, lots of things I have had to do here in the studio (business)! But I am finally back to painting again.
I have the sky basically done, but I will probably tweak it more! Now, I have started working on the background…kind of getting it in there to see how my colors are working.
I will tell all of you, and perhaps some artists will understand, maybe only a few that are like me…and that is the fact that colors do NOT come easy or naturally to me. I mean, in a basic way, they do come easy, but as I paint more and get older (hopefully I am getting better), I am having more problems. Drawing always came easy to me, no problem there. So, when I was younger–even when I first went to work at TSR, I kind of just colored my drawings, not actually color the drawing, but my knowledge of subtle colors and the fact that I did not have the experience of painting hundreds of paintings. Which , many times I would get lost in colors when I wanted a certain mood or feel . That was mainly because I loved to draw more than paint. I was kind of impatient then. I wanted to do everything quick! “‘get ‘er done” !! As I studied the colors of the other artist at TSR, my eyes were opened more and more. Especially Keith Parkinson’s work. Color came naturally to him, but he struggled a lot on his drawings. We eventually worked together freelancing in our own studio and there is where we picked each others brain.
Now days, my colors are much better than those way back then. I use the same palette (colors) , but I really try to constantly improve on color choices, subtle compliments, glazing and many other approaches to color! I have slowly been getting better, yet at the same time, I do not want to copy another artists color, I want my mental vision to be painted in the matter that I see and feel it in my head! Sometimes that is difficult for me.
I know, some is going to reply, “it is because you have a thick head”pic.twitter.com/Zwu0y18Vge— Margaret Weis (@WeisMargaret) December 18, 2020
