Dave McClellan Art Blog

Scarecrow

2011-10-26T23:51:00.001-07:00

Book Cover

2011-09-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a book cover image that I did a while back for this book.

Painting People and Places in Provo with Perkins

2011-08-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a few samples of the many color studies I did last week at the Bill Perkins workshop that I advertised in the previous post. It was my second time taking the color theory workshop, and although I don't know if it's showing up in my work yet, I think I'm starting to grasp some of the concepts that Bill talked about. These were all 40 minute studies of various color and lighting situations.

This one was the last one I did at the color workshop and we got to spend 80 minutes on it, which by that time seemed like an eternity. Ok, not really-it just seemed like 80 minutes. I still had to paint really fast. I took a picture after every 20 minutes during the model breaks so you can kind of see the progression.

The second half of the week was the plein air workshop. We spent a lot of time watching Bill paint, looking for good painting locations, looking for good eating locations(this was the most successful part for me) and in between all that I painted these studies. I don't feel like these turned out particularly well, but I was trying some things that I don't usually do, like paint rainbow umbrellas. Bill gave me some good things to think about, so hopefully my next few paintings will start to show some improvement.

All in all it was a great week of painting with some of my favorite artist friends, filled with a lot of "a-ha" moments, as in "A-ha! so that's what Sargent and Sorolla were doing" and "A-ha! So that's why my paintings look nothing like Sargent and Sorolla." I now have lots to think about.

Painting workshops anyone?

2011-07-21T22:53:00.001-07:00

For any artists who will be in Utah the third week of August, Disney artist and painter Bill Perkins will be conducting another painting workshop like the one I blogged about here. This time he will be here for a week and the first part of the week will be the color boot camp part like before, and the second part of the week is a plein air painting workshop.

This is a great opportunity to learn from someone with many years of experience as both a fine artist and an animation industry visual development artist. I thought the last workshop was fantastic and I was surprised at how much information was new to me. And the great part is that the information is applicable to any disipline in the visual arts. If you ever had the thought, " I wish I were better at color" then this is for you.

Anyone interested can contact me, as I'm the guy handling the sign ups for this. See the image for the details.

12 iPad Sunsets

2011-07-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

A bunch of quick iPad sketches of sunsets looking out my back window. None of them is that great by itself but I kind of like comparing them all and seeing how much the colors vary from day to day and even moment to moment.

The Hated Heat

2011-06-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

I know most people who check out this blog probably don't like basketball. But that's ok because most people who do like basketball don't like these guys in this image either. When I was working on this I figured they would be the eventual champs. But that was before I realized that the aliens from Space Jam stole their super powers and gave them to Jason Terry. How else do you explain LeBron airballing layups and Wade dribbling it off his foot? Anyway, it was a really fun series to watch.

Dirk Nowitzki

2011-05-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

The NBA finals start tonight, and I might actually watch this time since the Lakers aren't in it. And since Dirk and the Mavericks were the ones to dispatch the Lakers, I hope they win. Unfortunately, I don't think they will because as I was working on this portrait of Dirk, my wife said, "Oh, are you drawing Jon Heder?" And although that was probably just because of some drawing errors on my part, I realized that no one who could ever be mistaken for Napoleon Dynamite is going to beat LeBron and Wade.

From this morning's life drawing session

2011-05-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

Done on the iPad, using the Brushes app, two hours. I like this one much better than my last few of attempts on the iPad. Painting on the iPad is fun, but it's a fight. I remember watching the documentary "It Might Get Loud" a while back and hearing guitarist Jack White talk about how he feels like playing his guitar should feel like a battle, and he's trying to conquer it. That's kind of what painting on the iPad feels like to me, and maybe that's why I haven't given up on it yet.

Clouds

2011-04-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, just for practice, I will paint the clouds that I see outside my office window. I painted these yesterday, which was an exceptionally good day for clouds.

Color Workshop with Bill Perkins

2011-03-10T21:14:00.000-08:00

Last week I was able to go to a painting workshop with Bill Perkins. Bill is a very experienced artist who has done a lot of things. Check out his two websites here and here. He described this workshop as "color boot camp" designed to teach us as much about color and light as possible in just three days. He had us do many quick (30-45 min) paintings from the model under different lighting situations. I really enjoyed the colored lights, but the flat light situations were particularly challenging. It was a lot like doing plein air paintings, but of people rather than landscapes. He kept telling us not to worry about our drawing since there was no time for that, and so some of those sketches look pretty bad, but I thought I'd post them all up here anyway because I wanted to show the whole experience.

A lot of what we talked about was familiar, like starting with just values and talking about tonal contrast before moving on to saturation and hue contrasts, which is the way I teach digital painting. But there were some new ideas too, which really shouldn't have been new to me but somehow I managed to come this far without understanding them. Overall it was a great experience and I am excited to try out some of those new ideas in a painting when I can spend longer than 3o minutes on it.

And if you are interested in seeing what some other people did at the workshop Greg Newbold has blogged about it, and I thought Simini did a really nice job of capturing those colors.

Angels

2010-12-31T01:04:00.000-08:00

A few more landscape sketches

2010-11-28T20:10:00.001-08:00

I kind of lost momentum with the iPad sketching, and went back to the real paints. Here are the three that I thought turned out the best from the last few months. I have had the pleasure of teaching some classes in the BYU illustration program this fall, and one of those classes was a landscape class where we went out plein air painting as a means of studying light and atmospheric perspective and then applied those principles to illustrations. I did the top image in that class. It must have been a nice spot because a lot of the students got a good sketch there too. Kind of surprising since it's Utah Lake...not known as a very picturesque spot. I have realized that I really like yellow and blue together. Almost as much as yellow-green and purple.

More Illustrations

2010-09-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

These are some images that I did for the website for the book mentioned in the previous post, The Magnificent 12. I did a lot more, but these are the ones I like the best.

The Magnificent 12

2010-08-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

This is a book cover illustration that I did for a book that just hit the stores last week. It's a fantasy adventure story with a lot of humor in it, which is my kind of book. It's for pre-teens so it's probably about my reading level, too. I really enjoyed reading it with my kids.

I also did a lot of character spot illustations for the book's website: themag12.com. If you are nine or ten years old, or know someone that age, it's worth checking out.

More iPad Paintings

2010-08-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

The sunset one I painted last night out my back door. That effect with the red sunlight hitting the rain from behind was awesome, but lasted only about five minutes. So I tried to just get the colors and then did the rest from memory. It was done in Sketchbook Pro, but when I got it to the computer it looked too purple compared to what I remembered so I touched it up in Photoshop.

The other one was done near Memory Grove in Salt Lake City. I started that one in Brushes then switched to Sketchbook Pro because Sketchbook has a smudge tool for softening edges.

iPaint en iPlein air with an iPad

2010-05-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of my first attempts at sketching some of the scenery around here on my new iPad. These were done using the Sketchbook Pro App.

I have never been a trendy gadget guy, but I have been waiting years for someone to come out with something like this. It's not quite fulfilling all my dreams yet, since it lacks the pressure sensitivity of a Cintiq, but it is close. Now I can quickly capture (or try to capture)the fleeting golden hour lighting effects that would be gone by the time I went and got out my oil paints. And I can now do digital painting anywhere I want to, even if it's a little more primitive than what I'm used to. The reviewers said that the iPad is a much better media consumption tool than a media creation tool, and they are absolutely right, but it is still a lot of fun. And all that other stuff it can do is pretty cool too.

A few drawings

2010-02-12T22:02:00.000-08:00

from our Friday morning figure drawing session at work. I usually show up late and only have about an hour to draw, so I draw small and usually just get the head and shoulders. These are probably my favorites from the last few months of small, figure-less figure drawings.

Tree

2010-02-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

This started as a demo for my digital painting class on how to start a painting. It wasn't a very good start. So I felt compelled to finish it to hide the fact that it wasn't a good start.

My Back Yard

2009-12-08T19:41:00.000-08:00

I wanted to get out and do some plein air paintings of the fall colors but that didn't happen. My only plein air painting trip this fall was to my back yard where I painted the sage brush behind my house. I think I'll paint the same scene in the snow pretty soon. Maybe looking through the window. It's REALLY cold out there.

Yerba Mate

2009-11-17T19:57:00.000-08:00

This image started out as a sketch in my sketchbook, then a demo for the digital painting class that I teach and then I ended up finishing it just for fun. It is based on my memories of a place I lived in Misiones, Argentina.
If you know anyone from Argentina, then you will know all about mate, the herbal tea that all Argentines constantly drink through a metal straw called the bombilla. Misiones is where they grow the herbs. That's what the green rows in the background are. And Misiones is known for its tierra colorada or red dirt which turns all white shirts to pink.

Aspen Trees

2009-08-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Silliness

2009-07-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple digital pieces done just for fun for the Avalanche blog. The Mer-Man one was a combination of two themes: Masters of the Universe, and Zodiac signs. The other one was obviously a Wizard of Oz theme. Lately there has been a lot of construction around my home and where I work, and I just can't visualize a road without orange cones anymore.

Red Rocks

2009-06-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Digital composition based on the oil sketches I did in southern Utah below.

Morning on the Shore of Tibble Fork Reservoir

2009-06-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Recent Drawings from Life Drawing Session at Work

2009-05-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

The first three were drawn in my sketchbook with a Prismacolor pencil. The last one is bigger in charcoal. All were done in an hour or less.

Zion Painting Trip

2009-03-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I was able to go on a painting/sketching/reference gathering trip with some BYU illustration and animation students and faculty to Zion National Park. They are doing a student project on environment design and will be using the sketches and reference they gathered for their designs. Since that's kind of what I do for a living I got to come along. It was a blast.

These are the paintings I did while I was down there.

Drawings

2009-01-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

Here are a few drawings that I did in the class I taught last fall.

And a couple more for good measure.

2008-10-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

More little paintings

2008-08-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Here are some plein air sketches from this spring and summer.

April

2008-05-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

Really Cool Colorful Costume

2008-04-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

You can't have a model like this and just do a charcoal drawing. A dress like that calls for paint.

She is from West Africa and is a really good cook.

Demo Videos

2008-04-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some demos that I recently did. The first one is a landscape that was just out of my head without any reference. I have nothing against reference, in fact I am very much in favor of it. I just mention that I had no reference as a disclaimer for why it isn't better.

The next two are digital portrait studies that I did from life of a couple co-worker friends, Emily and Dillon, who were nice enough to sit still for me. I tried to do an approach similar to what I would do with real paint.

Also, I am not very good at talking while I'm painting (or at any other time for that matter) so I decided to borrow the audio track from someone much more experienced in painting demonstrations than myself. I think his commentary is probably at least as instructional as mine would have been, plus something about his voice just makes me feel happy. Special thanks to Tom for help with these videos.

Here are the finished images.

Drawings

2008-04-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

I realized that I haven't posted many drawings on this blog, so here are a couple from the last few months of study at Kamille Corry's studio.

My two latest plein air attempts

2008-02-12T18:31:00.000-08:00

This one was painted up the street from my house. 6x8

This one is somewhere in Laguna Beach. 8x10

Cast Painting

2008-01-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

This is a cast painting that I worked on last year at Kamille Corry's studio. I feel like I learned a lot about oil painting and how to finish a painting over a long period of time. Most of my oil paintings have just been studies done in one sitting.

I also gained an appreciation of ancient Greek sculptors. It was pretty tedious painting just this guy's head. I can't imagine how long it would have taken them to sculpt the whole thing.

The Jazz

2007-11-13T21:41:00.001-08:00

As a huge NBA fan I have drawn lots of basketball players, but not for a long time. So I thought I would celebrate the start of the season with a portrait of some Utah Jazz players. I originally was going to exaggerate the caricatures more but they ended up more idealized. But these guys have been playing well so they got the flattering treatment.

Yellow Leaves

2007-10-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Probably the last plein air of the season, unless I decide to go paint in the snow.

In honor of football season...

2007-10-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

Recent Oil Sketch

2007-08-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

This is my son in his favorite spot in front of the TV. That day he wasn't feeling well so he actually stayed still enough for me to paint him. It also helped that he fell asleep halfway through the movie.

Latest Plein Air

2007-08-14T07:53:00.001-07:00

Considering the ruthless onslaught of insects that my freind Steve and I had to endure while we were painting, I think we both did all right. Hard to go wrong with Aspen trees. I think I got all the bugs picked out of the paint.

Star Wars Fun

2007-08-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

The topic over at the Avalanche Blog was "stupid Star Wars characters." I don't think she's stupid, but the fact that she wore about 37 different hairstyles per movie made no sense.

The Princess Bride Guys

2007-07-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Princess Bride. Cheers, Vizzini.

Another plein air sketch

2007-07-01T23:52:00.000-07:00

painted up in the hills above Salt Lake City

Last Week's Plein Air

2007-06-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

Latest Plein Air Attempts

2007-06-06T20:33:00.001-07:00

Mossy Falls

2007-05-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

Old environmental concept art.

MTR

2007-05-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Some concept art I did for the Meet the Robinsons game.

Zion Canyon

2007-04-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

A plein air painting I did last month at Zion National Park.

Bono

2007-03-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

Here's something to make me feel old. It has been 20 years since The Joshua Tree was released. Oh well, Bono is older than me and he's still cool. (I think)

This is for the Avalanche Blog. The theme is Rock Star.

Also this was done using ArtRage, which I just discovered. I don't know if I would use it for professional work, but it sure is fun. They have a free download and if you want the full verion it's only $20. Check it out.

The Captain

2007-02-05T10:16:00.000-08:00

This was done for the Avalanche Blog. The topic was "Villain."

Old Tak Art

2006-12-05T13:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it's time to get something besides my losing art contest entries up here to look at. Apologies to those who may have clicked here multiple times in the last month only to see nothing new. I haven't been able to do any personal work for a while, so I will have to resort to posting old art. Here are a couple pieces from Tak.

Losing Art Contest Entries

2006-10-31T15:21:00.000-08:00

My former office mate Justin who now works at Blizzard talked me and a couple other guys into entering the Blizzard art contest. They posted the winners today and neither I nor anyone I know is among them. I probably didn't spend enough time on these to compete with the ones that were picked. Oh well, at least I have something to post on my blog now. I don't know if Todd and Ryan will post theirs. We may have to pressure them a little.

Seascape: Corona del Mar

2006-10-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

I was in California a couple weekends ago and had a chance to make it down to the beach to paint. The threatening rain clouds looked really cool but made it a challenge because they kept blocking the sun. I was an hour or so into it before it started to get too dark, so I had to finish it off at home.

Her Royal Highness-ness

2006-10-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

This is for the art challenge at work. This week's topic is royalty.

Lost Hobbit

2006-10-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

At work we have started an unofficial, just for fun art challenge where we all do a piece based on a common theme. Last week's theme was the TV show Lost, which I have never seen. So naturally I chose the hobbit. Maybe I will take this and change him back into a hobbit and add this to my collection of Lord of the Rings fan art. Anyway, they are big into caricature here at work so I have been attempting to get better at that. And you can check out what everyone else at work did over on the Avalanche blog.

Three Dog Knight

2006-09-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

This is an illustration I did a few years back for Dragon Magazine. I actually did quite a few illustrations for them, but as I look back at them, I don't know, I guess I am just not a fan of the subject matter. Sometimes the fantasy genre just gets a little ridiculous. Fantasy football on the other hand... Anyway, I like this guy. He looks like he could play safety for the Raiders.

Football Time

2006-08-28T16:25:00.000-07:00

I know that there are probably not too many people who do fantasy art and like football. I am one of them. I did this image of Ricky Williams a couple years ago when he was leading my fantasy football team to the championship. That of course was before his pot-smoking sabbatical from the NFL. But the real reason for this post is to remind Ryan that he needs to sign up for fantasy football.

Treebeard

2006-08-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Another old LOTR image that I did only to be later out done by the movie. But this was my idea of treebeard based on the description in the book.

Narnia Painting

2006-08-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

This is also an older image, I think 2002. But I went back to it recently and worked on the values. So now it's a new image again.

Really Old Image

2006-08-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

I wanted to only post things that were done within the last year or so, but I haven't been able to do much new art oustide of work lately. So I decided to go way back to 2001 when I painted this balrog scene as I was getting geeked up about the first Lord of the Rings movie. Of course the balrog in their movie was better, but I would have hoped it would have been. This was just for fun and I wanted to paint some LOTR fan art before the movies came out and imprinted their images into my mind. Fortunately, I like their imagery a lot.

landscape painting

2006-07-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of my landscape paintings from the last year. These were all done on location in about two hours. Plein air painting is so much harder than it looks, but it is a lot of fun to be out there enjoying the weather and the views. I envy the artists that can do this full time.

Serious Study

2006-07-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

These are charcoal drawings that I did last year while studying with Kamille Corry, a classical realist painter and very good teacher. I was skeptical of the cast drawing method of study at first, but after having done it, I can say that it was extremely helpful and a great way to learn about light and values. It's just very tedious and time consuming.

Art Challenge: Saruman

2006-07-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

I work as an artist for a video game developer. We have a thing called the Art Challenge where we assign ourslelves a topic and do something just for fun. The assignment for June was to do a portrait and it had to be done digitally. So here's my entry.

I now have a blog.

2006-07-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand, (actually just one very persuasive friend, Ryan Wood) I now have a blog.