The Best Vector Text Effects, Ever.

Although the Vandelay Design blog is primarily geared towards tutorials for web designers, there's a heapin' helpin' of valuable information for illustrators and graphic artists as well. Like this post about text effects using Adobe Illustrator.

There's also a top 20 list of the most valuable Photoshop tutorials on the web. That's a pretty bold claim, but I think they may be right.

Now, back to the drawing board.

End of Post

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You can be a Hot Dog with SketchUp

Even if you're not a computer hot dog, you won't need your courage mustered with SketchUp. Most of us don't relish the idea of digesting new software, but the online tutorials are quite easy to stomach, and you'll be able to devour them without biting off more than you can chew.

Okay, I'll stop.

Recently, I was asked to write a how-to article about Sketchup 7.0 for a special edition of LinuxPro Magazine. SketchUp is a free 3D modeling application available from the benevolent behemoth, Google. You have heard of Google, right?

The problem with such an assignment is that SketchUp doesn't seem difficult enough to warrant much instruction. It's so easy to use that I had difficulty thinking of more than one sentence to write: "Open SketchUp and start drawing stuff."

But I was being paid by the page, so I knew I needed a more robust approach. Besides, there are countless online forums, blog posts, and video tutorials that describe pretty much everything you need to know. With such a vast support network, even Pepe Le Pew could build a model of the Eiffel Tower before you could say, "Freedom Fries."

So I considered writing the article about how to build models of typical residential rooms and furniture in case the readers wanted to see how new counter tops or cabinets might look in their kitchen. That idea left me with visions of my daughter rolling her eyes at me with, as the song goes, "her finger and her thumb in the shape of an 'L' on her forehead."

I knew my project had to be something fun to build. It had to demonstrate SketchUp's usefulness not just to hobbyists and woodworkers, but also to professional artists. It had to be fun and relatively simple to build. But most importantly, it had to be totally unverifiable in the real world.

So I decided on a Googlebot. Read on...



As much as I'd like to claim it, inventing a physical form for Googlebot is not my own idea, nor is it new to the online community of bored bloggers. But I don't think I've seen an interpretation that crosses the Spyder three-wheel motorcycle with Disney's Wall-E. This little guy could sniff out a relevant anchor tag from fifty paces, even if it were hopelessly buried under a deep heap of bloated code.

Building a Googlebot step-by-step would hopefully show how 3D modeling can be a valuable tool for facilitating an artist's creativity and imagination, not just project planning for an armchair architect. The usefulness of a lightweight, flexible program like SketchUp comes from quick and accurate insight into the nature of 3D objects: the play of light and shadow on their surfaces, and the effect that various perspective viewpoints have on them. For my own work, having a tool that helps me quickly block-out the rough shape of an object so I can experiment with lighting and texture effects is priceless. And the fact that SketchUp is literally priceless doesn't hurt either.

To keep the article relatively simple, several of the major pieces and parts of my Googlebot were built ahead of time: I made the model of the wheel while the binoculars were made by a SketchUp user with the screen name Birdman. Both models are available through Google's 3D Warehouse.



Although the article is rather matter-of-fact in its description of how to use the Move, Scale, Rotate, and Push/Pull tools to build the remaining components of the Googlebot, it also reveals a few insider tips and tricks to make these tools do more than they you might expect. The Scale tool, for example, can be manipulated into becoming a mirror tool, an explicit function that SketchUp lacks.


The free version of SketchUp is not intended for modeling with a high level of accuracy or detail. Both are possible, but if you're after photo-realistic renderings worthy of gaming or fantasy art, better stick with SketchUp Pro, Swift3D, 3DS Max, or any of the dozens of other mighty titans in the industry. I own a copy of Swift3D, and SketchUp will never replace it, just like my computer will never replace my pencil. Use the right tool for the right job.

With that in mind, it's imporatant to realize that all surfaces in SketchUp are either purely planar or are made up of a series of faceted planes. Arcs, circles, and curved surfaces are not really curved; they are polygonal. They may appear curved but that's only because the number of faces on the polygons are high enough that your eye doesn't pick them up. On the plus side, that keeps computations to a minimum. But it also prohibits highly accurate modeling of undulating surfaces like the curvaceous hood of a '53 Mercury. Those things can still be represented, but only with a series of interconnected triangular patches that only approximate the surface. You can soften the edges between the triangles to further improve the appearance, but the results are still approximations that don't stand up to close scrutiny.

But no matter. Accuracy isn't the point here; it's expediency, visualization, and insight. And SketchUp is masterful at all three.

So check out the articls online or pick up a copy of the Linux Pro Magazine Special Edition at newsstands everywhere.

Now, back to the drawing board.

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It's a Back Alley Brawl, Y'all

Here's a family feud that car fanatics have wrassled over for nearly 40 years:

Two cars from one car company, both archetypal muscle cars of the late 60's and early 70's, both designed and marketed to lure torque-starved gearheads away from hot-selling Mustangs and Camaros. These two cars are so embedded in automotive lore that arguments over the superiority of each is the subject of bar stool ballyhoo and online forum fights to this day. In a time when design sensibilities change so rapidly that it's an insult to say, "that's so 2004," the fact that this argument has survived across a generation is a testament to the timeless appeal of these classic cars.

Charger vs. Challenger. Read on...




This illustration is an expanded version of a simpler one I made for my graphic design partner Justin Kite for the promotion of the upcoming Gear Grinder car show in Kansas City, MO on April 17th and 18th. The poster version loses the background buildings to give Justin more elbow room for his design. Limited edition prints of both the promotional poster and the full illustration will be on sale at the show.

For dynamic scenes like these, my usual process would normally have started with a series of thumbnail sketches showing varying points of view, car orientations, and lighting schemes. After selecting the one that the client and I liked, I'd work up a pencil rough of the entire scene before inking, scanning, and embellishing with digital enhancements. Using this process, a scene like this would take, on average, six to eight hours to finish. That's not out of the ordinary for illustration work, but I've been working recently on updating my workflow to reduce the number of early thumbnail sketches I need to get the design layout established. It's hard to call any process that includes a scanner and Photoshop "old school," but that's pretty much what it's becoming.

I now use Google SketchUp to build rough, block models of the major components - in this case, the three cars and the buildings - and push them around the scene until I get the pose I like. The models aren't at all detailed; I'm just careful to locate the wheels at the proper wheelbase and track width, and I try to model the basic body proportions so that they match the car model and year I'll be drawing. To add a sense of motion, I can steer the wheels and roll the bodies against the direction of the turn. I can even change the shadows by varying the sun angle and time of day, all before graphite ever hits paper.

Once the scene is defined in SketchUp, I can print out a low-res .jpeg that I export from the model and use it as an underlay for the detailed sketch. For this scene, I used the same model for all three cars - the Charger, the Challenger, and the cop car in the background. Dozens of photo references of the real cars helped me make the final drawings look accurate. The SketchUp model even provided rough locations for the buildings so I could quickly overlay details like bricks, windows, exhaust hoods, and flying trash cans.

For now, I'm not saving much time in the overall process because of the front-loaded time suck involved in building the models. But once I have generic block models of a few trucks, hot rods, and muscle cars, I'll have a handy kit of parts for any new project.

Now back to the drawing board.

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Two New Cool Tools

For my latest logo design, I've added two new arrows to my quiver of illustration tools: Google SketchUp and The Complete Color Index by Jim Krause.

The logo job was for a new software application called Topshelf. According to the software authors, Topshelf is a "lightweight framework for building Windows services using the .NET framework." This means nothing to me. But programmer, web developer, and beefy flinger of heavy steel billets Dru Sellers asked me to design a logo for the new app. Read on...



To get the basic layout, I used Google SketchUp to build simple masses for the shelf, bottles, and text. This free 3D modeling program has become my go-to tool for quick perspective and shading studies. (I'll be writing a lot more on how I use SketchUp in the next week or so.) After spinning the model around to get the POV I wanted, I sketched over a printout of the model, and then added details like shapes for the bottle caps, the liquid inside, the labels, and the white glassy highlights.

For the color scheme, I cracked open my new copy of The Complete Color Index by Jim Krause. It's a fan-friggin-tastic reference for quickly scanning and finding the perfect combination of colors. Dru told me ahead of time that he wanted greens to be prominent. That was enough to go on, but had this been a big job, I probably would have toted this compact, two-volume treasury to the kickoff meeting and guided the client through several color combinations. As it turned out, the very first combo I picked was enthusiastically approved.

In the final design, Dru and his cadre of creative code-cronies decided on a slightly simplified version, but the basic design is intact.
Now back to the drawing board.

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Roughing it up a bit.

I'm working on tee shirt design for a long-standing client whose concept requires a '69 Impala hopper poised with one wheel lifted high off the ground.

My usual black-and-white style is pretty clean-edged, like in my '53 Merc and '34 Ford illustrations from a year ago. But now I figure it's time to try something new.

Read on...

My usual method begins with inking hard lines over a rough sketch either with pen-and-ink or with my Wacom tablet, then discarding the under-sketch altogether. But to get a rougher feel for the Impala, I used only pencil, much like I did with my '59 Caddy, but with far less regard for cleanliness. I scanned the smeared-up sketch into Photoshop, then applied a Level adjustment to polarize the midtones to either pure black or pure white. This left some white streaks and splotches within the larger black fields, but those were easily refilled with the Pencil Tool.

Next, I applied a hi-res burlap texture on the layer above the image, using a Linear Burn blending mode. I made a mask on that layer that left texture only on the car, not on the background. Then, using the a white Pencil Tool, I added a few highlights.

I'm liking this new style. It has a half-tone feel without the pop art look that goes with it.

No pixels were harmed by Photoshop filters. I swear.

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Process Notes on The Fish

Many of my illustrations are about hot rods, flaming skulls, and the occasional pit bull. I make no apologies for that line of work. It pays well enough, it's in sufficient demand these days, and I enjoy the hell out of it.

But if I could truly make a go of a career that focused on illustration in a surreal style, I would. I'll always draw hot rods, but there's a constantly squirming lobe of my brain that would love to paint mysterious, dreamlike scenes with the fluidity of Michael Parkes and the intrigue of Eric White. So to keep the squirming brain in check, I occasionally clear some time on my calendar and some space on my drawing table for an intuitive, concept-driven piece. Recently, I made The Fish during just such a pursuit:



The print measures 12" x 22" and was painted entirely in PhotoShop using my new Wacom Intinuous3 tablet. Getting the right look for the water reflections took quite a bit of research and tweaking.

This post is not a tutorial, but more of a discussion about my process. If you're interested how I made this painting, read on...

The Concept
The concept about this image came primarily from a dream. I often dream about fish, especially colorful fish. They're usually huge, they're always friendly, and sometimes they talk. (I realize that the needle on my freak-o-meter is pushing well into the red zone, but if you haven't figured that out by now, you're either a new reader or not a keen judge of character.)

As an aside, the fish in the dream that inspired this illustration didn't talk to me, but it did live a brief period of time as an unconscious nude woman sleeping in a partially submerged shipwreck. All you arm-chair psychologists out there, have a ball.

Sketching and Layout
Like every project, I start with a freehand sketch that's nearly the size of the final print. I don't usually do thumbnail sketches when the layout is clear in my mind. For self-promotion work, that's nearly always the case.

The patterns on the fish are loosely based on a parrot fish. Very loosely.



After scanning in the sketch, I could see that the boat looked too elongated to me, and the fish needed more, I dunno, wiggle. Scanning changes your working medium from paper to monitor, and much like flipping an image left-to-right and back again, the shift in visual input changes your read on an image and makes proportion problems or scale inaccuracies stand out like a drunken banjo player at a Finnish funeral.

To fix these problems, I just used Edit-->Transform-->Warp on both elements to get the right POV for the boat and to put more of a sense of motion to the fish.





At this point, it's clear that the image is lacking a dude. The scale of the original sketch was too small for me to draw a well-proportioned human figure, so on a separate sheet, I sketched the following figure at about twice the scale of the final image.

(You can still see the faint lines indicating legs and feet on the lower right. I drew those in, then erased them immediately after recognizing that they made the image look too much like the figure in Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World.)




I scanned in the figure and placed the image onto the original sketch, scaling and distorting along the way until it seemed to fit into the boat nicely.





Painting the Sky and Water
I placed the two sketch layers into a group called Background, and made two additional groups, one called Sky and the the other Water. In the Sky group, I started a new layer and began painting big ol' fat strokes of primary colors like blue, cyan and magenta using a watercolor brush from Bittbox set at about 50% opacity. I overlapped each color and left about 1/4 of the sky nearest the horizon white. Then I whacked away at whole sky with the Spot Healing Brush to give it the look of a watery wash. In my hands, the Healing Brush is fairly unpredictable, so I sometimes have to smooth out the resulting splotchy areas with the Smudge Tool.

When the colors all blend evenly - but not too evenly - I adjusted the final color balance using Hue/Saturation/Brightness until the it looked like this:



Next, I zoomed up on the upper left-hand corner and made a moon by selecting a circular region and filling it with a white-to-transparent linear gradient set at an overall transparency of about 70%. A couple of dabs with a soft, transparent Eraser Tool later, and we got ourselves a pretty realistic looking moon.


Using a small round brush, I painted a gray and white jet liner and two long, soft lines for the condensation trail. (The shift key is the best way to snap a straight line across a canvas, but you have to be sure to turn off the brush's Shape Dynamics if you're using a pen tablet.)



Now with the sky completed, I made the far-field reflection of the sky around the horizon by simply copying the Sky layer into the Water layer group and flipping it vertically using Edit-->Transform-->Flip Vertical.


I wanted to paint some little puffy clouds that were reflected in the water, so to keep from going completely nuts, I rotated the canvas 180 degrees so I could paint the rest of the sky reflections as if I were just painting sky, right-side up. On a separate layer, I used a soft round brush with white for the highlights and darker, desaturated samples of the sky color for the shadowy areas. I also painted a few quick horizontal strokes across the water to begin showing waves.



Then, with canvass flipped back upright, I put a gradient layer mask on the water layer below the cloud reflection layer, and put a solid layer of deep green below them. The fish will eventually be swimming up from these green depths so I wanted the viewer to feel like they can see deep in to the water, but I still wanted the cloud reflections to give a sense of surface.



Next, I zoomed up on the boat and used a watercolor brush set to Multiply to paint the deep shadow reflections.





Painting the Boat and Dude
Using the pen tool, I outlined portions of the boat sketch where I knew I wanted crisp edges. In the screen-shot below, you can see where I drew a path outlining the bow, stern, and gunwales. Right-clicking on the path and choosing "Make Selection" turns the path into a selection and allows you to paint inside the lines. My elementary art teacher would be proud.





My dude had some pretty boring hair in the sketch, so I thought I'd give him a little more been-lost-at-sea-for-weeks look. Shadows on the boat floor were painted using paths as selections and infilling with a blue-gray color set to Multiply.



Painting the Fish
I saved this for last. It was the cherry at the bottom of my Manhattan.

After turning off all the layers, and moving the Background layer to the top of the stack and setting its blend mode to Multiply, I used the pen tool to draw a path that followed the shape of the fish. I then made a selection from the path.





The parrot fish was my inspiration, but only for coloring and patterns. Besides, I wanted my creature to be friggin' huge, and I think parrot fish are only a few pounds at most. Just like I did with the sky, I painted the three basic colors using a broad brush then blending them together using the Healing Brush. Then, using a small round brush, I added the patterns and details.







To get the effect of the fish rising up from the green depths, I put the fish layers above deep green solid layer and set their layer mode to Color Burn. A layer mask on the fish layer makes the tail fade into the distance.



The fish really looks like it's swimming up from below the surface now. But the water is way too calm.



Watery Ripply Wavey Effects
This is where some research and experimentation came in. I found this tuturial on-line, and I could barely believe my eyes. It describes how to generate your own displacement filter map using the red and blue channels of an image that you generate purely from noise. It even allows you to embed the perspective distortions you need to make the waves recede into the distance.

It took me at least three tries to get the map to work right. Suffice to say, if you try this method, be sure to follow each and every instruction in the tutorial. Leaving out even one step or fudging even one input will give you disappointing results.

What the writer of the tutorial doesn't tell you is that when you apply the displacement map using Filter-->Distort-->Displace, you'll need to experiment with the scale factors, starting somewhere in the 500 range for horizontal scale, and 200-300 for vertical. I spent hours fiddling around with sub-100 scale factors and mistakenly deducing that the process was worthless. Once I bumped up the scale enough, the effects became noticeable.

It took me awhile to realize that the displacement map method simply shifts existing pixels left and right, and up and down, according to a wavey-looking noise pattern defined in a separate .psd file. So it won't, for example, make a wavey, watery surface appear on a solid field of color. It needs surface reflections to act on. I learned through experimentation that the clouds and other reflections I painted weren't going to be enough.

Using a light cyan foreground and whitish background, I used PhotoShop's cloud generater under Filter-->Render-->Clouds. I know that sounds like cheating, but the end result is completely unrecognizable from those fake clouds. Besides, after admitting that I dream about talking fish, I figure that this is no biggie.

After generating the clouds, I applied two maximum instances of perspective transformations to the clouds, then added a significant amount of horizontal motion blur using Filter-->Blur-->Motion Blur set at 90 degrees and a distance of about 30. Then with the layer's trasparency at 100%, I applied the displacement map according to the tutorial's instructions and using the scale factors I figured out from earlier experimentation. (I suggest doing all this experimentation in a separate file because the computation times can get pretty long.) Here's how that looked:



I copied and pasted this layer below my painted cloud reflections and above the fish, lowered the transparency, and gave it a Linear Burn blending mode.

Here's the final image:



I suppose if I were truly going to paint in the surrealist style, I'd have added a sleeping nude woman floating below the fish and posed mid-morph on her way to full fishdom.

Alas, Dali I ain't.

Now back to the drawing board.

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Fast Times at El Camino High

I received a call from Scott Rehn, the Announcer and Event Promoter from Championship Offroad Racing. He's working with El Camino High School in Oceanside, CA, one of two schools selected to be featured in an upcoming episode of Drag Race High on the Speed Channel. It's a reality show, and camera crews record students in auto shop class as each school builds a high performance drag racer from an old muscle car. When the cars are finished, professional NHRA drivers race them down the quarter mile for bragging rights on the national stage.

Scott contacted me because he found this illustration of a 1967 Chevelle SS 396 on my portfolio website.




As luck would have it, El Camino High's car is based off a 1970 Chevelle SS. Scott liked the style of the illustration and asked if I could make a few changes to customize it for the school and the show. Read on...

Though Chevelle enthusiasts may disagree with me, the body styles don't differ much between the '67 and '70 model years, especially when rendered in semi-cartoon style. I did have to change the grille from the older four-headlamp setup to the twin headlamp grille that came later. Also, I changed the orientation of the shaker hood to match the one on El Camino's car. Then we added the school's name in the background and squeezed the giant head of a cougar - the school's mascot - into the driver's side window, sort of Big Daddy Roth style. We also threw in a few other goodies designed to poke fun at their rival school.

Here's what we came up with:



The torn edges came from a page of a very old book that good old Bittbox scanned in and offered up for free on his web site. I converted the scan to greyscale, maxed out the contrast, and used the image as a layer mask. Bada bing, bada boom.

With any luck, some of the kids will be wearing this emblem on their shirts while the crews are filming. What a hoot.

Now back to the drawing board.

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Wacom Rules the Planet. Resistance is Futile.

There's no doubt about it now, my Wacom pen tablet iz tha shiz, y'all. It has sped up my workflow, improved the quality of my line work, expanded my digital painting capabilities, and on more than one occasion made me giggle like a little girl just from the sheer joy of drawing.

Yes, a little girl. I'm secure, I can say it.

Here's the first work I made using this patently perfect peripheral:



If you're considering the purchase of a Wacom tablet, read on...



First, the 6x8 model is the perfect size for the work I do. If you tend to use your elbow as a pivot point when striking a long smooth arc, the next smaller version, the 4x6 model, couldn't possibly be give you enough real estate to pull it off. And the next larger sizes, the 6x11 and the 9x12, seem too bulky to hold comfortably in your lap. Unless you have a lap the size of an Astro Van. Besides, Danidraws.com recommends the 6x8, and that's good enough for me.

The tablet has a total of eight buttons. They're grouped in two clusters of four, one cluster in each upper corner. Of course, they're fully programmable. And, you can specify different functions for each button depending on what application you're running. For example, a button can execute the "b" shortcut (the Brush tool) when you're in Photoshop, and the same button can activate the "p" shortcut (the Pen tool) when you're in Illustrator.

I don't know about you, but that makes me all tingly.




In the left group, I programmed the upper-right button for the "e" shortcut (Eraser tool), and the button below it for the "b" shortcut. That way, I can toggle between the two functions with my left hand while my right hand is busy layin' down the love. (Wait, that didn't sound right, did it?)

Next to each group of buttons is a touch-strip that is also programmable, but is useful only for zooming and scrolling. If you've used a touch pad on a lap-top computer, you'll no doubt have no trouble getting used to the touch-strip.

Finally, Wacom's website also has a great list of tips and tricks for Photoshop, Corel Painter, and Adobe Flash. These guys know how to do support right.

Yes, I'm glowing. This thing is fan-frickin-tabulous.

I'm not ashamed of my feelings.

Now back to the drawing table(t).

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A 1957 Chevy Bel Air and a Better Mouse Trap

I thought I'd have some fun with a 1950's Texaco ad I found on-line while perusing vintage ads for a themed restaurant in North Kansas City.



The poster is 22" x 14" and was painted digitally in Photoshop using brushes I downloaded free from Bittbox.

The entire painting was done using a mouse, which is a process akin to threading a needle with Novocain shots in each finger and wearing boxing gloves. While blindfolded. And drunk.

Things are looking up for the badger, though. I've done my part to help the global economy by making a very wise purchase.

Read on...

I just purchased a Wacom Intuos3 6x8 pen tablet for just a smidgen under $300.00. I plan on writing more about it once the two of us have had more quality time together.

But in the meantime, here are a couple of things I've noticed:

1) Wacom's customer service is stellar. The tablet had a few performance glitches pretty early on, well before I'd finished pinching all the bubble wrap. I was ready to just pack the thing up and send it back - y'know, with the bubble wrap still intact and all, it seemed the easiest solution. Besides, ever since my Microtek scanning software refused to recognize its own scanner and I had a stunningly abysmal experience with Microtek's laughable technical service, I acquired a profanity-laced Tourettes-like tic at the mere thought of contacting any computer peripheral company with questions of any kind. But Wacom suprised me. I emailed their customer support with a description of the problem, and within a day, a friendly gentleman replied with detailed troubleshooting instructions. And when that fix turned out to be only partially effective, a simple email back to customer service brought another helpful reply within 24 hours. I'm still working through the problems (the pressure sensitivity in brush-mode cuts in and out), but I'm pleased that so far, Wacom has made good on their promise to provide prompt technical support.

2) There's a little button in the Wacom control panel called "Lock Proportions." It's located in the Mapping Tab of the tablet setup. Click it on if you want to remain sane. I'm just sayin'. If it's off (which unfortunately is the default setting) the tablet maps its entire surface to your monitor screen. That sounds fine in theory, but if the tablet and screen are not the same proportion, then you'll see an ellipse whenever you try to draw a circle. Talk about a brain-boink. Sure you may lose a bit of usable tablet space, but unless you feel like retraining your visual cortex, I suggest you turn it on.

3) The tablet's drawing surface and the heal of my hand have a relationship to each other similar to Naugahyde against a sweaty butt-cheek. As a result, I tend to get jumpy lines as I drag my hand across the tablet and it sticks. I'm going to try cutting the fingertips off of a cotton glove and wearing it on my drawing hand, Michael Jackson style, so my hand can slide easily across the tablet. I'll let you know if that works.

4) I reprogrammed the front rocker switch on the pen to act as {alt}-{ctrl}-z, which in Photoshop means "Step Backwards" through the undo history. This is slick because my first attempt at drawing a line is seldom my best one. Somewhere around attempt number eight or nine, I either get the line I want or I simply lower my standards a sufficient level to call it good. With this switch setup, marching through each attempt is as easy as draw, click, draw, click...all with one hand.

I'm working on an "ink" drawing with the pen tablet now. Should be done in a week or so, and I'll post the results here. So far, the tablet experience is so superior, it makes using a mouse feel like trying to draw with a crayon taped to your elbow.

Now back to the drawing board.

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Don't Fight the Graphite

Pencils don't get the respect they deserve. What with the popularity of digital image processing, vectorized line work, and - what's that stuff called? - oh yeah, paint. Sadly, it seems the pencil has been forgotten at the bottom of everyone's Art Bin along with the Pop Tart crumbs and that rock-hard tube of Liquitex Medium Magenta.

But I ask you, who doesn't love the feel of a bright yellow Ticonderoga #2 wood pencil twirling in your fingers or tapping on the edge of your desk? Nobody, that's who.

Read on...

I say the wood pencil deserves to return to its iconic stature, with the makin'-it-happen end sharpened to a long, acicular point, and the pretend-it-didn't-happen end gnawed into an unrecognizable wad of crushed metal and moist rubber. Stick it behind your ear. Chew the paint off it. Hold it flat in your hand, thrust your arm upward, slap your wrist with the other hand, and watch your beloved writing implement rocket skyward until the point embeds itself in your office ceiling. Despite written claims to the contrary, Heaven is a place stocked with an endless supply of sharp wood pencils and thousands of square miles of acoustic ceiling tile.

The pencil is a nearly perfect writing instrument. It's also a darn good drawing tool, as any bored art-kid stuck in High School history class will tell you. It can track a thin line that's so faint, you'll swear one of your arm-hairs fell onto the page. With a firm overhand grip, that same pencil can lay down a heavy pool of slick, black powder that, despite your best efforts, will end up partially smudged on your cheek. And with a skilled hand, it will create smooth, luxurious washes of silvery grey in any shade imaginable.

I've always been comfortable drawing with pencils. I've loved them all my life. Hell, I'm 46 years old and I still have a visible piece of pencil lead imbedded under the skin of my right palm from a John Bonham style drumming mishap in the third grade.

Today I use a Ticonderoga No.2 wood pencil for nearly all my pencil-roughs, layouts, contour drawings, and sketches.

But as much as I love them, I don't use wood pencils for shaded renderings. That's a job for artist's graphite pencils like these. Sometimes called "woodless pencils," these are thick bars of solid graphite with a clear lacquer coating to keep your hands and Chinos clean.

They can be sharpened in any standard pencil sharpener, though I've been told that the preferred method is using a sheet of fine-abrasive sandpaper. They're available in several hardnesses, though typically a 6B will do most everything that I need for shaded sketching.

In pencil parlance, the hardness of the lead is graded by varying levels of "H" for "hard" and "B" for "black" (*). HB stands for "Hard Black" (**) and is equivalent to the classic No. 2 pencil. Softer - and therefore darker rendering - pencils are labeled with increasing values of "B." A 6B lead is much softer than an HB, and 9B is softer still. I find that 6B is amazingly versatile for shaded renderings, able to hold a decent point while still laying down a pretty funky bass-note when asked. I suppose having a super soft 9B on hand would be helpful for deep black areas, but I haven't yet found much need for one yet. Harder pencils can range up to 6H, even harder. A 6H pencil makes a very thin, very light line, and is more comfortable in the hands of a draftsman than a sketch artist. It also doubles as an Exact-o knife.

Now, you'll notice that the art pencils don't have erasers attached to them. That's because artist's are nervous critters by nature, and we'd chew them off before we finished our first layout. So, we buy separate erasers, either of the soft block or kneaded variety. Be warned: these are not interchangeable! The block style, usually made from firm chunks of vinyl, erases using an abrasive action. It literally grinds out the graphite particles from the tooth of your paper. It's useful for removing large areas of goof-ups on bond papers, sketch pads, and Bristol board because these papers absorb (sort of) the graphite dust and need a rather aggressive approach to clean-up. Kind of like my 14-year-old stepson.

Kneaded erasers are more like Silly Putty; they are sticky, and they work by lifting graphite right off the paper. You don't usually rub a kneaded eraser across your work, you dab it right onto the area you want removed. Because they're kind of gooey, you can even mold kneaded erasers into pointed shapes to pick off tiny spots without disturbing the surrounding work.

Because of its hard, dense surface, Vellum is an excellent substrate for the combination of a soft graphite pencil and a kneaded eraser. For final artwork, that set-up is the diggity whoop, yo.

I also use a mechanical pencil. Specifically, I use a Koh-I-Noor 0.7mm drafting pencil loaded with F lead. F is approximately halfway along the pencil hardness scale between HB and H, and I suppose it would be similar to the No. 3 lead in a classic wood pencil, though I can't prove this. I don't know what the F stands for, but let's call it "Fine." The F hardness in a 0.7 mm pencil is very useful for fine detail work, thin contour lines, or anytime I need to draw a hard edge along a metal, cork-back ruler.

Mechanical pencils like the Koh-I-Noor are also available in an absurdly thin 0.3mm variety, and I own one. I just never use it. I do sometimes use the uber-fat 0.9mm version for heavier line work. That bad boy gets H ("Heavy," slightly harder then HB) lead.

One other snazzy gizmo I use often is the eraser shield. It's basically a stainless-steel stencil that masks the work you want to keep while exposing tiny lines, dots, or arcs that you want to attack with your eraser.

Oddly, the majority of the real estate in my graphite drawings is produced using a blending stick, not a pencil. These tightly rolled sticks of paper push the graphite dust around the surface of your page to create those smooth gradients of gray.

Like a pencil, they can be sharpened to a point to help get into tight corners. My process is to lay down a light layer of squiggly lines over a large area with my 6B artist's graphite pencil. Then I spread the love around using the blending stick. If an area looks too dark, I use the kneaded eraser to remove the excess graphite then hit it again with the blending stick. Again, Vellum is my choice for paper here. Because most of the graphite sits on top of the surface of a Vellum sheet, those little dust particles are as easy to push around as an asthmatic preschooler. (Hey, I was an asthmatic preschooler, so I speak from experience.)

After the base layer of gray is down, I can start adding shade and shadow. Again, I lay down a heapin' helpin' of graphite in the darkest areas, then feather it out into the lighter areas using the blending stick. Here, the quarter panel area behind the headlight has been blended out while I'm starting to shade the rocker panel.

The key is to start light, then build to dark. It's tempting to fill in all the heavy shadow areas early so that the image will pop. But you must resist. The danger is that you'll smear all that graphite dust over your drawing as you work on the finer details. Details first, shadows last. Also, never let your bare skin touch the artwork; always rest your hand on a clean sheet of bond paper. Your skin has oils that will smudge and yellow your artwork.

Finally, when I've gather the strength to stop obsessing over impossibly small details and can finally call the drawing finished, I spray the entire sheet with an acrylic fixativ. This locks the loose graphite dust down to the surface to prevent smearing. The good stuff won't yellow or get all crinkly. Some artists use hairspray. Some artists also use drugs. I don't use either.

See? there's no need to fight the graphite. Make it your friend. Speak kindly to it. Go ahead and smear it on your face. It's going to end up there anyway.

Now back to the drawing board.

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(*) Linguists in the audience will recognize that "black" is not the opposite of "hard." This is because language is a left-brain activity and art is right-brained. It's hard to get the two sides to agree on anything.

(**) I've also heard the "HB" stands for "Heavy Black." This doesn't make sense to me because HB is the hardest black lead you can get.

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Craft and Commerce

"In commerce, the musician makes music. In craft, music makes the musician."

That's a quote from one of my favorite guitarists, Robert Fripp from King Crimson. It's always refreshing to hear musicians speak about their profession in thought-provoking ways rather than the usual, "How hard to we rock? SO F***ING HARD!!" Anyway, Mr. Fripp wrote it in a short blurb he called, "Craft" which appeared in the May 2006 issue of Guitar Player magazine. He's a smart cat, Mr. Fripp, and the line has stayed with me for quite awhile. Recently it's been popping into my head quite often, mostly as it applies to illustration assignments that I'm tempted to refuse. I use it as a mantra of sorts, and it reminds me that no job is too big or too difficult.

Read on...

Though he wrote the quote and the column for guitarists, clearly his point applies to any creative profession, including illustrators. On the surface, it appears that he's trashing the idea of art made for the purpose of commerce. I don't think he is, though; it's really a refreshing and encouraging take on the age-old dilemma of commercialism versus creativity. Rather than seeing the two forces as an "either / or," I think he's seeing the two forces in the light of "both / and." Creating artistic work for the marketplace does not necessarily mean an artist is selling out, nor does the artist's work have to suffer in the name of commerce. And artists who can survive independently of the marketplace - pursuing their own visions without concern for its marketability - are the exception rather than the rule. For the rest of us, seeing both sides of the art/commerce coin is more than just survival, its truly inspirational.

Here's an example. The next time you're asked to create an illustration that at the outset may seem beyond the current state of your abilities, remind yourself that it's not you that's making the art, but it's the art that is making you. If you view your job as entirely a commercial endeavor, then you'd be tempted to tell clients with seemingly impossible illustration assignments to find someone with greater abilities or experience. But viewed in this new way, there's no other answer to give but, "Yes, of course I'll do it. And I'm gonna rock your little world, sucka!" (The "sucka" part is optional, and not typically recommended for most clients.)

Confidence comes from knowing that the art - the creative vision that's just waiting to be placed on paper - is going to pull you through the process. The art will make the artist.

Then, of course, the artist will make money.

Back to the drawing board.

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