Summertime Rolls

Happy summer my muddy people! Wow can�t believe we�re in june already. 2017 just seems to be flying by.



I wanted to post an update on that last forest painting id started last month. Glazed some color into it, then started painting into it pretty directly detailing and dialing in the values. With a foggy scenario like this I�m having to be very careful with my values to make sure stuff in the background recedes properly.



Working digitally there are layer modes and tools that can easily add atmospheric effects. It's been a great exercise to approach it analog. It's a good reminder that painting really just comes down to putting the right colored shape in the right place Think Ive got a game plan on how to close it out now, just need to burn some hours on it and resolve things more.

Been kind of recapping the painting these trees for the past couple of years, and Im realizing that what attracts me to painting a specific setting is some sort of unique lighting scenario. Working in a slow, detailed manner Ive found allows for some in-depth problem solving on the specifics of how a certain lighting situation can affect the objects within the scene. This type of study has really helped me with invented lighting for concept and storyboard work. Ive actually been kind of surprised at how much i'm pulling from these and applying into my production work.



Early on, I started with painting night shots, as while id done a good amount of night time city paintings, I hadn�t done much non-urban night stuff. Theres much less light pollution out here so shadows tend to be darker. The first one I tried was a backlit scene, so I could concentrate mainly on the language and calligraphy of painting branches.

Then I bought a flashlight :), and started playing with that type of harsh frontal lighting. This tends to make things feel kind of creepy with objects emerging from the blackness. Theres like a �headlights on the highway� effect with the white light and harsh cast shadows that�s super cinematic. I have a few ideas I want to explore further in this vein at some point.

It was around this same time I also started playing around more with heavy atmosphere and foggy scenes. These paintings are all about edges and careful placement of values. At a certain point it can almost begin to feel monochromatic because the colors and values sit co closely together. It becomes really important to do test marks before diving into areas so you don�t throw the whole key off. Feels like I�ve come full circle here where I�m back to painting fog again (though theres sunlight this time!)

Here are a few additional lighting situations I've tried to paint:



Back lit dusk...

Front lit sunset...

Dappled light...

Noon sunlight...

Sun through fog...

Moonlight...

Im constantly looking out the window on the hunt for unique lighting scenes, and keep my camera near the door so I can run out and shoot reference on a moment's notice. Looking forward to these long summer days and hopefully they provide some cool material to work with :)



On a side note, I also finally got this gem framed! Mr Manchess painted this at the Seattle Conceptart.org workshop back in like 2007? Only took 10 years to get a frame on it :P. Greg is and will always be one of my painting heroes. There are so many great marks in this it just blows my mind. Whenever I feel like Im actually getting somewhere with painting, Ill take a look at this as a

reminder of how far I�ve still got to go!

Side Project Fun

-By Justin Coro Kaufman

Hi Muddy Colorers! I've got a couple of side projects to share that I�ve been working on. Above is a block in for a new forest painting started recently. I used this photo I took out in the backyard one foggy morning as my reference:

I want to try and see how close i can get to capturing that atmosphere. I usually start these monochromatically and just kind of push and scratch the paint around to describe features and surfaces.



I use primarily bristle brushes so I can get extra scratchy, and Windsor-Newton olive green paint, which is transparent so I can get a wide range of marks and values by pushing and scratching into it. I use refined linseed oil to thin paint out for areas like the background, but use it mostly straight from the tube for the ground cover. This took about 2 days off working off and on�maybe about 8-10 hours total so far?



Next steps will be to glaze some color into the pic and lay in the sky. Both will help establish the key and value range as well as base temperature/color. Still got a long way to go on this. Ill try to post an update next month. Hope I don�t screw it up :D!!!

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Also last week I wrapped up an illustration I�ve been working on for this Endangered Species book my friend Manny Carrasco has been putting together through a non-profit called Expedition Art. Manny�s got a lot of friends, and theres a ton of amazing artists who�ve contributed art for it



Should be a really cool book.



I chose to digitally paint the giant tortoise. Always kind of had a thing for tortoises. We have a yellow foot and a giant sulcata here at our place. They're wonderfully sweet and curious animals. The sulcata in particular is extremely friendly and comes running out of his turtle house to say hi every morning when we let him out. So cool!



Started sketching in Photoshop, then brought it into Procreate, then into Paint Storm, then back into Photoshop for final touches. Not how I usually work, but just kind of wanted to mess around a bit approach-wise. One of my favorite things about working digitally is that you can kind of throw everything but the kitchen sink at it and really have fun experimenting in a way that would be impossible with traditional media. Bouncing in between digital painting programs gets even crazier because you can kind of leverage each one for what it does best. For instance, Procreate is great for drawing, photoshop is the best for compositing and color corrections, and also has a pretty good brush engine, and Paint storm is really nice for juicy marks and happy accidents. Combining these provides a wide arsenal of tools.

Initially, I worked up a couple of sketches but in the end went with the close up since it helped keep the focus on the animal and not the scene.



Worked pretty directly on top of the sketch, working with a variety of different brushes. Kind of just experimenting with textures and color and exploring different ways to describe surfaces.

Once I had it laid in I bounced it between Paint Storm and Procreate, rendering and refining the drawing while trying to keep the marks fresh. fun times!

A Tale of Two Paintings

-By Justin Coro Kaufman

This past year�s been kind of crazy around here. Between MB work and the barn remodel I haven�t been able to oil paint much. Now that I�m set up out here (!!!), I�ve been easing back into it a bit more. Haven�t been able to start anything new yet, but had these two paintings I�d started last year and for their own respective reasons hadn�t been able to finish them.



Hate unfinished things hanging out in the studio, but I�d put enough time into each of them to where there was investment there... I'd normally just sand them down for the panels, but with these two, I thought it�d be fun to resurrect them try to carry 'em to the finish line- and really glad I did!



It was fun to work back into something after so long. Found myself a lot less invested in things, which made it way easier to change stuff. It's interesting to see how differently you view something after a few months.



The first one I worked back into, I�d originally started last fall. I based it off of foggy shot I took of the pond out in our yard. Foggy scenes are deceptively difficult, in that it's not so much about surface details but more about careful value placement and accurate silhouettes. I started this one by painting the sky first, and then into the back tree line and foreground elements. Painted this all wet in wet in order to get the �quiet� soft brushwork necessary to block in subtle values. Once the first pass was dry, I painted that central tree in the middle ground on top.

There were things that bothered me about this painting, but I just didn�t have the time/motivation to dig in and try to figure out how to fix it. So it sat on the bookshelf for a couple of months, taunting me every time I walked by. I made a mental list of things I wanted to try on it, and would think to myself �oh just you wait til that barn is finished, then your ass is MINE�



Finally got to sit down with it last week for a bit and ended up repainting almost the whole entire thing. Taking a hard look at it, I realized that it was too yellow and didn�t really capture that cold wet smokey atmosphere we get out here sometimes. Repainted the sky much cooler this time, and knocked more color and temperature in general across the whole thing.

Cooled off the grass and got to detail out areas as well, but still tried to keep things soft to push that atmosphere. SO SATISFYING getting in there and refining stuff after months of it sitting there staring at me. Still needs a couple more passes to refine a few things but I feel like I�m in a better place with it now.

This other one I started last summer. This is of a clearing off in the back of our property. I really like this area and how the heavy tree cover dapples the ground, and I love these crazy old trees with the exposed root systems. I came out here to shoot reference at least a dozen times before I got anything promising, and even after deciding on this shot, I thought long and hard before I started. To be honest I think I kind of psyched myself out on it. There�s a LOT of information to deal with, and I felt like it was necessary to try to interpret as much of it as possible. I got through a monochrome block in, but at some point just threw my hands up in frustration and stopped working on it.

So it sat there on the shelf behind me for like 6 months. At some point I glazed color into it, and had started picking at the tree stump, but just couldn�t figure out a solid approach to it. That is, until a few days ago, when I pulled it back out and started messing with it again.

It�s going in a very different direction than the foggy scene, where here I�m painting �noise� to describe a lot of the surfacing. I started with the left background, and have been working my way left to right. Trying some harsher �crisp� edge work in order to push the surfacing and also to help establish a wide value scale to get that dappling effect going. About halfway there on this pass. It�s taking forever, but starting to get what I�m after, and hoping one more pass of some broken dry brush stuff here and there and we�ll be in good shape to bring it in for a landing.

Some Self Reflection

-By Justin Coro Kaufman

I�ve painted self portraits fairly regularly for the past 10 years or so. It's a great exercise on a few fronts. For one, its nice to paint a head that will hold exactly how you want it for as long as you want to paint it. It's not easy to spontaneously find someone to sit for 5-6 hours while you paint them.



Its also interesting to try to look at and convey your face as objectively as possible. We all have this somewhat distorted self image of ourselves. To try to see past that and instead focus in on conveying shape/edge/value relationships takes practice, But its helpful in getting better likenesses of other people too.



I like doing self portraits all prima without underdrawing. It�s a perfect subject to practice drawing with a brush as its as complex as you want to make it but its not too committal. I try to light myself with the same light as my support and practice mixing flesh tones by literally holding the paint up to my face. I try to paint with deliberate marks and as little blending as possible using mostly natural bristle egberts and rounds to paint thickly. Above all else, I try to have fun and experiment in ways I might not have the balls to do on a painting with more riding on it.



I went through and pulled a few self portraits from over the years that I thought I�d share, and also sat down and recorded a little time-lapse of one too.





This is the first one that really clicked for me. This was around 2005. We�d just started MB and everything was fresh and new. I look like a kid.

This was around 2007-2008? Getting thick with that paint! Not the best likeness but remember feeling like I'd made some breakthroughs on modeling form.

2008. Just liked this one because it was done on a piece of junk wood and ontop of a failed self portrait.

This was 2009. Painted during a beard-off we had at work.

2010. Won the beard off. Was around this time I overheard some construction workers cracking jokes about how I looked like Jesus while walking to work one morning.

2010 Decided to do something about that biblical look.. If you grow your hair out its 100% necessary to cut a sweet mullet before you shave it all off. And paint it.

2012 beard�s back!

2014 Set up two mirrors for this one. Painted it with leftover paint from an another self portrait but ended up liking this one better.

Painted this one in 2014 as well. Put in a few sittings on this.

Early 2015. This was the first one I painted after we moved up to Washington.

Here is a photo and a timelapse and of its current state. Might work back into this one and refine some things.

A New Place to Work

-By Justin Coro Kaufman

I wanted to share a project we�ve been working on for almost a year now. It's not a painting, but more a space to paint in. A new BARN STUDIO!!!



When we moved our family out to the woods a couple years ago, one of the things I was the most excited about was the barn. It wasn't anything too special, a humble, empty outbuilding across the yard, BUT it had a water a sewage line running to it, lots of potential, and sits less than 100 feet from our place. Great opportunity for a studio conversion.



For pretty much the entire duration of my professional career, my home set up has been in the living room. Pre-kids, this set up made sense, as Ive always liked being in the center the house, where I could hang out with my better half, half-watch TV and work at the same time. This set up served me well for the better part of the past 16 years. Lately though, with two little dudes tearing through the house, its become more and more difficult to work like this. Don't get me wrong, LOVE the kids, but DON�T love it when they draw or paint on my stuff while I�m using the bathroom or grabbing something to drink. Want to encourage them to draw and paint (just maybe not on dad�s stuff). There�s now a real need for a space to keep things separate (and safe) now for everybody�s well-being.



Enter BARN! The possibility of fleshing an entire building out to accommodate all of my arting needs has been something I�ve fantasized about for years. Having no construction background whatsoever made it kind of a daunting task. There�s SO much that goes into a project like this. Being a complete amateur, I figured the best way to start would be to take measurements and fall back on my 3d skills to build out a 3d model that I could iterate proposed alterations into.

This proved to be valuable as we started the actual work, since we could refer back and also try things out virtually before committing to it physically. decided to make the downstairs the oil painting area, since the open bay and barn doors make it easy to bring large canvases in and out. the upstairs would be set up as the digital part of the operation, or MB north :) where I could put my computer stuff.

We started out with the plumbing, since the water and sewage came into the building at the opposite end from where we intended to put the bathroom. First step was to have a concrete cutter come in and basically cut almost the entire foundation in half. Once that was completed, the plumber came in and trenched the new lines. We also added in lines for a shop sink in the painting bay, as well as a sink for the upstairs office area as well.

The actual building began once the lines were all roughed in and in place. We�re fortunate that our neighbor is a contractor and custom home builder who agreed to take the barn on as a side project portfolio piece type thing. Im limited in terms of handiness, so it was nice to have an experienced hand to power through the more specialized tasks that required actual skill. I handled most of the low-skill grunt stuff like demolition, installing insulation, site cleaning, painting, grouting etc.



The entire downstairs was originally covered in cedar panels, which looked kind of cool, but wasn�t insulated and didn�t lend itself well for hanging stuff, so I tore it all out and stripped the walls down to the studs.

Then came the reframing and window replacement. the windows were initially single pane�s of glass nailed permanently into place. we kept most of the windows the same size, but replaced with them with double paned ones that open and close. we put in a couple of large picture windows toward the back of the building to introduce more light and create some better views of our yard :) The upstairs picture window as particularly difficult to put in since its about 300 pounds and had to be hoisted into position about 15 feet off the ground. It was a relief nobody was killed. Also added a couple of skylights and made the cupola operational to increase air flow upstairs.

We just finished grouting the bathroom, which ended up being a fairly involved task in and of itself. We tiled the whole room so its pretty much a gigantic shower that you can hose down. It'll be easy to keep clean and also to wash mastiffs in there :)

There's still a laundry list of stuff to finish up, but once some final electrical stuff is finished and the sinks/toilet/stove are installed I can move in and start making stuff. After about a year, we�re now weeks away. Its been a very education experience, but Im SO ready to get out there and get my hands dirty at this point. Beyond excited! Maybe now my next post can be about making actual art or something!!!