The Art of Sandro Duarte

The other one - Digital painting (Krita)

2016-05-31T12:58:00.000-07:00

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Somewhere in between a sketch and a finished artwork...

Painted using Krita. Free and open source software.

By the Piano - Ballpoint pen illustration

2016-05-12T01:50:00.001-07:00

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Done on an A3 paper sheet (29,7 x 42,0 cm /11,69 x 16,54 inches) with a lot of color and black ballpoint pens, super fun to do but also a challenge to get a large area with almost the same color right, like the wall.

Although it is indeed a black piano, it was not the case to use a black pen all the way down and go "full opacity" because there are some subtle transition between shades of gray.

One example is on the reflection of the photographer foot.

here's some wip's and a timelapse video:

Garage - Conclusion (3/3)

2016-04-20T14:50:00.003-07:00

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Getting the light to work with the car, bike and the garage itself was a challenge. After give it some thought, I use what I already had create: the SketchUp models.
Blender is awesome and all but it's far easier to recreate a daylight environment with SketchUp.

One of the cool things about being a 2D artist is that today it's easier to find image references, for instance I wanted a BMW rim type and while a Google image search can provide some good results, one can also use 3D models available on specialized sites like www.turbosquid.com where you can choose to buy, download the free ones or just watch the preview image if that's enough of a reference to project in hand.

In the end of the research phase here's how my folders look like:

Conclusion:
Gouache is a new media for me but I can wait util I have the time to work with it again, it is the closest I've got to digital painting because you can go back fix things, pick up color paint over or just clean up revive dried colors and so on.
I'm so used to have a reference photo to illustrate, like with my ballpoint pen commissions, that creating a painting, as a commission, was refreshing and challenging and it opened a new horizon for me, the craft of putting together elements to achieve a final painting it's super!
Here's some details from the painting:

Garage - The execution (2/3)

2016-04-15T12:12:00.002-07:00

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To be able to draw the lines I use a twine fixed with a tack, then I marked the points on the canvas to finally, use a ruler. It's tricky when vanish line is far from the canvas, for the left side I had to put the canvas upside down and move it almost one meter to the right to get it to match...

Finally, I use watercolor as underpaint to help define the colors,

It was all going great until I waterbrushed the car...That's when I realized that I should never have used a soft pencil for the lines because it smears...a lot.

To fix it, I sealed the canvas, something I should have done right after the pencil drawing was done, oh well...

Getting straight lines with gouache (or acrylic, oil) it's really hard, I'd never even think of it until I had to do it myself, so I got masking tapes to try "cheat" but it didn't work, the paint end up going under the tape because of the texture of the canvas...

"Use a ruler" a voice inside my head was screaming like it was the most obvious thing to do...but yeah, it fails too for the same reason as the tape and plus the fact that I had to hold the ruler against the canvas and risking to mess up with the other areas I've been painting before...

In the end I just had to do it by hand with my new "mahl stick" made of a piece of wood and a bottle cork,well it works!

When I paint I always start by the darkest spot (the higher value) because that will define the whole painting as no other place will be darker then that, at least that's how I do with my ballpoint pens illustrations, with this paint I knew the darker spot would be on the car and it would a very dark blue so I was more worried about the rest and that's way I started on the shelves (I also do this because if there's a place you can mess up and still keep hope its's here my friend, at least for ballpoint pen).

But painting with gouache it's so fun because you can go back to fix things, you can use the colors you mixed and dried by adding a little bit of water, although the best practice is to add more paint instead of water and you can have this kind of palettes and it's alright!

I'm using this small brush for the details on the bike, I decided to go with a different style and a different position or the bike because...the way I first put it didn't really make sense as bikes almost always have the side rest bar on the left and not on the right as I first draw it so I had to redraw it but the canvas was already sealed and that's when I started to "draw" with paint! It's an amazing thing to do, just get the brush with paint and start painting shapes and to see it come together, there's no turning back now, I can assure you!

Here's an image I put on my Instagram to show that particular process

More on the next and final post about this painting.

Garage - The concept (1/3)

2016-04-13T06:37:00.002-07:00

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At first, the client wasn't sure about what she wanted, there was this main concept of a car (a BMW) and a motorcycle( a Harley Davidson) on a garage surround by tatto stuffs, rims on the wall and a giant poster of a futebol club, after some texts and emails I send her a draft I created using SketchUp and some models from the 3D wharehouse.

More back and forth with emails and some more SketchUp drafts later, we ended up reducing the scene to only the bike and the car on the garage but now I had to figure out the best composition, she send me a image of how she wanted the garage to look like so I create a draft based on that but it wasn't coming along so we ended up sticking with the image itself for the background.

After getting the car and the bike on the right perspective I was ready to start painting but first I had to transfer the composition to the canvas...

There's a lot of ways to transfer a drawing to a canvas, using graphite on the back of the page and then using a ballpoint pen to trace the drawing on the canvas as a cheap carbon paper is one way or using a grid system, but when the destination area is quite large the best way it's to use a projector, That is, providing you have one...

After seeing a lot of DIY projector online i thought i could try it myself.
The requirements were a cellphone and a magnifier so I got them on a shoebox for just then realize that the magnifier I had wasn't that good and as result the cellphone ended up outside the box, defeating the purpose of having it in the first place...

But it was done now, so all I had to do was to get my pencil and start drawing on the canvas, well, it's not as simple as I first thought, because you need it to be dark so the image can be projected (a cellphone can´t generate the light a "real" projector can), but to see the lines you are drawing becomes a issue.
After getting the landmarks on place, I had to redraw everything so it could be ready for painting and there's when i notice the lens distortion caused by the cheap magnifier...

If it was a portrait, that is the most recurrent subject I paint /draw, it would be easier to fix but with construction subjects the lines had to match so now I'm out to find a ruler big enough to fit the canvas and to use to get each vanish point...