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Step by Step
Painting with Dave Fox and Josh Hoffman |
List of Supplies
A Friend
3H Pencil
An Eraser
Arches 140lb. Cold Press
Liquid Acrylics
Brushes
Controlled Substances
1. First off, you'll need a friend. I
know most of you are nerds and
don't have friends, but maybe you
can pay someone you work with to help. They're probably nerds, too.
2. Second, you'll need some supplies. A pencil, harder ones such as 3H are good cause they don't mark up your paper too badly. An eraser, to fix the hundred of mistakes you'll make. Paper, arches 140lb. cold press is nice.
Paint, we enjoy liquid acrylics such as F&W or Schmincke. They are more lightfast than watercolor, which means they won't fade so quickly. But they dry quicker and are permanent, which means you have to
work quick.
Brushes, I like round, larger phony sable brushes, Josh uses flats or filberts or something. Use whatever works best for you.
3. Third, you'll need some ideas.
Maybe you can look on the computer at some people's websites, or in the tattoo magazines or something to rip off some ideas. We're sure most of you will have no problem with that. As the few others who do have a problem with that, you'll have to make do with what you've got upstairs.
Controlled substances can sometimes help out at this point. On the other hand, sometimes they can hurt. In this case, well, this was our case.
4. After one failed attempt, and a long past deadline, we decided on
trying something basic. Josh went for the good old-fashioned reaper.
Sketched it out, and decided it would be more fun if he was smoking a bong (refer back to the
controlled substances clause).
Then I came over his house, he made dinner, we smoked from his bong (ironic isn't it?), and watched the final episode of The Swan. We shared a good laugh. Ha. Ha.
Then I took his sketch and went home.
5. After a good night's sleep, I felt it was time that I squeeze something
out of the rest of this fine watercolor paper that would otherwise go
to waste. So, rather than just drawing wild bio-mechanics, and ruining Josh's beautiful reaper as happens in so many other collaborative art projects, I thought to myself, "hmmm, what would go well with a reaper
smoking a bong?" Yes, you heard it right. I thought. Try it sometime, it's been known to work wonders. OK, maybe it didn't work wonders, but I came up with some weird stuff that a stoned-out-of-his-fucking-skull reaper might be thinking about and/or seeing.
6. So I drew that shit in there, using the remaining paper as best as I
could, and like I said before, trying not to fuck up what Josh already
made look good. Then i started to paint. I outlined the hallucinations in color, as hallucinations are in real life. Remember, if you don't draw how things are in real life, you suck.
Then I had the bright idea to paint them with neon blacklight paint (ok, in the real world, hallucinations would glow in the dark, but I
thought the blacklight would be close enough). Now this paint is not liquid acrylic, it is regular acrylic craft paint. I figured if I watered it down and used it for highlights it would work ok. I even tested it on some scrap paper. Well if you're here for advice, here's mine: DON'T DO IT. Blacklight
paint sucks for watercolor technique.
Anyhow, I did my best to make the freaky shit glow, then I went back and shaded over it with the liquid acrylic. Then I gave the paper to Josh to make do, hoping he could make sense out of the disaster I created.
7. So Josh went and painted the reaper. Outlined it first. Did the black shading next. And then the color. I suppose you're looking for some painting technique advice here, huh? Something like, "dip the first brush in the paint, dip the second brush in the water, lay down the paint and pull out the edge with the water." Well, if you don't know how to paint with watercolors (liquid acrylics working basically the same, just, as I said before, drying faster), then this won't help you at all anyway.
Go learn to paint first.
8. Anyhow, after Josh painted the reaper smoking the bong, he ran into the dilemma that the gay pastelly look of the hallucinations were overpowered by the solid, full look of the reaper. And being that I was away on vacation for the weekend, Josh had to go into the background and fill in a bunch of solid black. And then outline the things in white. I felt bad, cause I woulda done that shit, had I been around. Oh well, sucks for him.
9. When he gave me the final version of the painting, I went in and darkened up some of the shading in my stuff just a little more, to make it look more solid like the other half. These are the reprocussions of using crappy blacklight paint.And there it was, our finished reaper smoking a bong, seeing weird things flying through the air collaborative painting.
10. So let's recap the important stuff about collaborative painting.
You need friends.
You must be able to paint.
Most importantly, your ideas should COMPLIMENT each others, not ruin
them.
Now get off your ass and do something for a change. That's the only way
you're ever gonna learn, anyhow.
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