Art Thread: Yukon Artwork

[yukon]

I feel a little strange about setting up a art thread for myself , so somebody tell me if its not ok to do this. I graduated a couple of years ago from Parsons School of Design, and since then have kinda lost my motivation for my own work. I must say I'm pretty new to Hellboy, and that Mignola's work has been an inspiration to me and is slowly getting me back to the drawing board. anyway I really miss getting feedback, like I did in school as I find it really motivates me to get working! SO i'd love it if I could post some of my drawings and paintings so all you folks can let me know what you think. thanks! the first is a pretty old painting ( got to be over five years old now , and still not really complete it was painted in glazes so it took alot of time) It kinda reminds me of sam keith in a weird way, the second is from a series of drawings I did my senior year. floating rhino, I did hundred of rhino drawings that year and culminated the year with a pair of 5 footx 5 panels of two rhinos and the third is well just me screwing around. ewww mandrill!

[E. Spears]

I like the horse painting a lot. The colors are very nice, I think. The rhino is sweet, as well. The mandril's face was hard for me to make out at first, but it's still a cool one.

Be sure and share some more art.

-ers

[Conundrum]

Yeah, definitely cool stuff. Love the rhino. Post more, more, more. Try some Hellboy pics.

[jnapper]

I feel a little strange about setting up a art thread for myself , so somebody tell me if its not ok to do this.

Totally cool for you to do it yourself. :)
I sometimes set up art threads when a new user begins posting two or more threads of his work-- it's just to combine all the works into one place.

Your pieces are wonderful-- the horse with the baboon sketch makes me want to see you do an Abe and a moneky with a gun! :)

[yukon]

ok here are some more
1 and 2 is the latest painting I completed. Its oil on canvas
3 is my painting that was shown in our senior show (whoo hoo it's the only piece of my work that ended up in NYC gallery, ok it was the schools gallery , but its something)
4 another recent painting wheee its shiny! lots of glazing and sanding ( i'm not totally happy with the composition. The colors, oddly enough were inspired by Uma Thurmans outfit in the final fight scene with David carridan in Kill bill Vol. 2. The weird places we get inpiration from....
5 is the drawing I did at the American museum of natural history that inspired paintings 3 & 4
thanks for the comments I REALLY appreciate it. I promise to do some more hellboy stuff. I have to finish that abe and mermaid drawing, then I think I'll definately do some armed monkeys. I love mignolas sense of humor ....

[Ken O]

Wow. Thank you for sharing. Great stuff, the detail in the pencils is just wow.

[morna]

Nice stuff yukon. The new horse really puts me in mind of the Lascaux (sp?) horses with the short legs and big feet and big plump rumps ... not to mention the colour! Very nicely rendered. I liked the hovering rhino too!

[Petersen]

Wow the white stag on red is graphicly wonderful!!

[Tad]

Really nice stuff!

[ReptileJK]

Wow! Love the Indian Stage pencil.

Very cool!

RepT

[E. Spears]

ooohh! I really love the 'kill bill' stag. The colors are really great, and I like the composition a lot.

Great stuff all around.

-ers

[Hellsaint]

Yukon-- I like the rhino pic alot, the curves just suits it nicely. Nice to know an artist who likes sketching animals, great work :)

[Maija]

The stag pieces are great.

Have you ever worked in encaustic or egg tempera? Your style looks like it would really lend itself to that kind of layering and translucency.

[yukon]

I've mucked around a bit with encaustics, and made my own temperas, I didn't have a great deal of luck with either, I'm pretty spoiled by oils they stay plastic for so long and are very forgiving. I do however cut my oils with huge amounts of mediums to achive translucency, and favor more translucent colors I'm a titanium white lover!. I used to make alot of my own mediums, all sorts of combinations of varnishes, and stand and linseed oils. As of recently I've been using alot of galkyd slow dry, its a great medium but its brutal on your brushes; I recently had to replace most of my brushes because of it, expensive!
do you know anyway to slow down the drying process of encaustics, or temperas? I'm pretty fond of slow drying, I've even gone so far as to cut my paints with clove oil which slows drying to a crawl ( it can take a pigment that normally drys in 48 hrs to take weeks to dry) great stuff but you need to be careful not to use too much or your get a runny mess. Oh and it smells great!

[yukon]

okie heres pretty much my first hb. a quick drawing in vine. I'm crappy at male anatomy to begin with and hb's anatomy is pretty wacky. The duster is awesome, but I can't tell whats going on underneath! I didn't mean to make him look so dejected, just was trying to squeeze him into the paper, lazy composer I am!

[Tad]

okie heres pretty much my first hb. a quick drawing in vine. I'm crappy at male anatomy to begin with and hb's anatomy is pretty wacky. The duster is awesome, but I can't tell whats going on underneath! I didn't mean to make him look so dejected, just was trying to squeeze him into the paper, lazy composer I am!

Shorts are tight, like biker pants. He's barrel chested, meaning the widest part of his chest is wider than his shoulders. And his right hand is huge compared to his left. I'd say your version of his left hand is a little oversized and the right is way undersized. Finally, his legs are relatively short. Also, his feet should be tiny and his tail thick.

There's a model sheet by Mignola in the Art of Hellboy. Maybe some nice person will post it here for you.

Nice work in general. Keep it up. :D

[yukon]

thanks tad! thats helpful. I really have to pick up a cpy of the art of , I'd love to see that model sheet

[E. Spears]

Nice hellboy, I actually like this take on him. my only crit would be his left arm, it looks a little off. Everything else is sweet!

-ers

[Hellsaint]

Its a good sketch! His tail and rhod are my only qualms tho. He looks kinda sad cramped there. :D

[Tad]

Found it! But you should still buy the book. Get it in softcover!

[yukon]

thanks tad! I'm watching a copy of art of..on ebay as we speak. what wee little feet! This page really helps

[morna]

ya, tiny wrists and ankles too! ... and non-threatening slopey shoulders.

[yukon]

silliness from I saw an octopus thread... water colored. I can't wait to get my scanner back online b/c these photos are terrible, color is pretty off.

[Petersen]

Is this on 2 pieces of paper? or is that line near the top from photographing it? what is the size? you blend a nice subtle color with some interesting detailed linework. Have you atempted storytelling in this style? I think it could be very compelling.

[Maija]

Ha! That's a wonderful piece, Yukon!

I hope our silliness inspires you to create even more surreality. It really is a lovely painting.

[yukon]

Its actually three pieces of paper, I have this stack of typing paper thats been lying around and I've been doodling on it. I really didn't mean for this to be much of anything more than a doodle; hense the awful paper its on. typing paper and water color don't really like each other by the way. I taped the paper together as I worked because it needed a bit of space to breathe.I'd say its about 11" x 15". I think I'm too much a chicken for story telling, I should really try though..... thanks for all the nice comments and suggestions its greatly appreciated ! here are some more pics ( these are probably the closest I've ever come to storytelling, not much to say, except they were meant to be funny, and everyone at school seemed to take them much to seriously. oh and the last one is a study with rambling included, but i like the drawings. don't worry it doesn't make much sense to me either.

[yukon]

thanks Tad! I printed out that scan and blew it up, ( its hanging above ye old drawing table!) And thanks MM for the drawings! that hecate is oh so very beardsley. Both of these are oil on, sadly, cardboard ( can't be wasting money right now on canvas and masonite for studies) hopefully I'll get these done to a point that I'm happy with so I can do a full scale painting I'm thinking HB and evil water nymphs oooo evil nymphs!

[Tad]

Both look great with the exception of the RHoD. Bigger is better! The Hecate study is sweet! Great stuff.

[gary bolt]

Yukon, your studies are beautiful!

I have minimal experience with paints. They look more like watercolours to me. Do you dilute the paint in some way to make it more fluid? Both pieces are great, but I really like the Hecate. You are packin' some serious talent! :)

[Conundrum]

Yukon, I agree great stuff. Tad's right about HB's hand and this is just personal preference but I'd like to see Hecate's tail.

[Gene Poonyo]

ya, tiny wrists and ankles too! ... and non-threatening slopey shoulders.
Believe it or not, that was the reason, except for the shoulders, I didn't get the big Bowen HB statue. But now one cannot get it for less than $500.00 USD anymore. Sigh...

[yukon]

Darn it Tad ! I was hoping you wouldn't notice the RHOD! I'll fix it :D Both of these need work, but since theyre both oil I gotta wait for them to dry a bit so I can glaze another layer of paint in without picking up the paint underneath. These are both oil I favor oil and I typically use and underpainting which is what is being done here. with an underpainting oil is applied in very washy, thin layers to basically lay out the structure of the drawing underneath the painting. Fine layers of translucent paint are then put on top of the underpainting ( allowing for drying in between layers) to add more colour and Light. The old masters used this method in their paintings, ( allbeit their paintings took years to complete) Its the reason in those style of paintings the flesh of their models looks so real ( afterall our skin when peeled off in thin layers is quite translucent, and its the cumalative effect of many lightly pigmented layers on top of one another that gives flesh its color) Sorry I'm rambling a bit. Take a look at Ingres ( in person , if you can ) he is a God at this. ahywhooo back to work! I'll post updates as I go. ......stupid rasafrickin rhod............

[yukon]

another version of hecate ( in progress )when I first saw mignolas version of her I thought that pattern on her face was actually part of her face, and very snake like.The huge bulk of her hair, looked to me like a cobras hood. I kinda lost that in this version, I'm hoping I can do a rendered version of her and then glaze the pigmentation over her features to get that Carnivale mask like effect. we'll see......

[E. Spears]

I really like the Hecate paintings, I am really interested in seeing the progress of the newest one. The hellboy study is sweet, too. I agree, the RHoD was a bit on the small side, but it's still great :D. I really like all the rhino sketches, they've got a nice loose quality to them.

-ers

[yukon]

here is a little bit of progression. I really needed to rework her face I think I've got it pretty close to where I want it. I need to figure out how to handle the scale pattern on her tail( I tried a bunch of stuff but didn't really care for what I came up with and ended up wiping it out) Any suggestions?

[Maija]

Whoa! I can't believe this is just a study on cardboard. Tragic! But you're going to carry this over to canvas, so that should make it alllll better.

I bow to your skill. You asked me a question earlier about using solvents and extenders and such, but you're way ahead of me technically. Although I was a painting major, I fell out of doing actual painting quite some time ago, though looking at your work makes me wish I had a studio and some money to buy piles of oils and brushes and canvas again. Someday.

I can't wait to see this Hecate piece blown up. I'd sorta like to see it even more than Hellboy (blasphemy!) just because it's nice to see someone other than Hellboy get a treatment by a different artist and Hecate is an interesting subject.

I would suggest you might treat the scales according to your usual technique: in translucent layers of brush-strokes-as-scales built up and then glazed over, so she has an oily reptilian sheen about her.

[E. Spears]

really sweet, Yukon. The face is really cool, definitely your own take on her. I'm loving what you did with the background colors, very atmospheric. Now I MUST see it finished :D.

-ers

[morna]

Ooooo.. nice Yukon! She's very much more malevolent now. Love the suggestion of skull over her shoulder. The transparency of your oils is intriguing...the stuff I use is very opaque and dead seeming in comparison. I am looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

[yukon]

I don't think this study will ever make it to canvas. I've really already invested too much time into it, and I'd probably loose interest if I did a transfer to canvas. oooops....

Morna, what skull? I din't put any skulls in there, however I thought it was a great idea so here are some skulls. I wonder what else I should paint back there.....

[Ken O]

Wow. That is breath taking. Awesome work.

[morna]

Morna, what skull? I din't put any skulls in there,

;)

ps I love the new skulls. and ... harpys come to mind as possible background acoutrements

[yukon]

whoa subliminal skull... The will of Hecate I suppose ... morna is your new avatar one of you pieces?

[morna]

yeah "Los Muertos 4". It's from a series I did inspired by the day of the dead thing they have in Mexico... a rare foray into recognisable imagery. The current avatar is the "back" of the piece. This one was the only one with the skeleton hand, the others had another skull face... Janus-like. One side tended to be scary and the other more comical or cartoony. I love the piece and photos really don't do it justice. It's within reach of me as I type this... you should see it full of tulips... crazy-ass!


It was actually my first avatar ...Tad said it showed style... I've loved him ever since. Stroking an arist's ego is like feeding a stray dog

[yukon]

NICE! I'm so jealous of you glassblowers, I know next to nothing about the process( wish I did though) your work is great! Do you have galleries that carry your stuff anywhere about the east coast? I'd love to see them in person.
You just sent me on a mad search for an artists work that I saw WAAAy back in 2000 at the heller gallery in NYC. http://www.hellergallery.com/ar_morris.htm (amazing what memories are made fresh again, when the right buttons are pushed) I'm sure you already know this gentlemens work, but the bone references, and insect like motifs you use recall this show,(thanks!).

I'm going to post the final of the HB study I did. This ones gone as far as its going to go,because its time to get cracking on some REAL painting ( I can't keep working on cardboard, its making me sad! I need to get some gessoed panels going!)
RHOD is still pretty lame, and the "Crown of the apocalypse" looks way more like "Tiara of the apocalypse"But hey its got funny pointing faerys . Annoying little buggers they are, maybe that is why Hb looks so grumpy in this study.

....it could be the tiara though.....ooops

[Hellsaint]

Great hb yukon :)
I thought the crown looks too much like the flames, but this is a neat piece.

[yukon]

todays inky doodle. Its Ganesha! ( I always secretly wished he'd show up in Hellboy) I figure if I ever did a book Ganesha would be a frequent cameo appearance...

[yukon]

here are the last steps with the hecate study. I've had a change of heart and I think I am going to take Hecate to a real panel. I'd love some suggestionson what I should change from the studies. I think with the final study I got a little too "rainbow bright" with the colour and I's like to subdue that a bit in the final. I also want to shift her pose a bit to make it a little more dynamic( she looks stiff to me ) I think I should also like her to look a little less like a member of KISS. oopsie.please let me know what you think.

[yukon]

I've been working on this for a couple of weeks I'm just starting to add the foliage (red leaves blowing through the air and plants and grass) so this is kinda the "bones". eeeevil unicorn....... the colors are pretty off in the larger shot (camera is crap and is begging to be replaced). The second detail is much closer to the actual color of the piece. oh quick question, how do all you lovely folks get the pictures to actually show up in the post as apposed to show up as an attachement?

[morna]

wow kool piece yukon! I'll wait 'till it's finished for any crit stuff... but so far so good!

Apparently, you have to have acess to a website to host the image for it to just be there... which is nice aesthetically but I find that over time a lot of these degenerate and all that's left is the pesky little red "X" in a white rectangle. I like the links for an art thread 'cause they'll always be there.

[Jan Bentzen]

Yukon - I´m impressed with your art. Very "poetic".

You have to join the art-exchange next time :)

- Jan

[Hellsaint]

Hooo... Nice piece! Actually, about an unicorn, its nemesis is a nightmare, black horse with flames on its hooves. Still, the drawing is great :)

[kid cthulhu]

Wow, Yukon!

Wow...

I had no idea. I should spend more time browsing, there is constantly more and more amazing stuff from all of you crazy boarders.

[Zabalou]

Great art Yukon, it's like an illustration for a novel, i read that someone said before 'very poetic' i agree, i think so.
Awsome, i'm very impressed of what you have done here. :cool: :D :cool:

[yukon]

thanks for the compliments. I'd love to do the holiday art exchange it looks like a blast. I've made a bit of progress on the little HB and unicorn painting, but I'm basically hatching when I put in the plants so its a super sllloooowww process. I picked up some MDF ( 24" x 48" ) so I can blow up the Hecate study. The original was 11"x 22" so this scaled up version should give me a little more breathing room. The proportions are going to be pretty different however. I'll post more when I'm done.

[yukon]

I haven't updated this in awhile, I'm still working on the other stuff,however I totally blew my first attempt at that hecate blowup ( good thing I bought several sheets of MDF :) ) any who I need to work on these little water colors as the season out here on cape cod is on its way. I work ( in the summer) for a small non for profit that researches the whale species that occur off of cape cod, and I wanted to do some little drawings and water colors for them to sell to raise some extra revenue. I did some small paintings of some cetaceans as practice runs but they need a bit of fine tuning
1. Atlantic white sided dolphin ( they are beautiful and occur pretty frequently around these parts.) the anatomy is a little funky. flukes and flippers need to be reshaped, and he should have a distinctive underbite like all dolphins. I have to try to be pretty accurate. The colors I think are pretty dead on ( blue needs to be toned down a touch)
2. Humpback whale. This one has a lot more whimsy to it he's a little short in the bodyand his head shape is a little off
3 for kicks and B/c I was attaching stuff, a Wapati study I did at the The american Museum of natural history ( its got paint and stuff all over it from mucking about in the studio as reference)
I really should put together a web page :o just haven't the slightest idea how

[Petersen]

I really like the Wapati study and the paint only adds to the feel of it. I know it was just a study, but the balance of how it deconstructs from it's head down is wonderful.

[E. Spears]

I agree, the Wapati study kicks ass. And that Ganesha picture is awesome. You're right, he would make a sweet character in Hellboy :).

Great stuff, Yukon.

-ers

[gary bolt]

Those new images are great, Yukon. I like the humper. The line where the dark upper half meets the pale lower half is beautiful.

[morna]

Yukon, I have to say I agree with these guys. The Wapati study is wonderful. He makes me remember being in Banff and seeing Elks walking around in the city.

liking the humpy too





edit: damn we're going to have to stop posting on the same thread at the same time... with these avatars it's just too cute - like old couples who dress alike. jikes!

[kid cthulhu]

if I ever did a book Ganesha would be a frequent cameo appearance...

Cool!

He's always been my favorite god. Thing for elephants and all that...

And yes, he would be sweet in Hellboy. HB goes to India would be amazing!
I'm sure Mike's thought about it at some point or another.

[Maija]

The humpback whale painting is gorgeous and I also like the looseness of the wapiti drawing. It reminds me of a photograph that was in a "Best Mountain Photography" show at the Banff Centre a couple of years ago of a wapiti skull under the ice of an alpine lake. This sketch echoes that spookiness.



*Pictures morna and Gary in matching powder blue track suits*

Tee hee hee!

[yukon]

hellboy in Indiaaaaaa.... how cool would that be? imagine all the mignola indian statues! and the colors!I know "gunga din" was referenced in one of the HB books. I'd totally think MM would have a sort of Kipling handling of a HB story in India, awww now I wish it really exsisted :o
thanks for the nice words everyone the wapiti is one of my favorites, my senior work ( when I was in school ) kinda culminated with the deconstructed and ( for lack of a better word) "ghosted" animals. I've always had a conservationist, and nostalgic bent in my works of animals. The ghost animals (red stag painting thats on the thread) was heavily infuenced by alot of the ideas in miyazaki's works where the animals are not only signs of nature but of gods of the old world. The idea I guess was to represent them like memory in the process of passing away.... Anyone seen the miyazaki movie with the Tanuki's? I don't remember the name of it off hand. I love that one.

[Tad]

Mononoke-hime (1997) better known in the US as Princess Mononoke

Nausicaa.net (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/)

[yukon]

nope that isn't it. Its the one with the shapeshifting tanukis who try to take back Japan
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/pompoko/ there it is!

[Tad]

I sit corrected! :p

[yukon]

I'm so excited about the summer art exchange so I did a warm up wee ink wash and watercolour.

[JohnThompson]

That is a gorgeous painting, yukon! If this is a "warmup", you'll blow us away with the finished piece!

[morna]

ooooh that's a beauty! ...and horseshoe crabs - I love those guys! We have one on our bathroom wall (that I still feel guilty about - I wouldn't buy it now, but I was in first year and naive)

Very lovely yukon, you make good stuff!

[yukon]

http://www.ocean.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/
their copper based blood is used to test various drugs for contaminents. As a result "bleeding" the crabs became quite common out here on the cape,and while they rereleased the crabs that didn't die from the process of being bled, the population here on the cape is still considered endangered. I have a horseshoe crab as well but its a shed skin I found on the beach out here ( certain times of the year they wash up alot). I know how you feel about the guilt I had a chambered nautilus shell that I've never quite forgiven myself for buying........

[fitzroy]

Great HB painting Yukon

[Petersen]

Count me in as being impressed. I like how chisled the forms are..esp. hellboy's horn stumps

[kid cthulhu]

Stunning as usual, Yukon.

Looking forward to the finished piece, especially if thats just a warm up!

[Maija]

Wow! Can't wait to see the final version!

[yukon]

Thank you all for youre kind words, I want to make the final a little more complex. I'm not so happy with the lack of definition on the lower part of HB's coat, and the placement of the crabbies need some work. I've got a whole "Boneyard" in my house from all sorts of amazing beach finds Dolphin vertibra, and duck and gull skulls and such , I'd like to include.
I had a question to throw out for you all. I want to sell some of my finished drawings ( including this little study)on ebay, and some of them feature HB. Am I going to get in all sorts of copyright infringement trouble if I do this? I really don't want to offend MM. I wouldn't even be asking save for the fact that I've landed myself in some uky financial trouble, and I'm trying to save some money to go back to school ( whoo hooo Marine Bio degree here I come!). My little job working for a non profit that saves and studies whales ( as you can imagine) isn't exactly making me rich, I'm probably going to have to look for a second job cleaning houses or waiting on tables, ( I HATE Cleaning toilets just about as much as I hate waiting on tables... sigh... the things we have to do for money) I also thought it would be an interesting way for me to get some of my stuff "away" from my messy studio where my works on paper have a tendency to get lost or wrecked. I figure collectors will be nicer to them than me.... Maybe they'll even FRAME them... anyway your thoughts are appreciated.

[Rob H]

Just don't get rid of the tentacles. Everybody loves tentacles. :p