[Music] hey everyone Carl cap in ski is back with a demo from imagination here we go people always seem drawn to my line work so it's quite nice to have an outlet for it with no Instagram I'll tell you what I've found as well with paintings as they're weird because they're sort of though there's a definite pattern there like a journey every time you know and they're always the same you start out with like great ideas and great intentions and great aspirations that this is going to be the one this is defining painting and so
the first stage is really excited and you're sketching ideas and then you get approval and you start splashing paint on and it's all really good then it slowly just morphs into this this isn't quite it's going as well as I wanted it to and all and so you by the end you I just want to get this thing finished no it's like going for a shoot let's get this over and done with and then at the end I'm always disappointed by the end result Michael that wasn't how I wanted it to be but the nice
thing with it is that like if maybe in six months later you look back at it and go actually you know quite like that or there's some element there that you because you're so obsessed with the initial idea or or maybe something in the process loved and if you painted those initial marks are really exciting energetic and then as you render it you they get lost and lost that freshness you know but then you know six months later when you forgot about that stage of it turned out okay that one I'm trying to find my
style or my way I think because I'm not very confident copy other people too much or I'm not copy but try and emulate what they do and it's a good thing to do especially if you you know doing it from the really good guys but you've got to sort of do it and then recognize that three or four years later it will be morphed into your version of it been using those pencil brush pens a lot and it first three years was just this this is so hard to use but then a slowly start to
get to grips with how you have to be gentle with it and now I'm gonna feel like I'm just starting to do my version of brush pen and stuff but then with the sketches it's nice because it really they're quite they're not throwaway but you know you don't have to sort of agonize over stuff too much I'm not doing preparatory sketches and reference checking out lighting and things like that I'm just trying to get an idea down pretty quickly like a lot of the times when I'm sketching like a figure like this I'll just make
really loose lines that you know initial drawing isn't always this detailed and before I do in confident just do like a series of shapes and and then I can start to look for what's going on here and is this some kind of backpack he's got on and I quite like that process where you just kind of play in with the lines a bit more it really helps me to keep pushing the design aspect as well and I think everybody's guilty of it does it they find a way to do Macker or find a way to
do a historically base character or a fantasy character and then they sort of just do little iterations and and I'm still doing it still made the same you know repetitions and the same design choices but just by doing these sort of initial kind of loose lines I can often come up with something that's maybe changes the silhouette a little bit or can inform the structure of if he's wearing armor or you know whatever it may be so quite like that idea just to change it up a bit and keep things fresh and say says essentially
just gestural marks you know but if you can get them to have some relevance to a figure like that's one pose I always do I've done that in so many times so but I'll carry on anyway and do it again and then you know so I've got a basis there for the legs and I have an idea of the arm I don't quite know who what he's doing at the moment but I can then start to make these sort of gestural lines and try and look for some you know interesting shapes in there and then
when I come in within kiss it's a little something to build on really I'm pretty bad with narrative still funny that's one thing I'm trying to really trying to work on a bit actually building a bit more of a story and trying to do more multiple figures or figures that are interacting with each other rather than just standing alone looking cool you know which you know it's it's nice and there's a place for them and they're great for you know industry work character design all that kind of stuff is perfect but for this sort of
thing sometimes it's nice to to get some kind of interaction and counterplay going on so I'm trying to do a bit more of that but as I'm saying that I'm still doing a single figure sort of looking cool but yeah narrative is definitely something I want to gain a bit more I'm very lucky because my whole family is very artistic so I've got my dad's a musician and he used to draw pictures of American Indians that used to give those presents all based on those Oh was it Curtis the photographer who did the American Indian
I think it was when he used to copy these things and do really beautiful pencil drawings and then my mum's does knitwear design my sister's a musician my dad's a musician my brother's an artist and a musician we didn't have a lot of money growing up but there's always people making things or making music or doing something you know so that was a great environment to to sort of be raised in but as far as artists go there's one or two oh I've worked with that have been really an influential and more and maybe not
even influential but inspiring to be and sort of to feed off so like there's a guy called Paul Danton and still works at Games Workshop who was just a really really good artist he did the things that I don't do so well really well it's a great story teller in his pictures and build a fantastic epic narrative in stuff so he was big influence and work with Adrian Smith who was another artist there who was really amazing designing on the fly and and also incredible rendering technique outs of the ability to like stuff without reference
so they were big influence of when I first started out at Games Workshop really it's a huge list of masters that I've tried to emulate Russian painters like ilya repin cram sky the portraitist and shishkin was a polish guy called Yosef brand too as a sort of military painter some French military painters from the late 18-hundreds Mazon the a indebt i were really inspired me John Singer Sargent obviously and then he's the guy who kind of took over was philip de laszlo another amazing portraitist Velasquez Soria there's just too many Arthur Rackham when I was
a kid I loved his books as it growing up my mom had some of his fairy tale books that he demonstrated him Henryk clay and then Norman Rockwell was a huge huge blew me away when I came across his work and why if I would pie of it and it's just the list I could go on and on the whole video could be two hours of me just listing artists that I love so there's so many of those guys though I wasn't really taught about them at art college because as I said in the interview
you know it's my art course was a bit of a disappointment I mean nobody was teaching me these anything about these guys that were obviously had some relevance to what I wanted to do and what wants to explore snow - - Cerie told me about so I kind of dig it out on my own and you know do my own researching and then modern day I really like Phil Hales work and Ken Williams and build syncovich who was a comic artist I really liked Dave McKean all from the sort of late eighties period really like
Mobius as well when I was quite young and I think I really liked him without realizing just quite who he was or what I just remember seeing these images that I absolutely loved and you know some are so cool did you grow up reading a lot of comics not really have a lot of disposable income and maybe the comic market was a lot more under Grammer it's not like in the US where comic shops are a big big thing there's only made I'm from a pretty small city in in England and Nottingham so it was
only maybe one comic shop when I was a kid so it was often things that my dad brought back from me he was a musician he'd go off to France or something gig in and come back with some weird little book that he'd found out there I like spider-man when I was a kid I really like Spidey used to draw him all the time I also tried to spend less time on the face as now because for a long time I just used to work on the face because probably this thing I can do most
quickly or naturally easily so now try and spend more time on the wrestler figure let's just put the face in quite quick so if you're dissatisfied with your like art school and how did you I can learn of all the other artists and like it was just long laborious and I mean I'm still doing this frustrating really because I think you know bearing in mind that I'm 48 so we didn't have the internet as young kids so you'd have to go to the library and find a book about someone you wanted to learn about and
and then it wasn't so instantaneous either so you didn't just kind of write now you go that's cool well that's cool all right then you went he took the book out for two weeks and you took it home and then you look to it and really tried to absorb it part of me wishes we'd had the opportunities that are available now with like like the online courses that you guys do you know I think I could have learned so much more efficiently and quickly you know rather than this process that I've been through which has
been you know long kind of making mistakes and okay that's not right I'll go back and try and relearn that really it's been a matter of self teaching going to life classes studying masters whose work you really enjoying maybe even making small master copies and things like that but with hindsight if I'd had the opportunity when I was at art college we had live classes but no one taught life cuz it's just that something you went along to and you did it if you wanted to now I think you know to do these online courses
as a sort of support in support of what you want to do you know however you want to take your career what whatever direction would have been you know absolutely invaluable to me and also someone to teach you these kind of fundamentals that maybe when I was at art college it kind of fell out of fashion or they'd been lost you had to dig around to find the right College the one that was still had a realist painting background or wanted to talk about anatomy and structure and perspective and all these kind of things so
yes it's a bit of a regret really of mine that maybe the the system let me down somewhat but I don't know I've got there in the end I don't know wife gave him a big sticking plaster on his neck there but I might make him like a modern-day vampire hunter or something but yeah I think also one thing that I would say is it our schools are fine I don't know if it's the same in the US but in UK they do tend to have an in-house style as it were and so everybody is
taught to draw a certain way or paint a certain way and you can start to look gen Eric it's quite hard to stand out from the crowd so maybe the fact I'm self-taught learning those fundamentals like you know when I've watched the proko things you've been taught them pretty jack academic stuff really and that's the stuff that I was never taught and I've had to try and go back and relearn in my own way I think that's probably the one of the big mistakes I made was not to you know not to be taught the
stuff that I've had to relearn in my own sort of time like human anatomies I don't have a encyclopedic knowledge but I've got enough to because when you sketching as well a lot of it's about getting the idea across see I need to perfectly render everything out as long as it looks like what it's meant to look like and it reads to the viewer that's where I'm trying to get with the ink work at the moment I still think I'm a tendency to overwork stuff as it were I want to sort of get to the
point where I'm just doing enough I think that's when you getting like Yoda level it's when you just do enough and then you go that's it that's enough that's all you're getting you can see what's going on there I don't need to tell you any more than that that's like that's the real deal for me and I hope that when I'm 80 I'm looking back at this stuff and going that was crap I really was not very good you know because you've reached the level where you like yeah I was okay then but I'm a
lot better now you know to draw with that reference is a it's a hard skill you know it takes a long time to get good at so don't get frustrated that you you can't get the results there's sort of that idea that artists are a tortured soul is there's there's a reason that's a stereotype because if you're not accepting of it you are a tortured soul because for me you're gonna die never doing the paint and you wanted to do and you can accept that idea and sort of welcome it into your mindset then I
think you can be a much better artist a much happier person as well especially you know if you're studying to study and then alongside that just have a bit of fun and playing because you can take the ideas you've learned maybe in you in your online course or whatever it is you you know you're looking at and take those and then try and play with them but if it goes wrong it's no big deal nobody's gonna fire you or you know what I mean just just try and apply the things you learn in and see
if you can do something with it and eventually it will start to stick I love sitting and I love I mean that's part of the reason I stopped working digitally as well because as satisfying it as it was I love taking just some ink and some paper and making an artifact it's a craftsman thing is you you you take two elements put them together and make something that hopefully looks nice and you can do it you can do it digitally completely of no kind of nothing against digital art it was just personally it was there
was a bit of a bit of a problem too to actually get what I wanted out and answer the paper as it were so yeah I mean you have to understand them not as good as the Korean guys are at least if they've really studied but how you can break it down into composite elements that it's our thing we said in the interview break it into chunks it's a lot less daunting and less intimidating I'm bearing in mind those basic forms when I'm putting the lines down I'm just always trying to consider where my perspective
point what the angle of the it's the arm or the leg is at and how that's existing in the 3d environment that's a pretty traditional technique isn't it a teaching method is to use your your line or your the shape of your mark making to follow the form it makes that idea a lot more easy to tackle without using reference I think how many books do now I self-published for ya so it's not like I've got a publisher so I've got to financially pay for the initial print run and so it's quite a big process
for me so what I tend to do is every year I'll publish a book of all of the stuff I've done that year and then I'll launch it usually at Lucca comics and games because it's just Falls at the right time it's close to Christmas and you know so it makes sense to do it then and you know I'll do like a hundred and forty eight pages of black and white and a few color pieces so I've got loads but the first two now out of print and so we collected them together in the big
Pinsky and then did a whole big color section as well of work after them for various clients and some personal projects so that was quite nice to get a proper color section in there as well as because that's you know that was initially what I was doing more of than the sketching as it were the more more of that stuff I do the less of this stuff from doing with it the self-published of will do a thousand copies and you with reprinted every book so he even though I put the tip first throughout published out
of print now they they still managed to sell maybe a couple of thousand of the first two volumes I'd say which is you know fantastic for for such a small operation you know you've got to be a bit pragmatic I think as well in you've got to understand that it's not just about you is it this especially if you've got a fan base they want to see what you're doing me you got to be respect or two people onion and there's got to be an interaction though it can't just be this is what I do
if you don't like it screw you it's like kind of person is that you know and it still surprises me that people I've managed to make contact with and have responded you know who I really admire you know I had messaged make me know that this morning you say no you're gonna be it sent and he's site and he replied like I am a friend but he's took the time to reply and say oh yeah great have a good time sounds intimidating being sat next to jeonggi all day said yet basically it is so you
know like that kind of things I think what is what it's all about you know I know we're all slightly awkward and we're all a little bit socially awkward I think as it comes with the territory is being an artist being a fan of this kind of thing ninety percent of people are a little bit introverted and so you know if you're an hour salty it's not just like they're they've come along and they're like look how good I am and you know that they're all a little bit shy and and and I think you
should take time for that because I don't know we're all just trying to get along in life aren't we how often do you paint now most weeks and painting you know I'm working on one or two oil paintings all the stuff I do for cool mini or not is oil painted so we just worked on a project that's undisclosed so I can't tell what it is but it was based on a black-and-white movie so that was really cool I got to do all these characters in black and white has really enjoyed that quite a good
way to learn that valuers weren't working you know that's possibly one of the good things of workshop as well when when I first started out we did a lot of black and white pieces for the for the rule books so you spent you know good maybe 60 to 70 percent of your time working in either black and white acrylic or inks or really helps you learn about value and how important it is to focus on the balance between the two as well I need to give him a weapon there vampire hunter I know I was
gonna give him a hammer that's taking crossbows could be cool little handheld crossbar you've got all the heads of the vampires on on his backpack but one of the weirdest jobs I got was well not weird but no it's great fun was designing nerf guns I still don't know how they came to the decision Oh we'll get Kaminsky to do this but they did and it was yeah it was really cool I never got any of them though so now I've got a son I really wish I'd gone yeah as long as you give me
one of everyone well they were sort of again early iterations of them so a lot of it was not that I specifically designed the whole gun but I might doing a load of ideas and then let release the gun in you could see how us they've took that bit and that bit mashing together I did quite a lot on a series of weapons that were like I think I exam be hunting game or something they were all kind of mishmash with tape around the handles and so I did quite a lot of work on that
and then they did another series that fired these little phone disc did a hell of a lot of work on this one see this is I don't do narrative very well but I think I'm maybe quite good at building a narrative into the characters that go along so there's this develop you like okay so the sticking-plaster there but he's bleeding he's a vampire hunter has it all gone a bit wrong for him and I think that's one of the things I tried to do with character designers I try to kind of build a story around
their costume detailing maybe a bit and you can sort of you know always have to tell a story it in the picture you can tell a story by you know what they're carrying and the things they have with them especially when you come to design a fantasy character one things interested me was a lot of the things her coat remnants that they'd carry with them were non-replaceable so you from a different age you know there where if you had an armor it would probably cost you half the cost of your house you know you didn't
just you know wear it when it was broke I'll get a new bit all the stuff they had was you know looked after and cared for and repaired and I think you can add a real level of interest to you character design if you can do a bit of that that kind of stuff in there and I think also I like the idea of learning about the sort of mechanics of it how it works not just what it does you know I like the idea of that with armor and things like this you know what's
going on underneath the armour layer in detail and stuff like that it's good for character design of them but it's also you know like that's as I said to you before that's one of the things I miss about being in a studio like when you said all crossbow that's the kind of thing you do with your friends you or the colleagues when you're in a studio like ah let me do this guy what can I give him it's always nice to have that extra set of eyes or ears I'm not a good businessman really at
all my wife's really good but there's only so much she can do you know look at the setup you guys have had to get to really kick this into proper monetary system got to put so much time and energy into it and I don't want to stop drawing you know there's a balance there but I think you know I could be a bit more savvy about it some people kept recommended patria and they said yeah but again it's like I have to do video content or even YouTube this our set up a YouTube channel so
I set one up and then I post a video maybe once a year a work car the thing for me with Instagram is I'm doing something like this daily really then you know I can post every day but still I should do more videos and you know that kind of thing that's the great thing about the social media really is that now as I said to stand you know it's we you know I have clients asking me to do the this the style that's posted on Instagram you know or my style but before that I
always felt like I was had to do something a bit more polished or finished or I'm not very confident naturally I'd always think well other artists are doing scissors a bit more involved and maybe I need to do that you know I guess the social media side of it is helps me get a bit more confident in my ability and my own angle on it really I suppose like I say you know I mean I know what gets click because I know what gets the most hits but it's great but I don't want to just
do that you know don't do occasionally do a Batman or Hellboy or green or this kind of stuff or sexy girl you know but I want to keep investigating themes and like I've never done oh I've done a lot of soldiers who look like this but I've never built it into someone who's doing it you know something like a vampire hunting themes are quite like that I've done vampire hunters in a fantasy way so I want to just keep trying stuff out really in and people seem to like it anyway nobody's like oh come on
do Batman we're bored of this to Batman again people are really nice about it oh really look II probably nearly finished really probably should leave it probably in danger of ruining it if I keep going on there's a great quote I think I read from Gregory man chess who said the moment he thinks he might be finished he puts the painting down shall sign it [Music] thank you you guys did a great job you really did yes we did it together guys awesome thanks again Carl for the demo you can check out more of his
stuff at Carl Penske comm and if you want more of these videos hit all those buttons that make YouTube happy we've got tons more videos on the way with new stuff every day see you tomorrow
