Terminator Salvation/Sam Worthington, progress 1
oil on board
11" x 14"

I redrew the sketch for this Sam Worthington/Hamlet/Terminator illustration. The pose was too stiff and the likeness could have been stronger.
After imagining myself in the position of the subject I asked myself why I only had ONE hand in the illustration. If this was truly the mock-Hamlet pose I would have hammed it up with the right hand. This would add gesture and sell the idea more.

I re-shot the pose and I ended up favouring the fingers holding the skull in the new shots much more. After thoroughly redrawing and refining the sketch i was dishearten by the thought of redrawing it for the painting surface. Not an uncommon issue for realistic painters.

I figured it was a good time to give Donato's drawing transfer and mounting technique a try. Essentially you scan, print then matte medium your drawing to the surface. Pros: a MUCH faster way of working and you get to keep the original drawing unharmed. Cons: You're limited to the size you can print at and since the process involves soaking the printed surface in water bleeding is an issue.

I have realized that 11x14 is a real sweet spot for me. It's big enough for me to get fine details but small enough to speed up painting times. I bought a ton of matte medium and found 11x14 Strathmore bristol board in their 400 series. I was hoping for 500 series which is 100% pure cotton but at a buck a sheet I figured i'd hold of until i knew i can get the technique down.

Earlier in the day i ran a test sheet of paper under water. there was bleeding but not the total mess i'd expected. I figured if I dropped the opacity of the drawing that would give me less bleeding on the bristol board. The first two shots are a before and after of the soaking process. The paper will expand after you wet it, even if you wet it with matte medium. If you don't pre-soak the expansion occurs during the mounting process and then you get bubbles. Not cool!

The first attempt was a bust because too much of the ink had washed off. My next attempt was printed and with a different paper setting and "in colour" instead of greyscale even though i'd be printing a black and white image. This allowed for more inks to be used giving me a better shot of having a stronger image left over after the soak. There was a clog in one of my blue ink heads that created this happy accident. An awesome Raw Sienna glaze effect, thank you universe!

This time before attempting to soak i hit the print out with a blow drier to make sure the ink had properly settled into the bristol. Then i soaked the back FIRST and gently rinsed the front. This gave me a much better result with only minor water artifacts. Not bad for an inkjet printer that's almost 5 years old.

I let the majority of the surface water drip off and I began my matte medium mount. I hadn't attempted anything like this in almost seven years but it's a simple concept. I applied a liberal amount of medium to the gesso side of my gessobord and spread the glue with a brayer. I then positioned my artwork and repeated the process on the surface. Immediately i could tell the bristol had grown vertically and exceeded the surface size. The forth image was taken directly after the bristol mounting was complete.

The next day i trimmed the minor excess bristol with an exacto knife and began painting the background. The final photo is a shot of the red steam background. I've pushed details and began painting the figure since this phone but i'd like to introduce a varied amount of colour into the smoke.

All in all i consider the technique a success and i look forward to being able to push my drawings further knowing i can simply mount a copy to my surface after. It's all VERY exciting!