Dumarian Instruments

The finished Dumaria instruments! from top right, clockwise, are a 'howl dish,' a harp, a guiro/huiro, and some hanging chimes. This is what happens when you read too much Diontopia. Oh wait, there's no such thing as too much Dinotopia.

Woodcarving

Another ancient folk art: wood carving. It's pretty much what it sounds like, but there's a myriad of ways to carve wood, from chainsaw to chisel. Anything from large, rough hewn cuts to smooth polish can be achieved. A fun thing to work with on this image was trying to simulate how a wood gouge cuts with the grain, as well as some traditional patterns that have arisen from it, like the little notches along the tail and the mane. I also enjoyed simulating that high gloss finish, that sinks down into any ridges and catches the light. On real wood the finish can really sparkle and make the wood glow.

Chris Pye
An example of a carved box
Windsor Wood Carving Museum
Bas Relief wood carvings

Embroidery

Embroidery is one of the older decorative arts, and has been practiced for centuries from Europe to China. It involves creating a design using colored thread on cloth, often with other pieces of colored cloth sewn on. Lots of different designs are possibly using different stitches, or combination of them. Embroidery can be done by hand, or on a machine, or a combination of both.

This image mimics both machine and hand sewing techniques, but it's all digital.

The Bayeux Tapestry (Which is 20 inches tall and 231 feet long. Yes, feet.)
Chinese Embroidery
Azerbaijan embroidery
The Unicorn Tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Impasto Painting

Impasto painting uses thick, wet strokes of paint, generally applied loosely. It's frequently used in oil painting, with paint strokes so thick they may even cast their own shadows. Highlights in particular get really thick, and increase the illusion of sparkle because, not only is the paint a highlight, but the physical paint gets an actual highlight on it because of its thickness. Impressionists used Impasto heavily, such as Van Gogh and Monet. Here is a detail of Rembrandt's A Jewish Bride, showing the impasto technique clearly.

Other artists who use impasto:
Joshua Clare
Ovanes Berberian

Scumbling and Dry Brush

Dry brush techniques can really cover a wide gamut of techniques and mediums, from oil paint and acrylic to watercolor. It involves putting undiluted paint on a dry brush that is dragged across the surface, leaving pigment on raised areas. Scumbling is when lighter colors are dragged over darker colors, and can give a rough, textured effect, or a light gauzy look, depending on what kind of surface it is applied to. It generally gives a solid but broken line, with hard edges, but can appear soft if done over a fine texture. Diego Velasquez was a master of this, you can see that he was dry brushing some of his finer, final brush strokes in this image of Sibyl with Tabla Rasa and this portrait of Juan de Pareja. The ends of strokes are often more broken than the beginning, which gives much of the look to Chinese brush painting, which often uses a combination of dry brush over light, wet, washes. This image, by Yet Por Cheng, shows the effect nicely. The oldest known art even uses something akin to dry brhing, you can see how the texture of the rock affected how pigment was rubbed over it in cave paintings like Lascaux.

Lithography

This is a 'digital lithograph' (d0n't kill me, printmakers) each color was done on a separate paper, by hand, then scanned and registered digitally. Color was added to each layer to simulate different color runs. This is a mock cover for a short story written by Laura Jennings about Psychic Dolphins who fight Aliens in Space. Yes. You heard me. Besides it being an interesting short story in and of itself, it was just way too good to pass up the opportunity to draw.

Lithography was invented in 1796, and is still in use today in mass printing (known as offset lithography) It relies on the play of fine wax resist (sometimes applied by hand with a crayon) to a smooth, limestone surface for each color run. Oil based ink can be passed over the stone, and print is made based on the natural resistance of the ink. It was the first printing technology that allowed normal work flow for the artist: prints are made as they are drawn (only in reverse) and do not have to be carved out. This allowed new art styles to flourish, such as Art Noveau, Alphonse Mucha's work was largely produced by lithography. Lithography also advertised the west, with artists such as C.M. Russell, and even Thomas Moran used lithographs. It leaves a subtle stone texture, which looks often looks like fine stippling or rough paper. The crayon used to make the stone plates can also affect the image: it can be quite fine, or can appear very much like a crayon drawing (as in, Crayola crayon drawing)

Today, offset lithography uses a polymer on an aluminum plate, which can be bent to a cylinder and allows for faster printing with multiple colors.

Screen Printing

Also known as silk screening, uses a layer of silk or muslin stretched taut across a frame of wood, using water adhesive stretching tape to pull it taut. This frame is laid flat on top of the surface that is to be printed on, which can be anything from metal, wood, or glass, to, of course, paper. Stencils are used to control where ink goes through onto the surface, and are laid over the silk, then have thick, gel like ink squeegeed over them, leaving the first layer of ink on the surface, in the shape of the stencil. Other colors may be added on top, but only when the first layer is completely dry.

Museum dedicated to Andy Warhol, one of the most famous screen printers.
Squeegeeville: with instruction, ordering information, and links to contemporary silk screeners.
Contemporary screen printers:
Nelly Duff
'Judge' website with prints for sale.

Woodblock Printing

Woodblock printing is one of the oldest mediums used by 'illustrators' in that it could be mass produced. Almost as soon as the printing press was invented, woodblock illustrations found their way into the text as well, especially in religious manuscripts like this illustration by Albrecht Durer. Outside the Europe though, woodblocks had been in use for far longer, with recorded examples in China from at least 220 b.c. and even a few examples from ancient Egypt.

The most famous examples of woodblock printing are the Japanese Ukiyo-e prints such as those by Utagawa Hiroshige.

Some contemporary artists that use woodblock printing are Tom Killion, Ralph Kiggell and the Brazilian folk artist José Borges.

Some interesting qualities of traditional woodblock prints are the texture the paint leaves on the paper surface, which can be effected by how much ink is used, paper thickness and tooth, how much pressure is applied, and other factors. Edges are usually bold, and their edges are different depending on what material they are carved into, whether it be linoleum block or actual wood. Even the grain direction of the wood has a bearing on edge quality: finer cuts can be made on an end-grain section of wood (sometimes called wood engraving) than can be on a normal plank. Different gouge widths and shapes can also be used for different line quality.

So here's my go at 'digital woodblock.' I had fun experimenting with the limitations of a three color run (on off white paper) rust, turquoise, and the black trap line. The turquoise over the rust gives the brown, simulating real, transparent printing ink.

Transparency

There's a nice little trick in Photoshop using the channels tab that allows any drawing to be turned 'transparent,' like an animation cel. Cel shading has been around for quite some time, and used to be hand inked and painted, frame by frame. Cels were inked first, then painted on the back, to eliminate brush strokes from the finished cel. Each one became one frame of the animation. Through the years cel creation became more and more efficient, especially once Xerography was invented, which allowed drawings to be transferred directly onto the clear plastic, rather than having to trace every single one from the original drawing. This process was tested on Sleeping Beauty, and the entire film of 101 Dalmatians was made using this method (which gives it its charming, sketchy look. There's more potential to this though than just cel animation.

Classical, a user on DeviantArt, used this transparency technique on That Sinking Feeling. You can see the black and white line art here.

It's also a great way to color that amazing drawing you did(Thank you TracyJB), add some tone to it, and stop relying on the 'multiply' setting.

I've used this technique before, but thought I'd experiment a little more than usual with it, and tried this little picture, which turned out looking pseudo silk-screened, but which I actually think would probably be a silk screening nightmare.

Technical Drawing

Technical illustration is rather a broad label, covering everything from architectural blueprints, to product design, to concept design for things like robots and armor. Traditionally technical artists relied on rulers and 'rapidograph' pens to get smooth, exact lines with even weight and concise proportions, often showing the lines through the 'skin' of the object so inner workings can be seen. This drawing is how Sorrek's hut (from the last post) is built.

Examples of some tecnical illustrations include everything from the Thomas Jefferson's Architectural designs to the batmobile, and these designs for Tron, to product detailing such as this one.

Illustrator is a funny beast, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.