James O'Brien

Texture with graphite

2008-09-20T15:32:09+00:00

Here's a piece I made last week for the LA Times using a slightly different method inspired by a graduate student at one of the schools where I teach. Her method is similar to my usual technique however she makes custom-made texture areas for each piece. She uses graphite to sketch the texture areas on vellum and then uses them to make screens for screen printing.
So, for me, rather than collaging a pre-existing texture, for this piece I pencil-filled in the large color areas using a 3B graphite pencil, scanned them in, and then converted them to the individual color areas. I like the fact that I am hand-making each color area as well which results in unique textures for each image area.
The LA Times article this piece accompanied was written by a chef discussing his profession.

Above are the pencil-filled areas (along with some of the line work) drawn on tracing paper with a 3B pencil and then set to high contrast using the Threshold command in Photoshop (Image>Adjustments>Threshold). The background was built using the face element.

Sleep illustration

2008-08-17T04:57:53+00:00

This is me, still struggling through "Moby Dick." Actually, I'm currently finishing Frank Herbert's "Dune" and have Paul Bowles' "The Spider House" on deck (although I would rather read his "Let It Come Down" but can't find a copy).

I just finished this illustration for Johns Hopkins for a story about a sleep study procedure that can be done in the comfort of your home. The client wanted a "homey" feel with the addition of a graph that represented the procedure. To keep the image more general, I designed it without the graph, just an image about sleep, and then worked in the graph for the client. So above is the non-graph version.

The cat is a combination of my daughter's two cats, Misty and Lue. Misty likes to sleep in this position next to me; Lue modeled for the ears and paws. And even though I'm moving toward the use of more reference, the figure and the rest of the scene were drawn from my imagination.

Above is the version with the graph.

And here is the sketch.

Sam Colt portrait

2008-08-03T00:15:58+00:00

I did a portrait of Samuel Colt for one of my Hartford Art School classes (taught by Nancy Stahl and Jean Tuttle). First, I made a sketch using a couple of references and then reduced the distortion in Photoshop. I blocked in the color using Illustrator and combined it with the sketch in Painter to introduce some painterly textures. After messing around with that for a while (my Painter technique is tentative and clumsy), I posterized the image in Photoshop, about two dozen variations.

Robert Kennedy portrait

2008-06-07T03:39:09+00:00

Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's assassination. Today's NYTimes had an op-ed section of essays written by his children. The essays feature nine illustrated portraits of Kennedy done by Leanne Shapton, Andrea Ventura, Tina Berning, Vivienne Flesher, Thomas Libetti, Laura Carlin, Paul Davis, Brian Cronin, and Isabelle Arsenault.

Forty years ago, as he was celebrating his victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. To mark the occasion, Op-Ed editors invited his children to share their memories of him.

Feeling left out and a little somber on the anniversary, I decided to have a try at it using the same observational process I'm using for my thesis. I think I used the same reference as Andrea Ventura.

I was 6 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. There is this foggy memory of me sitting on the floor in the living room in front of the TV watching the news. I could feel that my parents were sad, maybe they were crying (my mom anyway, my dad never cried). I've always connected this memory to John Kennedy's assassination but I was not quite 2 at that time so maybe it was Robert Kennedy's death.

Cubist city

2008-05-16T14:56:02+00:00

Here is a piece I did recently for Convene Magazine (via Shostak Studios) for a story about Convention and Visitors Bureaus. I was off an a Paul Klee/Cubist Picasso slant, using abstract color shapes to suggest a shifting cityscape that the hands have arranged and constructed.

Below is a closer view of the right side of the spread.

New bus drawings

2008-03-27T01:25:11+00:00

Here are some new bus drawings including one from our trip to Ft. Worth made during our Hartford MFA Illustration contact session.

Holiday card image

2008-01-24T09:44:26+00:00

This image was for a real estate brochure in Florida. I decided to use it for my holiday card, seemed to fit in a color manner, in some ways (I reddened the orange a bit), a positive new year image. The end process took a slight bend from my normal method, slightly less chaotic then a previous image, but still some messiness about. Below is some process, separated layers. Not sure if it explains the method much, basically one texture, recolored and masked on multiple layers (that's the secret folks!). Additional textures add some blips and blops here and there.

Chinapod

2008-01-04T08:50:31+00:00

This image was commissioned by Business Week for a story about iPhones in China. As I waited (and waited) for sketch approval, assuming the story must have been killed, I decided to go ahead and finish the image as a little exercise using a new texture. The next morning, I sent a quick note to the AD to check in and included a screenshot of this finished image. His reply acknowledged that the story had in fact been killed, no comment on the image. Then the following week, he decided they wanted to use this piece and asked for a hi-res version. But unfortunately, they went with a photo in the end rather than this image. Illustration can be a fickle business.

Creating texture

2007-12-30T03:00:23+00:00

I've had a number of students ask me how I create the textures I use in my work. There are several ways of creating texture but here is the one I most often use.

First, I find an image to use either by scanning something in or finding an appropriate image online. This one is from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (Daguerreotype collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-2439)

Next, I go to the Image menu and change the Mode to Indexed Color. This allows me to limit the amount of colors within the image. I set the Palette to Local (Perceptual), set Forced to Black and White, and turn off the Dither. Then I determine how many colors the image needs in order to create an interesting texture. For this image, 7 colors separates most of the scratches from the rest of the photograph. After clicking the OK button, I switch the Mode back to RGB. This doesn't change the color palette but just allows me to work in the RGB mode again.

Next, I choose the Magic Wand and uncheck the Anti-alias box and uncheck the Contiguous box. Then I click on the color of the texture I want to capture, in this image it's the tan color making up most of the scratch marks. With the Contiguous box unchecked, the Magic wand captures all of the tan rather than just one contiguous section. I then copy and paste these tan pixels onto a new layer and hide the original image layer. I delete any recognizable or large areas of texture, in this case erasing Lincoln's hands, head, and shirt as well as some of the larger texture bits.

Finally, I copy and paste the texture bits to thicken them up, depending on how thick I want the texture to be. I rotate the pasted texture and move these pasted areas around to make the texture appear more random. I also rotate by 90º increments in order to avoid creating any anti-alias pixels. I lock the transparent pixels on this texture layer in order to quickly change its color. Locking the transparent pixels allows me to quickly change the color of the texture by holding down the Option key and hitting Delete (to fill with the Foreground color) or holding down the Command key and hitting Delete (to fill with the Background color). You can also use the Edit>Fill command or use the Pencil or Brush tool for this step. Since the transparent pixels are locked, no new pixels can be created so painting on the layer will only change the color of the existing pixels (but keep in mind that if you use the Eraser tool, rather than erasing pixels, you will be painting them with the Background color).

So that's it, pretty simple actually once you know the steps.

Welder

2007-12-30T02:49:36+00:00

This image was for an article discussing an impending shortage of skilled welders, an interesting story for me since my father was a welder. I remember showing him with pride a bead weld from shop class in college. He was proud since I was the artist rather than the mechanic/hunter/fisherman, that was my brother's path. But my father was really an artist at heart, just a generation too early. Or maybe it was the small town expectations.
I struggled a bit with this image. Lately I've been less interested in concept, thinking more about portraits and subtle emotion. So it was a challenge to show a need for something, in this case welders. The concept I arrived at was the dashed outline suggesting "you could be here" or "missing."
By the way, I still have my father's welding mask which look much like this one.

NPR calendar and 3x3

2007-11-18T03:58:02+00:00

I had a busy summer, started the MFA program at Hartford and had a number of projects (not to mention a bit of teaching). Back in August, I received two big boxes of the NPR calendar I contributed to, above (top) is the image. The copy on my page (February) reads:
"As I write this, I am listening to the classical music stream from my local station, KSJN 995.FM in St. Paul Minnesota. I enjoy listening to a wide variety of music and programming NPR has to offer. The music becomes a part of my work, flows through it, as it is doing with this woman's knitting. The music is interwoven with the work, in this image, literally becoming a part of her project."

I also had two images selected for 3x3 (middle and bottom images), nice surprise. I'd forgotten about entering that one and had resigned myself to being snubbed by the competitions this year.

Bus sketches

2007-05-23T05:07:21+00:00

I've been more of a designer than a drawer lately, so I thought I should get back to it by using my bus rides as opportunities for some observational drawing. Here are some so far from this week.

Portrait study

2007-05-13T14:55:40+00:00

This is a study from a sketch for a killed story, thought I would carry it through as a little portrait exercise.

Spots

2007-03-30T15:03:57+00:00

I haven't done any spots for quite some time so this project was a refresher for me. Here are four of them, for Forbes Magazine.

two companion images

2007-03-18T15:45:04+00:00

These were two recent congruent assignments. Both arrived at a similar conceptual device. The top image was for an story about genome research, big projects vs. little ones. The bottom was for a story about funding medical research.

I was experimenting last week with one of my students using Stonehenge white drawing paper in an Epson 4800. He'd had good results but mine were turning out kind of odd, the ink wasn't settling on the paper properly. Anyone have any experience with that type of paper or a similar type of drawing paper. We were using it mainly for its scale (17" width) but then realized we had access to some Epson paper at the same width. The Enhanced Matte paper accepted the ink much more cleanly and evenly.

Also, any thoughts on Color Profiles. I've been using Apple RGB (with my fancy new 23" Cinema!) because it gives me a better web image. But Adobe RGB supposedly works better when converting to CMYK. Any opinions?

sf chronicle piece

2007-03-13T17:58:04+00:00

This image ran in the March 4 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. It was for a review of Daniel Mason's "A Far Country," about a girl searching for her lost brother. Here is a link to the story online.

oscar night benefit

2007-02-22T05:38:27+00:00

This is for a local benefit for the Minnesota AIDS project, an Oscar night benefit at the State Theater in Minneapolis. Attendees enjoy appetizers and desserts from local restaurants while watching the awards ceremony live on the big screen.

final adoption piece

2007-02-18T06:35:56+00:00

Hey everyone, here's the sketch and the final image for the adoption story. Again with this piece, I used only a two paths taking a much more relaxed and freer approach with less control. Still not using my pricey Wacom tablet though, prefer the old mouse for some reason (actually a new Mighty Mouse!), more comfortable. But I intend to use the tablet more, someday.

adoption piece study

2007-02-11T04:23:00+00:00

This is a color study for a story I'm working on about adoption. The sketch didn't fit the space or the story but I did a color study anyway. In Photoshop, I usually create a number of paths that I use for masks and selections but with this piece I just worked with the pencil and eraser tools, collaging and painting texture. Without a net, less control.

Another white guy

2007-01-12T05:24:09+00:00

Here's another in the previous mode, white silhouette on color. For this one, I've included a background color field to tone down the texture a bit. It's about putting together a budget. This is actually the rough-edge version, with all the bleed showing. I designed it to bleed left, right, and bottom but not at the top. I think this version looks more interesting than the cropped version where the left/right/bottom edges are cleaner.

screen print?

2006-12-21T05:35:25+00:00

i found an interest in screen printing over the summer and, since am not quite comfortable yet with the lack of control (messiness, ink, etc.), i tried bringing the look of it into my photoshop work. here's an example. this image was for a story about leisure and work.

final montag in countryside

2006-12-21T05:12:14+00:00

sorry, never did get the final image up for this one. finished by ma at syracuse (r.i.p.) and am heading over to hartford next summer for the mfa.

approaching the warming fire

2006-05-24T19:58:04+00:00

this image is where montag warily approaches the fire where he will find five men seated around it, former professors and intellectuals, each having a different classic book stored in their memory.

montag in the countryside

2006-05-01T04:35:55+00:00

in-progress. i still have to bring in more trees in a background pattern and add a house in the middle right. and the arm needs some work. montag escapes after killing beatty. he runs toward the river, fleeing the hound.

progress update. close but not quite there. in some ways i miss the line work but never intended it to fully stay. color contrasts need to be tweaked here and there. the fear is a little more pronounced than in the sketch and i have aged him a bit. i had originally wanted the background to include someone looking out of their doorway (everyone is told to look outside at the same time to look for montag) but opted instead for the hound.

clarisse

2006-03-30T17:38:26+00:00

sketches and art for clarisse.

background

2006-03-30T17:29:37+00:00

for my ma thesis at syracuse university, i am illustrating ray bradbury's fahrenheit 451.