Jaime Jones Digital Painting Workshop 7-21-12

Background
So Jaime Jones is friggen dope. In July, I took a one day workshop with Jaime at Concept Design Academy. He is one of those examples that prove that you don't have to go to Art Center to be dope. You can be mostly self-taught as well and still be badass.  To tell a little about Jaime, he grew up in the midwest or something and used to do a lot of oil paintings of barns and enter state fair art competitions when he was as kid.  You can see influences of Scott Christensen, Edgar Payne, turn of the century american illustrators like Howard Pyle and Cornell in his work. Therefore, his concept art stuff has a very traditional feel.

Process
What surprised me was how slow and carefully he paints. He really takes his time. He works in minimal layers and flattens constantly. He would duplicate a layer and work on it for about 15 minutes. If it didn't look better than the original, he would scrap it. Every stroke should be working to make the painting better. Kind of like what I was saying about Yohann in my other post, if you are painting something and you are almost finished and it's still not feeling right, fucking scrap it and repaint. He feels more fresh that day. I quote Jaime and Jaime is quoting Sargent! Listen up!

Art Theory and Technique
He talks how tradition painting concepts such as
- have appealing mases of dark/light.
- have your lay in kill from 100 yrds in 30 min work.
- have half tones work. then do darkest darks and lightest lights.
- have big medium and small in an obvious way.
- have micro-compositions. have everything work when you zoom in.

He says that these concepts are simple, but juggling them all at once is difficult. 

Painting is a "pile of easy concepts that are difficult when you deal with them in concert."

Painting versus the Picture: "The operation was successful, but the patient died." 

A tricky thing he talks about is to avoid "caring too much about the painting, but not about the picture."

What it means to me is.. "painting" is the technique side, and the "picture" is the overall read and emotional impact.

Jaime likens the process to the saying "the operation was successful, but the patient died." No one will care about the technology and technique if you failed to accomplish your goal.

Concept art vs illustration. 

One thing I had Jaime help me clarify is that illustration and concept art are different. In illustration you want a cool composition, chiarscuro, and sharp and blurry edges etc... In concept art, the drawing and painting needs to be really legible and clear. And sometimes you sacrifice the illustration to have a clear concept piece. Yeah.. I was a little confused when the principles of illustration and art contradict what is needed in industry work.

Outside Interest

Lastly, Jaime advocates having some kind of outside interest to help inform your concept art. Otherwise, the artists look all "inbred." Having an outside interests ensures that the results are a little bit more unique to you. So go out and have fun! Don't just draw all day! Jaime Jones says so! lol

Demo

See? He practically repainted the entire lizard on the last step. He doesn't give a fuck that he already spent 5 hours on it. He does what he needs to do to make it look right.