Graffiti Characters (How to Draw): Mixed Media Art

Graffiti Characters Bombing the Boulevard daily. out the techniques that I use to make art. But, for once, I want to talk to you about choices that I made with my own art. The first medium that I was proficient in was oil painting. But after college ended, I was too drained to paint after I got home from a day of work. The setup and clean up of paints took as long as the process of painting and the drying time was way too slow for my needs. I estimate that I painted only once or twice per week for about three hours per day and I only produced about two finished paintings per year. I did this for six years.

I slowly started dabbling with mixed media art. What you are seeing now is a process that I have worked out over the past 2 years for the past two years. This process allows me to have results similar to oil paintings, done in one day rather than six months. I even incorporate oil paint in to one of the steps.

Here it is:
1.) Pencil Drawing
2.) Illustration Markers (prismacolor, Ad, Decocolor)
3.) Color Pencil
4.) Thin Layer of Oil Paint
5.) Digital Additions (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro)

I use this process to make my characters. Over the last 2 years I have made over 1500 characters. I scan them and save them as PNG files and I use them over and over in my artwork. PNG files stand for Portable Network Graphic and they are basically a filetype that works like a sticker. Stay tuned until the end of the video and I will show you what I mean. Contact me through my website merrillk.com or leave me a youtube comment and I will be sure to get back to you.

I used about five reference images for this work. I merged them (took my favorite parts of each and did this pencil drawing. The hand gesture was one of the best drawings that I did of a hand from my memory (head). This video is on time lapse, nut the pencil drawing part took the longest out of all the steps. Now I am using Illustration Markers (Prismacolor, Pantone, Ad Chartpak). The markers serve as the equivalent of an underpainting....they are fast, accurate and available in a variety of pre mixed colors and tones. The shirt will eventually be white, but I wanted the blue/green color to peek through the white when I add it in the next few steps. I am a HUGE fan of Prismacolor color pencils. They allow me to be accurate and to work with translucent color (meaning that light can only partially penetrate a layer of color pencil). Skin is translucent. Color pencils also blend (mix) very well with each other. Notice that I use several different, but similar (in tone and color) color pencils to do the arms and the shirt. Q: Why do paintings (most often) look more realistic than drawings?

A: Paintings are made of SEVERAL layers of (dried) transparent to translucent paint while drawings are done in one complex layer. Music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com Song Protofunk