New-fangled Water-Mixable Oils vs. Old, Reliable Traditional Oils

Last Time I listed the 4 qualities I was searching for in an "ideal" oil paint.

1. Paintability

That the paint itself will allow for the smooth, buttery application consistent with that of traditional oil paints.

2. Archivability

That the final product will be archivally sound. (It will allow for thick over thin, it won't lead to long-term cracking, the colors won't yellow unreasonably fast. etc.)

3. Dry-ability

That if needed, a layer could be touch-dry, ready-to-paint-over in 24 hours. (While staying workable on palette and canvas for at least 8 hours.)

4. Non-Toxic

That you can work solvent-free and in a non-toxic studio environment. (Here I am concerned mostly with the fumes. I don't plan to eat any of the materials.)

It turns out to be almost impossible to get all 4 qualities in a single oil paint. Water-mixables offer some promise and I have been very interested in seeing if they might be the solution to the question.

In the last post I mentioned many of the problems I had run into while using the water-mixables and why I was considering giving up on them.

But before I did, I felt like I needed to do one last experiment to make sure of my suspicions.

The Experiment:

I Painted 2 figures, both on the same panel of gesso-primed MDB. I painted the first in Water-Mixable Oils with just water and then painted the second in traditional oils with a Galkyd, OMS, Walnut oil blend as a medium. I timed myself; 90 minutes each, so it would be giving each method a fair shake. (Otherwise I would totally cheat and spend way longer on the water-mixables, because I am biased.)

As I mentioned previsouly, The water-mixable paints are not fast-dry on their own. They dry faster than traditional oils, but still take longer than 24 hours to dry, especially if whites were used. So to solve this drying time issue for the water-mixables, I made my own quick-dry white by mixing 1 part Artisan Fast Dry Medium to 3 parts Holbein Duo Ceramic White (Which is a really nice white that is somewhere between a zinc and a titanium). This mixture gives great workability for about 6 or 7 hours and is usually touch dry in about 24.

(I decided on this fast-dry white mixture after watching Greg Manchess's demo from Massive Black where he mentions that since white gets mixed into most of his colors, he will use an alkyd white for his whites, and this keeps his paints workable but drying fast. If you haven't seen this video, go find it. It is extremely informative.)

Test Results:

#4. Toxicity

Water Mixable: Non-Toxic. no side-effects noted. PASS

Traditional Oil Mix: Toxic. Slight headache. Then grew fangs, claws and unsightly hair. Roamed countryside howling at moon. FAIL

#3. Drying Times

Both dry in 24 hours. BOTH PASS

#2. Archivability.

Both survived to day 2. So, ok, well so it's hard to tell how they will look 100 years from now just yet. But, they both allow for working thick over thin so that's a start. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and let them both pass for now.

#1. Paintability

The Water-Mixables had to be wrangled with a lot to get them to work in a predictable manner. I found myself constantly stumbling over the paint as it seized up unpredictably, and then at other times became suddenly too fluid. It seemed like just an unnecessary amount of fighting to get the paint down. The final result feels bland and heavy-handed.

When switching over from them to the traditional paints it felt as though suddenly the paints themselves were making good decisions for me. There was no fighting. Everything was fluid and just worked.

To the best of my (admittedly limited) abilities, the water-mixable oils just lack the subtlety and workability that can be achieved with traditional paints and solvents.

Water-Mixables: FAIL

Tradtional Oils: PASS

Final Results:

Both land 3 out of 4.

Conclusions:

I wanted to believe in water-mixable oils. And I still do. I come from a watercolor background, and love the idea of using only water as my thinner.

I think that water-mixables are a step in the right direction, but after my experiences with them, i don't think they are there quite yet.

Clearly the manufacturers have been listening to the community and are working to deliver a solution. That is really exciting and I hope to see them make more improvements as they are able to do more testing and get more feedback.

As with the last post, if you know of a mixture that you believe meets the 4 qualities on the list above, please post it in the comments.

The response in the comments last post was really great and thank you to everyone who contributed. There are a few products I am looking to try out from that list.

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Water-Mixable Oils

By Justin Gerard

The Problem

A year ago some friends of mine succeeded in making me terribly paranoid about the hazardous effects of using solvents or petroleum distillates in oil painting. Side effects would likely include excessive hair growth, pronounced fangs, frequent urges to howl at the moon and a hankering for red meat.

I took this all very seriously. (Some might say too seriously. What's a little extra fur here and there?) Since I didn't want to give up on oils altogether, I began looking into non-toxic alternatives.

As I did this I had 4 major criteria that I was looking for:

1. That the paint itself will allow for a smooth, buttery application consistent with that of traditional oil paints.

2. That the final product will be archivally sound. (It will allow for thick over thin, it won't lead to long-term cracking, the colors won't yellow unreasonably fast. etc.)

3. That if needed, a layer could be touch-dry, ready-to-paint-over in 24 hours. (While staying workable on palette and canvas for at least 8 hours.)

4. That I can work in a non-toxic studio environment. (Here I am concerned mostly with the fumes. I don't plan to eat any of the materials.)

To find a paint medium that had all 4 proved to be a lot harder to find than I originally thought. Most products and mediums out there could give 3 of the 4, but very few could deliver all 4.

I spent a lot of time talking with the manufacturers about it and most of them recommended I try water-mixable oils.
Easy clean up, non-toxic, faster drying times. It sounds great.

So I tried these water-mixables on several paintings to see if they made the grade. In particular I worked with Winsor & Newton's Artisan range and Holbein's Duo range of paints and mediums.

I started doing experiments with these a year ago and have done a lot off and on since then.

After a great deal of testing, and several pages of notes I concluded that they failed the 4-point test because they cannot deliver on #1.

Here's why:

-When working with just water I found that the slick workability we associate with oil paints lasts for just a few minutes before the paint tacks up (when the water is either absorbed out or evaporates), at which time you have to re-wet the paint again. This makes the next stroke kind of unpredictable. If it is too wet, it may all unload immediately, saturating the paint, and muddying an area. If it is not wet enough, it tends to stick too much. It can be really frustrating and is why so many people have decided that the best place to store these products is directly in the trash.

-I also found that the paint layer wouldn't dry for days. Especially if there were any whites in it. (Winsor and Newton uses Safflower oil in their Artisan whites. Safflower will keep the whites whiter over time, but it tends to be extremely slow drying.)

-When working with the water-mixable Linseed Oil, (either alone or mixed with water) The paint is slick and a little more predictable, but it never dries. Fail on #3. And if it has to be heavy, and isn't any faster, I might as well just work with traditional oils and walnut oil. It would be just as safe and the clean-up wouldn't take much longer.

-When working with the Fast Dry Mediums:
Alone, they are impossible. They tack up within minutes and leave that area an unworkable syrup for at least the next 12 hours.
They cannot be mixed well with water for some reason. (This shouldn't be surprising, since we are mixing oil and water after all.) They tend to foam up and turn into a mess.
This leaves mixing the fast dry medium with the linseed oil mediums. Mixing these 2 together produces a reasonable working medium. However, it only marginally improved the overall application of paint. It wasn't as frustrating as just water, but it was still contrary. If I mixed it heavier on the fast dry side, it turned to syrup too fast. If I went too heavy on the Linseed oil side, it stayed workable for longer, but might remain an unworkable syrup for days after. There was no perfect mixture that I found suitable.

So my notes lead me to think that water-mixable oils are too much of a fight to justify switching over.

But I feel like I need to do one last experiment to make sure of my suspicions before just giving up on them altogether. I am still really pulling for them. So for the next post I will be conducting an experiment with two separate 90-minute portraits, one in water-mixable oils, one in traditional oils to see how the 2 compare.

In the meantime, I would like to get your feedback. If you have found a mixture that you think meets the 4-point test above post it in the comments. I'd love to hear about it.

Next Post: The New-fangled Water-Mixable Oils vs. The Old, Reliable Traditional Oils.

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Drive-By Posting

By Justin Gerard

Today's post is a quickie because I am in more trouble than a fox in a hen house. A hen house guarded by grizzly bears with rocket launchers.



Due to an important project due NOW, I didn't have time to finish my planned post on Art as it Relates to Technology and the Industro-Military Complex Throughout History. I flatter myself in thinking that it would surely have knocked some socks off. It will have to wait until a later date.



Instead, I have attached two recent experiments in water-mixable oils. As a product it may defy science and sound reason, but the more I use it the more I like it.

Underpainting for above painting.

Colored gesso on primed MDB.

Water-Mixable Oil on Primed MDB.

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The Eyes Have It

By Justin Gerard

Recently I ran into a problem of how to treat the eyes in an illustration I was working on. I was following my reference, but every time I painted them in they stuck out like Mickey Mouse eyes. (No offense Mickey.)



But in my reference the eyes were bright. And don't they call them the whites of the eyes? Are they not white!? IS THERE NOTHING IN THIS WORLD I CAN TRUST?

Before I lept from my chair to go and light the curtains on fire and rip the couch cushions in half I thought, waitaminute, painters throughout history have likely already wrestled with this conundrum. Why should I suffer a mental breakdown figuring this out when they've already done the work! I can relax again. There is objective truth out there, even if sometimes it comes in a thousand muddy shades of gray.

And so I assembled the above collection from some of the artists whose work has been a great inspiration to me. The results have been very helpful for me. My curtains and couch remain unmolested. Sometimes whites aren't always white.

I hope you enjoy.

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Illustration Process: Digital Trickery

By Justin Gerard

In the last post, I focused on the traditional aspects of my process for watercolor and digital. This week, we focus on digital hocus pocus used to complete these pieces.

My digital process is mainly derived from the Dutch-Flemish indirect manner of working.

If I travelled back in time and gave the Dutch-Flemish painters an Imac with Adobe Photoshop CS5 on it and a Intuos 4, they might have promptly thrown it all in the lake and then painted an unflattering picture of me as a fruit basket. But then again, they might decide that their methods work well regardless of what medium they are executed in and they would go on to make some awesome work with the new tools.

The process I follow mainly involves first laying in the shadows transparently, and then working in the highlights opaquely on top of them. This is then followed by adjusting the colors and details.

Color Adjustment

I have an ancient Epson flatbed scanner, one that primitive man invented sometime after fire, but before the wheel. Like most stone-age equipment, it is quite reliable, but it does tend to get its colors off just slightly. The image always seems lifeless and dead to me after it has been scanned.

This first stage is just to get the image back to what it looks like to the naked eye in soft light.

Shadows

I work purely in multiply layers to establish the dark areas and shadow details. I work this up to slowly to kind of explore the nuances of the lighting in the image. This chance to explore the lighting is one of my favorite aspects of working digitally.

I use multiply (set to zero black) to add the color. You can use any of the other modes to achieve color, (color, soft light, hard light etc.) I just prefer multiply because it behaves a little more predictably and because it tends to look a little more natural over a traditionally painted image.

Highlights

After working up the shadows to a satisfactory level of darkness, I work highlights in to slowly refine the shapes and give them more dimension. As in the Dutch-Flemish manner, I tend to work opaquely at this point, and generally stick to the areas that are being lit.

Color Adjustments & Final Details

For the final details I work with normal layers to sharpen up details and focal points. I try not to overwork the whole image at this point though. This is both a blessing and a curse with digital. Since you can essentially zoom in forever, you could feasibly spend the rest of your existence refining every little hair. At some point you need to make decisions about what needs to be refined and what can be left a little vague.

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Illustration Process: Traditional Work

-By Justin Gerard

For this post and the next I will take a break from shameless self-promotions to share some process work.

Over the years, my process has mutated from the clear and straightforward approach of my early childhood:

Step 1: Tear page from coloring book.

Step 2: Turn page over and apply crayon directly to back of paper.

..And turned into an overly-complex and technically absurd mess that it involves hundreds of extra steps and expensive, new-fangled products.

So, I will break this into 2 parts to keep things more manageable.

Today's post is the traditional side, the place where I begin most of my work, and my next post will focus on the digital side, the place where I end most of my work.

Thumbnail

Ink on napkin

The conceptual stages are generally just exploring ideas to help find a compositional arrangement that seems pleasing. The tools used for this change from image to image. For concept-work I go with whatever works.

Rough Drawing

#7 pencil on copy paper

Once I establish a rough drawing that I like I do studies of most of the faces and figures. I will try to really nail the expressions that I am after. I always consider this one of the most important elements of the image. As Rockwell pointed out, "if you get the face and hands right, they'll forgive you for the rest." So if I have a face in the image, I try to make sure I have it established in a study somewhere.

And if it hasn't already been determined, these studies will help me to decide which lighting arrangement will be the most advantageous for the characters.

Study

General's HB Pencil on Strathmore Vellum

Tight Drawing

Pencil on Strathmore Bristol

For the watercolor stage I stick very close a process laid out by Peter De Seve in his excellent Step-by-Step Graphics article (Vol.10, no. 6) about his technique. (I highly recommend it if you can find it.)

De Seve's overall method in the article carries a great emphasis on preserving the drawing, which is one of the most alluring aspects of it for me. You can see from his work how well it allows him to play up his characters expressions and designs.

I will sometimes (and this is one of those times) apply workable fixative to the drawing before starting the watercolor. Fixative will leave the surface a little less workable for the watercolor, (the surface tends to be less absorbent) but will keep the drawing much more intact. Since I weep bitter tears to see the drawing slowly disintegrate, I am generally willing to risk it.

Watercolor over Pencil

The watercolor process begins with washes of earth colors to tone the paper, applied wet into wet. Then after this has dried color and value are slowly worked up with about ten thousand tiny washes applied wet into wet or wet into damp.

One of the nice things about this approach is that it allows folks like me, who have a foggy command of color at best, to experiment a lot as they work. If a color doesn't look right it is really easy to adjust.

After this I panic and then throw all the old illustrator tricks at the piece in a last desperate effort to save it.

These tricks include, but are not necessarily limited to: Ink, pencil, acrylic, markers, badgers, lawsuits, incantations, harsh language, oaths, gouache, threats and even blows.

Final Traditional Painting

Next Post: Digital Trickery

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ImagineFX #66-67

By A Shameless Justin Gerard


ImagineFX recently asked me to do a two-part series on drawing for their magazine. The first issue of this two-part series goes on sale this month. To prepare for writing this article I read through 60 books on drawing, 40 books on anatomy, and several books on cattle rustling.

Along with the drawing article, this issue also features articles on Charles Vess and Matthew Stewart, as well as a modeling tutorial on airships that I am particularly looking forward to reading.

This last article is important because I plan on taking over Peru, and as anyone who has ever considered the matter thoroughly, airships are the only proper way to do it.

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Experimentation

By Justin Gerard

I am a chronic experimenter.

Most of the following test pieces were done between client projects. They are all victims of a continuing campaign whose goal is a better understanding of the mediums available to the contemporary illustrator.

Some of these experiments seem to give good results:

Oil, thinned with 80% Galkyd, 10% linseed oil, 10% OMS mixture* over Golden Heavy Body Acrylic underpainting on gessoed panel, sanded smooth.

While others seem to give rather poor results:

Oil, thinned with Galkyd Lite over Golden Acrylic Ground for Pastels, over FW ink underpainting, on paper glued to MDF.

MISSION FAILED.

Both cases help lead to a better understanding of the tools available, and how to use them.



This quest for understanding is complicated enough with the wide array of classic painting mediums that artists have used in the past and that are still available, but to make it even more complex, modern paint manufacturers add new mediums to this list every year.



Holbein has released an acrylic paint that can be lifted out after it has dried.

Winsor & Newton has released an oil paint that can be thinned with water. (You heard right: Thinned with water.)

And Golden releases new acrylic products every other week, all of which behave in new and ingenious ways, from drying instantly to a matte finish, to staying workable for days, to actually painting the painting for you while you eat french toast that it made for you.

Golden, you totally rock.

The same goes for supports, brushes and essentially any other tool a devilish cunning marketing division can conceive of.



While many of these new products may be just marketing fluff, some of them are quite useful and provide the artist with materials that are more archival, faster-drying and safer to use than tools of the past.

But do they result in better art? Or just more efficient art?

Is all this really necessary?

A critic of this approach might suggest that this chronic experimenting is a misuse of one's artistic energy. That the artist's energy is better placed in slowly perfecting his skills with a particular medium over the course of a career.

And truly, some of the greatest contemporary master's techniques are stunning in their straight-forward simplicity. Paul Bonner, whose amazing work looks like it must involve every medium ever conceived of, as well as unimaginable dark powers, says merely that, "Mostly I just mix up some watercolor on a dinner plate and start painting."

Oil, thinned with M. Graham's Walnut Alkyd Medium over Holbein's Acryla-Goucahe, on gessoed MDF.

Our critic might also suggest that this sense of chronic experimenting could lure the artist into believing in "silver bullets" that can somehow make up for deficiencies in drawing ability and craftsmanship.



We hear that an artist used some exotic medium and think, 'if only I had that exotic medium, my work would look as good as his.' Those of us who've tried this experiment are familiar with its generally dismal results. A special medium can offer small comfort to a poor composition.



However, while we must admit that the silver bullet is perhaps the wrong way of looking at it, there is something to be said for understanding the tools available to the contemporary artist.



And we may site examples like James Gurney, a painter who actually does appear to know a vast amount about every medium ever conceived of and uses each of them as necessary to achieve his artistic goals.

Tests showing varying degrees of success and failure

with Winsor & Newton's Artisan Water-Mixable Oil Paint and Mediums

When I do these experiments, I tend to keep tight notes as well as take photos of the various stages. In my notes I record details, like drying times, workability and surface quality.

Not only does recording the steps help me to remember how I did a particular piece, but it also helps me remember not to shoot myself in the face when I am half-way through another piece executed in the same manner. Often at the half-way point a piece reaches what some illustrators call "The Ugly Stage" where if the artist doesn't have a firm knowledge of how the piece will look at the end of this stage, he may literally kill himself.



While these experiments are not always helpful, and can result in some dismal failures, I find them extremely helpful in sorting which tools work for me and which tools don't.

Winsor and Newton Griffin Alkyd Oil Paints, thinned with a 75% Liquin, 25% OMS mixture* on MDF.

* Denotes a mixture that might well kill you dead without proper ventilation.

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The Most Mind-Blowing Images I Have Seen in My Life: Part II

By Justin Gerard



On a trip in 2009, I had a chance to see the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. While there I beheld one of the most impressive sculptures created in the last 200 years. It was the Saint Marc, by a little known sculptor named Jean Baptiste Gustave Deloye.

Why is it awesome and how comes it to be on a list of the most earth-shatteringly awesome art I have ever seen?
Because it is of a dude who who has wrestled down a Winged Lion. And he did it wearing nothing but a tea cozy.

The lion looks plainly furious, while Saint Marc looks like he is lost in abstraction, his mind already having moved on from the fact that he just mastered a winged lion. He might be thinking, "I wonder if McRib is back?" Or, "I wonder what happened in the last season of Lost?" But he isn't very concerned about the lion or the fact that he is wearing nothing but a tea cozy.

Note: Some will no doubt cry out that art like this promotes a spirit senseless cruelty to animals. To that I will say that winged lions can generally be expected to take care of themselves against unarmed and stark-naked men.

Now the learned among you will say that I may have misinterpreted this particular piece because I couldn't read the placard, and yes, my Parle vous Francais isn't what it used to be.

Je ne parle pas français. Désolé, désolé! Je suis American!
However, I do have a vague recollection of the winged lion being St. Marc's symbol and that the imagery has something to do with his preaching, (or one of the other apostle's preaching) being "like that of a roaring lion."

The artist here has skillfully maneuvered around any appearance of stiff oration, and cut more deeply into the impression and sense of what the impact might be like to listen to a truly masterful and compelling orator contending for what he believes.

Judging from what I see in contemporary examples of sculptures of mighty orators, I can't help thinking that if this concept were to have been attempted in the last few decades, we would either have a dull, square man in a dull, square suit, and a disgruntled finger jabbed in the air, or else we might have a loose collection of junk welded together to give the impression of a loose collection of junk welded together.

Given the choice of the 3, I am always going to listen to the guy who has mastered a mythical creature, even if he is naked. And most people will generally prefer the place somewhere between pure representation and pure abstraction.

This skillful communication of the idea of a mighty orator, an orator whose voice sounded like that of a roaring lion, is so much more interesting to me simply because it can be misinterpreted. Consider that without the title below "Evangile St. Marc" we might not know exactly who or what this was. (Though we couldn't help but be impressed.) But given the title and a general understanding behind it, it encourages a rethinking of the viewer's world, and his seeing everyday ideas with new eyes.

The artist may have undertook to make this sculpture simply for the pursuit of excellence in art. He might have done it for the money. Or he may have done this out of a sincere appreciation for a man who believed in something so strongly that he had to shout about it. Who knows?

But I derive such pleasure from this sculpture.

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Inspiration

By Justin Gerard

Every now and then I get asked what I do for inspiration.

Some mistakenly believe that I torment my sister's cat for inspiration. Others believe that I methodically hunt down and destroy endangered species. And still others suspect that I build giant robots and plan an invasion of Mars.


 




I assure you this is not true. I like good music and fine literature.

But even more than music and literature, I find that camping trips provide some of the best inspiration.


 

Some might say; yes, but don't you spend most of a camping trip fighting mosquitos, rain, fires that won't start and equipment failure all while being completely lost? And don't you spend most of your mental energy panicking about wether you will even survive this day because you have not exercised in a month and have been living on chic-fil-a?

And well yes, this is all true. But there are brief moments on these trips that make the whole experience worth the overall misery of it. When it is all said and done, I tend to forget how terrible it was, and how we almost killed each other that time the campstove broke, and I am left only with the impression of the spectacular views and the warmth of sun after being freezing and the taste of food after being starving.

Apart from being inspired by the raw beauty of the planet, hiking gives a person a chance to be alone with their thoughts in a place where they cannot help but feel small and cannot help but appreciate what they have. There is something about being freezing, and having to wrestle with building a fire and putting up a tent in the snow that suddenly turns a simple, everyday thing like a warm shower into one of the greatest technological wonders of all time.

I always bring a hardback sketchbook with me on these trips, and try to have easy access to it. Every time I come back from one of these trips I have hundreds of new thumbnails a ideas for new projects I want to undertake. The odd scribbles and tiny thumbnails made on the trail may get turned into something larger and they may not, but the impression of it all never quite leaves me. It will always be somewhere in the back of my head, waiting for a chance to find its way onto paper.

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Drawing Month: Part II

By Justin Gerard

I received a number of questions during part I of Drawing Month.

Most of them fell into one of two categories: 

1. How do I go about drawing a face for a study? 

2. What if I really am confronted by aliens?

For the first question, I start every face with a grid, to map out the proportions and overall shape. For me one of the biggest struggles for every face is the proportion. This early mapping out of the structure keeps my faces from looking like they are sliding off the page. To help with this, I like to draw on vellum, so that I can flip the page over to make sure that the beautiful woman I'm trying to draw isn't starting to look like a bottlenose dolphin. I have found that very few ladies are impressed with images of themselves where they look like a bottlenose dolphin.

Pirates don't typically care as much as women about how they look, but even still, I try to stay in the habit of keeping good proportion. You can only take your characterization of certain people so far before sabers get drawn.

After I have roughed out my figure, I begin to work in the smaller shapes and try to establish where the shadows are going to be. At this stage I will work and rework areas until they look right. In most cases, when I reach this point, I have hopelessly muddled the image. See the pirate on the left. A portrait like that could very well get me shot.

So now I am faced with a number of choices:

I could run for it.

I could try to clean up the image with an eraser.

Or I could place a second sheet of vellum over the drawing and do a clean line drawing over it, keeping the correct lines and leaving out the ones that do not add to the image.

Generally speaking I opt for the third choice, but I won't pretend I haven't run a number of times.

So this works for human subjects. But not every subject you will draw is going to be human. Which brings us to our second question:

What do you do if you are Earth's first contact with a super-advanced and potentially hostile alien race? Will this method work? Or will this get everyone on the planet vaporized or turned into martian-livestock?

The answer is yes. It will work.

Now, the process is generally the same as working with a human subject, except that similarities to bottlenose dolphins might not be as offensive to an alien. The trick with aliens is of course to not screw up on your first draft, or if you do, to not let them see you throw your first draft away. Aliens may find that first screw up hard to understand, and it may make the human race look weak and easy to conquer. No pressure or anything, but the fate of the planet is now in your hands.

After you have completed the image present it to the alien as a gift.
Some may scoff, but it saved Milwaukee 0f '93.


 

Portrait of Alien from The Milwaukee Incident of '93.

(Pictured here alongside the discretely thrown away first draft.)

If the alien isn't impressed with the portrait of themselves, draw a picture of their pets.

No one can resist a portrait of an adorable pet.

Portrait of Alien's Adorable Dog from The Milwaukee Incident of '93

If you are interested in learning more about the basic approach I use I recommend the following 2 books:

Bridgeman' Life Drawing by George B. Bridgeman
Drawing Course by Charles Bargue with the collaboration of Jean-leon Gerome

These books have been a tremendous help to me. They offer cleaner and more thorough instruction on the method of drawing shown above, which has been twisted to serve my own dark ends.

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