Pop Culture Characters when they were Children – “LITTLE”

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Wayne

Little, Pop Culture Characters when they were young

ad & link to the kickstarter page for Little, the book of pop culture characters

Shameless ad we know, but we want Will’s book to work

Little is a collection of little or young, pop culture characters, or re-imagined pop culture characters as children, like when they were Little – printed in a collectible art book

HOW CUTE!

Will Terry has been drawing these little pop culture characters for about eighteen months on and off. At first it was just for fun but then it grew into an obsession. After tabling at a hand full of “Cons” and selling hundreds of them – He realized he just had to put them in this book. You know, for the fans. How cute! they say. Folks love’m.

It’s fun to see if you can tell who they all are

Kickstarter is another way for artists to make money

If you are an artist, and I hope you are, and if you love doing art, and I hope you do, you should be constantly thinking of ways to make money doing what you love. ART. Kickstarter is one more opportunity out there. Will Terry is giving it another try. Another Try? Yes, he didn’t make it last time. So, being the die hard that he is, and the persistent artist that he is, he is doing it again. We will probably write about the success, or failure of this kickstarte in the future, but right now we are hoping to get a lot of support and momentum so that Will will have to spend countless evening mailing books, prints and posters to all his faithful fans that supported him in this endeavor.

Thank you and if you like the project, and I hope you do, please share it, pass it on, contribute support etc

– and check out more of what Will is up to, he teaches art at FolioAcadmy.com too of course.

The Artist in You

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Will Terry

An Artist is trying to manifest itself

young Will Terry, the Artist to be, and his elder sister

“It wasn’t that I took pleasure in removing their heads”

Every child is an artist, in one way or another. I don’t know if you can see it, look real close. Do you see that? That little boy has an artist trying to find it’s way out. My parents should have known when I took apart my brand new transistor radio. My sisters should have known when I removed their barbie doll heads – it wasn’t that I took pleasure in the removal of the heads. It was seeing how many different reactions I could create in their emotions. By the time my motor skills really developed I painted my masterpiece – Three barbie doll heads, owned by three different sisters all coming off at the same time. Magnifique!

Without boring you with all the details I had a pretty typical American exposure to art in junior high and high school. He was always pretty good but there were always those who were much better.

Getting into college was a challenge

I really didn’t fit in the one size is supposed to fit all public school system. I had quite a bit of trouble with reading comprehension, science and history always netted below average grades and forget about math…that left art and music…the only two bright spots on my report card.

On the other hand the little girl in the picture was destined for academic honors…if you look close you can see that she knows it too. (Love you Beth- look what she does!)

My art skills were keeping me in the game.

So on to college and more bad grades in english, (shouldn’t that be capitalized? How should I know, I’m an artist) history, science, and math – what’s new right? Art on the other hand was still keeping me in the game with my grades. Kind of like adding bases to acids. (I did remember that from science class)

Then…upon applying for the BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) at BYU I distinctly remember hearing the earth crack as I was barely allowed in on probation. PROBATION???!!! in art??? but I’m supposed to be good at art – at least that’s what everyone had been telling me. How could this be? If not art then what?

I finally had to come to terms with the fact that my past effort had taken me as far as I could coast. It was time to admit that I wasn’t the savant I thought I was. That I had to get to work – that I had to humble myself and start listening and learning from my teachers – mainly Richard Hull and Bob Barrett – also Rob Colvin. If not for them I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a successful illustration career. (Ironically I was later hired to teach part time at BYU by Richard Hull)

One of the reasons I wanted to release my “How To Illustrate Children’s Books” video series is to help others learn those very important principles that can be the difference between success and failure. I know how frustrating it is to wallow in depression when a piece doesn’t work out….when you spend a lot of time on an image and you wish you had never started it. I know what it’s like to try to talk yourself into liking your own work. And I know what it feels like when you show a new piece to someone and their facial expressions just can’t lie as good as their lips….and how when you work and re-work a piece and re-work it some more you want to smash it and scream. Been there. I’ll admit it I’ve shed real tears over my art and I don’t cry very often…although “Driving Miss Daisy” gets me every time.

I wanted to post this as encouragement to my fellow artists – and leave you with this: I’ve realized that all those frustrations, emotions, disappointments and tears have led to one happy camper. I love my job

How To Illustrate Children’s Books

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Wayne

It is easier to Illustrate Children’s Books when you know how.

This has been one of our best sellers and most watched video courses.

Doing artwork and illustrating in your spare time.

Will Terr worked on this video series while his kids played xbox and his wife caught up on her reading. It was a choice between relaxing doing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and taking my turn cooking OR…Making a video series. It was a toss up – on one hand he’d get the satisfaction of cleaning and watching his kids mess it up again or creating something that he had been thinking about for quite some time.

We are all glad he let the kitchen go and created this wonderful art lesson.

Video is a much better medium for showing someone exactly what you mean

I’ve put quite a bit of work into my college picture book class but I always thought I could do more with it. In class the images that I show are static and often leave me feeling that I could have done better. Video is a much better medium for showing someone exactly what you mean in many cases. Don’t get me wrong – I demo in my classes but sometimes you just aren’t prepared or equipped to do exactly what you want. I’ve tried to include just about every aspect of the children’s book making process in this series to provide viewers with a basic knowledge of what they need to work on.

It has been nice to help others learn Narrative ILLUSTRATION

0001b It’s definitely not perfect but I’m proud of the work I put into it and hope that it brightens the lives of those who want to learn more about narrative illustration. Perhaps this isn’t your cup of tea but if you know anyone who might appreciate it send them a link.

picture of some character development Thanks and have a beautiful day.

It Hurts When Your Artwork Gets Scrapped!

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Wayne

This Illustration was Scrapped, but Not Forgotten

He DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT, SO HE WAS CUT.

This is the only fame this little guy is going to get, unless we post him on Pinterest.

Folio boy, Will Terry, created this little gem for a job he was working on for Klutz awhile back and this little guy just didn’t make the cut, so he was cut.

They can’t all be gems

But like on Facebook, if you have a million pictures of yourself or loved-one, or you cat, you probably don’t need to post all 1,000,000 of the pics, just post the good ones that get the point across. I know it’s sad when you have something that you work on and work on, our little babies they are, only to have them rejected by “the man”. Or the publisher, or the client. So Wizard boy here gets to come out of the flat file of shame and stand tall in the lime lite on this small time Folio Academy blog.

Here’s a wizard I did a little while ago that was never used by my client – Klutz. I liked him but he didn’t fit into the project so the poor guy got scrapped. Enjoy your 15 minutes my little sorcerer. ~Will Terry

A slice of life story about a spider who got roasted alive,

till he was dead

When I was in 7th grade I was in a science class that required an insect collection. I had a pet tarantula at the time who came to an awful demise when my aunt Jeanine set his jar in the sun. He roasted to death there in a quart jar with holes in the lid, on the kitchen table in the warm sunshine on a sunny day while I was in school 😥

Well I made the best of it, I pinned him to my insect collection board. But the day I took the cardboard of pins and death to school, I chickened out, “He’s not an insect stupid, everyone will laugh at you!” So I took Terry the Tarantula, my great, big, beautiful, wonderful, incredible, super, spectacular, giant, awesome, and very impressive spider off that board and handed it in with out him. He never got to shine, because he wasn’t an insect. I still feel bad about that, I should have left him on there to enjoy his 15 minuets. Insect or not, he belonged on that board with all his dead little friends.

In loving memory of Terry the Tarantula

Counting the one in your cephalothorax, it took 9 pins to hold you down

So Many Art Teachers Just don’t Teach Art

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Will Terry

Why Do So Many ART Teachers Refuse To Teach ART?

(50% off, ‘How to Design a Drawing’, details below.)

Many Artists learn more from ‘online art courses than in college

I can’t tell you how many artists have told me via Facebook, twitter, YouTube, this blog, email, Skype, etc that they have learned more from online classes like FolioAcademy, SVS and otheres, than they did in four years of Art School at 500 x the price! As much as I’d like to pat myself on the back I won’t. I won’t pretend that I’m doing more than any art teacher should be doing.

How can Artists & illustrators be learning more online than in school?

How can this be happening? My theory is that art was never treated as a serious subject in K-12 and as a result students enter college completely unaware of what they need to learn in a visual arts program. “But Will, I had A Few great art teachers in high school” It happens, but quite often, in fact more often, art teachers spend most of their time managing students that were dumped in their classrooms from the counseling dept. – I know – I taught High School art and I was in High School Art. I believe that a lot of art teachers that don’t teach either never became accomplished in their own work and never learned the rules, or perhaps they’ve simply become lazy and willing to take advantage of the system -a system that pays them just as much for being a great teacher as it pays for being a lousy one. It could also be that they are afraid that they will create clones of themselves who will take away their work – pure nonsense and scarcity thinking. Or maybe they spend too much time babysitting and policing those students that are only there to screw off and cause trouble. Like I say, I was there.

Drama majors, English majors, Music majors, and Dance majors come to college with much more experience than illustration or art majors.

They come with more experience because in Drama, English, Music, and Dance they are taught rules. You can’t have a school play if the actors are taught to act their “feelings”. Obviously you can’t write a story without learning rules about plots, sub plots, climbing action, climax, falling action, resolution. Not to mention, Language, spelling and of course grammar. You can’t make music if everyone is doing their own “interpretation” of the song and you can’t be an effective dancer without learning “moves” moves that were developed by other dancers.

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Folio Boys go to So Cal

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Wayne

I am lucky to be Will’s best friend

This video isn’t that great but it is cool to see Will Speaking to Millions of peeps.

Since the California Teachers Association (CTA) loves Will’s artwork for children so much, he has been able to represent the CTA two times so far. So they paid for him and his wife, or if she was too busy or not feeling well or what ever, He was able to take some significant brother. That’s me, Will’s best friend, Wayne. So we loaded up the truck and we went to Beverly, LA that is, swimming pools, movie stars.

Well the next thing you know, Old Will‘s on stage up there, over the weekend he was a celebrity, he got to represent the California Teachers Association again with his Armadilly Chili Book. He had a blast and he even got to say a few words in front of the group. That’s him up there.

I couldn’t believe how they crammed more than a million people in the ballroom.

We SOLD OUT on Saturday afternoon – We couldn’t believe it! Over 500 books! They even made a plush out of Tex the tarantula, – you may still be able to buy it here. Author’s note, Not Terry the tarantula who was slow roasted to death in a jar, but Tex, a character in Armadilly Chili.

They took very good care of us – too good!

On Sunday we drove down to visit illustrator Steve Gray in Hermosa Beach. He’s a great guy and a decorated illustrator – he won the Grand Canyon Reader award last year for his Coyote book.

Steve uses one of those nifty Cintiq Tablets to render his illustrations. He used to do quite a bit of advertising illustration back in the day and his studio walls are decorated with many impressive and recognizable work.

Pick up a copy and enjoy his wacky drawing and wonderful color and Jennifer Ward’s great story.

You can’t go all the way to the beach without actually getting your feet wet right? I’m the short one on the right.

I guess we weren’t the only ones having a good weekend.

No this is not how we found Will’s wife’s car upon our return, they are still happily married. We saw this car outside of “The Mad Greek” Near Vegas, where we stopped for one last overdose of gluttony on our way home.

Illustration Demo for BYU Art Students

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Will Terry

Art Demonstration for an illustration Class at BYU

I may offend them with a BYU alumni overweight, and smoking!

I was asked by Greg Newbold to do a demo in his illustration classes… so I racked my brain to come up with something that would be FUN but non-offensive to the students. Well not TOO offensive.

Behold! the sketch I came up with. Fun? Offensive? Art?

I really like this sketch and I’m going to paint it but I’m concerned that the student’s might not like that I’ve decided to portray a BYU alumni overweight. And as many of you know, they don’t smoke, so I am taking a little risk here. Not to worry, they may be Mormons but they aren’t that uptight.

Finished, Acrylic paint over Photoshop printed background.

Six hours to paint it

This is the finish art demo: It was a lot of fun working on it and talking to students. I was happy that they thought it was funny… or at least, didn’t beat me up for poking fun. I worked on it in class for about 4 hours and spent an additional 2 at home with a few finishing touches.

Digital Stage, no lighter than 50% value.

This is the beginnings of my digital stage where I Scan in my sketch, take that into Photoshop and airbrush some smooth, basic colors and keep them kind of dark. My main concern is getting everything no lighter than about 50% value.

Using Photoshop I spent about 20 minutes laying in shadows and basic foundation colors. Then I printed it on watercolor paper. The next step in this method was to stipple a layer of acrylic gel medium over the print. I use a kind of short hair paint brush and a little Gel Medium at a time and stipple it onto the paper, giving it millions of little tiny peaks. Aka tooth. The gel drys clear so you can paint with acrylics right over it. Building up the lighter areas. And of course saving the highlights for last.

PRACTICE for PAINTING COLOR & LIGHT; ART CONTEST

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Wayne

Homework for Painting Color & Light

Here is a little assignment you can do, or not, but if you would like to, take the challenge and see what you come up with.

I would love to see what you come up with and maybe blog some of it. If you do something pretty cool, attach it to me in and email. Well, don’t attach it to me, attach it to an email and email it to me to my personal email.

WayneAndreason@Gmail dot com

Art Contest

(I just got an idea forming in my brain, this is now an art contest or a painting contest, or maybe a coloring contest, either way, see below, or the bottom, or the end of this blog for details.)

Just Color These

If you can figure out how to download these drawings, or save them to your computer or device, print if you wish to paint traditionally, or work digitally if you’d rather. Or do your best to draw them.

Then color them.

Variations of a theme.

Colored-Mushrooms-lineSM

Take these mushrooms and make set different. That is, color them different colors, explore different light, colors and what ever. We have an example at the end of this blog if you want to see some possibilities.

Complex things are made of basic shapes

practiceDrawing

Bare in mind, that most things are built with basic shapes, so this is simplified. Take it and decide what you will do with it. Light source and direction. Warm light, or cold, dark and dingy or light and cheery, you decide, add detail if you like.

Santa Claus (AKA Father x-mas) on a Tropical Island

SantaBeachValue

So Santa is on the beach. See what you can do with color on this one. Is it morning, is it noon day, is it evening, morning, or night? You decide. Do one in the day and one in the night if you dare. Same scene but Night vs Day.

Mad Scientist in his Laboratory

jakes

This is an awesome black and white that Jake Parker drew during his Inktober phase last year. This could be realy fun to color, heck it’s fun just the way it is. Think of what you could do with color. You could use harsh light, contrasted by soft light, maybe some creepy fog. Have fun with it. This should be fun for comic book and graphic novel lovers.

and this is “below, the bottom, and the end of this blog”

contest details:

Entries must be emailed to me WayneAndreason@gmail dot com (that’s code, figure it out, the dot means period and there are no spaces) as an attachment in the form of JPEG, no later than one week from today, Okay, 8 days, take Sunday off and go to church for a change. (this was an attempt at humor, please don’t take offence, I can only be so PC)

We will find some artists in the community to judge the artwork who will choose 1 to 4 winners, depending on how many entries we get. Or maybe I should say 0 to 4 winners as we may not get any entries.

By entering a piece or more, you are giving permission for that piece to be displayed on the internet etc. Just in case.

The winner/winners will get a FREE Folio Academy art lesson course of their choice.

Contestants are not allowed to EVER be offended by Will’s or my attempt at humor. We mean no harm, except to that girl named Tammy who tore up a picture I drew of a dinosaur back in second grade. I do mean to offend her but she can still enter. I promise I won’t tear it up. I think her last name was Roundy.

and oh yeah, you can’t go around selling it as your own work as the drawings are drawn by Will Terry

and Jake Parker who are famous artists and hold copyrights.

have fun.

EXAMPLE: COLORED MUSHROOMS

So we took the mushroom theme and ran with it to give you and example of what you could do.

PS if you know Tammy Roundy that went to Lincoln Elementary school in Salt Lake City about 45 years ago, tell her to friend me on FB. Any of you may friend me too. thanks. Your best friend, Wayne https://www.facebook.com/wayne.andreason

You can’t just fix a bad design with good color

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Wayne

If it don’t work in Black and White, it ain’t gonna work in color.

A good painting will also look good in Black and White. That is to say, if you can’t work out your value patterns in black and white, you won’t be able to just fix it with color. Have you ever heard of a grisaille, (that was a tough one to sound out, let alone spell) It’s a black and white under painting. I think the word gray, or grey, as I like to spell it, comes from the same root.

What is a Grisaille and how do you pronounce that?

Grisaille (/ɡ r ɨ ˈ z aɪ / or /ɡ r ɨ ˈ z eɪ l /; French: gris [ɡʁizaj] ‘grey’) (Giz-eye is how I pronounce it) is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. ~Wikipedia

Work out your lights and darks before you add color

So, where was I? Ho yeah, it is often wise, especially for beginners, to work out you lights and darks before you move to color. I like to give it the squint test. Squint at your work and see if it reads well. Do the wrong things disappear? Do the right things stand out?

The under painting can be in a sepia or other tone too, for a nice effect, it doesn’t have to be BLACK and White.

Light and Shadow

Where is your light source? Is it in the picture? If so, you shouldn’t have anything in the painting that is brighter than the light source.

Are the shadows, cast, core etc, in the right places? I am thinking that the cast shadow in this piece is not dark enough.

Do you have reflected light in the right places?

Just add Color, or Colour as my UK friends like to spell it.

If you are painting digitally, like in Photoshop or on the iPad, you will enjoy the ability to undo. If you are using water colors then you can just glaze transperant colors over you black and white under-painting. AKA Grisaille.

If you are using oil paints, you may want to try a water color, acrylic, or gwash, (i better look that up) Gouache. The oil paint goes right over the aqueous paints without disturbing them and it works really well. You should see how Robert Barrett uses gouache, for under-paintings to create a beautiful effect. He calls it a “Rub-out” technique.

Working with Color

Are We Creating Too Many Artists? Teaching ART

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Wayne

By Teaching Others, Are WE Creating TOO MANY Artists?

I AM often asked these questions:

1) Are you worried that you are helping too many artists – that will one day take away your business?

2) Why would you help other people learn and succeed with their art when they will ultimately compete with you and yours in the market place?

3) Aren’t you worried that you will have a bunch of artists copying your style?

Abundance versus Scarcity, A Way of Thinking

I Copied This for School

I was happy to finally be able to make this video to explain my position on the abundance mentality vs the scarcity mentality. I would love to know how you feel?

Won’t your students take away YOUR business?

Will the copy cats out there, copy YOUR style and steel all your would be work? Absolutely not, your style is like a fingerprint. Only you can produce it. And I can’t think of anyone who has really gotten anywhere just by completely copying someone else’s style. Many have found their niche or their style by copying that of another or a lot of others. I say that is a good thing.

I will also say that if you have a unique style, like Will’s unique acrylic painting style, and as a lot of leaders and great artists do, and as a lot of unknowns also have, people will copy, and why shouldn’t they? Suppose it is such a cool style, You have mastered, that others start to mimic it or copy it. Good for you, that means something. And what about the market place. As that style becomes popular, there will be more demand for YOUR style of work. And the market is so big that it won’t hurt at all to have others doing similar work.
We talked to a young artist who has a neat and unique style of painting. We invited her to teach an online art course for Folio Academy. She wouldn’t do it because she was afraid that all of you would hurry up and copy her “style” and put her out of business. I believe that IF hundreds of artists, in fact thousands, learned her style and copied her and promoted their work, she would only do better. First of all few if any would nail “her style” and as more and more artists painted like her, that “style” if it is SO good, would become popular and more clients would want it. Creating a much bigger market then she alone could ever fill.

Art Schools MAKE their students “COPY” others.

copy of the Death Dealer

Most art schools will have a few assignments where you are to do just that. Copy a masters art work, or that of someone you idolize. I copied a piece by Franz Halls and a piece by my favorite fantasy fiction artist, Frank Frazetta. I learned a lot from it. If you know your history you’ll know that Franz Halls was already dead and I didn’t put Frank Frazetta out of business at all. I probably didn’t promote him much either with my insignificant attempt to mimic his “style”.

Author’s note. I was so proud of how I took the word Forgery, and made it look like Frazetta’s own signature.

I have seen people sitting in front of great paintings like the Mona Lisa, right there in the Louvre, copying the daylights out of these paintings. I haven’t seen any one mistaken for Leonardo Da Vinci lately. Copy away. Okay, enough of the soap box. Wait, one more thing, Bob Ross was never replaced and all he did was teach “His Style and Techniques”. I’m just sayin.

EVERY ONE’S COPYING SOMETHING

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