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"My technique is fairly straightforward. It's all about keeping my choices as narrow as possible. Just ask my wife how great I am when presented by too many choices.

When the client accepts the sketch, it goes down on gessoed canvas or masonite, depending on the job. I then apply an acrylic medium over the gesso, in both cases, probably over the drawing as well, and let that dry. That gives me a great surface to apply paint on, and allows me to keep moving the paint around. If you put oils right on gesso, it gets sucked in there like a chalky sponge, and you wind up scrubbing more than painting.

I don't get all involved in the transferance of drawing to painting. I've seen some amazing techniques out there for this dreaded step in the illustration process. As for me, if this process gets too mechanical, too process oriented, if I spend too much time looming over the drawing, I lose steam. Then the project becomes work, and it's hard to create when it's work. I need to keep aspects of the entire process immediate and free for the creativity to keep flowing.

I start out with a burnt umber stain, covering the whole piece and using a lift-out technique for the underpainting. Then, depending on several factors, I either let the underpainting dry before applying the overpainting, or I just go right into it. It all depends on the project and the needs of the client. If it's a fast turnaround, or if the piece requires a stylistic approach that's immediate and full of energy, then I don't wait. I try to maintain a series of weekly paintings that don't go longer than 3 hours each just to keep my edge.

However, if it's an involved piece that needs time to evolve, with layers of depth and complex composition, and of course if I have the luxury of a long deadline (about 2 weeks min), then I can spend time on the underpainting, let it dry, and then spend even more time on the overpainting.

I use 3 fundamentals when painting:
- Start with a broom, end with a needle
- Back to front
- Dark to light
These are pretty self explanatory, and it's really all I go by in terms of technique. Keep it free and loose, don't over think or over work a piece to death. Keep stepping back, walk away from it from time to time. Keep seeing it with fresh eyes. Don't pull all-nighters, it'll be there in the morning. Of course, I'm the worse criminal of these crimes, so who am I to say anything. I get sucked into a project and the world could blow up outside and I wouldn't know it. You can tell when an artist is coming up for air after a few hundred thousand hours immersed in a project, they have this "... awe man..." look on their face while their eyes adjust to daylight, like they just came out of a coma. We all know what it's like. You can tell on the phone too, whenever you can't understand what they're saying because they keep scraping their face all over the mouthpiece. You remember John Hurt in the first Alien movie, when he's suddenly sitting up without the face hugger clutched on his head, that's an illustrator about every 3 weeks.

Anyway...

I have a limited palette, after exploring the multitudenous varieties of technicolor crap out there. I swear, these days if it's been imagined, even in some hysterical clinically-induced haze, you can probably get it in a tube somewhere.

The palette :
- Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow
- Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna
- Permanent Green Light, Veridian
- Prussian Blue
- Cadmium Red
- Dioxyzine Purple
- Titanium White
Keep it simple. Too many colors gives me too many choices. Not a good thing. Train falls right off the rails. Try to mix the colors you need. I also keep a tube of Ivory Black on standby just in case I need to mute the Prussian Blue down a bit, but I try to never use it. Every single time I use black, it's like a bird flew by and crapped on my painting.

I love Prussian Blue. I've used all the others, and they just aren't the same. You can do things with Prussian Blue that you can't even imagine with any other color. The late and truly wonderful Keith Parkinson once scowled at me for using Prussian, he hated it, it's too intense, said it infected his entire palette. Advised me never to use it. After some years of trying to heed his wisdom and use other blues, I just gave up. You can get a dark out of Prussian Blue so rich it claws at your soul.

My brushes are limited as well. I use cheapo house painting bruses that you can get at a hardware store for less than a buck to cover large areas and also to sweep across the painting whenever I need to capture depth, or softness. However, I'll spend the money on my flats and rounds. I used to use filberts, but got away from them. I like having the options presented by flats and rounds. I use the red squirrel natural bristle, Windsor & Newton "Galeria", they're expensive but they take a beating and nothing lays down paint as wonderfully as these. When it comes to the smaller brushes and hairlines, I sometimes run to an office supply store and pick up a few packs of those cheap synthetic brushes. They don't last for more than 2 paintings but they lay the paint on pretty nicely when they're new.

I use a retouch varnish when the painting is dry, as this stuff is intended to be used before a painting cures, which usually takes more than a year. It levels out the paint textures and brings out the values.

I do not use any mediums. I've tried them, and I hate them, including Liquin. The smell of Liquin alone gives me crawlies. I once did a painting I was extremely proud of back in college, I added linseed oil to the paint as I was exploring different techniques. That was about 15 years ago and that painting is still tacky to this day, with 15 years of fuzz, hair, moss, bugs, and anything else you can imagine sticking to that thing. Many illustrators swear by Liquin, and I understand why. But I'll take my chances with paint and turp. Don't need all those other choices."

- Jason