Author Archive
Tiger, Tiger
By Jack Ruttan in ballpoint pen, cats, color, digital, sketchesDrew a tiger while on the phone last night. And then coloured and textured it here.
Wedgewood Dr.
By Jack Ruttan in sketchesWedgewood Dr. A short written and directed by Jonathan Balazs, with paintings by Jack Ruttan.
Warm-Up Faces
By Jack Ruttan in sketchesI’ve not stopped drawing things, just gotten out of the habit of putting them up. Still banging away at digital painting, which I might share some other time. In the meantime, here are some warm-up faces. I draw tons of faces. I prefer to kind of originate things, rather than draw too closely to a […]
New Paintings
By Jack Ruttan in color, Jack's House of Cats, montreal, paintings, watercolor, watercolourIt’s been a while, but here are some new paintings for “Jack’s House of Cats.” Both of them are re-imagined a little. I snapped the Hotel Kent in the early 90s, when the sign was still up. But in this, I tried to picture what it was like in its “heyday.” The Bain Morgan is […]
Iffy Paper
By Jack Ruttan in color, Jack's House of Cats, montreal, paintings, ruttan's place, watercolor, watercolourFound this sheet of sort of cardboard-y paper in my files. After my recent 1941 Whatman experience, I wondered whether this was one of my better types of paper (it was stored away, and did have “deckled” (ie. neatly torn) edges). It might have been Arches Cold Rolled, or some such thing. So I stretched […]
Further Sketchy Oddness
By Jack Ruttan in black and white, color, Coloured Pencils, dinosaurs, sketches, watercolor, watercolourThat strange animal was inspired by a person on a palaeontological art website who thought that sauropod dinosaurs might have had trunks. Probably not, but the idea led to an interesting-looking beast.
Sketches
By Jack Ruttan in sketchesSketches from the old school yearbook, and Star Trek.
Colour Combinations
By Jack Ruttan in color, Coloured Pencils, paintings, sketches, watercolor, watercolourI’m trying out different colour combinations to see if anything twigs my interest. I have to admit that the yellow ochre underpainting thing is still my favourite, but I don’t want to use it as a crutch. Still, light in these paintings seems to be yellow. These aren’t actually “Wedgewood thumbnail roughs,” (that’s a old […]
Hands
By Jack Ruttan in black and white, Coloured Pencils, pencil, Portraits, sketches, watercolor, watercolourTrying to do more “House of Cats” pictures, but I’m lacking inspiration. So I went to youtube and watched watercolour technique videos. People’s hands are fascinating, but in these videos you rarely see the faces. So, I drew the hands in watercolour pencil, and then drew the owners’ faces as I imagined them. [link] [link] […]
New Animation Studio
By Jack Ruttan in color, Coloured Pencils, heads, men, montreal, pencil, Portraits, self-promotion, sketchesThrilled by the news that a new animation studio is opening up in Montreal (a side-effect, I think, of the low dollar making it more tempting for foreign operations to invest here. Not to mention the high number of talented artistic types in this city). In honour of that fact, I’ve done this amazing, highly-detailed […]
Paintings on Whatman paper
By Jack Ruttan in paintings, ruttan's place, self-promotionThis is a recent painting I did on the Whatman paper. Even though I work hard on adding light, I fancy that it’s somehow brighter, almost sparkly. Here’s the paper stretched and ready to go: Here’s a closeup of the grain. It’s pretty rough, Hot-rolled, as they say (I think). Maybe I’m the only one […]
J. Whatman Antique Paper
By Jack Ruttan in paintings, ruttan's place, sketches, watercolor, watercolourIn the last post I was writing about painting on simple typing paper, and the (futile) effort of stretching it. Well, today I was stretching some old paper I had inherited from my late Mom’s stash of art materials, which I had taken with me to Montreal back in 1987 from our family home in Calgary. […]
Cheesy Paper
By Jack Ruttan in sketchesSometimes it’s fun to do something completely against the rules, and find out how it works. In this case I found out that trying to stretch ordinary typing paper doesn’t work. Kind of fun to paint on with gouache, however.