As I said in previous reviews of Targete’s DVDs, he is a very competent painter who is comfortable with his subject. And that makes you, the listener, nearly as comfortable with what he is doing.
Targete initially drops new layers into the black and white underpainting he did in Volume 2 of his DVD series. He demonstrates that it is very easy to add initial glazed colors to it by manipulating a layer of color under his black and white layer. He then works in additional chaotic (but pleasing) warm and cool colors by playing with the color dynamics settings on his Photoshop brushes and by varying the digital palette he is using. Because he has already established the values of his finished painting, adding color only reinforces what he has done, making it more dynamic, more exciting.
At this stage, Targete also references his original color sketch and occasionally samples from it to keep his new painting within the first creative boundaries he established. So much of what Targete brings is in the words he speaks as the animation flows across the monitor. He explains how skin tones are affected by the blood that flows beneath them and by the light of the sky that flies above them. “Flesh has blue in it, has purple in it, has brown in it. It’s all about knowing which colors dominate,” he says. Much of this has nothing to do with the rather dark, foreboding painting he is creating, but there is so much more to the subject than can be expressed through one work. Targete makes the subject come alive and communicates to the viewer some of the passion he feels when he is painting.
At one point, Targete says, “I’m working around in a lot of areas … spreading the joy around.”
That expresses a lot of what even the casual observer will take away from watching this artist at work .. the joy.
As with Volume 2, Imaginative Illustration With J.P. Targete, Volume 3: The Final Color Illustration is a DVD-ROM, which means it plays only on a computer DVD player. The DVD’s playback resolution is worth the momentary setback that not being able to play it on a commercial player might initially cause. And considering how much detail Targete invests into his painting, that resolution pays dividends immediately.
The finished painting that J.P. Targete creates is a stunning testimony to the rigorous process that he uses within his work. Like a castle made of Jenga blocks, it’s pretty easy to see how the finished edifice would collapse if you took away some of the first blocks that helped establish a firm foundation.
Imaginative Illustration With J.P. Targete, Volume 3: The Final Color Illustration is an extremely valuable resource for digital painters and concept artists. And it would be hard to conceive starting out on a career in digital art without a copy.
