15 Minute Speed-Paints 4

Surprise! King Kong! Yeah yeah, you know the drill. The two in the middle i spent a little more than 15 minutes on, but besides that, 15 minutes all the way.

By the way, thanks everyone for dropping in, commenting, and showing support in other ways too. It means a lot to me, I think when you're out on your own its easy to lose touch with your community of artists. Some days it might be tough to keep your motivation up, and I think when we all take a moment to cheer each other on, it does a lot.

Dragon Magazine (and more King Kong)

Hello all! I am so very pleased to finally share my first illustration done with Wizards of the Coast. They have the preview of the image online now, so I guess that means I'm in the clear. If you come back later and this post has vanished, well, that probably means I wasn't in the clear.

This illustration was done for the online incarnation of Dragon Magazine, issue 377. I had the privilege of working with the notorious Jon Schindehette. If you don't know about Jon, you should.

So I'm a pretty happy camper right now. I can stick this feather in my hat, and I've also got a couple different projects in the pipeline. Happy days! It feels like all the years of hard work is starting to pay off. Well, pay off with more years of hard work, but that's alright! I feel so very lucky to work in something I'd be doing anyway in my spare time. We artists are a lucky bunch, minus the recession.

Here are some more King Kong studies. 15 minutes each, as usual. I've posted a batch of these every day for the last 3 days. Go me! Doing these exercises has already gotten me thinking about ways to improve, its alarming how fast I'm making "color discoveries" off of the past 3 days doing this. I definitely recommend it to any artists working digitally. Its so easy to get started too, just grab your favorite dvd and you're good to go!

Thanks for reading, my faithful friends.

15 Minute Speed-Paints 2

More practice from this evening. I wonder how long I can keep using stills from this movie (King Kong) before I burn out and hafta switch. Well, I have the extended edition, so it might take a while to find out. Man, I love me some Peter Jackson extended edition dvd's. Naomi Watts is also very nice to look at, but you wouldn't be able to tell from these...yet!


I'd been using this blog like a 2nd portfolio site with a lot of words, but I think this is the start of me actually using a blog how its meant to be used. Here's hoping I don't fall off into obscurity after 2 weeks.

15-minute Speed Paints

I took a couple hours out tonight to do some speed-painting, because I want to get more comfortable with the Wacom tablet. Yeah, I know, I've been using it for 5 years now. But most of my process usually involves me drawing out whatever it is I'm going to paint, and then scanning that in. I also want to practice composition more, and I gotta say, doing these speed paints is like killing two birds with one stone! I'm definitely having fun with these. I've been talking with some helpful individuals about getting off my butt and really using my spare time to do studies and practice for myself, instead of only working when I'm being paid for it. I can't remember the last time I did any artwork that was just for me, just for the sake of practice. Its always this job or doing it for that annual, or so that I can have a specific something for my portfolio.

Well, enough talk. This is my venture for the evening, I spent 15 minutes on each of these.


I know. It'll get better. If you're an AD and this is your first time visiting, for the love of god scroll down! I swear I'm at least halfway decent!


I'll mail a postcard to the first person who guesses what movie this was from! I'll need your mailing addy to get the postcard to you, though! ;)

Also, I am available for more freelance work. You know. FYI. Just saying.

McLean's Mentoring!!!

So over at the conceptart.org website, they have an entire forum devoted to students connecting to volunteer "mentors." The learning process has always been something I've found kind of interesting, I feel like all throughout my career as a student I've paid as much attention to how the instructors demonstrate ideas as the ideas themselves.

Well, I've always wanted to get one of those threads underway, and now I have. I've got 3 guys who are taking the plunge and putting their trust in me this summer. The goal of the class is to arrive at a single finished illustration with a strong composition and color palette. The road there includes lots of thumbnails, value studies, and color studies before we ever start on a final. If you'd like to follow along, you can do so by clicking here. If the class goes well, I think I will make it an ongoing program, with a summer class, an autumn class, and a spring class.

Also, I am going to jump in and do a piece with the class myself, but shhhh! Don't tell them, its a secret for right now. Why should those guys have all the fun, right? Below is a thumbnail I am considering.


Its an image of a Nacatl from Magic: The Gathering. Because hey, who doesn't want to paint a Magic card? It couldn't hurt to tackle some of the Magic subject matter head-on. I also didn't want to get too complicated with narrative in this image, because it seems like most Magic cards are very direct in whats going on. He's making a "quick retreat." Simple enough, right? I also like that he takes up a lot of space in the picture, most of the things I do are figures with a very "safe" amount of negative space around them. The Magic cards hafta pack a lot of punch at a small scale, and that means you gotta get a little more bold with your cropping decisions! At least it seems so.

Also: My freelance schedule is opening up here pretty soon, so to any of you art directors out there, feel free to show me some love. ;)

Until next time, dear readers!

Illustration Master Class 2009

This last week I attended the Illustration Master Class, hosted by Rebecca Guay. It was a fun week, I was very productive and met a lot of really darn cool people. I think my brain almost exploded when Irene Gallo, Greg Manchess, Jon Foster, Dan Dos Santos and Justin Gerard were all in the same room. It was way too much for a nerd like me to handle!

We had several options for our assignment this past week. I went with the "Steampunk Wizard of Oz" option. As you will see, even for a "steampunk" version, my piece was a very loose interpretation. I decided right off the bat that I wanted to show the Wicked Witch of the West in my illustration, along with Dorothy. My thumbnails here are much more rough than what I'd usually send to a client, but for personal work they work just fine. The one I chose had a very similar camera angle and setup to my last illustration, with the cartoony fox.

After choosing a thumbnail I was happy with, I did some drawing and some color studies, and finally ended up with two color directions that seemed like equally good solutions (A and B above). I settled on B because it seemed a little less typical for me, I know I've relied on "blue-green + red-orange" more than once. Plus, I've got a job I'm working on that might look really good in those colors, so I figured I could save that palette for later.

Once I got past the preliminary work, it was pretty smooth sailing into the final piece. After fine-tuning the colors and values in the studies, I knew that as long as I kept referencing my studies and adhering to them, it'd be nearly impossible to mess up the final illustration. (you can click the image for a larger version)



I really think this piece raised the bar, and is a step up from the rest of my work. More than one instructor told me I was working on my best piece, and that's a good thing to hear. It gets me excited to make EVERY illustration my "best" illustration (which is how it should be anyway).

Speaking of "best illustrations", I have a deadline staring me down, so I need to go kick its ass now. In the meantime, you may want to see some of the other illustrations that other notable IMC students did. Here are some links to the blogs of Justin Gerard, Nonie Nelson and Zelda Devon. No promises that they will have their piece online when you click the link, but I'm sure that they're on the way. These guys have great blogs anyway, so hopefully you won't mind looking at all the awesome work they have.

Thanks for checking in! I'll leave you with a picture of yours truly hard at work, from Irene Gallo's Flickr. Keep fighting the good fight!

Dream Kingdom

So I just finished this guy up a few days past. Its probably the most kid-friendly thing I've done since these guys years past. So yeah, I really enjoyed working on this one, and its given me some ideas on some long-term personal projects I'd like to start on, focusing on elaborate environments. I've really been admiring Mary Grandpre's palettes lately, sort of "rediscovered" her work. You might know Mary's work on the Harry Potter books in the United States, but she's got way better stuff than that! Really worth a look if you've never been to her site, and if you already have - well, one good turn deserves another!


I think its neat to be able to claim influences on artists that people wouldn't normally associate you with. I would prattle on about all my various influences, but I think that might be a little self-indulgent. It'd be as though this blog were all about me or something.



Next time I post, I'm hoping to have some darker fantasy material to share. I wouldn't want you guys to think I'm all just cuddly animals over here.