Tuesday, July 14, 2009

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.

10 comments:

EL Gato Negro said...

Hey man things are looking up its about time WOTc got you to do some work. you were destined to make killer work for them haha good shit man and im really digging these movie stills i might give a try at the end of the week, How is that mentor thing going ??? looking grand man peaceeeeee!!!!

robin_chyo said...

congrats on the WoTC gig! looks great! hope you're doing well, man.

Erin McGuire said...

Awesome work Mclean :) Those movie studies are pretty nice also. You should consider doing some from A very Long Engagement, or maybe Amelie. Both of those have great color and the subject matter is cool too. Keep it up!

Glue said...

CONGRATS MY FRIEND!!!
This piece looks awesome, youve been churning out some amazing work,Jackson has some nice compositions.

Im sure youll do more work for wizards, great job!

Charles Valsechi said...

Awesome! Wizards is a great place to get your foot in the door.

Sean Andrew Murray said...

Nobody messes with a guy that has TWO magical battle-axes! This is fantasy-world truth.

Rich Pellegrino said...

the painting came out great dude. congrats to getting a gig with WoTC.

Adam Tamte Volker said...

congratumalations MC!!! I think this is a great and important first step for you. I have no doubt in meh mind that this is merely the beginning.

-Tamte

DCriler said...

Good to finally see what the hell you hinted at in IMC class. Nice work. Glad your rockin some freelance work...there's only up from here.

As for me, same old stuff...engineer all day, then practice painting with the little time I have at night. I'm in the middle of having some fun with the book cover competition over at Artorder.
Anyway, keep on rockin & rollin!

Peace, Derek

McLean Kendree said...

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it!

Eric - the mentor thing is going well, I feel bad though because sometimes I get swamped with stuff to do and it takes me a couple days to go sit down and get back to them.

Erin - Duly noted! First imma see how far I can get with king kong though >:]

Miguel - thanks, I hope to get more work with them, for sure. Yeah, I loooove me some Peter Jackson! What you up to, bud?

Sean - Yeah, those guys are the worst, especially when they start moving in down the street. "There goes the neighborhood!"

Tamte - Yeah, I'm excited for what comes after this. Ideally, this will open some doors.

Derek - Man, I wanna get in on that bookcover competition myself, but i just don't know if I have time! I'm gonna be driving around the east coast a bit, so who knows when I'll have time to sit down and crank something out? Hope yours comes out well buddy, I'll keep an eye out for it!