D&D Spot Illustrations and a Figure Drawing

Here are a few 1/4 page illustrations I did for Dungeon and Dragon Magazines over the past several months. The two characters on the left I did for Jon Schindehette, and the four weapons I did for Keven Smith. I've enjoyed doing pieces this small, the variety is a nice break from some of the bigger, more involved pieces I've posted lately.


Also, this past Sunday my friends and I went to an uninstructed figure drawing session, and it was great to get back to drawing from life. I felt a little rusty at first, but this stuff is like riding a bike.


Thanks for looking, I'll have more goodies soon!

Adventurous Youngsters: Part 1

I'd really like to get involved with some YA fantasy book-cover work. I always felt that my color palettes were appropriate, and that my interest in the fantasy genre was evident. So what gives!? Oh, right, I need to draw 'Young Adults'. A little while back I reached out and got people's suggestions on good YA fantasy books (still open, BTW, just list 'em off in the comments of this post). My aim was to find some solid YA books that I could create illustrations for, and thus broaden my portfolio's horizons a bit.

I plan to alternate between illustrations that depict already-published stories, and illustrations that expand my own personal sandbox/world and aesthetic.

This first value-rough is for one of the personal pieces. I'm making an effort to have elements in this image overlap and not be too secular. My friend and former coworker Jeremy once made a good observation on an earlier piece of mine that each of the elements were very separate from everything else. I'm making an effort to push this overlap and interplay in my work until it becomes second-nature. That's really how I make any kind of progress: I work at it until it becomes a reflex.


And below are some thumbnails and outfit sketches for a Sabriel illustration. Sabriel is the title character in the book by Garth Nix.

If you're a fan of Sabriel, you should check out the work my other friend and former coworker Kali has been doing for the Picture Book Report. I was a little hesitant to get rolling on this piece for fear of simply being outclassed in the Sabriel category. But hey, its a fun book, and the more art the merrier.

I'm going to try and post my progress on this project every month, but I'm not making any promises as to how often this will produce a finished illustration. Work gets hectic, man. You know what I'm sayin'.

Dungeons & Dragons: Hammerfast

In my last post I was lamenting my wait to reveal artwork. Well, this morning I noticed on the Wizards site that this image is now public!

This is the most recent cover I've completed for Dungeons and Dragons, for the Hammerfast book hitting shelves in April 2010. This will be the first book in a new series about different locations in the D&D universe. I had Kate Irwin as my AD for this, and I feel like the entire process was extremely positive and fun. So thank you, Kate, for working with me on this project!


These are the best days of being an illustrator, when you get to share. I thought it would be neat to include some of the process for this image. The description I received for this assignment was very specific in what the illustration was supposed to show, so it made my job much simpler right from the get-go:





As always, thanks a ton for looking and reading!

Dragon 381

Finally! Here is the cover of Dragon Magazine 381. I had the privilege of working with Jon Schindehette again, and I'm flattered that he trusted me with such a cool assignment. It was great to be given the same kind of responsibility that guys like Kekai Kotaki, Cyril Van Der Haegen, and Kieran Yanner have taken on as well!


There was a lot of good back-and-forth in the early stages of thumbnailing, so that we could get as close as possible to the idea that Jon envisioned for the piece. The result was a composition that was less typical for me, which is good. That's one of the neat things about working with an art director: you tackle problems you wouldn't have come up with alone.

I believe in making images that A. have a strong impact at a glance, and B. hold up under scrutiny. I've been following Jon's Artorder blog long enough to know that whenever he posts cover images, he makes the files extra-big (and why shouldn't they be? they're covers!). Knowing this was added incentive to make sure that this image wouldn't just fall apart once the viewer got a close look. Its one of the most "hi-res" images I've done in a while, if that makes any sense.

Having moved to New Mexico has manifested in its own little way; the color palette and the rock formations in the background weren't any product of growing up in South Carolina, lemme tell ya. Now that I can go see some epic mountains at sunset, its wild to witness how much atmospheric perspective obliterates detail and just reduces mountains into simple shapes of brilliant color slashing away at the horizon. The clouds are pretty, too. My New Mexico friends have taken to calling them "McLean Clouds", which makes me happy.

Thanks for reading! I've got more goodies in the works, another cover included. It might be a little while longer before I can post that one but it'll get here, rest assured!

Cthulhutech: Mortal Remains

I did this image way back in April, but the book wasn't released until recently. Now that it's out, I can share this image!


I don't normally do much sci-fi subject matter, so this was a fun challenge. I think that this piece has a much more "digital" color palette than most of my portfolio, which is really kind of appropriate for something so futuristic. I think this is also one of the first illos I've done where a human character isn't present.

As more of the Cthulhutech books come out I'll be able to share more illustrations I've done for them, so keep your eyes peeled!

Betrayal at Monadhan

Well, the new issue of Dungeon Magazine went live, so I think its safe to go ahead and show you guys this illustration I did for it.


This is the same dragon that's pictured on the cover of Dungeon 170, except dying. Once you defeat the larger dragon, a smaller dragon in his chest cavity comes out to continue the fight.

I don't have much else to say, I'm minutes away from packing up my computer and heading out for Shreveport, Louisiana with my good friend Kyler, to visit my other good friend Adam. From there, we are heading to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and will see what the west holds for us.

Incidentally this may involve an extensive search for a new apartment, so if there's anybody listening out there who would like to send some work my way, it would probably make my move to a new place a little easier on the financial end!

Thanks for reading!

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.

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!

Blue Giant Ver. 2.0

Oh man, these re-works just keep comin'!

Bog Witch Final

I forgot to post the final of this one to the ol' blog, so here it is. I dunno, I think its come a good ways, but its certainly time to let it go (for now, anyway). I should be able to have another pretty solid update before Xmas, but I gotta get the work done first before I can post it!

Gorgon Blood 2.0

Here is a rework of an older image, I'm glad I took the time to fix it up. Its one of my favorite things that I've done now, so hopefully the trend will continue. I'm going to go back and tidy up a couple more images for the sake of portfolio, Spectrum entry, etc.

Thanks for looking.

Process on my Bog Witch

Hi all, I'm posting some process for a piece I'm still tinkering on. This is a piece that I thought I "finished" a while ago, as a quicker illustration, yet I now find myself coming back to it. Like I said, I'm not done yet, but I thought it would be neat to show my process (so far), and to show what my work starts out looking like most of the time (ugly).

Here goes. As usual, you can click the pics for larger versions.

Big Old Lizard

Im done for the night,I'll probably clean this guy up a tiny bit before I put it in the portfolio, but overall I'm happy with him. I'd like to have one of these as a pet.

Motion Studies

So I am going to try and take the next couple weeks to beef up and flesh out the concept end of my portfolio. The first instance of that I finished today, in the form of some Motion studies for my old Dream-Catcher character.

I also finished that Blue Giant piece below.





There are environments, weapon designs, and animals on the way!

Its been too long

Long time no update! Anyway, I've been moving things around and I think I've finally got an online portfolio setup that I'm going to stick with for a while. My portfolio is at www.mcleanart.com, and all the news and updates will be here. I've got a finished piece and a color rough here, to show that I have been up to something. The first one is a painting of the Sabriel character from the Garth Nix book series. The second one is an unused direction from a Jack and the Beanstalk illustration that I decided to turn into something else. Most of my pieces look like that early on. The final should be finished soon, and uploaded onto my portfolio site.

I'm hoping to get the ball rolling on some personal projects soon, so that I can start to post that stuff too. Right now I'm thinking something in comic-form, to introduce some different characters that are part of a bigger scheme.

Spectrum 15

So I finally found out which piece of mine was actually accepted into Spectrum, and it was not the one I thought it would be - however I am thrilled regardless, and am dead-set on entering next year! The piece that got in was A Wrinkle in Time! I should say congrats to all my buds who got in this year too, there were quite a few! I hope to see them again next year on the artist list.


In other news, I created a "traditional illustration" section for all things painterly and graphic.

Oh, and if you haven't checked it out, James Gurney's blog is an incredible day-to-day educational resource. Schools have you pay so much, but this guy is just giving it out for free (to paraphrase a friend), so show this guy some love and better yourself! http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com

Lastly, I am selling Prints of my pieces through Deviantart.

Click for Prints!

They're not signed or anything, but you can get them really big, which i intend to do sometime soon just to feed my narcisism. But seriously, haven't you ever wanted a giant print of something you did? I will indulge just this once and get it out of my system.

Thanks for reading folks!

Downloadable Portfolio jpg's