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'.

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.

Odinn Iceborn

Quick edit: I am very aware of the resemblance between this character and Lars Umulaut of Guitar Hero. In fact, you could almost say that was the point...

Hey peeps, just finished this up a few days ago, so off to the blog it goes! This is quite silly, and I feel somewhat unusual for me. Strangely enough though, it came quite easily and without much struggle. This guy is supposed to represent the genre of "Black Metal", and I was checking out the costumes of bands like Immortal a lot. Immortal are pretty funny, unintentionally so. Kyler was my go-to guy for getting background info on this genre.

And just in case you're curious, here is a video of Immortal. Please note that nowhere in this post did I ever say I liked Immortal or black metal. Thanks for reading!

Darkness Calls

Hey all, me again.

I just finished this up, so I decided to go ahead and toss it onto the ol' blog. I did this one to show that I can portray licensed characters, and to try to show that I have the chops to do comic-cover type work. I imagine it would be easier for a client to trust me with their character if they saw that I could, in fact, draw other peoples' creations. This image is taken from the recent Hellboy story "Darkness Calls", the first trade to be illustrated completely by a single artist other than Mignola, that artist being Duncan Fegredo. I'll admit it took a little while for me to warm up to Fegredo's take on Hellboy, but now I'm pretty sold on the guy. Also, Koshchei was just a cool badguy.

I really dig the comics where the artist has taken it upon themselves to mold and create their own story and world. Guy Davis is one of my favorites for this, his Marquis title is wildly good. In my eyes though, the guy who tops 'em all is Jeff Smith, creator of Bone. Whew. If you like comics of any kind, or consider youself a fan of fantasy-type stories, its a crime not to read this one. I would want to do some art depicting those characters, but I think Smith's stuff works best as line drawings, I don't think I could add anything significant to what he already has going on.

Thanks for reading, guys!

Oh, Whoops!

Remember how I was complaining about all that "illustration-discrimination" stuff just a while ago? I guess I have to eat my own words on this one. Man, I feel like a tool.

http://soicompetitions.org/?section=institution_view_winners&institution_id=100&competition_id=30&entry_id=13998

Ringling enters all the pieces that make it into their End of the Year show, and so I didn't even realize this piece was in the running. It wasn't until I was checking Tina Sweep's blog (a good friend and good painter) when I saw that I had gotten in! Kooky! Tina's blog is here: http://tsweep.blogspot.com/ What is funny, to me, is that I did in fact enter this very piece in the student competition the year before, and it did not make the cut. Funny how life is sometimes.

While I'm at it, I guess I should upload some new art. Here are some drawings from the Dr. Sketchy's here in Baltimore. I'm usually a bigger fan of straight nude figure drawing, but its been such a while since ive had the chance to draw from a model, I wasn't complaining. I had good fun, actually. I hope it shows.

Also, a little while ago my friend from Ringling, Robb Gibbs http://robbgibbs.blogspot.com/ (now working at Firaxis up the road) and I took an excursion to DC to find cool things to draw. While the police would not let us park lawn chairs in front of the White House to draw, we DID get to draw some neat skeletons and stuff in the National Museum of Natural History.

More recently I got to participate in New York Comic-Con, and I had a great experience! I saw the James Jean show the day before it was to be taken down at the Jonathan Levine Gallery(and boy was it awesome), and that has gotten me all kinds of motivated to get back into traditional media. I stayed with a friend, Dennis Brown http://www.bagger43.com/ , and had the chance to pick his brain a bit about general art topics. I also had the chance to catch up with friends like Erik Jones http://irison.blogspot.com/ , Miguel Lantigua http://gluesblog.blogspot.com/ and Chris Johnson http://mrvisions.blogspot.com/ . I met people like Nathan Fox http://www.foxnathan.com/ , Irene Gallo http://igallo.blogspot.com/ , Jon Schindehette http://artorder.blogspot.com/ , and Jesper Ejsing http://www.jesperejsing.com/ , and walked away from every meeting very fired up and excited about what the future holds. Good trip, all around.

Lastly: A doodle.

Hopefully the next time I post, I'll be able to share some of the freelance I've been doing, not sure when I can let the cat out of the bag on that stuff! Soon I hope! Hope everyone is doing well!

Blue Giant Ver. 2.0

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

Hi all, this one isn't quite done yet, I still need to add a back view and finish rendering the left figure. Im about to really get cranking on a batch of freelance work, so its going to be a little bit before I can hop back onto this one, but I do intend to.

more stuff

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.

more stuff

more on the way, as usual. Still need to get on a turnaround.

Day 6

This post is a little lighter, just these sword designs for now. I think after these.... I think I'll start on a turnaround for that one robot in the "Into the Fire" piece. Man, there are a lot of little things I want to prune and replace on my site, but I hafta go at one one step at a time. My next post will either be that robot turnaround or another character to go with the "Dead Empire" characters currently online. The two of them feel a little bit lonesome, and I want to flesh out that slot in my portfolio before starting the next slot. Yes, that settles it.

Day 5

ok, so here are some of those weapon designs I'd been playing with. Next on the menu will be some different blade-oriented designs, like more spear-heads, swords, daggers maybe,i dunno. Just whatever seems like a good idea when I sit down to draw.

Day 3

Alrighty, so I think i've got my first straight-up environment for my site. These are a little more tough for me, but I can see how rewarding it is for those who do it well, and that helps motivate me. Personally, I feel like environments are an area in which I have a lot of investigating left to do.

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.

Downloadable Portfolio jpg's