Castle WIP

A little work in progress, inspired by landscape artist Albert Bierstadt. And also, since I've been back in Washington, I've noticed the beauty of sunsets on cloudy days. Just before sunset the sun peaks through the clouds, just above the horizon for a few minutes, creating an amazing view of the landscape and clouds being lit up by the sun. It almost makes it worth living your days under the gloom of clouds 24/7.... almost.

Land Bat

Another piece for the portfolio, using Photoshop and alias sketchbook pro to get this to it's final stage.

Here is my initial description:
Land Bats. Millions of years of evolution have resulted in a land-based bat. It's wings have shrunk and transformed into giant daggers, made of keratin. It is now over 10 feet tall and has no natural predators. It dices it's prey into small pieces so it can manage to fit them in its tiny mouth.

Zombie Love and more

Land Bat (Gray Scale)

I think it's pretty done in the gray scale painting. I'm going to try some color variations and see where it goes. Might possibly alter the design based on experimenting in color. Should be fun.

Land of Giants WIP

This is a fairly quick color sketch I was working on while on the phone. I started refining some parts already. I hope this is the first of more to come. I might try adjusting the aspect ratio of the format when all is said and done.

Sketchin'

Been looking at some Sebastian Kruger. I love his work.

This is just messing around with value and warm tones. I'm starting to just experiment with color schemes. Can't be too worried about making mistakes now.

Monsters go "RAWR!"

Here is my first attempt at a fully painted made up illustration, without line art. It took me longer than I normally would take, but it was more of a learning tool than anything. Things will speed up as I get used to working in color, with rendering.

Application!

This is an illustration I'm working on. I designed a monster and a character to do battle in an erie jungle cave setting at night under a full moon. It's probably going to be the most rendered thing I've ever worked on but I'm learning a lot about value and just taking my time creating accurate lighting and color with make believe characters.

It's still in progress, so I imagine the final will be quite different when all is said and done.

Experiments

Part of the reason why I love figure painting is so that I can have an excuse to just mess around and experiment, no pressure to make it good, just let things happen, good, bad, and ugly.

Every session I usually start out by making a really crappy first image during the short poses. And then do something slightly more confident, and continue until the final, which is usually an hour or more.

Here is my progress.





Whether the final outcome was something that improved upon the others is still up in the air. I personally like the energy and the lost and found quality of the short poses. I guess that is a part of it too, learning to keep that sort of rushed energy, but learning how to control it.

Figure Painting

All gouache, water color underpainting. Definitely a challenging medium, but fun to use. I think we are becoming friends.

Land Bats (WIP)

Cursed Land Bats. Millions of years of evolution have resulted in a land-based bat. It's wings have shrunk and transformed into giant daggers, made of keratin. It is now over 10 feet tall. ( in the final version I will draw a little dude in there to show you the scale) and has no natural predators. It dices it's prey into small pieces so it can manage to fit them in its tiny mouth.

Bigfoot, Ninja Robot, and some guy

These are some very quick prelim sketches for what I hope to finish very soon. Well, at least the first two.

Random Art Makings

An in progress painting. Watercolor over pencil, soon to be layered in gouache.

The Color of Shadow

I'm back in Washington for the time being, waiting on starting my next job. So I'm attending the open model sessions at the local community college. I'm trying to work mainly in gouache, but lately I've been enjoying charcoal again.

I enjoy how each lifedrawing experience offers a unique set of problems. This time the light was positioned behind the model, so it created very strong shadows near the model's head. Trying to capture the temperature of the shadow and just how many colors there actually were was very difficult for me at this point, but such a great exercise. Shadows have so much richness and subtlety to them, but it's hard to see it all sometimes, because you just tend to overlook them and focus on the contrast of light and dark.

Lots of Nudey Drawings

The paintings were done at Blur Studios' (www.blur.com) open model sessions and the charcoal studies were done at a workshop taught by Concept Design Academy founder Kevin Chen. All were incredibly valuable. Gotta love that there are so many ways to making images of people.