60s Smoker Sketch

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One hour color study sketch.

I'm too embarrassed to tell you who it was supposed to be... needless to say, I'm not much of a portrait artist.

Frost Mage Sketch

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A quick sketch from today.

Level 19 (Wish For Heirlooms)

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If you've ever played World of Warcraft you know that your first character is a little undergeared...

*YAWN* Sketch

Here's a quick sketch of an orc that I did in Photoshop.

I was trying to keep a real loose brush-style without doing a lot of blending.  Some of the smaller brush strokes remind me of Martin Emond's (R.I.P.) work.

"Switch" process...

I had a pretty big slow-down this week due to various other obligations, but after taking a few days off, I came back and created this piece today.

This would be my third color digital painting, so I'm getting much more comfortable with the tools.

WARNING: CARTOON NUDITY AHEAD. IF YOU OR YOUR WORKPLACE FINDS THIS OFFENSIVE, GO NO FURTHER.

Facial Recognition

Definition of CARICATURE from Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
1: exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics.

Definition of PORTRAIT from same:
1: a pictorial representation of a person usually showing the face.

For my latest piece, I put on my big-boy pants and tackled the manliness incarnate that is Ron Swanson.  Played by Nick Offerman on NBC's sleeper hit "Parks & Recreation," Swanson is a bacon-wrapped-turkey-leg wielding, wood-working, Libertarian, moustache-rocking purveyor of all things manly.  He also has a big, heart-shaped soft-spot for his co-workers, but don't tell him I told you.

Learning to paint, digitally or otherwise...

I've never been a very strong painter or color illustrator, so most of my experiences involve admiring painters/illustrators and their work from a distance.

About ten years ago, I bought the cheapest, no-frills, entry-level Wacom digital tablet on the market for about $40.  The working area is about 3" x 4", and the pressure sensitivity is nil...it's so difficult to get a varied line width out of it that I've given up on trying to ink anything I've scanned in.  Despite all this, it's provided me with a starting point now that I've finally begun to seriously study it.

After many failed attempts over the years to do anything with it, recently I started looking for tutorial videos on YouTube on the best ways to paint digitally. One artist in particular (Architectus777) was very good and thorough with his tutorials, covering all steps of his painting process.  Additionally, he covered in detail all the brush sizes and settings in Photoshop, which I've found is imperative to get any kind of results out of the process.
 
First came the handful of failed attempts at finishing anything, discouragement, etc., but after a couple of days of practicing with the tablet I was able to get the hang of the technical aspects.  There's no real easy way to blend colors in Photoshop, so learning how to pick up colors quickly with the eyedropper keybind is very important.

I managed to finish a couple of black and white pieces that weren't great but were pretty good progress for me.  There's always a feeling of relief and accomplishment right after I finish a piece, but after some time passes and I find all the areas that didn't turn out as well as I wanted, I tend to get a bit down.  I suppose I get frustrated that I'm not learning fast enough...

Over the weekend I was able to finish a simple, fleshed-out color figure that was also a pretty good mark of progress for someone who hasn't done much color work over the years. At this point I'm pretty excited to keep learning so I can get better.

Now that I've got some experience learning the tools, all I have left is to merely learn more about form, composition, lighting, texture, brush techniques, layering, anatomy, perspective, tone, and brightness/contrast, and I might become a decent painter.  Ha ha.

For The Horde...

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, World of Warcraft is a highly immersive and addictive massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG.)

Its lore is based on high-fantasy such as Dungeons and Dragons and the Lord of The Rings saga, and the story focuses on two player groups, The Alliance (comprised of playable races Humans, Night Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, Draenei, and Worgen,) and The Horde (Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Forsaken, Blood Elves, and Goblins.) I quit playing to focus on artwork and other more productive endeavors, but I still love the lore and design of the WoW universe.

While getting back into the swing of creating art again, I started off with fan art exercises where I did mash-ups of the Justice League with members of the Horde races.  The process of creating them with Illustrator was a laborious task, especially considering that I'm new to using the program for anything more complex than cartoon spot illos.

I've been slowly posting my initial eight illustrations on my deviantArt site, so please visit my gallery to take a look at them all as they become available.

On the tumultuous waves of the deep blue internets...

Howdy all!  Welcome to my blog where I will post updates of new works and discuss processes, thoughts, etc.

For various reasons, I haven't done any personal work (outside of freelance work) for the past three years.  About a month ago, I was blessed with an unexpected surge of creative energy, and I decided to slowly work my way back into the artistic community.

Thanks for visiting.