Happy Birthday Jewel!

Imagine that a precocious and weird, quirky kid, just on the cusp of adolescence, jumps over your fence and is heading for your front door. There's a younger, even weirder kid waiting behind the fence with a guy that looks suspiciously like Bill Murray.

As he gets nearer, you see that he's wearing a green corduroy sport jacket with leather patches on the elbows, a red vintage Italian scooter helmet, plaid dress shirt, and orange pants. He has a battered valise covered in travel stickers in one hand and a dark pink box with a bow around it in the other.

He puts the box on your front doorstep and periodically turns to look for signs of life at your window before leaving.

Inside the box there's a bulky pink velum envelope wrapped with a red ribbon, and inside that, there is a folded old gig poster wrapped in pink onion skin. This is that poster.

Happy birthday Jewel, don't overdose on whimsy!

Also there's some delightful French music playing in the background.
EXTREMELY delightful.

Happy Birthday Bob!

2015 is the year of the gig poster for me. While I knew that I was going to be doing illustrations for people's birthdays again this year, it was during a fit of sleeplessness that my tortured brain decided to go with this format. Don't bother looking up any of these fake bands on the internet...but feel free to steal any of the names for your fake garage bands.

So happy birthday Bob! Pile into the van for your gig with all those other bands. House gets a cut of the door and the t-shirt sales...if you don't like it, hit the bricks kid.

This piece's main figure is based on this figure drawing sketch by John Singer Sargent for his 'Joyful Mysteries' mural at the Boston City Public Library.

As this seems to be my way these days, this poster is accompanied by my obsessive need to record my artistic process. Music by Spin Day.

New 2015 Orc Sketch

Ah well, it's been a while, but I finally made it back with this lovely orc dude. One of the first images I've made while learning how to use Manga Studio 5. More work will be posted at the end of this week.

View the short process here:

Chocolate Dragon Fairy

Yummy Chocolate Dragon Fairy

Creature Concepts #1

I recently discovered the Feng Zhu Design tutorials, and one of them showed his process for creating creature concepts starting with strong silhouettes.

First I start with some abstract silhouettes with a black brush like this:

From there you fill in the details with your imagination and as many tones as you can muster, and you wind up with something like the image at the top. It's kind of a neat way to design, and you utilize your imagination greatly. Since I fill in the details on separate layers, I'm able to do an infinite number of variations for each one without destroying the silhouettes.

The first batch I did wasn't that great, but here it is anyway:

I added a little bit of color to these originally, but I didn't have enough tones in there to pull out the forms.

Fitness Update:

Week 1 - Day 3: Shoulders/Arms (missed abs from lack of energy)

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...

"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.