head render

Using a cintiq for the first time. It is... interesting.
It makes my hand all sweaty. Gross.

quick head

Dragon Head Video

A half hour of work compressed into 5 minutes.

I pick a mid tone color for the back ground. Lay in a soft rough shape with a darker tone. I vary the dark tone between warm and cool darks. This adds some color variety. Even though this image is essentially monochromatic, monochromes are really boring by themselves, so varying the color makes the image much more interesting to look at. This dark shape hopefully conjures up some idea of what I want to draw. When in doubt I fall on my backup, a dragon. So now I have an idea. I lay down a rough highlight shape. Now I have a better sense of what the shapes are and can begin refining. As I carve into the values I constantly pick new color from my image. Because I used the soft brush to begin my shape there is a wide range of value and color to choose from without much effort. I pull darks into lighter areas, pull lights into darker areas, and am conscious to do this several times as I come around the form. A deep dark added to a bright light will be way too much contrast. By picking new values as I go from one value to the next I ensure a subtler transition between values and details. If an area I'm painting becomes too uniform I take the soft brush and hit a wide area with dark or light. This brings values in an area together and also pulls or pushes the form for more dimension.

That's a mouthful!

I'm trying to pay more careful attention to what I do as I'm doing it. Writing things down is great to help me remember what I've done.

one more head

Help The Hodges

I sent the Dragon Hunters painting to Help The Hodges. I also sent a print of the Dragon and the Dog painting with it. If you are interested you can bid on them here.

There are lots of really wonderful pieces of art up for bidding here as well.

creature sketch

25 min creature head in Photoshop.
The color at the end is from a purple, red, and yellow overlay layer.


My friend for the evening.

Sketch Theatre

I drew a fat creature for Sketch Theatre during the 2009 San Diego Comicon. I'm really happy they allowed me to draw for them!

Here is the link to the video:
http://www.sketchtheatre.com/?p=3878

I loosely based the drawing off of my cousin's bulldog who has a friendly jowl face. He took about 40 minutes to draw.

color madness

This is probably the kind of thing I should be hiding from people instead of posting on the internet. :)

red fox

green sea turtle

What are we talkin' about?

Practice!
These are 5x7 panels in acrylic done over the holidays. Every day I'd pick a picture or two from a magazine and spend a short amount of time painting. Attempting to work on understanding color and scale. No drawing at all, just pure paint. I always draw first, it is so weird not drawing! I also never do backgrounds. I like characters a lot. I've been guided into understanding that it's all character. So have fun with knowing that. I really like the top right panel. I think I figured something out there. It feels good to me. Lively.

I never used a palette knife before. I think I love it. Chhhhhhk, chhhhhhhhk. It's a little attack!

No Cause

If you missed tix for the first futurepoly workshop...

(Lord knows I did!)
Here is the info for their second round!

Pictures

animal character sketches

Just started a new sketchbook. I love fresh books!

quickie

Lion Around

Head over to Futurepoly!

If you have any interest in concept art at all get your ass over to this event. It's ridiculously cheap, and all the guys involved are some of the nicest most talented folks I know.

EVENT: FUTUREPOLY's DIGITAL ARTS WORKSHOP
DATE: January 23, 2010
TIME: Doors open at 1:00pm, workshop runs 1:30pm - 6:30pm
LOCATION: Paccar Auditorium, Building N, Bellevue College in Bellevue, WA [ view map ]
PRICE: Only $60! Seating is limited, register online now to guarantee your spot!

at odds

quickie