Back from GenCon 2011

I've finally managed to settle back in from my trip out to Indianapolis this past weekend for GenCon. It's one of the biggest and longest running table-top gaming conventions around, and I decided that this year I would try my luck at having a booth. Not only was it my first booth at Gencon, but it was my first booth ever! So I was a bit nervous. What made me even more nervous was when Barbara, the art show manager, directed me to my table which sat right smack in the middle of some of the best artists working in gaming today. There I was, neighboring with guys like Omar Rayyan, Steve Argyle, Dan Scott, Ralph Horsley, Chris Rahn, Matt Stewart, Jeremy Mchugh, Drew Baker, Chris Burdett, Emily Fiegenshcuh, Vinod Rams and Wayne Reynolds! (if you don't know them, check them out  NOW!)
Not to mention the many other excellent artists in the other rows....I was certainly in good company.

Me at my booth. Omar Rayyan is over there on the left.

Eventually I got over it and was happy to be in one of the more heavily visited aisles. Going into a Con not expecting to sell anything always helps too because any little sale makes your day. I was surprised when in the first 30 minutes a guy came along a bought a print. Someone actually wants my art on their wall?? Hey, i'll take it. Even better, was selling two of my original paintings right off the wall! So, I was certainly pleased to come out of it having paid for my trip.


AND, if that wasn't enough, I was awarded "Best in Show!!" for my painting "Goblin Engineer." I was shocked! 
The judges were Chris Rahn, Jeff Miracola, Wayne Reynolds, and Barbara Fisher the art show manager. I've looked up to these guys for a while and to have my painting recognized by them means the world to me. 

My winning painting, Goblin Engineer (though Wayne renamed it "Goblin Penis Tinkerer") and super sweet crystal trophy!

So needless to say, i'll be back again next year. Though, I doubt there's any way I could possibly top this year...I guess we'll just have to wait and see.                            

Gencon Indy 2011!

Hey everybody! So it's been an impossibly long time since i've been able to update the ol' blog here, and I apologize for that. I've been buried with a huge book series project that I've been working on since May, and unfortunately as always I can't share a speck of it until it releases early next year. So it leaves me with very little time and material to share with everyone here. I do have some other projects that should be closer to release in the near future so at least i'll have those for you soon enough.


But I at least wanted to let you all know that I will be having my first booth ever at this years Gencon in Indianapolis! I'll be in the art show area so if you happen to be attending, come by and say hello! I'll have some free postcards available, as well as prints, booklets, drawings, and a bunch of original paintings. I hope to see you there!

A Game of Thrones - Archmaester Ebrose

I just saw this guy up at the Fantasy Flight Games website. I did this guy a while ago and they must've liked it since they used it on the packaging. It's always a joy to see your art on the final product.

©Fantasy Flight Games

And here's the full art. Actually, I had started painting this soon after my sketch was approved when i got an email from the art director saying "George R. Martin told us that the maester's chain is supposed to be tight around his neck." So since I had already painted it, and I liked the long chain better, I just made the chain shorter digitally. So you can see in the final product how it ended up.

©Fantasy Flight Games

10x12" Oil on watercolor board

Grombrindal - The White Dwarf

I just saw my painting of this guy posted up as the wallpaper for the website of the up-coming Warhammer Invasion: Legends. He is Grombrindal, the elusive "White Dwarf." A historical icon for Games Workshop, and the reason for a magazine series of the same name. Apparently he is a very solitary figure who travels alone in obscurity under his great grey cloak. Then, during battle, when all hope seems lost for the dwarves, he appears pulling off his huge cloak leading the last charge to victory! 

©Fantasy Flight Games

11"x14" Oil on watercolor board

The Goblin Engineer

I've had this one finished for a couple weeks now, but I wanted to do some glazing for the glowy bits and the whites were taking forever to dry. On top of that, i had a couple other deadlines that took precedence. So at last, here's the final image for my Goblin Engineer painting. You'll notice the addition of a few elements, mainly the background, that I decided to add after the drawing in the previous post.

New Sketch: Goblin Engineer

It's amazing how time flies when you're busy! Unfortunately for you, i've been busy on things I can't share right now. Luckily i've had a bit of time lately to get started on a new project for the  Running with Paintbrushes blog. So here's my drawing for that project. He's a Goblin Engineer, and he's working on a mean little assassin bug-machine...or something.

Elven Huntress finished!

Wow, time really flies when you're busy! I've finally managed to get settled after my time in Egypt and a short vacation in Turkey (everyone should go there its wonderful!). Not to mention all of the holiday madness. 

Anyway, here's how my Elf Huntress painting finally turned out. I've been working on a bunch of other cool things too, but they'll have to wait for release until I can share them.

The Ghoul of Mistwatch

A few months back I was commissioned by Jon Schindehette at Wizards of The Coast to do an image for Dungeon Magazine. The art order called for a creepy scene of a ghoul character dragging the corpse of a commoner through the streets of a dark medieval town. I was really excited about this project since I have always wanted to delve into the macabre with my work, but for general portfolio purposes always felt this imagery might have been a bit out of gamut for the way i wanted to represent myself. 

I would like to share my steps a bit with this one. I always find it interesting to see how other artists approach each commission. I sometimes find myself wondering, how detailed do other people do their thumbnails? How many thumbnails? was there a color comp? How detailed was the final sketch? 

I know my process is pretty ordinary for approaching a project like this, but for the sake of content and maybe answering some of the questions above for you, here's how I go about it:

Thumbnails!

I always do thumbnails. I hate thumbnails. I love thumbnails. I find some projects to be really hit or miss for me with thumbnails. Sometimes I can draw tons of thumbnails if i am inspired enough, but most of the time however I have a hard time doing lots of thumbnails. I tend to get stuck with liking my first one best (and usually it's the one that works out best). In this case though I really loved the imagery and could almost instantly come up with a scene from the art description. I think I did about 10 to 15 thumbnails before choosing these three:

The first one shown is actually the first thumbnail I did, and it was actually the one chosen. I usually send three thumbnails for a project depending on what the art director wants. Sometimes more if I can't decide or if they request specifically. These were also toned in photoshop to help emphasize the dramatic lighting.

Final Sketch!

After the thumbnail is chosen I will then shoot all of my reference. I am usually trying to get as specific with my reference as possible. Also with a piece like this, I want to make sure that the lighting is going inform me as much as possible. From all of my reference I create a final sketch that looks something like this:

Lately I've been doing all of my final drawings in charcoal. Vine charcoal on a pre-toned surface to be more specific. I've found that It is really nice for starting off gesturally and tightening down from there. Also, it's much easier to erase mistakes and change things on the fly. A problem I used to have when drawing in pencil was that I would lose the life in the sketch. Charcoal is much more like painting to me. This one also has a bit of photoshop in it to accentuate the highlights.

Color Comp!

Next, usually while i'm waiting for approval on the final sketch. I will do a quick color study in photoshop. I am no digital painter so these tend to be pretty crude, but they do help out a lot.

I find that if I don't do a proper color study before starting a painting I will spend far too much time sitting and thinking about what colors to paint things. This can be annoying and stressful and take up too much time. So I just do one...it helps tons.

Final Painting!

So last but not least it's on to the final painting after the art director gives the thumbs up on the previous steps. 

This painting was done at twice the reproduction size so about 10x15". I always get a good image of my final sketch so that I can then print it out full size on drawing paper and mount it to my painting surface. Often I will mount the paper to untempered masonite from the lumber yard, but since this was smaller I decided to use  Crescent no.115 three-ply hot press watercolor board. After that is mounted with at least three coats of acrylic matte medium, I will tone the whole surface with burnt umber. This automatically gets rid of the white of the paper and give a nice warm ground to paint on top of. You can see the ground color showing through in some spots, particularly between the cobble stones and the barrels on the left.

©2010 Wizards of the Coast

So there's a little look into my processes. Of course it's not always this straightforward, but most of the time it's similar. I have to give a big thank you to Jon for this project. He's a great guy to work with. 

Stay tuned for more soon!

What a lovely face

Hello everyone! Lots of work and additional internet connection issues have kept me from posting for quite a while unfortunately. But now that i've sorted out the issues as well as finished up some of those projects, I can get some more stuff up here for you to see.

When I came to Egypt about 2 months ago I came packed with all of my essential painting materials. In fact it took up more space than most of my clothes. The one issue I have always had here however is painting medium. It is illegal to bring flammable materials such as Liquin on the plane at all. Past years I have experimented with many of the materials available in Cairo art stores, but have had little to no luck of finding a suitable substance that can give me what I am so accustomed to using with Liquin. So this year after much research I decided that I would order a small bottle of Walnut Alkyd Medium from the states. Since it is a nonflammable alternative to Liquin it can be legally shipped anywhere. Though I do not recommend this since it may well have turned out to be the most expensive 8 oz. bottle of walnut alkyd on the planet! but besides the huge taxes and crazy shipping fees, this stuff is really great. I am pleased to have found a suitable medium that I can travel with finally. 

So without furthur ado here's two small studies I did as tests of the alkyd before I went on to more important paintings. They also second as gifts for my good friends Chris and Michelle here who work in the bone magazine at our site and manage the burials. They always let me know when a good skull is out for taking photos. The paintings are of actual burials we have here, and yes, the first one does have hair like that.

A Sphinx Methinks

Here's another quick study (not of a skull this time!) in watercolor. This is a ram-headed sphinx from Karnak Temple in Luxor. I thought this was a nice change from the typical lady headed sphinxes we're all used to seeing.