Month of Fear - Red Death

Here's a quick digital sketch I did for the Month of Fear blog. This week's challenge was to do an illustration for one of our favorite horror stories. I chose The Masque of the Red Death.

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

Hopefully i'll get a chance to do this as a real painting some time in the future as I like the image....but the way my schedule's been going lately...it might not be for a while. 

Month of Fear

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, so in preparation I'll be participating in the Month of Fear blog for the next few weeks. Myself and a whole bunch of other excellent artists will be posting weekly horrors. So go check it out!

Illuxcon!

Hey everybody! Unfortunately, nothing new to share today, but I just wanted to let you know I'm heading off to Illuxcon today. I'll have a booth in the showcase this weekend at the Allentown Holiday Inn. the Showcase is a special show that runs from 5pm-midnight on both Friday and Saturday nights. So if you're there, come say hi! Click the image below for more info.

Dungeon Magazine - Some Wererats

I just saw that the recent Dungeon Magazine issue #217 has been released. Here's a painting I did for the article a couple months ago. The story helps give flavor to a Dungeons and Dragons scenario that takes place in the Undercellar. An interconnected network of dreary rooms below the city filled with all manner of nasty things. My task was to show a couple of wererats up to something....probably no good.

Charcoal sketch with some digital touches.

 8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

War Pigs and Gencon

One of these days i'll have something for real to share, I promise! 

But for now, here's a couple small paintings that I did for fun during a week-long class with CF Payne, and Gary Kelley a few weeks ago. The class was great for exploring techniques and various media. I had a chance to try out both Gary's monotype printing method (which I'll try to post on here at a later time), as well as Chris' crazy technique that involves a million different steps and mediums that somehow he can make look effortless. So here's my two little studies that more or less started using Chris' method as an elaborate underpainting, but more or less ended up as my usual oil painting style...I guess i'm stuck in my ways.

War Pig 7.5"x8"
Oil, acrylic, watercolor, tinted gesso, and colored pencil on illustration board

Messenger Bat 6"x9"
Oil, acrylic, watercolor, tinted gesso, and colored pencil on illustration board

In other news, I'll have a booth at Gencon again this weekend in Indianapolis. I'm looking forward to the usual good time that is had there. If anyone is going to be there, come stop by my table in the art show and say hi. I'll have these two little paintings with me for sale, as well as plenty of other original paintings, drawings, prints, and even some limited edition playmats.

Until next time!

Gods of the City Painting

Time really flies when you're busy! Sorry for my lack of posts lately. Between freelance work that I can't share, travel, and school I've managed to let this blog grow a bit stale. I'll try to pick up the slack a bit.

Here's something that isn't particularly new, but I haven't posted it here or on my website yet. This painting was created earlier this year as a "reaction" project that we were asked to do after a week-long contact period with the Hartford MFA program in New York.

For me, already currently living in New York, I wanted to do something a little different than Times Square or Central Park (not that there's anything wrong with those places). So I chose an area that I've always enjoyed since moving here seven years ago. The arches under the train bridge in Astoria park also known as the Hell Gate Bridge have often felt otherworldly to me. So using them as a backdrop, I let my imagination run free a little bit and arrived at the image below. 

For a while I was really unsure how I felt about the painting because it's a little different for me. But over the past few months I've received a good amount of positive feedback on it. I suppose i'm always my own worst critic.  

Gods of the City - 12" x 18" Oil on illustration board. 

New Paizo Characters: Doom Comes to Dustpawn

I just got this book in the mail the other day, so I guess it's time to show these. I worked on these characters quite a while ago, but apparently there were a lot of delays in the publication. I still really like some of them though. I guess the idea is that in the setting there is some kind of force causing people to turn into animals. So most of them are in a state of partial transformation. Thanks to Andrew the Art Director on these, as he's always a joy to work with. They're all oil on illustration board.

All images are copyright © Paizo 2012

Badru and the Beanstalk Final

A while back I had posted my sketch for the first piece in a series i'm working on for part of my MFA thesis. The setting is "jack and the beanstalk," with an orientalist twist. I'm still figuring out the logistics of this project and how I want the whole thing to work, but for now i'm just working through some of the initial images in the story. So here's the final for the first one.

12x22.5 Oil on masonite

If you're going to be at Spectrum Live this weekend you can also see the painting in person, as well as many other originals, sketches, and prints that I'll have with me.

Dungeon 212

Here's a couple pieces I did earlier this year for Dungeon Magazine issue 212.
These are always fun because no matter what the assignment, I get to paint any combination of creatures, arms and armor, and magic. What could be better? 

8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

This one shows the famous D&D sorceress Iggwilv and her little demon friend, and a good reason to not invite her to dinner...Unless you like it when she turns your roast into a cloud of flies.

8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

In this one, an angel catches up on some reading while he is trapped in a library, but he's not alone.

Spectrum 20

Back in 2001 I was a junior in high school. Art class was my favorite, and I tried to fill my schedule with as many as the school would allow. I had been drawing and painting since I was very young. But I didn't really think anything of it until later in high school when my teacher told me that I could actually make art as a living, and there were such things as "art schools." I was ecstatic, I knew what I was going to do. In high school however, you don't learn so much about different artists. Sure, we heard about the big guys that everyone knows about, but I was never told what illustration was and how it differed from fine art (it doesn't, but for the sake of categorization in the eyes of art history...). I knew I liked painting and I especially enjoyed painting things realistically, but at the same time I liked comics and video games and fantasy movies. 
One day while in Boston wandering around by myself as I waited for my girlfriend at the time to get out of photography class, I stopped into Virgin Records to look for some music. Shortly after not finding any music I came upon the floor with all of the books. I immediately saw this one: 

I picked it up and sat down with it to see what "Fantastic Art" was all about. It was filled with hundreds of amazing images. I couldn't believe how cool all of it was, and that people painted these things. I knew I had to have this book. 

I carried it with me every day to school after that,  and flipped through it any chance I had. I drew from it, I studied the artists names, I memorized every image in there. I hoped that one day I could be a part of this, but I knew that was silly....me? Nooo. 

Years later, as a junior in college, I entered my first pieces into the Spectrum competition. It became an annual event each year after. My friends and I would get our best pieces of the year together and send them off to the competition, knowing we had little to no chance. Most of the time I would even forget that I sent things in because of how much of a long shot it was. But it was still worth it to try.

Twelve years after I chanced across that Spectrum 8 I can finally say that I've achieved what I dreamed of when first setting eyes on it. I'm deeply honored and still completely awestruck to be included in this year's Spectrum 20. Thanks to all the judges, and the Fenners who have been publishing the series for all these years. Here's the piece that will we included:

Now I have to keep my butt in gear to hopefully continue to get in!

Also! In other Spectrum related news: I will be back at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live! in Kansas City in just a few short weeks. I'll have all sorts of prints, drawings, and original art to check out so come say hi at booth # 802.

Skull Soldiers

My, how time flies when you're busy! 

Between school and general freelance work i've been running like a madman these past couple of months. Luckily, in all of the lack of time to post anything here, lots of things have become available for me to finally show you. So hopefully i'll have time to get those things up more regularly for you.

First off, back in the fall of last year I started working with mobile gaming company Cygames, creating art for a card game called Rage of Bahamut. Though I think my work only appears in the Japanese version so far. It's a free app, so check it out if you want.

Similar to work I have done in the past for the Legend of the Cryptids game, the idea is that the player starts with a basic version of each character. Then by combining versions of the same card, the character is upgraded to an advanced version. With Bahamut however, the character can upgrade four times. So four illustrations are needed. 

My character was a basic skull soldier called Hell Lord Skeleton in-game. As far as i'm concerned if I can get a skull or skeleton in an image, it can't get any better. But it can! They wanted a skeleton leading an army of skeletons! And they are all being controlled by some kind of necromancer. So the idea was to start with a normal version that didn't have too many frills and very basic armor for stage 1. With each additional stage the armor gets more detailed and there's a few more guys in the background. In the final stage, he should be the ultimate skull soldier! Well needless to say, these were a whole lot of fun to do. Here's how they progressed:

All of them are 10"x12" Oil on illustration board.

MFA Adventures - Badru Sketch #1

Lately, i've been steady working both on freelance jobs and some images for my projects as a part of the Low Residency MFA in Illustration program at the Hartford Art School. If you remember back to this post I had done a quick book dummy for an alternate version of Jack and the Beanstalk set in an Orientalist setting. I may or may not continue with it entirely as part of my thesis project, but I still enjoy a lot of the imagery. So I figure I'll at least do a few of the spreads as paintings. Here's my first sketch for one of the paintings. 

Month of Love

I'm taking part in a bit of an experiment this month. 20 great artists, 1 sketch per day, all on the many incarnations of love. Stop by and check it out:

Banner by Jeanine Henderson

I should have some new art to share here soon so keep your eyes peeled!

Messing with Ink: Ningauble

So I've been meaning for a while now to play around with ink again, and last night I had a bit of extra time so started up this small drawing. I wasn't sure where to start since I haven't really used ink since school, but I had an extra piece of clay board lying around so I started with a quick pencil sketch on that. Then, I went in with a brush for the larger black areas, and detailed it out with Micron pen in some areas and scratched away with an x-acto (SO much better than those crap scratchboard nibs I had in school). I had a lot of fun messing around on this and I hope to continue to play with it in the future. The character is Ningauble of the Seven Eyes from the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. 

5"x7" ink on clayboard

Princess of the Underworld Advanced

Last week I shared a new painting I had done for the app game Legend of the Cryptids. This week I'm sharing the second "advanced" version of the Princess of the Underworld. 

 In this version the princess went from being a more sympathetic non-threatening character to more powerful and intimidating. Her beloved skull from the "normal" version is also now incorporated into her staff, and she's brought all of hell to the fight. I definitely had a great time working on this one.

12"x16" Oil on illustration board

I'd also like to thank the AD, Misako, she was really a joy to work with. I think some American companies could take a cue from the Japanese. They really treat artists with respect and professionalism. 

Princess of the Underworld

It seems strange that lately I've been doing more and more work, and yet, I have less and less that I can share with you. 

Well, I guess something is better than nothing. 
I've just been informed that I can share some art I did for digital "card game" app, Legend of the Cryptids. Creating card art for a digital app game is somewhat of a new a thing lately, with quite a few similar games popping up over the past year or two. The idea of the game is that you collect various character cards through "quests" where you pit your characters against the computers, and earn rewards by defeating various levels of monsters and bosses. Now the interesting part for me as an artist is that each card is able to be evolved by combining two of the same character. Thus, it requires two pieces of art that start as a "normal" version of a character and somehow upgrade into an awesomer "advanced" version once it is evolved. I'll talk a little more about the evolution process in my next post.

But for now, lets talk about the "normal" version. Princess of the Underworld is her card name, but instead of having her be all dark and evil (which is probably where I would've went) they wanted her to be a bit more sympathetic. So outside of that, they didn't give much in the way of scene or character design direction, which was nice for a change. Anyway, here's what she ended up looking like.

12"x16" Oil on panel, digital additions

Next up, I'll share how she evolved in the "advanced" version.