War Priest of Thune Final Drawing

Wow! what a whirlwind of a week! So full of inspiration and excitement this years Illustration Master class was yet again an amazing experience that I will take with me and cherish for the rest of my life. I have been fortunate enough  to have attended for the past three years and I am constantly blown away by the week spent with some of my favorite illustrators. Everyone is extremely generous with their knowledge and insight on the industry. It is a true pleasure to get to spend the sleepless hours during this past week drawing, painting, hearing from, and talking to some wonderful people. 
I was hoping that I would be able to post some progress throughout the week, but my desire to work and hang out as much as possible wasn't too conducive to spending time on the computer. So i apologize for keeping everyone in the dark!
As you may recall from my previous post I had set out with a small preliminary sketch to see what the instructors had to say. After a long day of great critiques it was back to drawing board. Most changes were fairly minimal to my satisfaction. 
After spending a couple nerve-racking hours trying to fix my little sketch into something usable, Jeremy Jarvis (Magic© Art Director) came around and asked me how long I spent to make the initial sketch. "about an hour or two," i said nervously. He looked ponderously at me and shook his head. "And how long have you spent screwing around with this one?" he asked. "Err 3 hours or so..." i replied as i craned my neck to look at the clock secretly knowing what he'd say next. "You need to trash this one and start over. It's going to be impossible to fudge this one into working." He told me much to my dismay (though I knew it). So after a deep sigh..it was back to the drawing board to start fresh and try to get life back into my drawing. But! even though it was a pain to start over again I managed to make an even better drawing than I had to begin with. This is something I could have never done at home in my studio by myself. I would've noodled away on that little drawing far longer than necessary hoping it would pull together, and it probably never would have.


So here's what came out of that as my final drawing: (apologies for the poor image. This is a photo on the easel as I had finished it with just the over head lighting)

After just a couple hours I had this bigger drawing together and Jeremy walked by again. "Nice! now we're talking!" he said "now go paint it!"....I was feeling great now knowing that I was able to turn the image around into something good. Of course as I walked away eager to get to work he called out to me as i left the room, "Don't fuck it up!"....gotta love the pressure. :)

So the moral of the story is: If your drawing is sucking start over...and if you fix your drawing and go to paint it...don't fuck it up!

Off to the IMC!

In just 7 hours i'll be on my way up to Amherst, MA for the IMC! Here is the second preliminary sketch i'll be bringing with me. Now off to bed!

IMC 2010: The Beginnings

It's that time of year again! This Friday I'll be heading off to Amherst, MA for the annual Illustration Master Class at Amherst college. It is a week-long intensive class filled with painting, critiques, painting demos, lectures, no sleep, waay too much college cafeteria food,....aaand did I mention no sleep? yep it's drawing and painting from 9am-2am everyday. Followed by some good ol' dorm-style hangouts into the wee hours of the morning. And not to mention with some of the absolute best of the best illustrators in the world teaching. I can't wait!

You may remember my posts last year about my IMC painting of the Berserker Lord. This year I want to tackle one of the Magic card descriptions given for the assignment. The description goes like this: 

War Priest of Thune (Magic Card)      

Color: White creature

Location: Battlefield

Action: This is a cleric who isn't content to sit back and heal the wounded — he/she wades into combat, using his/her own protective magic to make him/her a more powerful sacred warrior. Show a male or female, olive-skinned human cleric in full battle armor. Maybe the armor is plate with leather covering strapped over it. We want a glamor shot of him/her, confronting the camera, heavy mace in hand, as a smog rolls away from him/her unnaturally, as if receding from his/her presence.

Focus: The battle cleric

Mood: A holy badass

Notes: No real-world symbols, please.

So here's a bit of my process so far: 

First a bunch of scaled thumbnails. These are printed onto a sheet and are the same exact size the card art would be printed. I tend to be pretty loose with these. More thinking about composition than character design or details.

Next, after some good feedback from all around, I took my top three thumbnails into photoshop and did some little color/composition studies. they look like this:

I decided that I liked the bottom two color roughs because of their movement. But, after some further feedback I decided that my color rough of #1 was a bit different from it's thumbnail and actually looked quite different from what I was going for. Also the two bottom roughs are getting to be a bit too exaggerated and stylized for a Magic style cleric. Too World of Warcraft, and too action oriented for a character that should be a little bit more reserved. So back to the drawing board I went, and decided to work up a better version of my #1 rough. This is more of the feeling and look i was intending in my thumbnail stage. 

6.25"x8" Charcoal

I am also working up a charcoal version of my second color rough because I still really like the movement in it (i'll just tone down the WoW). We'll see what the instructors say on Saturday about them! 

Check back for more updates through the week!

New Illustration: Flight

Here's another new painting that I recently finished. It is for a young adult fantasy cover project. The theme was "flight."

"Muse" Finish

Well it's been a busy month of May with some new paintings (the other coming soon!), moving to a new apartment/studio, and training for a half marathon! All flopped on top of my regular 9-5. 

This painting was due just the other day for the latest Artorder challenge.

Discover A Muse

Here's a drawing for an upcoming painting that I am doing for the current challenge over at ArtOrder. It's for the "discovering a muse" challenge that's due on June 1st.

Happy Friday!

Well it's Friday again. So to celebrate, here's a sketch of some kind of Man-cat with a strange looking axe. Whoohoo!

New Drawing "Flight"

Here's a charcoal drawing I finished up recently for my next painting. It's for a mock young adult fantasy cover project. Should be a fun one!

Some Dragon-Bird Thing

I've got some new things in the works. Just started a new project at the ol' Running with paintbrushes blog. So since I don't have anything big to show right now, here's a sketch of some dragon-bird thing that may be making an appearance in my next painting.

The Witch of Fallows Heath

Well as usual it's been waaaay too long since i've added anything on here. Sheesh! Where does the time go? I just finished up this little painting as part of our project at the collective blog Running with Paintbrushes. It was a bit of a departure from my usual routine. I started the image with a loose charcoal drawing using very little reference. I mounted a printed version of the drawing as usual and then proceeded my painting without much reference. I did make a little color study in photoshop, and had a general photo for the lighting and the bird. So it was fun to go at this one without much of the tedious reference work and planning (though I do enjoy that part sometimes too).