11/6/2013 Monsters and Dames FINISHED!

FINISHED!

9/18/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 5 & 6

Got side-tracked yesterday and couldn't post anything.  Making it up today!

9/15/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 3

My family is staying with me for the week!  I had to hide away for a couple hours just to get this done! 

2/4/2013 Shit that's goin

I'm going to post a few desk shots as well, but just to shake it up a bit, I'm posting some FAN ART!!!

Seems like I'm in a bit of a marvel kick these days.  I thought it'd be cool to do some Spiral fan art over the weekend.

Dance, you sweet lady, dance!

I'll be honest, I first fell in love with Spiral from watching people play her in Marvel Vs Capcom 2.  She has a bizarre dance for an idle animation, and she has really weird looking moves.

Readers who have good memory will remember I talked about my attraction towards weird fighting game characters.  I wondered for a while why she was so weird in MvC2, and one day I ended up on her Wikipedia page.  Apparently she has to do these elaborate hand gestures and dances to conjure up her cosmic powers, allowing her to teleport, skip dimensions, summon swords, etc.  WHICH IS TOTALLY AWESOME.  And that's pretty much when i fell in love with this character.

Last week I was passing by my co-worker's desk and saw this.  Pretty old news at this point, but I haven't been paying too much attention to what's going on in comics these days.  Spiral's part of the Uncanny X-Force!  I was stoked to see her again!  Seems like she's some sort of raver in the series, which is kind of a cool/silly re-imagining of her cosmic dances, but either way I'm actually interested in reading an American comic!

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As promised, here are some more desk shots.  I'm finally done with the "build-up."  NOW IT'S TIME FOR ACTION!!! I still have a ton more pages to finish before this chapter is done.  But hold on to your horses, it'll all be worth it in the end!

Close followers of this blog will have seen this page develop over the past few posts

Also, I'm working on another drawing project (doing the spiral fan-art has inspired me to do an ink painting.  More on this in the future.)  I dug up one of my old sketchbooks.  Finding it still had a few blank pages, I started to sketch in it.  But while I was flipping through it, I found a drawing I haven't shown anyone!  This is a really old drawing, but I was so psyched to see it.  I remember this drawing took me almost a week to finish, and I had to look at a TON of reference for it, too.

I'M DEFINITELY DOING MORE DRAWINGS LIKE THIS!!!

8/13/2012 Stuff and Happenings

Hello friends!  Sorry I've been absent for so long once again, but I promise it was for good reason!  The whole finding-a-job situation has been distracting me a lot.  Though I have more time, I seem to spend most of that time looking for leads, or stressing out about not already having a job.  I've had some good news trickle in recently, so hopefully that's a sign of things lookin' up in the future.

But!  That's not all I've been spending my time on.  Take a look see, my friends, here's a little preview of what I'll be working on.

It only took me 4 tries, but I've finally completed the first page of my comic (pictured left) !!! 

Inks and Screen Tone

Slowly getting the hang of this.  Basically the problem with the last batch of screen tones was that the resolution was too low.  When I photographed this ink painting, I split it up into 9 sections and then auto-aligned them in photoshop.  With more pixels to play with, I was able to keep the dot matrices small enough to not compete with the line work. 

Memorial Day Speed Painting

Had a surge of productive energy this morning.  Thought I'd try out some speed painting. 

A bit of an update on my life:  Sadly I've been laid off from my job at 38 studios.  This got me thinking about my career.  I've been trying to be as versatile as i possibly could as an artist.  Leading me to work in many many different styles.  I'm going to try to use this opportunity to try to work on my own style a bit more.  I'm going to try to find a place to work where i don't have to bend my style opposite to how I want to progress as an artist. 

Also, I'm going to do a comic.

So stay tuned!!!

Taking a break from this painting...

I'm going to take a break on this painting.  This painting has just frustrated the hell out of me as i worked on it.  Parts of it I like, but there's just something about this painting that i just don't like.  I'm going to work on other paintings, but hopefully when i come back to this one I'll figure out exactly what i don't like about it...  Enjoy it in the mean time!

5/9/2012 WIP

Slowly chipping away at this one. 

My mind at night

Finally finished this painting.  I'm super happy with how it turned out...


BUT...



Sadly things didn't work out the way I wanted it to.  For those who have been keeping up with the previous posts, I've been working on this painting as part of my blog redesign project.  Originally I had thought about putting this painting behind the header.  So my logo would almost seem like it was part of the scenery, but alas, after trying it out last night, I've realized that it was a massive disaster.  I had to down res the image and compress it to the point where it looked hideous, and not to mention the header getting lost in a massive pile of neon mess.  Hahahaha, oh boy...   No matter, atleast I got a pretty painting out of it.  Now I'll just have to come up with an even BETTER idea...

Stay tuned, this battle is not over.  This blog will look amazing sooner or later.  THIS, I PROMISE!

3/12/2012 WIP

just chipping away at this one, almost at the finish line! 

3/10/2012 WIP

Still moving along with the blog redesign.  I've finally got something down that I'm happy with.  Much work is needed to be put into this piece, but I haven't posted in a few days, so I thought I'd give everyone a preview of what I've been working on! 

3/6/2012 WIP

Sorry for the lack of good lighting on this one.  I like to use a camera instead of a scanner, because i end up working too large for the scanner bed to take my image.  But it makes digitizing my pencil drawings a little difficult when lighting situations are not optimal.

Anyway, I'm ditching the city skyline painting for my blog redesign, and it's going through a bit of an evolution.  I won't end up using this pencil drawing to start my painting either, but it was a good exercise.  The end product is going to be related to this, but you'll have to stay tuned if you want to see where this is going!

3/4/2012 WIP

Hello everyone, it's been a few days, so here's a bit of an update on what i've been working on!

The city skyline painting is something I'm doing as part of my blog redesign.  I don't want to give too much away, I want there to be a bit of a surprise on what the end product is actually going to look like, so stay tuned!  It's going to be a fun one!

I hesitated posting this skyline painting I'm working on, even though it's a WIP, I'm a bit dissatisfied with it.  I'm not sure what's going on with the colors in this one, but hopefully I'll be able to pull things together sooner or later.  Working on environmental shots is always a challenge for me.  I'm used to understanding forms, but when it comes to creating space, it's a bit more difficult for me.  Which brings me to a realization I've had; Always include a background to your painting!  The practice is invaluable.  I've done too many paintings where I simply draw a figure on a white background.  Since I was a character concept artist by trade for most of my professional career, I've neglected mastering environments for a while.  Learning's always fun, but it's tough to think inversely (from forms to spaces) from what I'm used to.  But in the immortal words of Kintaro Oe; STUDY STUDY STUDY!

Also, a few friends came over during the weekend, and we had a bit of a movie marathon.  And movie marathons are a great opportunity for some doodling!