The Creation of Light

Blog Defribrillator

2010-08-27T12:47:00.003-04:00

Time for a little electricity to reanimate this rotting carcass of a blog. Nothing too exciting, but let's consider it an "icebreaker" to take the pressure off my first return post.

I live by Google reader

2009-10-23T09:05:00.002-04:00

and I think I just blew it up. This morning has been a string of craziness adding new blogs to my list, thanks to the #EPICBLOGRT over on Twitter. Don't know what I'm talking about? Get over to twitter and check out @Jeff_Lai @rowenaaitken @JonnyHodgsonArt @scottpurdy @abigbat @CharReed and I'm sure others by now (you can search by the hashtag label). Sweet!!

New Cover

2009-10-22T15:32:00.006-04:00

Here's a cover for a historical fiction piece set in 1940's Maine. I believe this is my first commercial piece done start to finish digitally, which is a strange and exciting experience for me. Feedback is always welcome! Enjoy!!

Drow vs Mindflayer sketches

2009-08-05T12:10:00.004-04:00

Just thought it would be fun to put up some of the sketches in my sketchbook that I used to "warm-up" for the Drow vs Mindflayer challenge and get some compositional ideas.

Drow vs Mindflayer part 2

2009-08-04T21:10:00.013-04:00

So a week has gone by since I submitted my Drow vs Mindflayer to ArtOrder (yes, I know I just posted on the blog today... that pretty much sums up my blogging timetable). I've actually been able to get some more sleep at home, think about my piece a bit more, access my "virtual studio" of friends on Gorilla Artfare, skype and beyond, and do silly things like, say, google images of crossbows (that first drawing was clearly made up). I'm not sure I'm done with this painting yet, but I feel like I'm making headway in the right direction.

Vacation and Drow vs Mindflayer

2009-08-04T16:07:00.005-04:00

Jon Schindehette is at it again on http://artorder.blogspot.com/. The challenge this time around was a book cover assignment, color, of a Drow (aka Dark Elf) fighting a Mind Flayer (if you don't know... well, it's a D&D thing). The span of the contest actually coincided with my vacation... perfectly. So perfectly that I emailed Jon before we left to ask if I could turn in my piece a half day late because we would be without internet until returning from vacation.

And so we were off to New Hampshire. Every year my in-laws rent a house in the Lake Sunapee area and my wife's family pops in and out over the two weeks (her parents and my family "hold down the fort" and 'suffer' through the whole two weeks of lounging lakeside). For Jon's challenge, it meant I was bringing my

sketchbook and my laptop and nothing else. I had no internet, no

reference pictures, no oil paints like I would typically use. Just me, some pencils and Painter/Photoshop. It was an interesting challenge for me, and

not really one I was prepared for. I was even less prepared for a 9 month old sleeping in our room and having several days of awful nighttime sleep-- so awful that one night the baby and I took a two hour car tour of western New Hampshire and Eastern Vermont at 1:30 in the morning. Admittedly, the dock on the lake in the early morning is beautiful (as the panorama shows-- my brother in law got up special to take this sunrise picture.

I was always too busy holding a baby at those hours to photograph anything). Somehow the lack of sleep killed my working method, and the finished product turned in to Jon, pictured here, was pretty weak. I would likely

have bailed on the submission altogether if I hadn't already talked to Jon about getting my piece in. Oh well. I've been working on the painting quite a bit since, and will get the updated version up later today-- I think some serious progress has been

made (though more to go before it's portfolio ready)

Slightly bigger version here

Gwenth and Garreth

2009-06-29T13:36:00.003-04:00

Jon Schindehette has hosted a number of weekly challenges on his D&D and fantasy-art themed blog ArtOrder. His blog has quickly become one of my daily reads for insights into the industry and samples of great genre art. This week's challenge was a B&W vampire piece. Details can be read here. I will say, too many late nights and a jam packed weekend (facepainting at a local fundraiser in addition to lots of social engagements) caught up with me in the end, and I'm not in love with the final piece. There's a lot more refining that needed to happen in some of the drawing, and a quick reference shoot could have saved me some pain in pulling some forms out of thin air. Oh well-- deadlines are deadlines.

Digital Color Study

2009-06-10T10:46:00.003-04:00

I have mixed feelings about revisiting old work, but in the end, I usually come back to the "finish it before you can move on" mentality. It may not be the most productive from a portfolio standpoint, but invariably I learn something new from(and oftentimes bring something new to) the piece. Here's an old sketch that has been kicking around for a while. Drawing was mounted to masonite and even started laying some paint down before I set it aside, but it's been leering at me from the corner of my studio whenever I work. I decided to take it into Painter and play around a bit to get something resembling a color comp. Still a bit of tweaking to go, but crits are welcome.

Thank you Frank Miller

2009-04-16T10:53:00.003-04:00

It's been a crazy couple months. New baby + insanely busy day job = no time for personal work. We've also taken on a basement finish/remodel ourselves, which will keep my evenings and weekends pretty busy for the next month or two. In the end it will mean that I'll have a nice new studio space to work in, though, so I'll take the pain for now.

Back around Christmas, my brother in law got crazy with some carpentry and was building bird/bat houses for his yard. He decided he would give bat houses to the immediate family as a "bonus" Christmas gift (natural mosquito repellant) and asked if I would be willing to paint them as my gift. We joked about putting a big Batman logo on them, but I wasn't sure how it would fly with all the recipients. In the end, I decided to do a little homage to Frank Miller and do a take on one of my favorite images from Dark Knight Returns. Here's the result. These weren't completed until just recently because I foolishly decided the best way to paint four of these would be to cut a pair of stencils and airbrush them. Yes, those bats are one stencil. Shows how well I take the easy path on things. At least I can make a hundred more if I was so inclined.

Busy month

2008-11-25T22:37:00.004-05:00

My new baby girl, Grace, was born 10/23. It's been a heck of a month, even with paid leave from the day-job. Most of my time has been spent rocking, bouncing, changing, and generally cajoling into some sleep like state, along with chasing my three year old son around. We even managed to play a little dress up for Halloween. With all that craziness, I did manage to sneak into the studio to finish out two LARPer portrait commissions that have been plaguing me for a while. One was done in the same head and shoulders style my previous ones were done in (not that exciting) but the other requested the application of my more illustrative talents. Not necessarily a piece for the illustration portfolio, but a good exercise in painting some various lighting effects, etc.

Speaking of LARPs...

2008-09-29T11:33:00.003-04:00

Here's a couple portrait sketches from the end of last week. All oil on canvas. It's fun to have friends that play "dress up."

2008-09-24T11:20:00.004-04:00

Quick little digital study in Painter, trying to level-up my digital skills. Roughly one hour, from ref.

2008-09-19T13:29:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time I considered LARPing (Live Action Role-playing) among my hobbies. I embraced the uber-geekiness of combining my love of fantasy with social interaction, creativity in costume and weapon creation, spending a weekend in the woods, athleticism in combat and lots of my old acting skills in the form of improv. Dressing up like an elf for a weekend may seem to be the super-nerd activity, but I actually found it much less so than table top RPGs and MMORPGs like WoW or Everquest.

I've been out of the game for a few years, but I still retain a lot of the friendships I made there, and occasionally I get fun little side commissions like the one at left from those old friends. This was a request for armor design themed around a spider. Pretty rough painter sketch, but the leather-worker that will be doing the final build was pretty happy with the design. Hopefully I get some good pictures of the final product. Should be fun.

Distractions

2008-06-05T14:43:00.003-04:00

I find it terribly ironic that I've intended to write this post, about distractions, for several weeks now. And, well, I've been distracted!

It's incredibly interesting to me the more time I spend with working artists the level of commitment they put into their craft. Twelve and Fourteen hour days spent in the studio, 6 or 7 days a week. It's this singular, directed focus that makes them successful, that elevates their work beyond that of their peers. The reason I find it interesting is that it is in direct conflict with what I perceive to be the nature of the artistic mind. Most artists I know are also craftsmen (or women), musicians, or writers. They have a multitude of "non-professional" creative skills. I for one have found myself pulled away from the studio to build furniture, craft leatherwork masks, "weave" a chain-maille shirt, play drums in a band, or a whole slew of other creative pursuits that will never further my illustration career but somehow aid in keeping me sane, and hopefully allow me time to come back to my "real work" with a fresh set of eyes. Having a kid only adds to the opportunities for distraction, as my latest little project proves.

Around my son's last birthday, my wife and I decided we needed to get a toybox for my son's growing collection of wheeled doo-dads and plastic thingamajigs. My brother in law, being a reasonably skilled carpenter, decided he would give a gift certificate for toy box construction as his gift. Little did he know what he was stepping into. After several sketches and designs, someone (I think my wife) suggested we build a toybox to look like a school bus, given my son's fascination with the bus parking lot barely visible from our back yard. We were off to work, sketching, prototyping, cutting, routing, painting, and improvising at every turn. Luckily, after far too many work sessions, everyone was somewhat pleased with the final outcome (as with any "custom" project, there's lots of little personal touches, from the father/son portrait, to the license plate to the id number on the bus-- lots of fun to play with):

Head Study

2008-02-13T12:47:00.001-05:00

Quick "phone sketch" while on a conference call. Done from ref in Painter, approx 30-40 minutes while talking/listening.

Abstract Experiments

2008-02-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

I've been really enamored with the digital techniques my friend Tom Scholes has been showing on his blog lately. There's some great video over there of him pulling incredible landscapes out of nothing, but more importantly using the tools that Photoshop provides to take what he's already done and skew, scale, warp and generally transform pieces of his image to make entirely new elements. Then, by layering these and changing properties, "accidents" happen that he plays off of in creating his final. It seems a great abstract way to "find" compositions, and is something I'm particularly interested in to break out of my stale thumbnail habits, and think about compositions more abstractly.

These were not quite done in Tom's techniques. For some reason I'm a little more comfortable with Corel's Painter application. I'm still getting used to the digital interface, so I'll consider these "baby steps" for now.

Gorilla Artfare's new blog

2008-01-30T21:58:00.000-05:00

A bizarre little group collective I'm a member of finally launched our blog. The level of talent from these guys and gals is simply amazing, and I'm honored to be a part of it. Check it out.

Gorilla Artfare.com

Oh, and to save from cross posting, here's a link to my last post there which talks a bit about my image from Conceptart.org's latest monster art Thunderdome, Last Man Standing 3 .

My blog has been sadly neglected.

2008-01-30T12:36:00.000-05:00

I'll be the first to admit it. I keep telling myself that once I have "a little more" to show, I'll post something. The issue is, I've got artistic ADD right now. I'm in "portfolio mode"-- no paying gigs right now, and so I'm free to work on whatever I want. Sadly, what ends up happening is I work a bit on this piece, a bit on that, and rather than plow through the tough parts of each piece, I put it down to pick up another half finished project. Case in point, the two pieces I was working on last spring (see below posts). Both have received some love, but neither making it to finish. In addition, I've got all these projects in various stages right now, each vying for the attention of my muse.

from top to bottom,
"Thor vs the Jotuns" --an experiment in sketching by photo-compositing, I hate the figure getting hit, so he will need to be taken out.
"When Last I Saw the Sunrise" --Old painting that needs a new life. drawing has been mounted and waiting for paint.
"Arch Enemies 1" and "Arch Enemies 2" --Some thumbnails from a book deal that fell through. I loved these both compositionally (other thumbs were quickly burned) and want to take them to paint
"Grimoire of Ashes"-- sketch from a "peer art directed" portfolio project. I loved the idea, but the composition has gone through about 17 iterations, none of which having worked remarkably well. I've been banging my head against this one for too long, actually, and think it may need to just vanish from my hard drive so I'm not tempted to hurt myself too much more with it.

Spectrum 14 update

2007-05-14T16:29:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the long silence here in Blogger land. I've not spent much time in the studio lately, and what little I have worked on I can't really show. My wife recently had surgery that had her laid up in bed, and with a nearly two year old running around, I've been particularly busy keeping my head above water. I've also been working on a small press book cover that I'm actually pretty excited about, though things are getting suspiciously rocky with the contact on it. I'm concerned the deal may be falling through. One way or another I hope to be able to show that work soon...

To keep things moving, here's the work that was accepted to Spectrum 14, with a few tweaks made since it's creation last fall. I just uploaded this to the Spectrum FTP site, so I think I'm all set.

Spectrum 14

2007-03-27T09:14:00.000-04:00

The Spectrum 14 artist list is up on their website (http://www.spectrumfantasticart.com/artist_names.html), and I'm on it!! I'm not sure what piece was accepted yet (though I have a solid idea which of the two is more likely), but I'm happy just to be listed there.

I've got lots of friends who made the list, but a big "woo-ha!" to my other "cherry-break" first timers Dave Palumbo, Arkady Roytman, Mike Dutton and Tiffany Prothero. All four are amazing artists, and I'm surprised none have made it before.

Divide and conquer

2007-03-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

At least, that's the idea.

This is another sketch that's been around for a while and plagueing me, but somehow never found it's way to paint. Just a quick acrylic lay in to get the values down at this point. I'm hoping to work this and the axe painting from the last post more or less simultaneously, depending on what gets done when and the dry time on the oils (work on this while the other dries and vice versa). We'll see how that plan works out.

WIP it

2007-03-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

I had hoped to finish this piece up over the weekend, but the rains and melting snow, combined with some grading issues in our yard, resulted in a small flood in my basement level studio and home office. Rather than painting, I instead found myself scrambling wildly to get artwork, electronics, and books off the floor, followed up by lots of shop-vac use, water logged rags and a bucket brigade. Oh well. Should be able to wrap this up sometime this week, as soon as I figure out where I went wrong with the perspective on the axe head.

Spectrum entries

2007-01-25T18:19:00.000-05:00

I finally worked up the courage to enter Spectrum. Both pieces came out of the amazing "Last Man Standing" competition over at www.conceptart.org It's a good start to bringing my portfolio up a level, and with another 4 pieces all in varying stages of completion, I hope to have a complete overhaul on my portfolio in the next couple months. (shortly followed by a website). More to come on all of that.