Hunted

Some new personal work. Still trying to nail down fantasy costumes, interesting armor and humans faces.  Also tried working some foliage into this one, something I needed practice working with.   I designed the idea around a spot illustration surrounded by blank space on all sides.  I've had similar ideas to this one in the past but this is by far the best executed one to date. I was inspired by old spot illos I've seen in books from the mid to late 1800's that use a lot of leaves/flowers/plants to create interesting shapes.

The finished image.   

The original quick sketch I did when the idea popped into my head.

A slightly more cleaned up version, trying to fix placement and anatomy.

The final sketched I used before going to paint. 

Studies.

Some head studies.

Some Sketching!

Business Cards

I came to the realization I don't have any cards to hand out to people!

Not that in this day and age of interwebs you meet too many clients in person, but I figured what the hell, it's more professional to have them and not need them than be asked for one and look like a scrub.  So I did some sketches, got mad, realized I'm not much of a  graphic designer and ended up with a handful of designs.  I didn't really know what I wanted when I started but my first batch of cards was horrid, I'm not showin'! ;D    But I did know I didn't want to use art I already created. (unfortunately I ended up having to anyway, long story)

I'll probably end up using several of these but the forward facing dragon was the one I chose to initially work with.

I ran out of time to order them off line, which was my original plan, so I went to staples and bought those do it yourself cards...... yeah, they suck.  There is no physical way, I could find, to make everything line up correctly every time, which made printing full bleed images impossible.   You'd end up with part of one card printing out onto the part of another.   I was going to just buy  heavy weight paper and cut them myself but no store around here sells good quality paper 100lb or over. So I had to leave white space around the outer edge, thus I made a last minute design to use for an event I was going to and this is what I came up with:

I guess I could have just done this with the mouth design but I didn't really care for the way it looked and I don't even really like the temp design.  Time to hurry up and get some better cards printed!!

Boston FIG

Had a great time this year at my first Boston Festival of Indie Games at MIT.   There were a ton of great games being shown and I even had a few paintings in their art gallery!   Just some personal fantasy/non game work this time, hopefully I'll be able to have some game related work (personal or client work) up there next year.  MIT has a great campus and any excuse to get out of the house is always good, even if it is being surrounded by hundreds of strangers.

Sketch Page

Nothing huge for this update. I've been busy with client work and trying to finish up a personal piece on the side.  I've unfortunately been spotty with doing studies in the morning these past few weeks. I felt like I was just going through the motions of doing them just to do them, rather than learning anything.   So instead  I've been trying to draw in my sketchbook more, working on coming up with better props/costumes/characters.  Even if I don't feel like doing it  all of the amazing pros I love religiously draw from imagination to compliment the studies they do from life.

I see a lot of pro artists who get the 'study disease' and start spending all their free time painting from life  and photos  (IMHO because it's easier) letting the imagination portion of they work/sketchbook suffer/evaporate.  That's pretty much my worst fear....ever. Drawing big titty women in dresses from Macy's with some metal shoulder pads thrown to give it that fantasy feel. I rather drink drain-o.

Welp, I've had more text than art this post, fail!

New Stuff

Some practice.