Influence Map

I have only just been introduced to these though they seem really popular.  The idea is to fill the space with various things that have influenced your art style.  The more space they take up the greater the influence.  There's a number of ways to interpret this, and influences are constantly shifting.  I tried to get a good mix of those artists and things that influenced me at a younger more developmental stage and ones that are influencing me now.  In a few cases it's more about the specific image than the artist.  In others it's really broad, like a movie or company.  I cheated a little too when it comes to my dad.  He's an artist, and my dad, easily my biggest influence growing up, but I'd feel weird making him the biggest thing since obviously parents are a huge influence regardless, but I couldn't leave him off completely.  This was a fun thing to think about, to realize how the things influencing my art have changed over the years, dramatically in some cases, not at all in others.  I'd totally suggest doing this if you're at all interested, and let me know when you do so I can check it out, it's really fun to see what makes a persons creativity tick.

FIRE!

An illustration for the Friend magazine.

Lady Gorn

If the Gorn had been a female, Kirk would have tamed her heart in no time.  But then we'd have been robbed of one of the greatest fight scenes ever.

"Brains, Good Sir, Braaains..."

Gentleman Zombie - 18x24, oil on canvas

 For some reason I find the idea of a traditional portrait, but of a zombie appearing as if he actually posed for it, really funny.  I kept laughing to myself as I was painting it, maybe it's just me.  I decided to use Sargent's portrait of Coventry Patmore as a guide and follow a sketch I did (which itself was a progression from this drawing I did years ago).  I'd hoped to get this idea out of my head but I had so much fun with it, I'm already planning a companion piece of a sophisticated Lady Zombie.

Stones, Arrows, and Snowballs

 

Another illustration for The Friend.

January '12 Sketchbook

Avery

Portraits of children are hard.  At least they are for me, they often look a little off and awkward.  I'm always apprehensive when I try to do one but I think I was fairly successful here.  I've also reached the point where I would much rather be painting something with oils than the computer.  If only I could figure out how to photograph the finished paintings better.  This is Oil paint on an 8x10 canvas.

Leia the Slaya!

This is my 200th post!  And it's the first of the year so I wanted to do something cool.  I've been wanting to do a Frazetta inspired Princess Leia for a while and thought it a good way to kick off 2012.

My kid has really gotten into Star Wars lately but I've only let him watch the good ones (episodes 4,5, and 6).  He has no idea the other three even exist.  As a parent, what do I do?  Let him find out on his own someday?  Will he feel like I lied to him?  Is it better to expose him to them at an early age?  What if he actually likes them?  Can I deal with that as a parent?  I'll love him no matter what but how can I let him know they're wrong, without being too controlling?  The things you don't consider when becoming a parent...

Watercolor Santa

Just a quick watercolor sketch I did of Santa imparting some insightful words of wisdom.

Spectre Vesper

My latest oil painting.

Peace, Be Still

An illustration I did for the December 2011 Friend magazine.

Oldenburg Fantastik

This is a cover I did for a book coming out in Europe, it was a lot of fun.

October Sketchbook

2011 Pumpkin

I actually used sculpting tools this year which didn't necessarily yield better results but it did go WAY faster which was fun.  Hopefully I'll have more practice and time next year to get better at this.

Pumpkin Puppet

Late at night when the pumpkins play,

And want to frighten the birds away,

They find their situation improving

As they make the scarecrow look like it's moving.

Undead Burial

Haunted Hallway

"It's the most wonderful time of the year!..."

Mr. Natural

A birthday present for my father in law - Oil on board.

July and August Sketchbook

Yep.  That's literally it. I've had absolutely no time lately which is one of the reasons things have been a little dead around here lately.  I've decided to keep my September and October clear since it's my most favorite and inspiring time of the year and just draw and paint creepy things nonstop so hopefully that livens things up a bit.

Color Boot Camp

A few weeks ago I took part in Bill Perkin's Color Boot Camp workshop.  It was an intense 3 days of basically nonstop painting and learning.  I think I retained about .08% of what he was teaching but it was definitely worth the time and money.  Above is a composite image of the more than 19 color studies we did at a size which I'm fairly comfortable they be viewed in.  Even so, don't look too close and keep in mind that these were mostly all done in 40 minutes or less and intended as fast color studies, not finished pieces.

Sketch-Trade with Joe Olson

Joe gave me the incredible 'Possom Monster about a year and a half ago or something and I just traded him the Old Bolo Tie Guy today.  Sorry Joe, better late than never I guess.

Interesting Fact: Joe Olson is awesome.

Hands Off His Chest

Tried a little different technique with this one.  I'm not sure I like it but I had to post something this month and this was the only thing close to resembling something finished.  I'm really busy right now so my blog might be a little empty until I catch up :(

June Sketchbook

Heather

My beautiful wife has been asking me to paint her an avatar.  The first one I did she felt was too literal so I tried this approach, which isn't my usual style, but was a lot of fun and she seems to like it.

The Most Important Job

An Illustration I did for the May 2011 edition of The Friend magazine.

May Sketchbook

I'm never sure how to label my sketchbook posts so I've decided to just do it once a month, posting the highlights.  Enjoy.

Mermaid

I'm pretty much a huge fanboy of pirate movies and quite enjoyed the newest Pirates of the Caribbean (they could make a hundred of those movies and I'd still want more).  I really liked the mermaids so I did a quick mermaid painting.

It's Alive! Digital Painting Tutorial

I've been getting a lot of requests lately for a tutorial on my digital painting process so hopefully this post answers your questions.  I use Corel Painter for any actual rendering and Adobe Photoshop for adjusting levels, color balance, etc.  Digital brushes work better on large images so I never go below 3000 pixels in any direction with my originals.  I use an Intuos 4 medium sized Wacom tablet.

1 - The first thing I do is a sketch which I scan and then paint in black and white using Painter.  I find painting just the values extremely liberating.  Getting the fundamental composition and lighting right in value before introducing color helps me keep the image more coherent.  Plus it's just easier on my brain to be thinking of less things at once.

   I have a tendency to paint dark, I captured the levels here in Photoshop (Image>Adjustments>Levels) and you can see how on the dark side they were (left) until I adjusted them, bringing a greater range of contrast to the portrait (right).

1 - paint image in value only.

2 - The big downside to painting in black and white is that it's hard to introduce color to the image without it feeling dead and grayish. I solve this with a tool called Gradient Map in Photoshop. With the B&W image open go to Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map. Click on the gradient to bring up another menu letting you edit it. Pick a color for your high, mid, and low tones, keeping in mind that under most normal lighting circumstances the mid tone will be the most saturated. This helps set an overall tone to the image. I wanted Frankenstein's monster's skin to feel dead so I went with a greenish hue for the mid tone with the dark going cooler and the light going warmer.

2 - add Gradient Map for base colors.

3 - Now I introduce color through a Color or Colorize layer. I have no idea what the actual difference is between these layer types. Colorize only exists in Painter and I usually like the results I get from it more but since Colorize isn't supported in Photoshop (it converts it to Color on import) I have to export a flat image format (I do an uncompressed .tiff) from Painter and bring that into Photoshop. I let the colors get fairly bold at this stage since they seem to have a tendency to lose their saturation during the final rendering.
4 - Here I just paint in the details and add the finishing touches. I mainly use the cover pencil in Painter for painting. It's simple and similar to a digital airbrush but ends up feeling more natural for some reason. I use the digital airbrush too for adding a punch of color where I need it. I keep them all at low opacity to keep them versatile and to maintain the more natural feeling of building the paint up.

3 - paint basic colors into Color or Colorize layer.
4 - paint in details/final rendering.

 5 - In the end, I spend time tweaking the image in Photoshop until I come up with something I'm happy with. For this painting I adjusted the levels again and the color balance (making it more blue).  I sometimes edit the Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast, etc...just play with it until you're happy.

5 - do a final adjustment of image settings.

That's it.  Feel free to ask me questions in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

"Hey! Listen! Hey!"

I'm not sure what happened, Blogger seemed weird for a while and deleted this post so I'm posting it again.

Should I Be Flattered?

Check out this post on my good friend Sam Nielson's blog for an interesting story concerning the vacant-eyed red-headed kid in this painting of mine.  I'm never sure how to feel about stuff like this.  I've seen images of mine replicated before and I usually don't care and am genuinely flattered, but when it's in an actual commercial product...I don't know.  Sam's image was obviously used a lot more than mine (this "artist" who used our pictures has good taste at least :) so he's got more to be annoyed with, but I still find myself a little ambivalent about it all.  If nothing else, it's a little weird.

Bauer Power

"If you don't tell me what I want to know, then it'll just be a question of how much you want it to hurt."

Been watching a lot of 24 lately.

Botanical Burden

Oily Pirate

Around the time I started this blog (more than 5 years ago, wow) I began exclusively painting digitally. When I started I used lots of layers and digital tricks but as time has gone on I've begun basically painting as one would traditionally, using very few, if any, layers or overlays. Originally I liked digital painting for the ways it was different from traditional but slowly found myself unsatisfied with it for those same reasons. So I decided a few months ago it was time to get back into real painting and decided to go with oil paint. I'd only used acrylics before and thought it was as good a time as any to switch to oils as I'd essentially be relearning how. So this is my first attempt, ever, at an oil painting. It took a while since work has me so busy but I really fell in love with the process and can't wait to paint more, hopefully better, oil paintings. Thanks to Dave Malan and Dave McClellan for answering my endless questions.

Play Ball!

I've been crazy busy at work and have thus had less time for art (at least any art not for the Cars 2 video game).  I did manage to finish this 50's style pinup girl I've been working on for a while.  No, I don't think she'll be able to run the bases very well in high heels.