Playing with Alternate Styles

Every now and then I like to play with alternate styles, or experiment with other art software. Here's a couple of small examples.



 This troll head was done with Sketch Book Pro 6. It's a great piece of software. Not as robust as Photoshop of course, but it has some nice features, and being a lightweight piece of software it runs smooth and fast. It's mirror feature makes creating images like this fast and fun.

This flying snake was done in a style far removed from what I normally do. Much more graphic. Fun to do for quick sketch.

Photography

Once I started getting regular freelance illustration work, art ceased to be a hobby for me as it had become a career. Over time, photography started to interest me more and more. Better photography of course helps in shooting better photo reference, but also it's a nice way to exercise the creative muscles that's a little different than the work I do to pay the bills.


This is my friend Crystal, one of my favorite models for both photography and illustration.


My good friend and fellow illustrator Cynthia Sheppard. Her husband Brendan was there assisting in the spur of the moment photo shoot (we had been out earlier and Cynthia was dressed up and looking amazing), and he had the great idea to add the shot of whiskey and the pistol. Added a great femme fatale feel.


I took a trip to the local botanical garden. Lots of cool plant life from all over the world, including many varied regions. This one is a desert plant of some kind, which I failed to write down the name.


The Beardsley Zoo is a small local zoo here in Connecticut. This Bison was shedding large chunks of his coat, and when he shook his flanks he'd make a huge cloud of dust and fur. A very impressive animal.


I was shooting some photos of some berries in a bush when I noticed there was a nice sized Garter Snake sunning itself on the branches. Luckily I already had on the perfect lens to get a couple of great close ups before he got spooked and slithered off.


Another shot from the Beardsley Zoo, this time from the wolf pen.


Nudes

When I'm not working on paying freelance jobs, I like to change things up by painting nudes. It's nice to get back to something simpler, and I love the classical beauty of nudes.



These first two are my friend Ashley. I work from photos, and in the second piece, the photo I worked from was a little out of focus, but I liked the pose. I had enough information to paint from, except for the tattoos, which I decided to mostly just make up new ones for her. The top image has her with her correct and complete (at the time) tattoos.


This is another friend and volunteer, Susanna. She works as an artist's model for local art schools, and with that experience she struck some great poses. In this study I was also testing out some new textured Photoshop brushes.



Another fantastic (and beautiful) volunteer. More experimentation with those textured brushes.


Finally we have my friend Angie, another tattooed gal. This is several years old, and one of the first digital nude studies I had done. I did tons of nude studies in oils, especially back in art school, but this digital one goes back enough years that I was just starting to get regular freelance work back then.

DIY Art School


One of the blogs I started (and then eventually abandoned...) was DIY Art School. The idea was that art schools costs a LOT of money, and none of the information is especially secret information. It has never been easier to find everything you could want to know about making art than it is today. With that in mind, I presented a series of articles that talked about some of the process you'd need to basically give yourself a really good art education without the expense of art school.

Feel free to check out the original blog and that material here:
http://diyartschool.blogspot.com/

For this blog, I'll be using the "DIY Art School" banner now and then to post up tutorials, tips, and any other bits of advice that would be useful for art students, hobbyists, or people looking to break into this field. I'm also open to answering specific questions that people may have. Feel free to drop me a line or comment.

First Post!



First post of my new revamped blog. I realized that between the various online places I have been squirreling away different kinds of work, if I actually combined them all I'd probably have one semi decent and active blog. The plan is to keep it updated as a virtual portfolio (click the tab above marked "Gallery" to see finished work), but also a place to share sketches, random musings, tutorials and art tips, but also photography and my other creative endeavors that don't necessarily tie directly into my illustration work. So, I guess it will be like a lot of other artist's blogs haha.

Over the course of the next few days I'll be pulling in material from those various online squirrel holes and filling this out with the kinds of material I intend to make a regular part of this blog.

Enjoy and please leave me feedback!