Trying out some stuff

I'm always trying out some new style or approach. I find it's a good way to stay artistically limber. It really pays to keep exploring. This update shows a little of some recent exploration. This first batch was just me playing with some faster, looser more "concept art" style looks.

I've also been playing a bit with a more graphic, design oriented look. I may one day take this style and create some Tshirt designs, buttons, or another stab at creating stickers.

It's that time of year...

Happy Halloween

Monster Stickers

Recently I had the idea that it would be fun to take a stab at creating my own Kickstarter. I know many artists have that same idea, and while many go the route of sketchbooks and other collections of their art, I wanted to do something a little different. I just wasn't sure what. while doodling some sketches for "evil" Halloween candy inspiration hit. Why not do sticker sheets of monsters? When I was a kid back in the 80's, it seemed like cool stickers were all over the place, and what I remember (and maybe it's filtered through little kid lenses) was the art was actually a lot of fun! Yet these days I walk through stores and see art put on stickers (and other products) that is boring and uninspired, and little better than generic clip art. Also, as a guy who loves Halloween, I go into Halloween stores that pop up every season and find that most of the stuff has pretty horrible art on it! If you are going to make something, why not pay a little extra to have an artist at least make it as cool as possible?

So the idea was born for me to do my own version, and call them simply "Monster Stickers". I created three test designs, each with a theme (and admittedly used work I had previously created in the third sheet, but why not? None of those designs had been previously printed or even seen outside my blog here). At the time of this post, the Kickstarter is down to it's final 12 days, and is sitting at 43% funded. Will it get funded? At this point, it actually seems unlikely. It seems to have stalled out a week ago, with a trickle of new support here and there still, but with $2 and $5 pledges being the most obvious options for someone who doesnt want a TON of stickers, it just isn't getting the kind of viral views it would need to make the distance. Despite this, I'm far from discouraged. It's been fun to try, and I've learned a lot. I'm also planning on retooling the idea and trying again. Maybe instead of sheets of monster stickers people would respond to a smaller run of single monster designs, such as a larger die cut sticker of just the Cthulu design, or the Monster Candy all posed together rather than individually on a sticker sheet. Hmmmm, we shall see!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2102533205/monster-stickers

Update!

It's been a little while since I had a decent update, so here's some new art! First, a couple of monsters!

Next, some figure studies from a Drink and Draw a few days ago. Not the most finished works of course, but for 15 minute poses in a bar while drinking, not bad I don't think :P These were done on the Surface Pro 3 running Photoshop. Definitely one of my preferred ways of sketching in color away from home now.

Bad Ass Woman Warrior

I have this friend, Lauren, who is in incredible shape. She's a personal trainer, and has been getting pretty serious about building some serious muscle. After seeing some of her progress pics online I thought "This is a woman who is building the kind of body that a TRULY strong fantasy character would have." I've seen enough fantasy art to know that there isn't as much variation in women's bodies portrayed in fantasy art as there should be. There's lots of lithe and petite bodies, but not nearly enough truly strong and muscular women being portrayed. So I contacted Lauren about modeling for me, and explained what I wanted to do, which was do a piece that really portrayed that strength. A character that was strong and not interested in trying to be "sexy" in the traditional sense. Lucky for me, she was all in and loved the idea.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to portray. On the one hand I wanted to avoid the "barely clad warrior woman" trope. On the other, I wanted to be sure to be able to portray the muscle and strength that was the intention of the piece. I decided that maybe "barely clad" would be forgivable if it wasn't done in an overtly titillating way. I settled on an idea that was influenced by woad body paint (but red rather than blue), leather, and some loosely Celtic and Viking influences. I had an image in mind of a woman warrior staring intensely over the edge of her shield, sword in hand.

While the end result is in many ways a really simple piece, I'm still pleased with what it represents, at least to me.

As an additional note, this piece was a departure for me in some ways as I tackled the background differently than how I normally approach things. I decided to see how little rendering I could get away with and still have a believable and good looking background. I decided to let form and light tell the story (along with a couple of texture brushes), rather than hand rendering a bunch of ultimately meaningless details. I like the results here, and plan to continue to explore along these lines.

Glamazons vs The Curse of the Chainmail Bikini

Last month I was approached to work on a project that had been successfully Kickstartered, but that had a problem with an artist needing to drop out. This project, "Glamazons vsThe Curse of the Chainmail Bikini"  , lampoons the old trope of women in fantasy wearing very little actual effective armor. During game play players will kill monsters and fashion from them much more effective armor, with the player who fashions a full suit of armor first being the winner.

As I mentioned, the original artist, well known tattoo and pin up artist Joe Capobianco, had to step down due to a conflict in scheduling. The game designer decided that rather than trying to have anyone ape his style, they would instead use a variety of well known fantasy styles, from classic fantasy illustration (my strength), to Capobianco's pin up style, to anime and comic books, etc. Each artist would design a player character, a monster, and a set of armor based on their monster.

While all the client needed was the character illustrated for their player sheet, I decided it would be fun to flesh the image out with a dragon. Since I work digitally, the client can still easily have just the character isolated from the background, a win for both of us.

And here was my monster. I was given free reign to choose something of my own liking, preferably something that would trigger some gamer nostalgia for the old school Monster Manual. I decided to do a take on the old Shambling Mound, a monster made of pure vegetation.

An experiment in Photobashing.

Today I downloaded a video from concept artist Jan Urschel (find it HERE). The video showed a popular concept artist technique where pieces of photos are combined, then painted over to speed up the creation of concept art. I was enjoying the video, and since I'd never tried anything like that I thought I'd give it a try. Since this was a first try and an experiment, I didn't take the time to break the photo pieces into as many small pieces as I would want to if I was giving this a much more serious try. Many of the pieces here are still fairly recognizable compared to their source material, and a true attempt I would make a much bigger effort to disguise them. Still, for a first experimental effort I did kind of like the result.

EDIT: Looking at this with fresh eyes a couple days later, I wish I had pushed the distance more by making the rock formations and castle much smaller. Too bad I didn't save a copy of the layered file. Oh well, first try and all, we'll see how the next one goes as I think I'll be trying more of this!)

(Note: I do not own copyright on any of the photos used. I found them on Google. If any photographer sees their work in this image let me know and I'll be happy to list a credit and provide a link to your portfolio or website)