Things that go bump...

The recent Art Order challenge was to come up with a concept for a "log monster". I'd actually forgotten about it until I read a brief mention about it on Friday via my FB network. Came up with some sketches on Saturday, and colored the above on Sunday. It was a good way to spend the weekend. :)

See other WIP's and final concepts via the Art Order blog. Once there, recent challenges are posted on the right column (you might have to scroll down a bit to see all the links).

Dragon in the Rough

More character sketchings. The little group below is maybe a Selkie trying to protect a trio of water nymphs...or maybe they're mermaids; I haven't decided yet. Need to fix the Selkie tail; I haven't drawn a seal in a long while (hmm...not since high school I think) and didn't have a reference when I was sketching these, obviously -- ha. And another dragon attempt. Just keeping busy between other things for work.

More Sketchings: Fearful Fairies

Here are a couple of characters from "Some of My Favorite Things": Fairies and Fairy Tales. The rough sketches are part of an illustration that I've been working on for the past week, in-between other things (as usual). However, there's a Monday deadline for this particular little project so I'll be posting more stuff from this...eventually. :)

Fairy Tale Progress: Puss in Boots

Spent a few hours yesterday and today sketching up and finishing a character concept for this week's CHOW over on conceptart.org. Below is the line-art in pencil; the above is the "final" colored in Photoshop.

Queen Titania: Bits and Pieces

Here are a few sketches of my "Queen Titania" illustration in progress for CHOW 146. I just read that there has been a one day extension -- yay! I might actually have something to post for the CHOW Final Burning rather than holding off and posting in the CA Finally Finished section.

The rough layout posted below was finally sketched on paper after much internal sketching in my head. I just quickly put it all on paper in a rather rough layout sketch so I wouldn't forget the various groupings and characters I wanted to include to tell my story of Queen Titania since I was also working on a few other things this past week. The top drawing and the "fox and hounds" at the bottom are some of the final bits I'm still wrapping up before pulling all of the elements together and coloring them in Photoshop...

For the final drawings I'm working with a 2H pencil to do a quick overall layout, then go to an HB pencil for detail, and finishing up with a 4B pencil for outlining.

Extra-curricular for the Week

Here are a couple of preliminary sketch explorations for this week's creative extra-curricular activity: CHOW 146 -- Queen Titania.

Having a bit of buggy-ness with the revised code in my website update...hope to have that fixed in the next few days while I continue to work on a few other items on my studio "to-do" list.

Concept Art and Massive Black 2009 Workshop: Dallas!

I just posted this over on the Dallas Sketchgroup blog, but it's totally worth posting about twice! :) Four days of art and creativity immersion -- can't wait!! Here's the announcement that was posted yesterday over on the CA website:

ConceptArt.Org International Art and Design Workshop:
DALLAS TEXAS - March 28-31 2009

The next workshop is coming hard and fast. Are you ready? We are.

Conceptart.org and Massive Black have put together a stellar list of instructors, great sponsors, and a fresh program covering aspects from the games, toy, film, and fine art industries. The venue is beautiful. We are right next door to a gorgeous museum full of world class art, and have more planned than ever before. When I say we have more planned, I am saying we are pulling out all the stops. Art, jobs, culture, music, performers, training, and even more will be happening. We have a great list of sponsors including Google, SMU, the Guildhall, ReelFX, the prestigious AFI film festival, Corel and many others. This is going to be a big show with more art than ever before.

Time is short. Much to do. The official announcement will come this week and all info will be released then.

Tuition is 600 bucks and we will have an early bird offer which includes free downloads, cheaper tuition, and more. All the info will come this next week. Start getting ready folks...we are going to Dallas and will be shaking the art world from the top to bottom.

We chose Dallas as it is central to everyone here in the US and is a very affordable city to travel to. Of course, the local sponsors are world class too. This is going to be a great show.

The Shanghai show is still in the works but has been moved to late 2009 in order for us to find addtional sponsors. Dallas will be the only workshop we do in North America in 2009.

See you all soon!!

EOW Progress: Menolly's Dragon Stones Cove concept

I'm sad to say that I wasn't able to make the deadline for the EOW #100 challenge. There are some other artists that did finish and they've posted their most excellent work in the final burning thread on conceptart website here.

However, being such a fan of Anne McCaffrey's early Dragonriders of Pern books, I'm determined to finish all five of my own concepts when I have some more time once again after the holidays. I did get close to being happy with the above concept, and I may just revisit it again in the next year to do a tighter print-ready illustration of "Menolly's Dragon Stones" featured in the book, "Dragonsong".

More EOW: Benden Weyr -- Just Add Dragons

More progress during the day, about another hour or so between other projects. I'm feeling pretty happy with it, maybe too many clouds...hmm. In any case, I will still be putting final touches to this one and the others over the weekend to wrap it all up for the EOW challenge. You know, little final things like ledges and "dragons" and people and such.

EOW Progress: Benden Weyr concept

This concept-in-progress of Pern's Benden Weyr is still very much in the early coloring stage. Also currently missing the various peoples and the dragons which will all be added at the end. Just a couple more days to get it and the others completed for the EOW challenge -- in between the paying projects that also have deadlines next week, d'oh!

But, that's part of the fun, too.

More EOW: The Mountain Progress

It's been alot of fun pulling this image from my head into Photoshop after visualizing this particular scene from the book for so many years. Still in progress, after about an hour of coloring before the storms hit last night. :)

EOW Progress: The Mountain concept

Just found out this morning that there's been a change to the deadline for the ConceptArt.org EOW challenge -- yay! Even a few extra days will help me juggle these concepts in and around my job projects for a bit more polish.

Meanwhile, I've posted a progress shot from one of my Pern epic environment concepts: "The Mountain". I plan on posting a series of progress images here and on my CA sketchbook once I've finished them all. Lots to do yet for this, but you can see that I've done a quick pass on the background imagery, potential lighting and palette.

You can see the original thumbnail sketch for this here. OK, back to work!

Another Quick Thumb...

I decided to include Half-Circle Sea Hold as one of my selected environments for the EOW challenge. Here's the quick thumbnail sketch that I did the other evening (took a break from all art yesterday to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends -- yay! -- still feel full from all the lovely foods....mmm.). Anyways, I've already decided on some layout changes to this one to better frame the Sea Hold docking cavern; and of course, will be including people to help show scale and context (particularly for those unfamiliar with the various Pern locales).

Some Quick Thumbs...

Here are some quick environment thumbnail sketches I did for my EOW epic last night. I've already rethought the layout on two of them. :) I might end up doing a bowl-side view from the Hatching Caverns instead of the current aerial view...well, we'll see. I've been thinking that I may end up doing interior scenes for the final two environments, too. I'll decide tonight for sure. Time is running out!

It's Gonna Be Epic!

Had just a bit of that nostalgia feeling while doing some minor research today for the current ConceptArt.org Environment of the Week (EOW) challenge. It's the 100th challenge, so the topic has been appropriately selected as "Epic", and for my epic series narrative selection: Anne McCaffrey's Pern. Yup -- that's my not-so-great first acrylic painting posted above that I did in high school some 20 + years ago -- totally inspired by those dragons, that world, and Michael Whelan's interpretation of the same. Now, I've got to come up with something completely different! And, also still not in the direction that Tony DiTerlizzi went with his Pern version. :) The challenge deadline is December 9th to give us all enough time to come up with concept art that meets the following criteria:

• Come up with an epic narrative (my pick, "Pern")
• Your epic saga of choice is going to be pitched as an RPG
• You create 5 different environment concepts from this narrative
  
• The art must be cohesive (in other words they all need to be from the same artist style, same world and be visually designed)
  
• Presentation of your five Enviros and the design of the layout and titling counts!
  
• As does a consideration of the possible player demographic of your game.

In any case, this project will give me a great opportunity to rapidly develop some additional environment concepts which I've been lacking in my portfolio. Sketches I have plenty of, heh. This rather topsy-turvy year has somewhat allowed me to continue to revise and update my online portfolio to include more of the kinds of artwork and project opportunities that I would like to be working on all (or at least most) of the time, rather than the extremely varied art and design projects that I've done in the past just so I could pay the bills. :)

Anyways, as a long-time fan of the original Dragonriders of Pern I'll enjoy pulling out a few of those visuals that have been stuck in my head for so many years from reading and re-reading the two series (Dragonriders of Pern and the Harper Hall trilogy) from elementary school through college. Ok, alright -- I admit I still re-read the Harper books every now and again (and, nope -- I don't plan to read the new ones).