Sneak Peek: Painting in Progress

I know it will take me about another week and quite possibly longer to finalize this particular digital painting, ("The Mountain") since I'm working on a couple of other personal projects and the book projects and wrapping up a product design project as well (not to mention those pesky taxes) -- so I've posted a sneak peek detail up above.

I'm just about ready to post this painting in the small fantasy illustrator group I belong to so that I can get some constructive feedback and recommendations on lighting and composition. "Kelpie's Rider" is getting a major overall with the composition so that's on a brief painting hiatus while I revise the underdrawing for that, but I will continue painting on "The Mountain" and "Gorgon's Daughter" in addition to developing my book projects....

My SCBWI regional conference is at the end of next month -- whee! :)

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. :)

Latest Environment Thumb...

I went back and forth about determining that final EOW concept scene -- whether to go with Ruatha Hold during a celebration or Gather of some kind, or maybe some other scene related to Landing and AIVAS. Finally decided to float above both of those and go with a key scene from "All the Weyrs of Pern" -- the Yokohama spaceship.

The two images I posted will likely be merged somehow for the final environment concept so that just the edge of Pern and the Yokohama is showing and there will still be a view into the bridge where Ruth is floating and gazing down through the window at Pern and the Southern Continent so far below...

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).

Twilight Flight

A sketched environment with the usual col-erase blue pencil (not non-photo or non-repro blue). One of several I'm playing around with in between working on other things. I'll post more later.