Sketchbooks!

Received my first sketchbook collection today, just in time for next week's trip up to Spectrum Fantastic Art Live (SFAL) 2014!  I'll be bringing some of them with me, and a few will also have an original sketch on the first page. Additionally, I'll have some original art and prints as well as a few remaining copies of Issue #1 from WOMANTHOLOGY: SPACE! I'll be at table 78 -- stop by and say, "Hi!".
 
Here's the info about the conference:
Spectrum art book comes to LIFE!!! Join me and 200 artists May 9-11 in Kansas City for Spectrum Fantastic Art Live 3 (www.sfalkc.com). Spectrum is a three-day celebration of the best in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and comic art. You will interact with Traditional medium artists, Digital artists working in the Film, Animation, and Video Game fields, Sculptors, Comics Artists, Cover Illustrators, and more. Additionally, there will be opportunities to attend workshops and panels, observe live painting and sculpting demos, meet art directors, conduct portfolio reviews and attend the Spectrum 21 awards ceremonies. If you enjoy my work and would like to experience a wide variety of what the field of fantastic art has to offer I hope you will meet me in Kansas City, May 9-11, 2014.

Facebook: Spectrum Fantastic Art Live
Twitter @SFantasticAL www.spectrumfantasticartlive.com

Stuff on the Drawing Board

Some snippets from various drawing boards with illustrations currently (or within the past few weeks...) in-progress. I tend to rotate between working on different illustrations depending on the various project(s) in development. 

Primarily 2H pencil on Bristol, with some of the darker values using HB and 4B pencils, and occasionally graphite powder. 

2014 SCBWI Bologna Illustrator Showcase

Very happy and honored to find out that I received an honourable mention for one of my illustrations, Dragonworld, in the SCBWI Bologna Book Fair 2014 Illustrator Showcase Gallery!

See the grand winner as well as other entries in the gallery link, here:
http://bologna.scbwi.org/scbwi-bologna-book-fair-2014/2014-illustrators-gallery-2/

 Original traditional pencil (left); digital color (right)

Winged Battle

Fantasy illustration which is currently in-progress (the digital painting part). The scanned traditional drawing shown above is on 11 x 17 Bristol paper, using 2H/HB/4B pencils, a variety of erasers and some graphite powder painting.

Winter's Greeting sketching

Working on this 11 x 17 illustration a few minutes at a time over the next few weeks until it's finally done -- have a few other projects that have a much higher priority at the moment which is not a bad thing. :)

2H pencil on smooth Bristol paper, digital texture background added after scanning.
 

Painting Studies Prep

I've got a few traditional paintings I'd like to do before the end of the year...but it's been awhile since I've done any acrylic painting, so I figured I'd better get in some practice studies first. 

The canvas -- gessoed illustration board. Each study is about 6 x 9 inches. At the moment I'm deciding what type of fixative (if any) will be used to save the line work, since I do want some of that showing under the paint. Maybe. 

I did a quick sketch on each canvas with HB pencil.

Above study is "Jon Snow and Ghost" inspired by GoT. The other three are also inspired by my imagination...mostly: "Horse," "Warriors," and "White Deer".

I'll start applying color next week.

Dragon World: Final (almost) Pencils

The next stage of my "Dragon World" illustration: pencils.  

After gathering element references, taking a few pose reference photos and designing heraldry icons for the magical floating elements around the main character, I proceeded to create the final layout using 2H pencils on 11x 17 Bristol paper.

I've posted more of my progress images of this stage on my Facebook page in the album called "Dragonworld".

Considering some additional minor revisions before adding in more value with 2B - 4B pencils. Then on to final color in Photoshop!

In-progress photo of "Dragon World" illustration.

Dragon World in-progress

The ArtOrder group run by WoTC art director, Jon Schindehette, has a new challenge up that I couldn't resist developing some concepts for -- dragons!  But there's a little more to it than that:
 
Quote:
"Today, I’m going to listen to the call of the community. A dragon challenge has been the number one requested challenge for years. I’ve always begged off, because I haven’t been able to come up with a challenge that befitted them. I mean, I could have just done a challenge where I said, “draw a really cool dragon”, but that is kinda lame, and judging that type of challenge can be difficult. One person’s cool dragon is another persons cliche. So today's challenge is going to have a spin…
 
If you look around our mundane earth, you will see dragons worked into everyday culture all over the place. They can be found in tattoos, clothing, architecture, art, and so many other places…and yet, dragons do not actually exist in our world. When I look at so many of the worlds in the fantasy genre, I can see dragons flying around, but I don’t often see them reflected in the cultures. Why is that?
 
This months challenge takes an iconic figure in the fantasy genre, and adds a layer of complexity.
 
The Dragon – Create a cool dragon and show me that you know dragons. Show me the emotional resonance that comes with a dragon. Capture the “essence” of a dragon, and breath some life into it.
 
The World – Now, you’ve got to integrate it into the world. And by “integrate”, I’m talking about more than just dropping a dragon into a scene. That isn’t integration, that’s just an illustration. “Integration” is showing how the world lives with, reacts to, is affected by, and influenced by the dragon. Maybe dragons are common place in your world and they blend into everyday life. Maybe there is only one in the world, and the myth of it is reflected throughout the world. Maybe your dragon is simply symbolic and you have to show it’s influence and integration in novel ways.

The more innovative and interesting you make your execution will affect the judging...Also, do not feel you are limited to a fantasy setting. Feel free to go off the reservation and find your dragon in any genre, time, world, or setting. This could make for some interesting editorial or book cover ideas – where you step out of the known and normal."
End Quote

While I wish I could have had time to work up a few pages for the Dragon World comic idea I initially came up with...I just don't...client projects took priority. But, I have two other ideas I've chosen out of my initial rough sketches that I'm developing further. One fits squarely in the "Book Cover Adult" or BCA category.  And the other should fit in the "Book Cover Children's" or BCC category...something that might one day be the cover for a story under consideration in "The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy"....gotta dream big and work hard! :)

In any case, this sketch was the final rough version that I have since been developing further for the BCA category...and I'll post progress images for that in a later post:

Read more about the Dragon World ArtOrder Challenge, categories, rules and submission requirements as well as other art in progress by going to the AO site, here:
http://theartorder.com/dragon-world-artorder-challenge/

Dragon's Perch

My first dragon post for 2013! The illustration was developed from a warm-up sketch originally created late summer 2012 (posted below).  The dragon didn't change much from its original design, but I did change the pose of the girl and altered her costume as well, from fabric to style.  The background was inspired by a photo I took at the Dallas Arboretum about 10 years ago (at bottom).
 

 

Year of the Dragon

In keeping with 2012 being the Year of the Dragon, I created this illustration as one of several dragon-ish projects.  The digital painting is above, with a crop of the original pencil sketch below.

Where Wolf?

"There wolf!" 

Did a quick werewolf concept illustration today that still needs just a bit of fine-tuning before I consider it final.  Below are some progress images as I created the werewolf concept, from initial pencil sketch to almost final color in Photoshop.

Eowyn and Nazgûl sketchings

Over on the ArtOrder blog, a new art challenge:
review the scene (of Eowyn fighting the Nazgul) in the book, and create your own interpretation of that scene.

I managed to pick up a copy of the LoTR trilogy at the nearby used bookstore and did a bit of re-reading of various scenes to tweak my memory last week. And during this week's storms, tornadoes and power outages, I came up with a bunch of possibilities with my little thumbnail sketches, some of which I posted below. I started with various abstract shapes to explore layouts, and then added a bit of gestural figures in the next stage of my thumbnail sketches. I've posted one of the three scenes I'm developing further at the top; I still haven't firmly decided which of my favorites to go final and color.

You can see many more entries, sketches and color versions in progress from other artists from digital to traditional over on the ArtOrder forums, here.

My intention is to do a watercolour version of the final scene I select, with some minor digital enhancements as necessary. The project is due on May 15th...

A Tale of Two Dragons: work in progress

Two dragons, but with two different art briefs: one is for middle grade and the other is for adult. But both illustrations introduce the main characters of the story, and provide a hint of the setting of the story worlds.

I've posted one of the initial rough sketches and layout I was most satisfied with before I started considering colors... The figure above is the image I posted in my Friday Faces page on Facebook as I began detailing more of the figure and costume.
More progress posts later during the week! :)

Whimsical Imp

This week's Friday Faces was a quick color sketch of an imaginary creature. Initial rough was sketched with blue pencil, and the final was colored in Photoshop 7 using one of the basic brushes.

First Day

This one started out as a Friday Faces random sketch, but I really like the narrative that's going on here so I'll be taking this one further over the next few days. Exploring, painting, adding in a background maybe, adding in some extra arms... :)

The Hunter

I seem to be posting everywhere but my sketchblog lately; I'll have to remedy that.

Juggling projects as usual, but I also started up a new weekly sketch practice for myself to work on lighting, speed-painting, and other areas in my illustration artwork that I feel still "needs improvement". I'm calling it "Friday Faces" and plan on posting a new one of those images every week as I have been doing on my Facebook page.

The above image is a concept I did in Photoshop 7 last Friday. A speed-painting practice sketch (for me any detailed illustration under 20 hours is really fast as opposed to product design concepts where I might do 3-10 a day or per week depending on complexity, etc.); took about 6 hours to do including research, sketching and coloring in PS.

Winter in progress

This is a small section of a much larger illustration that I'm drawing at the moment. One of several versions of the rough layout is posted below. Seemed appropriate that this week's Illustration Friday topic was also "Winter" since that is the theme of this illustration as well. I intend to have a majority of the detailed pencil completed by this evening. This will be finished as a watercolor project rather than digital. :)

Experimenting with a Dragon Rider

Color version of my first ACEO card. I was interested in doing some miniature painting (the cards are 2.5 x 3.5 inches) and creating these as traditional work rather than digital. Used a transparent watercolor wash first over my detailed HB pencil drawing, and then went over that with my new Caran d'Ache colored pencils. Some areas got a bit muddier than I'd anticipated, but for the most part I like it. I have three more to play with in between some other projects I'm working on lately.

Promotional Art for Fantasy Illustration

I'll be attending IlluxCon 3 next week -- yay! In preparation, I've updated and finished some artwork I'll be taking with me as promotional pieces for the art show. These two are a couple of illustrations that will definitely be there with me. Wish me luck! :)

Unkind Mermaids and Other Stuff

One of several mermaids I've been drawing in Photoshop 7 with my wacom tablet for yet another fantasy illustration project. Still need to add ornaments to her hair and a few other tweaks and fixes which I'll get to when I go to color.

I'm also working on some "miniature" pencil drawings (they're about 3.5 x2.25 inches each) for a series of fantasy illustrations I want to finish up with watercolors. Should be fun!