River City Comic Expo

Attended the River City Comic Expo (RCCE) in Little Rock, Arkansas this past Saturday. Had a great time -- what a fun event! I met lots of really nice people, and enjoyed chatting with them about my art for comics and illustration.  Planning on being there again next year, hopefully with some new comics (at least two), and definitely with some new art.

Here are some con sketches I did at my table, possibly inspired by a few popular characters... :)
I'll color them (digitally) when I have some free time. For now, back to work! 

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. 

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.
 

Wild Horses, in-progress sketch

Another one of those warm-up sketches that suddenly took on a life of its own: Wild Horses.
2H and 4B pencils on Strathmore drawing paper.

Think I'll color this one. :)

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 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/

Home on the Range

Early sketch for a middle grade sci-fi story.  This is a crop of the larger illustration, focusing on the main character here.  The final illustration is in-progress. 

Old Knight

My panel of an old knight is getting a slight update as I go to final pencils.  This comic short story (fairy tale) is one of a few personal projects for 2013.

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.

Baby Unicorn

A quick sketch yesterday of a baby unicorn which I then colored in Photoshop, inspired after seeing photos last week of various baby goats (kids) and horses (foals and fillies) posted on a couple of Facebook pages that I follow.

It's similar in style to the "pin-up" illustration that I did for the artists' gallery in the soon to be published Deluxe Version of the graphic novel "The Last Unicorn" coming out in May 2012 (per Amazon).

The baby unicorn I've done will be one of several traditional watercolor illustrations I'll be creating over the summer. I'll be launching my new Etsy shop in the Fall with assorted prints and original fantasy artwork available for sale at that time. If there are particular creatures or characters you'd be interested in seeing or buying, let me know! I'll be setting up a commission schedule soon as well. :)

Creating Cameos

Last summer I volunteered for what turned out to be artist Renae De Liz's most excellent Womanthology comic book project. By contributing, I hoped to gain some practical experience as a comic book artist (a long-time dream of mine), while at the same time create art for a great cause. It turned out to be so much more than that!

Cameos
One of my creative tasks for the Womanthology: Heroic project was doing cameos of a few of the Kickstarter contributors. My writing partner, Kimberly Komatsu, wrote the script to a wonderful short story called "The Aviator and the Elephant". It had multiple characters which meant I could do more than one cameo.

I ended up doing six.

In order to capture the individual look of each of the contributors, I did a variety of sketches for each subject using the photo(s) they submitted, and then did some more sketches of them in character and in costume in the same poses (or close to) for the story panels. Some of the cameos were in two panels, but most were in only one. Here are some of the preliminary panel thumbnails and sketches I did for the cameos:






After all of that, I did final pencils of each of the cameo panels along with the other panels for each page. Here those are, in no particular order and without text (FYI, there were 4 pages for the story with a total of 35 panels):






And then I scanned the final pencils, patched them together and inked/colored/painted the pages digitally in Photoshop. Here are the final color panels of the cameos (again, without text):






More about my interesting, always fun and challenging experiences, and what I learned about creating comics while working on Womanthology in a later post. :)

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... :)

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all my sketchblog visitors happy holidays and a Merry Christmas! :)

Initial rough sketches for this Santa Claus illustration were developed when I was an in-house illustrator and product designer for a novelty company a few years ago. I've posted some early concept sketches for the scene below. The artwork posted above had been cropped and trimmed especially for use on an ornament (rotating sphere); but the art was also used for other products as well (banners, outdoor holiday display, etc).

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!

Lovecraft Creatures: Penguins of Leng

The above is the final concept art that I did for the latest Art Order challenge.The initial rough sketches and lineart are below. A nice break and something quite different from other projects I'm working on at the moment. :) Here's the quote from H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" that I referenced while I developed these particular penguins:

“Suddenly a bulky white shape loomed up ahead of us, and we flashed on the second torch…This white, waddling thing was fully six feet high, yet we seemed to realize at once that it was not one of those others…We were indeed clutched for an instant by primitive dread almost sharper than the worst of our reasoned fears regarding those others. Then came a flash of anticlimax as the white shape sidled into a lateral archway to our left to join two others of its kind which had summoned it in raucous tones. For it was only a penguin—albeit of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known king penguins, and monstrous in its combined albinism and virtual eyelessness.”





You can view other artists' interpretations, from student to professional, of various creatures from the stories of Lovecraft on the Art Order forums, here.