Yesterday Must Have Been My Birthday!!!

Yeah it is almost 4:30 in the morning and I am greeting you all at the end of a fun birthday. A few friends and I went to Olive Garden (unlimited soup, salad, and bread-sticks are VERY good) and then we hung out, watched House, and played cards all night. All in all it was a good day.

Since I am still up now I figured I would give an update on what you should expect in the next few weeks. I will have some more step by steps up soon of the rest of my Beowulf series, I should also have a finished drawing of a portrait I have been working on, as well as a very old drawing of a giant flying turtle done soon.

I hope you are looking forward to my new stuff and I hope you enjoy them. Well I am off to bed now to get some rest for a D&D packed day.

Also remember today the 21st of August is Worldwide D&D Game Day, so get a group friends together, a bag of dice, Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and get NERDY.

Ask Away!

Hey everybody. I have recently made a Formspring account. So if you have any questions at all feel free to ask me. I love helping out and giving advice so please do not hesitate to ask anything you wish, just so long as it isn't inappropriate.

Beowulf Step by Step Part 1

This is a step by step for the first piece in my Beowulf series. I had never posted a step by step before but thought some might be interested in my process.

I treat my digital work the same as I do a traditional painting. I start with a finished drawing then do a flat color wash as an underpainting. I also change the actual color of the linework as well, this I do in my traditional by tracing my drawing with colored pencils, or by printing out the drawing in a different color before mounting.

After that I roughly block in my colors and values, colorpicking from my original studies, it helps save lots of time.

Then I re-work and refine everything, make any appropriate changes until I finish. That is a very rough summation of my process but I figure it helps.

But if anyone has any questions about my process I will gladly answer them. I hope you find this informative.

PLEASE HELP ME WIN!!!

I just entered my piece The End of a Legend for a chance to win prizes from Corel. Please if you would vote for my piece. All you have to do is sign in and then vote. You can also vote everyday so any help you can give would be extremely appreciated. You can vote for my piece here.

ILLUXCON 2010

I just got some awesome news. I won an all expenses paid scholarship to go to Illuxcon this year. I am so excited about it. For those of you who don't know Illuxcon is a convention for fantasy illustration. So many great artists will be there like; Justin Sweet, Daren Bader, Dan Dos Santos, and even Donato. And that is just a very small amount.

I got in on the submission of my The End of a Legend piece.

If you want to know more about Illuxcon check it out here. Illuxcon 2010

I am so excited for this it is a great honor, I am very thankful to have been chosen.

The End of a Legend (Beowulf Series image 3 of 3)

The final image in my Beowulf series entitled The End of a Legend. This one depicts the final battle between Beowulf and the dragon. Unlike his previous battles this one takes place years later after Beowulf is made king. A dragon begins to terrify Beowulf's land setting fire to all he sees. Beowulf with a group of thanes then faces off against the dragon. When the battle begins all of Beowulf's men except for Wiglaf abandon him. At the end of the fight Beowulf and the dragon both lie dead and Wiglaf sees to him. Wiglaf being Beowulf's only relative becomes the next king.

To contrast with my other pieces I wanted this one to depict the end of the battle, the aftermath of the carnage. I thought a nice way to show this was through the use of an above view so we could see the crows looking down upon the feast before them. I thought this quite appropriate as crows are very symbolic of death.

With the design of the dragon I wanted to keep with the same mammalian and aquatic fusion that Grendel and his mother had. I decided to give him a mane down his whole neck. I figured that any creature who lives in such a cold environment would need to have some form of warmth. He has the similar fin nature to his ear that Grendel and his mother does, but the main aquatic feature I gave him was to base his design off an eel.

I was really proud of how this piece turned out, I hope all of you enjoy it as well.

ArtOrder Feature

ArtOrder is a great site hosted by Jon Schindehette Art Director for D&D. On his latest post he was nice enough to feature one of my images. I was very flattered to say the least. If you do not know the site please check it out it is well worth the visit.

ArtOrder Priorities: Making TIme

ArtOrder

Mother of Grendel Grief-Wracked and Ravenous (Beowulf Series image 2 of 3)

Part two of my Beowulf series. This is the second battle Beowulf has in the epic, where he faces off against the mother of Grendel. Unlike the first piece, I wanted this one to depict the heat of the battle. I wanted Beowulf struggling to fight to show that even he can not handle the wrath of Grendel's mother.

I also really wanted to get that fierce emotion across of Grendel's mother. To show how much she loved her son as her love was turned into unmitigated rage against his killer.

Unlike Grendel I wanted to depict his mother with a slightly more humanistic appearance to make her a bit more sympathetic. For even Beowulf says that unlike the beast Grendel he can understand that Grendel's mother had to do what she did to avenge her kinsman.

Since Grendel's mother is said to look like that of a water demon I thought what if I combined a naga or serpent creature with that of a merrow and have a serpentine tail but with a fish fin. I figured this would work for how she travels on land and sea. The text also describes her as a sea-wolf and I wanted to play up that fusion. So I gave her aquatic features such as; fins, hand-webbing, and gills. I then also gave her the wolf-like features of her wolfen eyes, fur covered hands, and large mane.

This was really fun to create, I really enjoyed playing with the design Grendel's mother.

As always this was created in Corel Painter.

The Son of Cain Hunts in Heorot (Beowulf Series image 1 of 3 )

This is the first piece in my Beowulf series entitled "The Son of Cain Hunts in Heorot". I wanted each of the three pieces in the series to depict a battle with the three monsters Beowulf faces. This one shows Beowulf as he begins his epic fight with the beast Grendel.

I wanted this piece to depict the beginning of the battle as the first punches are thrown. Where Beowulf shows great confidence before this supposed threat, as his loyal men cheer him on against the demonic descendant of Cain.

The design of Grendel comes from specific parts of the original text. I show Grendel as this ominous shadowy figure that is almost completely silhouetted. I got this idea from a really interesting part of the book where Grendel is described as a dark shadow that lurks beneath the clouds.

Besides being a giant, Grendel is also said to have been disturbed by the noise of the great hall, thus why I designed him with the large ears. The rest of his physical appearance actually comes from descriptions of his mother. She is said to be a demonic sea creature who is refereed to as a sea-wolf. When I read that I wanted to play up that idea of fusing mammalian and aquatic creature aspects. So Grendel's ears were based upon a wolf but then enlarged to gain a more bat like quality. To incorporate the aquatic aspects I gave Grendel webbing that can be seen in between his fingers.

The piece was drawn out on paper and then painted in Corel Painter. I enjoyed painting it and hope you all like it as well.

We Now Return You to Your Regular Broadcast

Hey everyone I am back. Computer is back and operational and as you can see the blog got a bit of a make-over. I have lots of artwork to post so make sure you stay tuned. I also have some exciting new gigs coming up, once I can give you the specifics I will. I hope you're as excited as me.