Troll Witch in Red

Troll Witch has been a character I've drawn on and off for a while. She started as a piece for my portfolio and slowly started to develop into a character in a story I'm working on.

Troll Witch is a master of herbal arts and a friend of many. She lives in a house made of trees and river stones. Most of the season she wanders the woods collecting plants and herbs for her potions. Meeting lots of creatures along the way and helping out when she can. During the colder months, she stays at her home taking in visitors out of the freezing cold. She once had a whole party of gnomes, three dwarves, and a minotaur in her house at once, feeling more like a tavern then anything else. But once the snow melts, she leaves again to replenish her supply.

Monster Monday- September 1, 2014

Puca is a trickster fairy that can be equally helpful and confusing at the same time. He spends most of his time climbing around the trees, sleeping in the branches, and fooling the other creatures in the forest with his pranks. He is also known to be a changeling able to transform into animals like a rabbit, a goat, or a cat. The disguises are used to enter human settlements to steal food or trick people for his own amusement. In order to please Puca and keep his trickster ways to himself, people will leave a share or their crop for him at the edge of the forest as a present. 

Monster Monday- June 2, 2014

A little creature inspired by insects of many kind. A little drawing I inked for practice and turned out well. This design will be done on toned paper and inked maybe even colored. This creature is very small and lives inside trees with a larger colony of its kind. They work together collecting pollen to create a honey that can heal even the worse wounds. Many people wander the woods looking for the honey to help the injured or sell to a doctor.

Monster Monday- May 12, 2014

Sorry for posting Monster Monday a day late. Yesterday I had a chance to spend the day with friends and took advantage of it.  This week's drawing is a green man that I drew for my Mom for mother's day/ her birthday. 

Like the other green man I posted a while back, I created the face using different types of leaves. I didn't want it to appear too human and keep it's creature quality. The green paper is a card stock and the ink is FW burnt umber and white. 

The Satyr and the Will-o-wisps

Since a lot of the work I created lately has been more of the high fantasy side, I wanted my next piece to be more folklore based and not centered around weapons and warriors. The inspiration for the piece came from looking at illustrations by John Bauer. I was reading a book of Swedish Folktale with Bauer's illustrations in it. Like much of my work it starts in my sketch book and evolves into the final piece. I spent extra time playing in photoshop to create the lighting and mood I wanted.

I do plan to write a short story about the Satyr and the wisps, but it still needs more fleshing out before I release the tale. I haven't done any creative writing in 5 years and I feel rusty, so it may be a while from now when I post the story and some spot illustrations to go along with the illustration above. 

PORTFOLIO

Monster Monday- February 17, 2014

Spent Saturday night sitting in my favorite chair sketching and this troll appeared on the paper. He isn't for any project I'm working on but more as a relaxing drawing because is a contained idea so I don't have to think of how it will 'fit' in a world I'm building. But this troll is not for nothing, he may appear in my sketchbook I'm producing for convention season. The book is 32 pages, magazine size and going to be professionally printed. I've created about 22 pages so far and am liking the way the book is turning out. If there are any left over books from conventions in April, I'll have them available online for purchase.

Portfolio

Troll

A few days ago I was struggling with ideas for new illustrations. I couldn't come up with a good composition for a piece and had to take a break. I pulled out some toned paper and just started drawing. I haven't drawn a troll in a while, not even in my sketchbook. I let my hand guide the drawing instead of over thinking of what I was doing. Over thinking tends to be a killer and creates doubt before pencil even hits paper. This drawing really helped crush the art block I was having. And now I have 4 illustrations in the works all at different stages.

Monster Monday- November 4, 2013

This week's monster is an Ice Giant. This drawing is a character study for an illustration I am conceptualizing at the moment. I'm taking the idea I used for the watercolor Ice Giant I did a while back and taking it to the next level.

Soon I hope to open an online store where I will sell drawings as well as books and prints. It will most likely happen after the new year.

Monster Monday- October 7, 2013

The great Cthulhu of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Describe as one of the great old ones, the creature is imprisoned under a sunken city to once again rise and cause chaos on earth. Cthulhu is described as having an octopus like head, huge wings, and standing taller then any building. For my version, I gave it more of a squid shaped head for a more distinctive shape. Instead of many tentacles near the mouth, I chose 3 to keep the design clean. Normally many people give Cthulhu clawed arms, but I've always imagined it to have tentacle arms.

Death or the Grim Reaper and sometimes the Angel of Death, is a popular character of Halloween. Death as an actual living entity has been around since the Middle Ages as a skeletal figure carrying a sickle. Sometimes he can be tricked or bribed in order to stay alive, but it is also thought that he severs the soul and body creating death. For my design, I was inspired by Charon of Greek Mythology, who users the dead to the plane of Hades. Death has a black toga instead of a completely black robe, I also wanted his head to float high above his actual body so he could hid his form while meeting the newly dead. The scythe made of vines from the under world that holds his blade. Over all, I tried to reinvent the character to be more associated with Hades. 

Monster Monday- August 19, 2013

Here's the ink drawing for a watercolor I'm about half way done with. Its a part of series of 3 paintings about Tree Folk. This is the last piece in the series. I am experimenting with textures in the current 3 watercolors I'm working on and it's really adding to the pieces.

Next week I will have a new drawing for monster monday. The past 2 weeks have been really crazy.

Monster Monday- July 29, 2013

This watercolor was made for my Mom for mother's day/her birthday. I finished it over the weekend as a warm up to getting back into painting more and creating finished work again.

This creature is a water sprite. He hangs out by bodies of water collecting pearls and leaving them as good fortune to people they deem worthy. The design was inspired by frogs.

I just finished another painting last night that I will share in the next few days.

Monster Monday- July 15, 2013

Taking a break from a post about the Legendary Monsters. This week is full of creatures who fill my sketchbook. Keeping a sketchbook is important for me to brew ideas and designs, so I thought I would share sketches done in the past 2 months.

These little guys are going to be used for a series of chapter headers. It shows how the leaf sprite changes with each season, not just physically but emotionally as well. (i really like the little sassy sprite)

The left side of the sketchbook has some fish monsters that I designed to be used in a character spot illustration for a role playing game manual. The right side are designs of dragons, one thing I know that I should be able to draw better are dragons. After all they are important in my books and video games. 

I show spreads of my sketchbooks to show that not every page is filled. Sometimes just to get a fresh feelings, I'll hop to another page. The right side is covered in lumpy, weird mushroom creatures. These guys mumble to themselves as they run around stealing real mushrooms.

More designs of forrest sprites. The orb was to glow at night and guide the lost out of the forrest and back to civilization. The other page was my first attempts are Ice Giants, I have more pages that explore the idea as well as compositions for the watercolor I completed a few weeks ago.

The Imp designs on the spread are being used for a watercolor of a thieving imp sitting on a wooden beam. It's another illustration that I can be seen used in role playing games, more for a written adventure. The Imp steals a valuable necklace of importance and its the adventures task to return it.

These are designs for the Irish Phooka, a known changling, that takes the shape of small animals like goats and cats. I used the animals as reference to make the phooka more animalistic. 

I've been drawing my version of high fantasy elves for a while and haven't used any of the designs in an illustration. Here is the costuming and armor for an archmage high elf character for a role playing game character profile. The next page is my idea of how a explorer might catch smaller creatures of the wild. Many will-o-wisps trapped in jars, they kind of look like little ghosts.

And finally, basic rock elementals. I made it different from every other elemental using ruins to enchant the rock into an humanistic form. He has a strong body structure and cracked rocks of billowing smoke.

Thanks for checking out all of my sketches. I'll be posting one of these images a day of my tumblr.

Traveling Ice Giant

Finished the illustration earlier in the week. My summer job was/is keeping me busy. But that doesn't mean I'll be slowing done my illustration work. I'm excited to start saving money to get both 'The Other People' and my new 'Legendary Monsters' book printed for the next Con season. All those days standing in the sun, helping tourists pays off.

Remember to pick up 'Against the Slave Lords' to see my hobgoblin illustration

Monster Monday- May 14, 2013

The past week has been busy for me. It's finals time, had to finish an animation and study. While I did a lot of sketching now that 'the other people' is complete, I didn't get a good chance to sit down to create a finished drawing. So here's a sneak peak at a new watercolor I am working on. It's the green man previously posted a while back with fleshed out color and rendering. The scene is going to be when the sun is setting and the woods get dark. I started out rendering the figure to see how far I'll take the background. This piece won't get finished up till I move back to Asbury and get settled in. I have lots of new exciting illustrations planned as well as my next book 'the iron halls'

Green Man

Finished inking this piece a while back and the painting process has already started. It's a green man wondering through the forrest at night. I had a lot of fun designing the character with a leaf beard, tree hand, and log horns. I'm still debating if I want to design a patterned frame as a boarder, I guess I'll figure it out as it get's closer to finial stages.

The Other People

I just sent out my first ever completed book to the printer. It's crazy to think that I started sketching ideas in September, dummy book in October, drew pages in November and December, Inked in January, painted from February to mid March, and designed in April. And was a full time student and had a part time job. I even managed to get other paintings and drawings done. 

My book 'The Other People' will soon be available on tablet readers and for PDF downloads. It will be available for download in person (meaning you pay in cash and I send  you a direct email while I'm at the shop) on May 4 for Free Comic Book day at the Comic Book Shop in Wilmington for a low price. Here's a sneak peak at a page of my book

Monster Monday- April 1, 2013

Sorry for the delay, the past weekend was extra busy with Asbury Park Comic Con and working on my thesis. Here is a drawing I did at the con of a Troll.

Sketch Book

I am a illustrator who has always drawn. I've been keeping a sketchbook since I was about 10 years old and can't imagine the thousands of pages I have filled. Lately I have been working in a new sketch book book, a brown toned hardcover book produced by Strathmore. I've been searching for months for a hard cover sketch book that is not white paper, I need something with a binding so I am not tempted to rip out a drawing and forget a failure. It's important to keep all the drawings to show the progression to a liked drawing. The nice thing about sketchbooks is its an exploration and doesn't have to be 'finished' like an illustration. It's about problem solving and not creating perfect images. So I've decided to share some pages of my sketchbook in hope to get others to fill some sketchbooks of there own.

Incase anyone was wondering I draw with a simple pen and use a white gel pen for the white ink. 

Satyr Portrait

Here's a little Satyr Portrait I made while I was at work. I spend 6 hours in the illustration room and decide to relax with a painting that is not involve with my senior thesis. It was a nice break, but back to working on my book. Got two weeks left to finish my paintings before production then sending the book off to print.

Monster Monday- Feb 4, 2013

Shaman Troll