Last week I was nominated by my friend Darrenn E Canton to share my work on Facebook. While I'm not a huge Facebook person I took the opportunity to share my work. Here are the first 3 days of images I shared.
Day 1- Sketches
Day 2- Ink Drawings
Day 3- Digital Illustrations
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.
The past week has been busy with the 4th of July and general beach traffic of summer, luckily today I got off work early and was able to sit down to work on more legendary monsters.
The Hippocampus is coming along. For the most part I am happy with the design and it's ready to hit some bristol with ink. It's been different for me designing for aquatic animals because I'm honestly not use to it. But now I am enjoying aquatic creatures.
The leviathan is a monster of the deepest of waters, known to crush everything in it's mighty jaws. The inspiration was many sea animals: crabs, eels, angler fish, and lobsters. I want to go back in to add more exoskeleton elements to protect the leviathan for the pressure of the deep as well as other predators. It also needs to be more intimidating.
The Manticore is an addition to the Legendary Monster line up. The manticore is known as a red lion with a scorpion tale and a trumpet like roar. Since it was described as a lion, I used a male lion as the main inspiration for the creature. Then looked at horned animals like gazelle to see how savannah animals horns looked like. There are design elements that still need to be solved, but it's off to a good start.
Two weeks ago I started my summer job here at the beach and today has been the start of my first full week of work. But that didn't stop me from spending my free time working on my real work illustration.
The Minotaur was the first monster to be drawn and inked on bristol. It pretty much looks like the drawing I showed last week with a few adjustments.
Heres the inks over a texture i created using different types of paper and adjusting some of the elements in photoshop.
The tarasque was next. The tail was changed to be more of a weapon then in a drawing that I posted a few weeks ago.
The illustration on textured paper. I plan on adding information about each monster with the illustration, but I need to write it and get some help with placement and such.
Remember to pick up 'Against the Slave Lords' Dungeons and Dragons book on sale now with my illustration in the gallery in the back of the book.
Sorry for posting so late at night, the past week has been a little crazy starting my new job. I got horrible sun burn making it difficult to draw over the weekend. Then I spent the day overhauling the third floor to make what little space I have work.
Here's more of a fleshed out sketch of the Cockatrice. So far taking the Cockatrice has been one of the easier creatures to design since I had a clear concept of what I wanted from the beginning of the project. Still a few details to work out but getting close to starting the ink drawing of this guy.
The Minotaur's design is done. I flipped the idea of a bull face with a face with some human like features and a body that is heavily inspired by bulls and other cattle. When I do the final drawing, the Minotaur is going to have wider stance since he is a bulky creature and more of a hunch.
After being disappointed with the design I created for the Behemoth, I went back in with new reference. With a cattle inspired body, horns of a giant goat, and legs similar by an elephant, and a rhino horn, the Behemoth is more of what I originally thought.
Stay tuned tomorrow, got some awesome news to share!
rocks have been my new favorite element to draw in my sketch book. Thought I might draw some totem like head creatures.
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
