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
This weekend is MoCCA fest in NYC. I'll be there at table C9 with fellow illustrators Claire Connelly, Ginette Montoya, and Hannah Scherba. We all have a bunch of cool stuff created for MoCCA like Hannah's tote bags, Claire's graphic novels, and Ginette's book of fears.
I'll have new 11x14 prints of some of my digital pieces as well as stickers of some of the monsters I've created over the past month or so. There will also be copies of Goblin Guild and WARG. But what I am most excited about is my new book Conjured Thoughts: Volume 1, a collection of my work from the past year. So stop by my table C9 at MoCCa for a chat.
I don't often share my non-illustration work, but this still life does connect to illustration in a way. For my Drawing 2 class, we had an assignment to draw a still life with drawings, paintings, and objects in a single image. The assignment leant itself as a way to document my current work in a non-photographic approach. I collect the objects and proceeded to create a composition. Pencil rendering isn't something I normally do, so it was a challenge to cross hatch the piece.
I figured I would share work I don't normally create on my own time.
Tomorrow is October, starting the count down to Halloween. Since this is the first October for Monster Monday, it's going to be a themed month. All characters and creatures from famous books, legends, and tales. Each week I'm going to draw as many portraits of characters as I can. At the end of the month all of the drawings will be available for purchase through the online store I'll be opening up. The drawings will first be for sale at The Comic Book Shop in Wilmington, Delaware for their Halloween weekend. The remaining drawings will be up for sale in the shop.
First up is Frankenstein's Monster from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. In high school, I read both Frankenstein and Dracula during my senior year to help pass the time. After finishing both books, I found that I was more interested in Shelly's book. It captured the isolation of man and the dangers of science in the hands of the mad.
For my version of the monster I drew from my imagination when reading the book. I stayed away from the Universal movie monster look of the flat top. I added electrode like contraptions to his spine to power his nervous system. There is also a heart monitor that shows his irregular heart beats. His jaw is metal and hinged to the skull, I figured the jaw of a corpse might fall off so the monster need reinforcement.
Next is The Phantom of The Opera from the book by Gaston Leroux. Like many people I became familiar with the story from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical. But quickly realized that is wasn't a direct translation from the text. The classic Universal film is a great translation of the book, plus it has the power of early film make up effects. The phantom actually had multiple masks to cast different shadows for different lighting situations, that's dedication.
My phantom draws from both the pop culture design and original book. I've always favored the full mask since his whole face is disfigured. His clothing is theatrical because those are the clothing he has access to leaving under the Paris Opera House. The collar and cape are used to hide while wondering through the many corridors of the opera house and shield his identity from the workers.
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.
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.
I received my printed copies of my book over the weekend when I went home for free comic book day. I was very excited to see that the print quality was great, though pricey for the resale so I wasn't able to buy extra copies to sell at Free Comic Book day. Lots of customers were asking for copies and got me thinking I might do a kick starter or indie go-go for people interested in purchasing a copy and allow me to get a bulk order so it will cost less per book. But that's for the future.
Here's some snap shots of the book.
Over the next few weeks I'll post some of the illustrations I've created for the book. But now to get back to painting.
With the new year, comes more drawing. I have one semester left of my thesis and a large amount of paintings to accomplish. Here are some recent drawings from my sketch book.
A drawing I did for 'Goblin Week' started by Evan Dahm (Vattu, Rice Boy, Order of Tales)
A drawing of a Troll. I decided that ink lines help make the drawing stand out then just pencil. I like this dude's outfit as well. I have plans for using this design in a future illustration.
A recent drawing, I tried to play with some more textures. I like the carrots, Trolls like carrots... and sticks
A new creature I designed. Its a Froglin, an aquatic goblin. They are rather large about a foot and a half tall. They prefer the water and tend to steal bait off the end of fishing lines. I've been having a fun time drawing these guys.
It's been a while since I posted. Ever since the hurricane I have been working extra hard to make up for the week I have lost and there are only a few weeks left of the semester. And of course I still have a lot of work to do. But I have been able to find extra time between waiting for paint to dry to sketch. And I have decided to try some new techniques to make finished drawings that don't have inked lines.
I decided to try drawing on a non-white piece of paper. I have seen other illustrators I admire do drawings on toned paper like Justin Gerard and Brian Froud. It was alot different then working on white paper because I could use white charcoal to add another value along with the values from a variety of pencils.
I've only had a chance to do a few drawing on the toned paper, but look forward to using this medium and technique to explore another way to create a finished piece.