The Monkey King

The Art Order is holding a challenge to create a piece of personal art. Some of the prompts were mythology and folklore which got me thinking about mythology that isn't as popular. That led me back to mythology and stories I was researching early in my first 2 years of college. I was interested in learning more about Asian mythology since I have a martial arts background. Soon into my research Monkey King came up. After reading numerous academic articles and stories, I knew I had to create an illustration of the character.

Now a few years later, I was stumped on what to create for my next illustration. I draw European fantasy often and wanted to do something different. While looking through an old folder of drawings I found my first drawing of Monkey King and was immediately inspired to create a new piece based on the character. I got to work and created the new personal piece that I am happy with.

Monster Monday- July 28, 2014

A while back I posted the ink drawing of tihs Forest elemental. I began to digitally color the piece a few months ago and it sat in my work in progress folder. I decided to finish the character as a way to practice digital coloring since I want to continue to improve. Having a Work in Progress folder is helpful, when I feel stumped on a project; I'll search the folder and work on the piece while thinking of how to solve a problem on the other piece. And this helped me finish a new illustration I created for the Art Order challenge that I'll be posting this week.

Gandalf the Gray

For the past few days I've been listening to the Lord of The Rings audio books while drawing. It didn't take long for me to start sketching some of the characters in my sketchbook. Gandalf was the first to be drawn followed by other wizards of Middle Earth. Which is going to be a small series of Gandalf, Radagast, and Saruman. Each one will be drawn on a different color of toned paper to make the color that is associated with the color of each wizard. I may even draw each dwarf from the Hobbit, but that's in the future. 

Monster Monday- July 21, 2014

This week's monster is a Hobgoblin based off of a similar design I created a month back inspired by AD&D. The design follows more classic idea of pig nosed orcs and goblins with a nonstandard nose. In this case a bat nose. These goblins live in dark caves and have larger ears to hear better down the tunnel systems. They also can see better in the dark then other goblins. In the caves the goblins mine for different metals to create armor and use rocks to create weapons. The bat nose goblins are rare and are only seen if one ventures into the tunnels they inhabit.

Character Commissions

RPG Character Commission

Get your character drawn and colored digitally. You get the original drawing as well as an 8.5x11 print. Head over to my store to purchase your commission (only 5 currently available) then send me an email at paigeconnellyillustration@gmail.com with the character description. The art is for personal use only and not for commercial use.

For commercial work, send email to paigeconnellyillustration@gmail.com

Monster Monday- July 14, 2014

This week's monster is an orc warlord ready to rally the troops into battle. Orcs often find there way into my sketch book, along with goblins and treefolk and lots of other creatures. This piece started out as a thumb nail on a scrap piece of paper and evolved into a drawing. Currently I am flatting color in photoshop for the drawing and plan on working on it over the next few days. 

Continuing to prepare for Illuxcon in September!

Monster Monday- July 7, 2014

This week's monster is a goblin mechanic. It's a revisit of an idea from a while back and thought the idea would fit well into the Goblin Guild. It's done similarly with inks and a little clean up digitally after it was scanned. Next week, I will post another requested monster. Just have to work on bird anatomy first. 

Monster Monday- June 30, 2014

This week's monster is a Catoblepas from Ethiopia, one of the monster requests I received on Tumblr. It's said to look like a boar or buffalo with spikes along the spin. It's breath turns people to stone or kills them. For the creature's design I looked at oxen reference since they have an interesting silhouette and a strong build. For a future I plan on using the Catoblepas for an illustration. 

Ice Giant with axe and sword

Ice Giants are scattered all over my sketch book recently. I have done drawings on toned paper in the past few months and only one digital piece. I felt like I was neglecting photoshop lately and needed to get back into digital coloring. Last week I drew a toned paper version of the Ice Giant that did not turn out as well as I hoped. Redrawing the piece on bristol turned out favorable results. Then the photoshop magic begins. Though I do not consider myself a photoshop wizard like my friends. 

The original drawing will be traveling with me in September to Illuxcon, where I will be displaying my work in the showcase on Friday and Saturday night. 

Bonus line drawing

Monster Monday- June 23, 2013

Late Night Monster Monday, the past few days have been busy between working shifts at work and creating new drawings. The last post was a Hobgoblin and decided to draw a Bugbear that would match. Added similar textures like the other piece. So far, I like adding more texture then normally. I was browsing notes from Illuxcon last year and was reading over the portfolio review notes from Chris Seaman. He talked about adding texture and pattern, which I am applying to my drawings. The textures also look good when I am coloring in photoshop. I prefer to create the texture with line then adding textures digitally. Next I plan to draw a goblin to match the hobgoblin and bugbear. 

Next week I will continue with more requests, still working out some anatomy and design on creatures. 

Hobgoblin Dungeon Crawler

Yesterday after I got home from work, I was checking out twitter to see that Sketch Dailies topic was Hobgoblin. I haven't drawn a Hobgoblin since the ink drawing that was published in Dungeons and Dragons: Against the Slave Lords book. This piece became a nice break from working on larger pieces. Tony DiTerlizzi's D&D work are some of my favorite illustrations and I was inspired by his ink drawings to work on adding more texture to my own work. So far I liked the results of playing with adding texture and pattern to my work.

Mountain Giant Toned Paper

This drawing was an experiment with texture. I added more texture then usual and different techniques in the rocks, armor, and cloth of the giant. The results turned out well and it adds more to the piece with space being added to besides adding the black or white to give it interest. Currently there's another piece using a similar technique on the desk using what I learned from the Mountain Giant to help the next piece.

As for the Mountain Giant, I sketched the character in my sketchbook then scaled the thumbnail into photoshop to clean up areas to create the basic shapes in the composition. Then I scanned the sketch of the character in and laid it on top of the thumbnail to see how the drafted figure would work. After all is put together, the frankensteined thumbnail was printed out at full size to create the foundation of the drawing.

Monster Monday- June 16, 2014

A few days ago on my tumblr, I asked for requests of monsters people were interested in seeing drawn in my style. There were a bunch of great creatures, some I never heard of. So in the next few weeks for Monster Monday, I will be drawing some of the monsters. The first requested monster was a cyclops from Greek Mythology. The cyclops' design is more on the traditional side but with less greek influence on the armor design. Had a good time creating the drawing over the weekend as a way to relax after shifts at work. This week I will be posting a large toned paper drawing I have been working on in the past two weeks. I was going to post it over the weekend but after scanning I realized I need to add more texture to parts of the illustration. And I'll be showing a new process I've started to use to streamline my process.

Online Store Open

This afternoon I set my new online store live. There are prints, books, and original drawing for sale. Make sure to check it out and soon I'll have private commissions available through my store as well.

http://paigeconnelly.storenvy.com/products

Monster Monday- June 9, 2014

When in doubt, draw a Satyr, this week's monster was created as a practice for inking. I bought a few new brushes to try out to see if the brushes would be an improvement from the Blick brush I usually use. I bought a Princeton Preferred synthetic brush and really liked the way the brush moved on paper. After the ink test I began to use it to ink larger illustrations I am currently finishing up. Later this week will be a process post on a new toned paper drawing. Stay tune.

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.

Moleskine Sketchbook

I've drawn in many types of sketchbooks over the past few years, I've been taking my sketchbook with me everywhere since High School. I decided to buy a sketchbook that could handle the abuse of travel. And so far the moleskine has been handling the travel.

Usually the spine of my sketchbooks break and tapped together to keep the book from falling apart. I've been carrying this book around for over a month and it's still holding up. Attached to the book is a pen with multicolored inks so I don't have to carry multiple pens. Plus I'll never forget a pen to draw with.

Here are some pages from my current sketchbook.

Monster Monday- May 26, 2014

Another goblin, sometimes I feel like I draw them too often. This goblin is a shield striker. It can block with the shields on it's arms as well as hit opponents with the spikes or sides of the shield. Shield Strikers are heavily armored since they move slow due to the weight on their arms. Later this week, I'll post the digitally colored piece that I am currently working on.

Monster Monday- May 19, 2014

This week's monster is a Minotaur. I've drawn minotaurs in the past but wanted to have a more unique looking design with long ape like arms. When it rests, it lays it's hands down on the ground similar to a gorilla. This design is one of the creatures of Fable Wood, which I have two stories on their first draft. Minotaurs will play a role in a few of the short stories and are helpful builders because of their strength.

Toned Paper Experiments

For a while now, I've been using the toned paper with ink. I saw some illustrators using color pencils and markers on the toned paper getting interesting results. I decided to give it a try.

My first successful attempt was the Eye Squid. It took a few tries to figure out what worked. Inking the piece first gave a clear drawing. Then I used some markers and colored inks to lay a base color. I applied some of the techniques I used in photoshop like using a flat base to render on top of. Then I tested each color pencil on a random piece of toned paper to see how the results of each color. After I began to add the pencil on the drawing and created the final image.

Since the technique of ink/markers with color pencil was a result I liked. I drew a larger creature, a Fate Warrior, and used the same process to create the drawing. The creature was designed in my sketchbook and decided it would be a good character to experiment the color technique on the toned paper.

I've only drawn Quillkins a few times and thought it would be another creature to use as practice. This time I used other colors to help enhance the base colors. For example, the belly was colored with a muted yellow then I used a bright yellow color pencil then an orange pencil to add more interest. 

The toned paper, ink/marker, and color pencil technique has been an interesting experiment, there are many drawings I started that turned in technicolor nightmares. But it was worth the time in order to create a basis of how I plan to use color on toned paper in the future.