I started working on another illustration with the goal of making it as detailed as I could. But extreme realism can be VERY boring. Instead of working on the scene or mood, I was too wrapped up in textures and details. So I think I just lost steam with this. I might get back to it eventually, but for now I think I’m just going to set it aside.

This is my first year illustrating and printing my own Christmas cards! I actually started this illustration a few years ago with the intention of sending out cards then, but I just never had the time to finish it. I found the half-finished artwork on my computer this year and decided it was time to make it happen. I basically started completely over on it – only using the original sketch as a base, but I’m pleased with how it turned out for sure. I hope I can make it a yearly thing from now on.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Wow, no posts in months! I didn’t mean to get so slack, but I’ve been busy and one of the things I’ve been working on is an entirely new website design. I hope to launch it early next year, but it’s been slow going. Regardless, I finally got a chance to finish up this illustration that I started in July. It was sitting on my hard-drive nearly complete for months and finally I just needed to make the time to finish it up. I’m happy I did.

There’s no real story behind it, just felt like doing something a little dramatic and melancholy.

I FINALLY got around to re-painting the face on this illustration. This was one of the first pieces I painted three or four years ago and while I liked it enough to keep it in my portfolio, I was never satisfied with the face or colour palette. I swore I would get around to changing it eventually and that time has finally come. I’m MUCH happier with the piece now. You can see the progression from original to current under the cut.

Original Painting

The original painting wasn’t *bad* but I just hadn’t achieved the mood I was going for and the face looked wonky. Having the face rendered from below gave an unflattering angle up the nose and my render wasn’t very accurate. Not to mention, I originally gave this poor girl a serious case of fish-lips. I wanted the character to have more grace and softness.

New Colour Test

I started the repaint by testing a few different colour palettes by painting directly over the original illustration. Once I arrived at a palette I thought worked pretty well, I smudged out the face entirely, and began repainting.

Revised Painting

Already having the majority of the painting finished, and having a clear idea about the colour palette meant it only took a few hours for me to sketch out a new face I was happy with and re-illustrate the painting with a new color scheme.

My programmer friend asked me to help him by creating some character concepts for an app he’s currently building. Here’s the first behemoth-beast-thing I came up with. This little guy was a fun challenge for me since I typically paint women. Trying to render beefy male anatomy instead of smooth, beautiful skin was really refreshing. I think I might do some more studies like this just for my own enjoyment/study. Brushing up on my anatomy skills would be a good thing.

Process under the cut!

Final Image

I haven’t been able to update as much as I’d like because I’ve been too busy with a lot of side-projects including an entire over-haul of this site. I hope to launch a brand-spanking-new layout in a month or so. For now I’ll just post this little process image that made it onto some of my other internet haunts, but not here. It’s just an image to show some progression in a portrait I’m working on. Hopefully I find the time to finish the piece!

Just a quickie Photoshop experiment I completed with some photos from my studio. No real reason behind it… just wanted to mimic that hand-painted movie poster look that Drew Struzan does so well. Didn’t quite get the effect I wanted, but still some interesting results.

I needed to make a departure from the Sailor Moon fan-art for a new piece. I didn’t go into this painting intending to make something so dreary, but it progressed into this. Painting all those stains and wounds was a great learning process. I had to create some great grunge brushes I’m excited to keep experimenting with.

A few close-ups follow

This is just the result of a quickie sketch I made in my notebook. It was a pretty big style-departure for me so I figured I would try my hand at digitally rendering it to see what type of results I would get. Creating lineart was certainly new. I labelled this guy as a self-portrait mostly because I gave him the outfit I was wearing that day. I’m not that cute.

Some process, as always, is under the cut.

Process

I’ve already posted one piece of Sailor Moon fan art a few months ago but I had such a fun time painting the character, I decided to take another go at it. This time I expanded the challenge to capture the rest of the main Sailor Scouts as well! My geekery knows no bounds.

Process

Final Image

Overall, this is the biggest illustration challenge I’ve taken on in a really long time. I typically limit my personal illustrations to one character so painting five at once was certainly more difficult. The final result is marking what I hope is a turning point in my personal work. I think I achieved something different from my previous work with this painting and I hope to continue refining it.