Private commission. Watercolors on 140lb hotpress watercolor paper. This came out very well for a piece entirely out of my comfort zone, not just for the use of green and blues in my pallet, but overall. It was fun and tricky. I need to work more on foliage. It's good to work outside the box, and frustrating. 

Ch-ch-cha-changes!

I'm posting this to let you know that I will be planning a revamp of my work, which will most likely include this here blog of mine.

I think that I have been totting around a whole lot of baggage since college, perhaps before then too. I realize that now is the time for me to maybe take a step back from a few things and try to sort things out. Find out my likes and dislikes of my art making, really take a moment to go over and practice a lot of things that art directors and fellow artists have been telling me to explore.

I am not sure when I will have a chance to come back to this blog, but be sure that I will, with much better work.

With that, I leave you with this pencil draft for a private commission....

Coloring for Surreality

Hello world, it's been a bit since I posted anything on here.

I wanted to take a little time out to call attention to the web comic Surreality, created and inked by fellow alumni Caleb King and Carla Wyzgala. This coming April will be the mark of our first anniversary of releasing our online web comic.

The image as sent by Carla

I like to throw some color in  with the borders

Laying in the foundation colors

Adding in simple layer tweaks

Finishing up with some detail

Above is a quick look into how I apply colors to the comic. This is my first time as a colorist and I think that in the last year of working on this I have learned a lot (especially about cheating with layers). Caleb is a wonderful writer and artist as well (not to mention a pretty relaxed slave driver). Carla and I have been wanting to collaborate on something for a while, so I was her first choice in a colorist, and I am happy to have not let them down. 

Our comic has been a great success, and last summer we were pleased to reach our goal to fund a special anthology comic featuring the works of Andrew Day, Lucas Durham, Nicolas Giacondino, David Pauwels, and of course ourselves. Could there be another anthology in the future of the comic? We'll have to wait and see. 

Post Gen Con

So I'm back from Gen Con, which was a total blast since I took a big step away from volunteering to run much for my game group, which freed up my time to do some other things. I got to walk the floor in the dealer hall and chat with people a bit more as well as hang out with a good buddy of mine when schedules allowed.

Mighty Muggs on Display

I got a chance to stop by to visit my mighty mugg that I did as a design challenge for ArtOrder, and checked out the others there as well (everyone did a smashing job!). I also had a chance to sit in on some paint overs by Todd Lockwood, and while my USB wouldn't work I was still able to pick up a lot from the experience and hope to have a chance to meet up with him again at a future convention. 

There was also the Brimstone Drawing Club, which made it's debut at the convention. It's ran by Natanya Rubin and Kyle Bice, and featured some awesome models! I hope they come back next year and I hope they have at least a later session to see if they can snag any of the artists from the hall to come in and draw. 

Little Alice

I also had ad double portfolio review from WotC's Jeremy and Kate, as well as a later one from Zoe from Fantasy Flight. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that despite my own doubts (which were many) that my art is really coming around. I still have things I need to work out, but for the most part they seem fewer and far between. Zoe mentioned that if I can polish off things a little my work could get accepted for publishing, and Jeremy pushed me to delve deeper into my watercolors and gave me a lot of very helpful advice. 

So my focuses will be narrowing down quite a bit in terms of portfolio work, and widening in terms of working with my media. I have to say I feel great about being encouraged to work more on my traditional watercolors rather than digital. 

And last, but not least.....while I was away at the convention my buddy started up a kickstarter for the web comic that we are all working on. So check it out, and donate! And stay tuned for some WIP work on a new painting and possibly an inside scoop on my color work for the comic!

Mighty Mugg Wrap Up

Original Design

So I know that it's been a while since I updated this, and now with Gen Con just a few days away I realized I ought to get on with the wrap of the Might Mugg Challenge (Which has been a challenge and a blast!)

So when I last left off it was when I had started to go into the actual washes of paint to the figure after all the prep work to get there. 

Using the original design as a ref

I apologize for having skipped taking pictures after this point in the process, but sometimes when you get your groove on you just get caught up in the moment when it comes to painting. I decided I didn't like the yellow for the gold in her outfit so I applied a few coats of Golden paint's gold acrylic to give it that shine.  Once the figure was done I spray primed her with a protective coat.

Now a word about the protective sealer. I had bought it but wasn't going to use it once I had the paint job done because I was afraid she would be really hard to photograph. However I ran into some issues with the sculpy acting weird so I used the sealer to try to keep the problem from getting worse. I guess that sculpy III has some change to the chemical base as opposed to the normal sculpy, and despite following directions to boil it to harden as opposed to baking it, there were a few places were it became very tacky. 

Creating the Whip of Fangs

With the Mugg out of the way it was onto her accessories. Again, I kinda got lazy so there aren't any pictures of the process. For the whip I used a bit of a dowel rod, some thin wire which I braided, and some more sculpy....oh, and superglue. God, yes, superglue.

Again I primed and sanded this down before painting it and sealing it. I decided at the end to add a bit of sewing floss to the effect of tongues coming out of the snake head's mouth. For the skirt I just used a piece of faux leather from an old skirt and cut it out after futzing around with it to see how best this would work out. I sewed a bit of wire into the hem to help it hold it's shape to the top and used some velcro to keep it around her waist. I also cut a slip to add as a belt and just used cardboard which I painted as the buckle.

Oh yeah!

You can see how she turned out above. Overall I am quite pleased with how she looks though in hindsight it would have been cool to give her some hair from a scrap of wig or something. And the best thing...?

Quenthel with her comrades on Jon Schindehette's desk!

The best thing was seeing the picture that the AD of WOtC took of her and some of the other muggs from the challenge on his desk! Gen Gon is only a few days away now, and I can't wait to see how all the other muggs turned out. If you'll be at the convention, make sure to stop by and check these babies out!

Mighty Mugg WIP: Part 2

So this far into customizing my mugg I have already modified the figure with sculpy clay, primed, and sanded it. That means I'm ready to start painting.

It's not often that I use acrylics, but thanks to having gone to college, they were something I did have to purchase for some of my classes. Which means I happen to have quite a few tubes laying around still. I'm currently working with Golden acrylic paints, and Utrecht brand acrylics but I think just about any kind of paint will do.

First I start off by taking a look at the color study I already have laid out. Once again, that means the image below:

Color Study

I mixed up a nice violet with Ultramarine blue and Cadmium red, adding in some white and black until I got to a color I was happy with for the skin. From there I split half the mixture and added some more blue and black to darken it up a bit more for the color I would then use for the leather parts of the figure. And to make sure that the mixtures wouldn't dry and become plasticy I added in some retarder (again I happened to have the Golden brand).

Now even though I have the retarder in the mix, I want to use thinner washes as I apply the paint, so I make sure my brush is saturated with water before tinkering with the paint, and I do a few tests of the mixture on some scrap watercolor paper.

Once I'm satisfied I begin to paint the figure. At this point I still have the toy broken into pieces to make it easier to paint, so make sure you know which pieces are what and which way they are going to be facing before you paint! 

Above are some of the pieces with a few coats of paint on them. Using a brush loaded with watery paint and slow strokes, I was able to mostly paint without leaving behind any traces of brush marks. I am using a synthetic brush for the painting (retired watercolor brushes that no longer hold their shape). Giving them a little swirl at a 45 degree angle in the paint helps to narrow the tip for places that need more finesse.

I want to mention that I didn't draw on any of the details prior to painting them on. Since I have my original mugg designs out, I am instead eyeballing where certain details are placed. I did run into a problem with the yellow paint mixture I used, which would not apply evenly. Therefore those areas are a little rougher than the rest. 

I've still got a bit of painting to do with this toy, so you'll have to stay tuned for another post. But here's a preview of the detail process to come (a little cleavage never hurts!).

Mighty Mugg WIP: Part 1

As I may or may not have mentioned in a previous post, I was one of a couple of people who were chosen to modify a Mighty Mugg to be on display at Gen Con this summer. Above is the entry I submitted, and I suppose that since the blank arrived in the mail recently that I ought to begin documenting the process.

Firstly, we were asked to submit in a character we would like to create. I chose the character of Quenthel Baenre from War of The Spider Queen book series, mostly because I really loved her character though out the books. I used the cover she appears on as a point of reference for designing the mug. 

Paint Me!

Now, I am not simply painting the blank mugg. I will need to add onto it, and to do so I will use sculpy clay, which you should be able to pick up at just about any craft shop. I happen to have some already (+ for not having to run out for more), which I plan to use. I begin by pulling off smaller pieces (because I have small hands) and warming the clay up with body heat in my hands to soften it while rolling it into a ball. From there I can easily pull off pieces as I need in order to sculpt with. 

When I was finished adding on the clay, I decided that I wasn't going to bake it for fear of ruining the head of the actual toy. So instead I brought a small pot of water to a boil and dipped the sculpted portions of the head into the water for about 3-5 minutes. Once I pulled the head out the clay had set and become hard just the same as if I would have baked it. 

(Oh yeah, I started this process by cleaning the mugg with some soapy water. I used dish soap for this and was careful not to get any inside. This is important because the mugg tends to have some chemicals on it from where it was made.)

First, I pulled my mugg apart. I found a video on youtube that shows the process. Then I taped the pieces onto some sticks (I used colored pencils since I have so many of them), making sure to tape off areas where the joints will meet. Once that was done I used a spray primer on the pieces.

I did run into an issue with the spray primer dripping down some of the pieces. Don't worry if this happens, since once the pieces are dry you will sand them down so they are smooth. I also used an empty egg container as something to stick the pieces into, though due to the clay on the head I had to use a small vase so it wouldn't tumble over. 

So that's it for the first part of the mugg process. Now that the pieces are primed and sanded down it's onto the painting stage.