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!