Though I’ll try and get better pictures of it once it’s dry, I decided to go ahead and add my newest acrylic painting to the site. I call it, Consequences: I’m really having fun with acrylics (and inks for that matter), but they are far different from my digital pieces. I sort of just let them come out, and let them be who they are, and really try to experiment as much as I can. Read more…
Last year, I offered up a post on the small Moleskine sketchbook that I picked up (last July, check it out here). Since then, I’ve managed to fill it completely up, and move onto a new one. As an artist that likes to share (just catch me in real life, I never shut up), I thought I’d post a few more highlights from the last bit of Moleskine work. Now, the Moleskine for me has Read more…
Some time ago, I discussed the genesis of the cover art that I created for Maelstrom’s edition of author Brian Keene’s A Gathering of Crows (check it out here!). For that article, I talked about the content of the art, what it meant for the book, and in general the idea behind what’s going on in the image. But I didn’t really talk about the design part of it. Now, I know what you might Read more…
Most years, when I can spare a little extra money, I try to enter a couple of competitions. First on the list is always the annual Spectrum competition, for the best of the current year’s fantasy/genre art. I was lucky enough to have been chosen for Spectrum 9 many years ago, and I’ve always wanted to get back into the published book. To that end, each year I look back through my work and try Read more…
Now, before we begin, let’s just say that my years of being an engineering student are way, WAY behind me. But I was looking at a couple of sites today that discussed the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci Spiral, a quasi-magical scientific idea (let that roll around in your head for a minute) by which supposedly “better” or “more pleasing” art can be developed. The spiral is better defined on other sites, so I’ll wait Read more…
Over the busy weekend, I’ve still managed to create two new ink cards, both based on ancient stone sculptures. They are also both ink on 5″ x 7″ 140 lb. Cold Press paper. The first is a gargoyle, based on one that I have here in my office. I’m having fun toying with the close-up ideas on these, and this one is no exception. It’s based on the same gargoyle that I did previously (it’s Read more…
I’ve had quite a few ideas lately, but between my last trip for the day job, looking for a new day job, and family concerns, I haven’t had much time to do artwork. I have a few things I’ll need to do for deadlines, especially a new ink piece and a new contest-oriented piece, but it’s been difficult to get the art bug going in the right direction again. Certainly, a week-long workshop filled with Read more…
For my current day job, I’ve been tasked (since 2005, when I started) with creating animations for our big conference/workshop. The animations played, with video, in front of the major sessions at the workshops, for between 700 and 1200 people at a time. They needed to accomplish several things from the design perspective. First, they needed to represent, at least in a short way, the area where the workshop was taking place. Next, they needed Read more…
Man, that’s a terrible title. But it does, somehow, convey the idea that I’ve taken three each of my ink cards and framed/matted them together.
I think what I really wanted out of this, and indeed out of all of the still life/portrait/from-a-photo inks that I’ve been doing
I have an unfortunate tendency to abandon works of art, as I’m creating them, if they start going off track. I’m working on not doing that, but it’s built-in that if it starts looking like the piece won’t work as planned, I just give up and go do something else. It’s something that only applies to art, whereas with the rest of my life I tend to see the problem and deal with it, working Read more…
I decided that, for the gallery, I was going to take three famous “monster” actors and put an ink card for each in a frame, to sell at the gallery. I already have the Dr. Phibes that I did, and I wasn’t convinced that the Phantom of the Opera was going to work in it. So I put that one aside and created a new Lon Chaney Sr. piece, this one based on his character Read more…
I needed to get my new painting, The Apotheosis of War, ready for the upcoming First Friday Gallery Walk. So, I set aside some time tonight to finish framing it.
I started out to make a new sketchcard (same size and specs as the others, 5″x7″ inked), with the idea of doing one of Lon Chaney Sr.’s famous monsters. I chose his Phantom of the Opera, basing it off of a couple of photos. As I worked though, for some reason a certain softness, a certain humor even, worked its way into the image. It’s not as horrific a monster as I started out to Read more…
I was hoping to do quite a few more small inked cards (I’ve been calling them “sketchcards”), but I haven’t had as much time as I’d hoped. But, tonight, I managed to get one finished. I call it Phibes, and it’s based on the character from the “Dr. Phibes” movies. Since it’s Vincent Price Day, I thought that would be a good thing to try. It’s a 5″ x 7″, 140 lb. cold press paper, Read more…
Here is the new painting, an 18″ x 24″ acrylic painting. I named it “The Apotheosis of War”.
Now that I have the camera back (it took the family on a vacation this week), I can post a few shots of my work in progress. It doesn’t have an official name yet, but “futility” might have something to do with it. Here it is on my desk, and below it are a few closeup shots of the texture I’ve added to it for effect. Interestingly, my son looked at it and said “that’s Read more…
This cover is a bit unlike Kelli’s, and many that I’ve done, in that the story was already available to the public.
I’ve been lucky over the past few weeks to get to work with the fantastic Thunderstorm Books. I’ve been working on three books for their Maelstrom imprint, beginning with tonight’s showcase, the cover for author Kelli Owen’s Six Days. For me, this first book is special because it’s Kelli’s first novel. As she and others have said online, you only get one first novel, and I wanted to make sure that cover had good art Read more…
Last weekend I was able to finish a painting that I’d wanted to do for some time. Not a digital image, but an acrylic painting. Here’s what it looked like in the gallery on Friday night: If anyone read the previous blog entry (not betting on it) about the original “infection” piece (here), you’ll recognize the frame that the painting is in. When it was at the gallery in September, no one really looked at Read more…