Hey there everybody! So this will make my third update in August! I did it! Three posts in one month! That's pretty exciting, right? I'm sure it'd be more exciting if I actually showed you what I was working on, so let's get to that then. Here are some sketches I did at work the other day.

These were inspired by some music I was listening to, I plan on on painting each one digitally - I'm gonna try to do one-ish a week next month and post them up when they're done! That's all for this month! Stay tuned for more updates!

Hey everyone! It's time for another blog post. I've decided recently to go back to school and get a degree that encompasses a lot of my interests (digital photography, drawing, painting, web design, programming), and I'm super excited about it. I start school in about a week and I can't wait! While I was looking through one of my books on design for one of the classes I'm about to take I stumbled upon this picture.

(The above image was saved from wikipedia, I do not claim ownership of this image. It was posted as a reference.)

I had just recently made a custom brush set in Photoshop that looked similar to the strokes Monet used for the image so I thought it would be pretty fun to try my hand at painting my own version.

I started off with a super big canvas, didn't sketch or plot anything out, just painted. It was a really fun exercise. It's easy to get caught up in producing "Art." Something that has to look a certain way, or appeal to a person, or be something worthy of selling, but this was something I wanted to do to remind myself that the first reason why I do this sort of thing is because I enjoy it. So after about an hour this is what I came up with!

It's narrower, everything isn't quite aligned right, but it was a blast to do. The thing that really sticks with me anytime I do a study of a master work like this is how much color is used. There are so many different hues, tints, and values in this and the original painting it's crazy! It was really fun to create.

That's all for this update! I still want to do at least one more this month so look out for that one. Till next time!

Hey there, it's time for another blog update!

There was a sudden rainstorm that rolled over my house so I thought it might be fun to take some pictures. My objective was to try and catch the rain in motion. I wasn't entirely successful but it still lead to me getting some really cool photos (with a little creative editing)! Without further ado, here they are!

This was a small branch that broke off a nearby bush, the little white dots you see sparkling against the black background (which is the grass) are raindrops. It kinda looks to me like a constellation you might see in the night sky.

This photo was actually the reason the other shots look the way that they do. Because it was rather dark out and I was shooting at a very fast shutter speed to capture falling rain I had to photograph this image at a very high ISO. This can make a picture really grainy and lose detail, which is exactly what happened here. So while it wasn't really much to look at in it's unedited state, I thought there still might be some hope yet for me to showcase what I was originally trying to capture - the falling rain. By darkening the image, converting it to black and white, then inverting it, and adjusting the color balance channel by channel, I came up with this. If you look closely you can see little black flecks peppered throughout the image, that's the rain frozen in motion. I also really liked the way the edges of the leaves popped out against the sky (which is black in the photo).

This final shot was framed to capture water flowing out of the drain connected to the gutters on the roof. You can see the water up in the right hand corner of the image. The bonus for shooting stuff when it's wet is that you get a neat reflection of the water sitting on any surface. It made what's normally a boring grey sidewalk a little more interesting.

Well, that's all for this week! Doing something different was pretty fun. I'm also really glad I didn't get electrocuted, that would have been kind of a bummer.

I'm gonna try to do at least a few more posts this month, my goal is three, so look forward to some more new stuff soon. See you next post!

Hey there everyone! I've got some new stuff to share with you so let's get right to it! Here are a couple of sketches I did on my iPad this week.

These came about while I was sitting in a waiting room when I noticed an older gentleman in front of me. I started looking at the creases on his face and the texture of his skin and thought it'd be neat to do a portrait of a man around his age. With a great reference to work from (discretely) I went for it.

The whole process was really fun. I started painting in the shadows first, the dark hollows of the eye sockets, the contours of the cheeks, the shadow under the neck. Then came a whole bunch of layers of lighter grey to give the face depth, finally the face was topped off with some highlights and this is what the (mostly) finished product came to look like.

I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. All of the wrinkles and spots on the skin look really lifelike, I also like the way his expression turned out.

The task of painting the second portrait, which is of a young woman, was a whole lot more and yet a little more complicated. Because the texture of her skin was to be smooth and blemish-free there was a whole lot of blending to do. I didn't have to worry about that too much with the male portrait as the quick transition from light to dark and patchy to even skin helped to show his age. This would not have worked for a young lady though so everything had to be smoothed thoroughly from one shade to the next. After all of that was done this was what I ended up with.

I think she turned out rather pretty, her nose and lips were the most difficult parts to get right, but I'm really happy with the finished result. She's a little less realistic than the gentleman above, but I wasn't really shooting for any particularly photo-realistic look. I was just trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and do something I never do which is draw the human face. It's kind of an important skill for an artist, so I figured practicing might be a good idea.

Thanks a lot for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed this post. I've got a whole bunch of quick sketches I want to upload soon, and a friend suggested I post some of my older art from a few years back, so I might be doing that too. See you next update!

Hey all! I know it has been quite sometime since I've updated so I thought it was time to share a couple sketches!

They're a bit surreal which is always a fun style to work in, you can pretty much do anything you like (and it's kinda more fun for that reason). I'm thinking of turning the first sketch into a finished piece of digital art and making it available for sale on my store.

I've got a huge project in the works right now that I've partnered with a friend to complete. Once there's a bit more to show we'll most likely be launching a separate blog for it so stay tuned! Thanks for stopping by!

Hey everyone! Long time no blog! I mentioned before that I was plugging away at a big project recently and that's why it has been so long since I've updated. That project is over and submitted so I wanted to take some time to tell you guys about it.

There's an online art school called CGMA I've been thinking of taking some courses at for a while now and I noticed they had partnered with Syn Studio to sponsor an art contest. The criteria for the submission was as follows:

"This epic competition challenges you to conceive of or update a classic tale, design believable and convincing sci-fi technology, and illustrate a key moment in the narrative. You can also depict characters, creatures, worlds, and civilizations at any point in time and anywhere in space. Your goal is to create a unique sci-fi illustration which showcases your design and rendering skills while conveying a rich underlying narrative that has universal appeal. Your final image will be evaluated on it's originality, design and rendering."

Sounds pretty cool, right? Naturally this got my imagination running wild, it was pretty difficult to just settle on one idea and work on it. My gut told me to go with something immediately readable, Alice & Wonderland, but my head had other plans. After spending most of my time working on a project I didn't really end up liking I trashed everything at the last second and started from scratch. I had one day to complete what it took me a couple of weeks of work to get halfway done.

The first thing I did was to make a couple of thumbnail sketches to layout the scene. Here's a sampling below.

The last sketch seemed to speak to me the most so that was the one I chose to develop further. After looking at it for a little while I came up with a story, this actually be came the description of the piece I used for my contest submission. Here's what I wrote up.

Her ship, The Hare, had certainly lead her astray this time. With her navigation systems damaged she had no choice but to make an emergency landing on this previously undiscovered world, and from her first impression it appeared to be anything but wonderful. She found a disused observation tower and climbed atop to get her bearings. Suddenly the clouds in the sky parted, revealing some kind of massive structure, it glowed brightly against the dark night sky. Struts ran up from the base to the top and spilled over haphazardly. This mega city sat there before her, appearing almost to welcome her with a grin. She gazed into the distance, uneasy, it would be a while before her ship's automatic repair functions got it back in working order. She hoped that she hadn't been noticed, every second she lingered she was more overcome by dread. She thought to herself, "This is the last place you want to be, Alice."

There it was, I now knew what I needed to do, it was just a matter of pushing myself to get it done. All of the work began in grey-scale, no color was used at first so that I could make sure the contrast and value of the image was just right. That process took about 8 hours. It was grueling but I had to get it done. After all that work this is what I came up with.

At this point it was about 10:30 pm and I had been working all day, I was absolutely exhausted, but I couldn't give up because I was in the home stretch. Just one thing left to do, color. This would have been easy enough, had I ever completed a digital painting in this manner before, that was unfortunately not the case.

After two more hours of tweaking everything to be just right, I came up with the final image.

It had to be slightly cropped to meet the size criteria, but overall I'm extremely happy with what I was able to produce. I couldn't have done it without my biggest fan and cheerleader, Lee, so I'm extremely grateful that he was there to help me finish this piece. My entry can be found on CGMA's website here. Wish me luck guys, the judging's tomorrow!

So that's what has been going on lately, I've been doing a lot more photography which I should be getting around to posting up on my Flickr page soon. Thanks for reading!  

Hey everyone! It's time for a new post. As I mentioned in my last update there has been a whole lot of art going on lately. I wanted to share some of what I've been working on and explain a little about what it's all for.

I'm currently working on an image I plan on entering into a contest, the criteria are as follows: 

This epic competition challenges you to conceive of or update a classic tale, design believable and convincing sci-fi technology, and illustrate a key moment in the narrative. You can also depict characters, creatures, worlds, and civilizations at any point in time and anywhere in space. Your goal is to create a unique sci-fi illustration which showcases your design and rendering skills while conveying a rich underlying narrative that has universal appeal. Your final image will be evaluated on it's originality, design and rendering.

Kind of a tall order, right? I think it's a pretty cool idea though. I haven't really made a serious attempt at something like this before so now's the time to try.

Since the challenge is to make a sci-fi version of a fairy tale there's always one character that comes to my mind first, the evil queen! That's what I'll be showing off today.

The design inspiration for this character came from a random encounter with this neat little beetle I saw in my driveway one early evening.

I loved the color and the shape of the shell, along with its really interesting legs and antennae. This got me thinking, then sketching, and this is what I came up with.

There was quite a bit of hair on the beetle, which is pretty weird when you think about it, but apparently lots of bugs are pretty fuzzy. Or at least that's what I've found out from taking close up pictures of them. The hair inspired the look of the gown at her hips and the billowing fluffy back of the train. She's not quite complete at this point but this is where I started from.

There has been a lot more work done on this and more but I wanted to take you all through the process to see how something like this goes. I plan on updating at least one more time this week so look forward to more updates on her design and more next time!