Hey Gorillas–

Been a long time since I’ve posted. The standard of work on here is getting absolutely insane, and it makes me love you guys even more.

Here’s a new cover I did for a piece of historical fiction in 1940’s Maine. Definitely not the genre I’m used to, but was a good excuse to push my digital skills (this is my first commercial piece done start to finish digitally)

The Adventures of Benjamin East

I’ve got a friend that owns a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game, and he commissioned me to do some “portrait sketches” of a few of his players. These are all oil on canvas:

Hey Gorillas! Wanted to drop a little something out here to let ya’ll know I’m alive and making art. I was digging out old ref for a project that I’m picking back up, and stumbled on a pic that I loved, even if it won’t get used in the final. I decided to do a lunch speedy in Painter from it instead– thought I needed the practice on my digi-skills. Roughly an hour or so.

I had to pause some video I was watching on the web in order to jump on a conference call for work, and there was something interesting about the image freeze framed. I decided to crack open Painter and try to improve my digi-skills while multitasking on the call. About 30-40 mins while simultaneously  exercising the other half of my brain.

I’ve been really fixating lately on Tom’s digital enviro technique. I love the “found composition” possibility it offers, and so decided to take some “baby steps” to getting there. I’m still feeling my way around Painter, but thought these (particularly the first) were fun attempts at abstraction in gray scale and texture. Cheers!

Following the thread of Last Man Standing art on here (a daunting thought, for sure) here’s a quickie from me, with some process shots.

Some background:I had planned a rather extravagant futuristic city-scape with a foreground figure to  “tell my story”. It was going to be a fantastic portfolio piece, at least in my head (and the reference turned out rather nice as well). The holidays and health issues rapidly ate up my time, however, and I quickly realized that my planned image was impossible to create in the time allotted, especially given my primarily traditional working method. I was back to the proverbial drawing board. One night, while shoveling snow from my airport landing strip of a driveway when my snowblower quit on me, the idea hit me. Maybe it was my high-school love of Escher’s pseudo-surrealism or just the muse striking me, but I realized that “underneath it all” could be the painting itself, rather than the scene depicted. It also allowed me to work quick and somewhat loose in my painting, as long as the drawing was solid.

About 5 hours of drawing trying to get the self-portrait somewhat “correct” (detail shot):

For the painting, I put down the oils and went back to the old acrylic and airbrush method, primarily for speed of drying (and the background patterns were much easier to do in airbrush w/ stencils). Painted in one sitting, about 6-8 hours.

Took the painting into photoshop to composite it with the drawing and add all the paint peeling effects:

And finally, after a great crit by a close friend on the lack of focal point and the suggestion that perhaps the drawing could “glow” a little…

Admittedly far from my strongest piece (given my reliance on my weak digital skills for the finish), but I was rather pleased given that everything was completed in a roughly 24 hour period.