Lancer

This just a quick sketch I did for fun. It has it all though; worm, spear, dubious fantasy helmet (DBF)....

ArtOrder Tuesday challenge

Just another ArtOrder submission; I wish I had more time to work on these, but at least I'm getting faster in the process.

Eve B&W

Yet another iteration on the concept I've been messing with on my 'off time'; there's been such a brutal heatwave the last week that my studio has been unusable, and I came down with a pretty bad cold recently as well. Just haven't felt up to doing any serious work, so I've been working a little on some personal projects instead.

I think this pretty close to the final composition if I decide to take it to a finish. Not sure if I'd want to just work on top of this sketch to keep the loose feel of it, or get proper reference to fix some of the drawing problems that are bothering me.

Artorder Tuesday challenge

Unfortunately because of a backlog of portrait commissions, I haven't had as much time as I wanted to work on illustration work; but I've still managed to get an entry together for this week's Artorder challenge. I was bummed out that I didn't get things together enough to submit for last week, especially after finding out that Todd Lockwood was helping to judge the entries. He's a fantasy illustrator I've had a great deal of respect for since I was quite young; I actually met him briefly at DragonCon a couple of years ago, and he was about the nicest guy you could meet.

Anyway, I had to rush this piece a little at the end, but I think it came out fairly well. Challenge was to paint a book cover mock-up featuring a Mind-Flayer locked in combat with a female Drow (Both are monsters from Dungeons and Dragons).

That's why the action in the piece is shunted so far to the right (to fit on the theoretical front cover).

les vampires noir et blanc

So here's the final inked piece for tomorrows ArtOrder Challenge. Not sure if I stand much of a chance with the competition, but I'm glad I entered all the same. I'm a little unhappy with the sort of sloppy line quality I ended up with; I'm still not very comfortable with inking digitally, the tablet just seems to restrict my basic hand-eye coordination enough that I can't make the kind of subtle changes in line thickness that I normally love to do with brush and ink. In the future I think that I'll stick to real-world tools for black and white work and edit them on the computer.

Vampire Sketches

I always like to see other people's sketches and early prep work, so I thought someone else might be interested in seeing some drawings for a black and white piece I'm doing for the next ArtOrder challenge; from thumbnails to final drawing. When I don't have to turn in preliminary work to an art director I tend to work in a much more chaotic fashion at the sketch stage; as you can see here I'll draw over the same drawings repeatedly, adding limbs and changing poses in the same space. I'll post the final once I've (digitally) inked it.

ArtOrder Tuesday challenge

New ArtOrder challenge has been posted; there are some really cool pieces up this week. Mine was posted up a day late by accident, so I need votes more than ever! Do it for the good of America; or whatever your country of origin happens to be. Or vote for one of the other talents on display.

Okay, enough excuses now; I promise that tomorrow there will be a post with honest-to-god art in it.