New Acrylic Piece

I just finished an acrylic piece for a dear friend. It is 48" x 36" and the digital photo I took of it doesn't to it justice. If you're interested in a rough time-lapse of the painting process you can view that here.

The Throne

I started a painting the other day determined to come up with something out of my head instead of searching for source or inspirational material. After doodling a bit I had the image on the left (or something close to it.) That's when I saw what I was going to paint.

The image below shows my progress so far. This is after about 1.5 - 2 hours of work.

I'm fleshing the beast out a bit. I'm impatient so I decided to do some painting before finishing the sketch.

Reenter the Dragon

I met with Brandon Jeffords last week and he gave me some great criticism on my "Dragon Charge" concept. The pose is much more powerful with the body facing out of frame. I took some time to define some of the musculature although I will have much more definition in the painted version.

Dragon Charge Color Sketch

This is a very early shot of a work in progress. I'm working on sketching in color, not just painting over a sketch.

He's Making a List...

On the advice of a good friend, Brandon Jeffords, I have been pouring over art books and websites in order to find artwork that matches the kind of feeling/vibe/style I strive for in my own work. Last night I sped through my copy of Spectrum's 13th edition and made a list of some incredible artists. I appreciate much of the art in the book though I found it surprizing how much subject matter (and the color orange?) influenced my feelings on an artist or illustration. One of the artists I had some time to research is Raymond Swanland. His website is amazing and I've admired his artwork for quite some time without knowing his name. He worked on the Oddworld game series: great stuff. I really appreciated his Q & A section which describes his process in great detail.

I also ran across an article about John Singer Sargent's process on Goodbrush.com, Craig Mullins' site, which is in PDF format here. Again, great stuff.

Quick Campfire

I got in early to work this morning and decided to do a quick sketch. The guy looks a bit like my brother, Dane. This one took about 20 minutes.