Decade Anniversary

Today marks the day that ten years has passed since my father died, and I feel I need him now more than ever. I don't know why I'm writing about this, I think it's easy for me to put this down in words. If I were to think of how he would feel of my accomplishments if he were alive today, I honestly believe he'd be ultimately disappointed. He may say he was proud, but be disappointed. He was my inspiration and it was both of our dreams for me to go to art school and do something with it. And here I am, back in the town I grew up in. I feel I let him down. It's hard to make a living as an artist, especially when no one will rep you and in this type of economy marketing yourself is a full time job. I do what I can, but don't feel it's enough, and think I need to work harder but my motivation is not enough. I wish I could ask him what I should do and hear him make some obscure answer with a joke, that was his style. He was also a very philosophical guy and read a lot of books about different philosophies. He gave me a book about Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki, which he wrote several notes and and highlighted. In the back cover of the book he came to a conclusion and wrote a note. It said, "In life, it's not about how much money you make or how much you own and successfull you are, but how far you get from where you were." Smart guy, I guess I have to take that quote to heart and make a goal to advance further in life.

Another Dissapointing year!

I've been checking the Spectrum: The Best in Fantastic Art site every day, almost every hour for the past week, seeing if they posted the artists that made it in to the annual. Well tonight they posted them, and yet again I did not get accepted. For anyone that does not know what Spectrum is, it's an annual of the best sci-fi/fantasy done for the year and I try to be in every year. I submitted my Pinnochio painting, which I was sure to get in! I mean, it got such a great response from everyone I showed it to and I put my heart and soul into doing it. This makes the third time I submitted, and the third time I was rejected. It sux especially when I have peers from my school repeatedly getting in. Oh well, I guess there's always next year!

Almost there . . . !!!

So, I've narrowed down the drawing to this final sketch!! Next step is to do a color comp and finally get to the painting. I'm kinda scared to get started because I anticipate this being finished to such a high standard that I don't think I'll be able to pull it off. Oh well, gotta wait and see!!

All the King's Men update!!!

So here's an updated sketch and sculpt for my next project. Trying to figure out the background more and some of the bodies in the wall. Don't want to overload the wall with detail but need to suggest more in it.

All the King's Men

So, here's my next pet project!! I think it's one of my most ambitious yet and really brings me out of my comfort zone in terms of complexity and concept. I decided to do a painting on Humpty Dumpty and he's sitting on a wall, of dead bodies. Did I mention the wall of dead bodies is all the King's men that didn't put him back together again? Did I also mention he's a badass crusader with a scar over his missing right eye? Like I did with pinnochio, I want to do a familiar character but with a different twist on the tale. With inspiration from one of my old teachers, Kazu Sano, I decided to also sculpt out a piece for accurate reference on lighting on the character. So here's a sketch of my piece, and a picture of the sculpt I'm still working on. Of course this will eventually turn into a painting. Sketch still needs work and I'll post up more stuff as it comes along. Hopefully this will turn out well and be a big hit!

finished painting!

So I finished my latest painting, which was a commission of a warrior wearing the armor of God. The result is above. Overall I'm pretty pleased with it, although there are some things I would change, like the glow on the sword and the eyes, but it was a commission and the guy I painted it for wanted them in. And I also would have given more consistency and accuracy with the armor fitting with the sword, which they don't. Before I started on this painting I was looking at one of my old school chums awesome paintings and figuring out how I'm going to paint his armor and show light reflecting off of it, but not too much. I was looking at Chris Rahn's awesome work, which you can see at www.rahnart.com and tried to mimic what he was doing with hardly any success. I was able to get some good advice from him before starting though, which I was grateful for. Anyway, here it is, my latest finished painting since May!

color comp

So, here's a quick color comp for the commission I'm working on mentioned in the previous post. I wanted to get something with lighting as dramatic as possible like my other paintings. I think I still need to work on it, but I'll do it in paint. I don't like to spend too much time on a digital color comp when I'm just going to paint it anyway. Doing the armor for me is always a challenge, especially if it's somewhat dull but has a shine to it. One old classmate of mine, Chris Rahn, is a master of painting armor in my opinion. I'm happy I could say I went to school with this guy, although I wish I got his secret on painting armor when we were in class together! His work is awesome, he's pretty successful and has done numerous illustrations for Wizards of the Coast and their Magic cards. Check out his website at www.rahnart.com . I was looking at one of his paintings for almost an hour yesterday trying to figure out what measure of saturation he puts in his armor and how much of a highlight is in the armor, it's still a mystery to me. Anyway, looking forward to actually start painting this one, should be fun!