At the Crossroads

 Robert Johnson Thumbnail 1.5"x 3"

Value Study

Digital

Robert Johnson at the Crossroads

Watercolor 11"x 15"

It is said that the blues musician Robert Johnson made a pact with the devil, exchanging his sole for  musical  talents. This legend that has been retold in many shapes and forms since Johnson's untimely death in 1938. Obviously the story inspired me to create this painting, and in this post I am sharing a bit about the process of creating the final image. The first image is one of many small thumbnail drawings that I always do when starting an illustration. The second image is a digital value study, and at this point in the process I lay out the large shapes within the composition. The final painting was done with Yarka watercolors on Arches cold pressed paper. The painting was scanned and I made a few finishing  tweaks in photoshop.


For more information about the legend of Robert Johnson check out this link:
http://www.vagablogging.net/robert-johnson-sold-his-soul-to-the-devil-in-rosedale-mississippi.html

Final Miner

Prospector

digital

This image is from a series of digital paintings that I have been working on for a while now. I posted an image of this one earlier, and since then I have made some final adjustments.There are three others  in the series but  I have not had the time to dedicate to finishing them. I am hoping to do so ASAP.....

Petzl Proj.

Delivery

Watercolor and Digital

Santa Drawing

Santa Roughs

Here is a little something I did for Petzl back around Xmas time. Along with the final illustration I decided to post some of my preliminary drawings . My process almost always starts with a series of thumbnail drawings ( sometimes as many as 50), accompanied by a number of character studies.

Lautrec portrait

Henri de Toulouse -Lautrec

Trying to get a watercolor-ish feel with Photoshop brushes...

Rock and Ice Illo

Here is a piece I did for Rock and Ice a while back.

Feats Of Strength 7 Poster Art

My good friend and fellow rock scaler Paul Jung asked me if I would be interested in doing a poster for this years "Feats of Strength " bouldering competition . The event is held at the Cliffs Climbing Gym in Valhalla , New York, and has been going on for the past 6 years.Since the name Valhalla has deep connections to Norse Mythology , we figured it would be fun to have some sort of Viking theme for the poster. The image above is the final poster with all the information one should need if interested in attending the event.

Below is the painting without the text, sponsors, etc..

Feats of Strength

Watercolor and Digital

Trail Runner Illo

Dog Attack

Digital

Pit Detail

Digital

This image was used to illustrate an article about dog attacks in the December issue of Trail Runner Magazine. Unfortunately I had to vilify Pit Bulls in the piece. Despite the bad rap that Pit Bulls receive they still remain one of my favorite creatures on earth. This was a tough one because I did not want to make a super gory , extremely dark image, as the topic is already heavy enough.

At any rate here is the image in which I came up with. It was created with a variety of techniques and with a combination of both 2d and 3d software.

Power Struggle 6

Competition season is rolling in and Prime Climb is beginning to prepare for their annual event known as the Power Struggle. Above is the poster in which I created in order to help promote the event. It is sure to be a good time so be sure to come on out for it. For more information have a look at the poster or check Prime Climb out on Facebook, or at www.PrimeClimb.com

Another WIP

Saloon Drawing

"Where's the Gold"

digital

Here is another work in progress from my Gold Rush series. There still remains quite a bit I would like to do with this one, including incorporating a 3-D model as a border. Hopefully that will happen in the near future. For now here it is!

Work in progress

Thumbnail comp

Mule character design

Painting in Progress

This is number one of four in a series of paintings I am doing about the Wild West and the days of the Gold Rush. This one is about 80 percent finished, with a bit more to do here and there. As always I like to show preliminary drawings that I have used along the way when creating an image. So here is the initial thumbnail, character design for the mule, and the final painting in progress.

Nesh and Guanteen

Nesh and Guanteen

This painting served as a way to test the colors and textures that were applied to my 3 D Ganesh Creature model.I plan to post my finished Ganesh model and animations as well over the next few weeks. For now here is the painting in progress.

DPM issue 14

Funkt Up Illustration

Digital

Salo Feature

Watercolor

Had the opportunity to do a few small illustrations for Dead Point Magazine issue 14. Unfortunately I do not have the files for the straight up art work at the moment. I will plan to post those at a later time. For now I am using the actual pages from the magazine which can also be viewed by following this link:

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=mypagesuite&refresh=2Zt106Rag07H&PBID=67f1340a-6356-428f-8218-146b5065c4a2&skip=

Both features were fun to work on. One of them was about a climber that falls on a poodle killing it instantly. Which made for a challenge , since we did not want to make this to harsh of an image. So I tried to keep it as light hearted as possible as most of us know how hard it is to lose a pet..

The second one was to accompany an interview with Andy Salo. This was fun to work on since I have always enjoyed the comic book character Wolverine.The illustration is the small image used in the newspaper layout. The photo of Andy as well as the other photos in the feature were taken by Tomas Donoso.

Dropping the Ball

Alien Head

Graphite

Alien Head/City Close Up

Digital

They Live

Work in Progress

Digital

The John Carpenter film "They Live" is one of the many campy 80's films in which I enjoyed growing up. I was asked to be a part of an art show back in CT. , and the theme was 80's Horror. So I decided to go with "They Live" as the basis for my piece. Unfortunately I have dropped the ball and have not finished the piece in time for the show. For now here is the WIP.

Wagon Wheel Wrap Up

A while back I posted the line work for a project that I was working on for my friends at the Wagon Wheel Co Opt.. Recently I had some time to finally get close to finishing the painting. Because of the fact that I am heading out west soon and I will not be able to lug all of my paints and materials I have been making the effort to work digitally. So this one was created using a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. I am trying to mimic the style that I used to create my thesis paintings , which are acrylic paintings on panel, but with digital tools. Thinking I have a way to go but it's a start!

So here is the image. I am still planning to tighten some things up and tweak a few things here and there..

Deadpoint Illustrations

The newest issue of Deadpoint Magazine is out and features two digital paintings that I created in order to illustrate the story, Rabbits on the Running Boards. The feature is located on pages 58-60 of the digital edition , and is viewable online at:

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=mypagesuite&pnum=&refresh=wA058eN11F9q&EID=48b2d8ac-bdca-4946-858d-2fb6d331acf0&skip=

Rabbits on the Running Boards 2

Rabbits on the Running Boards 1

Finished poster art

Here is the finished art work for the poster I designed for Prime Climb's Power Struggle 4 bouldering competition. I wanted to keep it pretty flat and as graphic as possible , which is tough for me to do, as I love to over work things. I created the color palette for this from an old Winsor Mc Cay comic strip. If you are interested in seeing the image with text included or to find out about the bouldering competition, visit Prime Climb on Facebook.Look for the event titled Power Struggle 4.

Power Struggle 4 Poster Design

Inspired by the Greek Myth of Sisyphus

11"x17" , Digital

KRS ONE

I have been continuing to mess around with Corel Painter 10, when I have a chance. I had an older acrylic grey scale painting I did of KRS ONE, in which I was going to paint over using oils. For now I went ahead and painted it on the computer instead using the oil bristle brushes. Not sure about his likeness, pretty distorted, which I like.A fun experiment for me either way!

Portrait of KRS ONE

Digital

Piet Mondrian follow up

A while back I created a post with some potential portrait projects. One of them was a gray scale study of the painter Piet Mondrian. I decided to take this one to a finish using Corel Painter 10, a digital painting program. I scanned the gray scale painting( seen below) and painted right over it on another layer on the computer.

Mondrian gray scale painting

9"x15"

Acrylic on board

As I have always been fond of Cezanne's painting , Portrait of Uncle Dominque (seen below), I decided to use it as a color guide/palette for my painting. I began blocking in color using the Oil Bristle brush within painter, and selecting color from Cezanne's painting with the eye dropper tool.

Paul Cezanne

Portrait of Uncle Dominique

What I ended up with is the painting of Mondrian below. I still plan to go ahead and paint over the original grey scale study in oils. As of now I want to learn more about digital painting ,so this made for a good exercise.

Portrait of Piet Mondrian

Digital

Revised NYC Dog Walker

Currently I am working on a revision at a larger scale of one of my paintings, The NYC Dog Walker. In this post I wanted to share a little bit about he process I used to create the original piece. For the most part it is pretty straight forward, and like most pieces I start off by drawing tons of small thumbnail sketches. For this one, once I had a thumbnail that I liked (pictured below)I went ahead and ran it through some filters in Photoshop.

Dog Walker Thumbnail
1.5"x2"

After the thumbnail went through the photoshop filters, I went ahead and colorized it blue, as seen below. This image will serve as the final paintings under painting:

Thumbnail after applying Filters

This process of running the sketch through filters, and then colorizing it, makes for some spontaneous patterns, shapes, colors, and textures in which you may not arrive at otherwise. Once I have this done I will print this image out and mount it to a piece of board, and begin to paint on top of it. I have an idea where I want to go with the painting in terms of the figures, as this was worked out in the thumbnail stage. I try not to be a slave to my original skecth and make efforts to hold on to the more abstract shapes and patterns created by the photshop filters. From this point I continue to paint pretty directly, making changes and revisions along the way until I arrive at the final image seen below:

NYC Dog Walker
5"x7"

So the revised version of this painting is going to be a bit larger, measuring about 12"x16" versus the original 5"x7". So I wanted to tighten some things up in the drawing , and make some changes to the dog's, vehicle,etc. Pictured below is the new drawing that will serve as the rough for the new painting!

Revised Dog Walker Sketch

Graphite on paper

6"x9"

Random character, and vehicle designs

Working in a digital format is something I enjoy from time to time. At this point in time I am not as comfortable with digital tools as I am with a regular pencil and paper , or with paint and a brush. Although, I do appreciate the tool and try to make as much time to learn as much about the many applications that are available to create artwork both 2d and 3d. I have included some random character designs I have created over time. Some are from my children's book Norton B. Nice and some others are just things I do when I am bored. These are created by using a combination of Adobe Photoshop, and Corel Painter. All of these began with a pencil drawing which is later scanned into the computer and then painted. Sometimes I will create an illustration completely on the computer, but most of the time I begin with a regular pencil drawing on paper first. Either way everything comes down to drawing!!!!!!!!!

Winterg the Wizard

Digital

Norton

Digital

Norton as the monster

Digital

Mother

Digital

Motorbikes

Digital

Blue Monkeys

Digital