The new stuff

Meet my new friends:

The Falconer and Detective Brown Stone

The falconer was done for my brother and

Brownstone was entered into Conceptart's CHOW(character of the Week ) contest. 

tah, tah.

Chance

Well, she's done. Here is Chance a shapefiting destiny warper.

Full image and two details enjoy.

Yep.

Well, the new one is coming along. Its almost done (I think) maybe another 5 hours or so. I was hoping to finish it in a two 8 hour days, ah se la vi. Unfortunatly I think I'm coming down with a stomach flu or something, feels like I have brick in my stomach I hope this passes quickly. I need to get into Richmond to pay my rent in the apartment I don't live in. God what a wreck my life is- whatever- if I don't get sick I won't have to shit my pants all the way to Richmond. I'm going to post some more prelems for votive figures- its part of the way I work. I do a really fast loose sketch and find out what I want in an image and the basic focal points and story elements and then I do more defined sketches of every element in the painting but I don't put it together until I start doing an underpainting- mothing agrivates me more than a predetermined piece of art work. It is ture that I am risking compisitional instabilty and extra work but the character and enviroment get to grow and evolve so much more when I'm not "painting  by numbers" as an professor called. (Man did I want to rip her head off. In my mind I was preparing for a career as in an illustrator something those hapless slaves to history couldn't understand-all the good it did me.) Anyway despite all my whining and grumbling whe was right but not in the wat she nor I expected. That turned out to be a rant.  

I know I was supposed to do seven figures. I decided to let the last one be a suprise, she is a shape shifter after all and with a name like "Chance" I thought I would leave it up to her.

Stuff man, Stuff

Okay, mostly prep work today. Did a few random sketches to loosen up a little bit but besides that I've been preparing to work on a piece for a shape shifting character named Chance. I find that shape shifters present a unique challenge in conveying the idea that they have more than one form. And yes I've thought about having her in mid transformation but I've seen seasoned illustrators with far greater ability than me fall flat on their face trying that one so I've opted, as usual for a more subtle approach involving stone idols similar to votive figures of Mesopotamia to tell that part of the story. I want lots of shadows and maybe place it in a desert in a circle of standing stones not only are megaliths fucking cool but are excellent devices to portray her Fae lineage and extra primordial to boot. Harkening back to the college days here with black,grey,white red. Use to do sketches like that becuase I admired a romanitic painter so much I think his name was Gatto, he was supposedly the greatest draftsmen of the time. He was able to draw anything and anyone while maintaining supreme economy with his marks. Meaning each and every mark he put on the paper was pefectly placed and achived what many marks could not. I know it sounds pendantic but to us artists and draftsmen this is the stuff of legends.  And there is that story. Oh,yeah here are the first 3 of 7 fuax votive figures.

The Death of a God, a Curse Upon Humanity.

Well, its done and its Wycked Awesome. 

Can't think of anything to say. Feel drained. I Think she took a piece of my soul. 

I am lame

Spent the rest of the night working on a twitter icon instead. Check it out:

Yeah, I ahve way too much time on my hands.

All dragons are lame but mine

Read a cool folk tale about a dragon so huge it tries to eat the sun or moon from time to time named Alklha. Quite inspiring and thanks to this really keen image done by Tracy Swangler I was inspired to do one of my own- and then turn it into a logo to mock myself relentlessly –read on this will be explained. Normally, I try to avoid dragons because they are completely overdone in pop-culture, especially fantasy art circles. The truth behind their symbolic value is far more fascinating to me than any dragon depiction ever made but T.S. Easley and Todd Lockwood get really close. Normally dragons are cast as the anthropomorphation of a global or celestial forces so huge and the beyond [ancient] human comprehension. Like ultimate creation (Sumerian, Babylonian)Ultimate Destruction (Zoroastrian, Persian) first earthly manifestation of evil (Christian)natural boons and disasters (Chinese Japanese) and the list goes on and on. Anyway my personal favorite meaning is of western origin particular of Nordic Celtic where dragons are guardians of wisdom and knowledge. I could go on for hours about this stuff and end up writing a lengthy paper on the rapid corruption of the dragons symbolic meaning. Clearly it was an ancient cliché LONG before it was modern one and like immortal combat one is overbearing, two is a crowd and three is a recipe for disaster.

Not quite done with the destroying angel, perhaps later tonight.