A good friend of mine, Weston Ochse, just released a fantastic collection of stories, called Multiplex Fandango. Published by Dark Regions Press, Multiplex Fandango is filled with great stories, and I highly recommend picking one up as soon as you possibly can. Go here to do so. Now, you might be asking, why am I selling Weston’s book on my own site? Simple. Weston is awesome, and a great author. Also, because I was lucky Read more…
I’ve been trying lately to get on a schedule of having regular, smaller works completed. The last month has proven instead to confound that plan, but I’m still hoping to get that worked out. Case in point, my new painting for today. It’s meant to be a smaller, less involved painting, and for the overall series I think it will fit right in. The idea behind the smaller works is to do less complex ideas, Read more…
For a long while (for those who haven’t followed me for that long), I would do weekly art blogs about paintings that I was inspired by. Works by artists who are now among my favorites, like Caspar David Friedrich, Arnold Bocklin, Thomas Cole, and many others. You can see the original set gathered here. Between the unemployment situation, getting freelance art off the ground, and life in general, I stopped doing them for a bit. Read more…
I’m fascinated by creatures of all sorts, especially those that are a bit on the creepy side. Case in point, “The Mouth of Sauron”, featured in the extended edition of the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In case you haven’t seen the extended versions of the LOTR trilogy (which you should, they are fantastic), here’s a YouTube link of just that scene in the film. Of course, if you Read more…
In the first part of the article yesterday (here!), I talked about the pens, pencils, and different paper stocks that I use as an artist. Today I’m going to discuss the other things that I do, including acrylic painting, matting, and so on. First off, the easy stuff. Painting with Acrylics Now, I’ve only been using acrylics for about a year (save for the time in the late 90’s when I toyed with airbrushing), so there Read more…
Whenever I’m on Twitter (and, to a lesser extent, Facebook and Google +), there always seems to be these great discussions about the type of materials and tools that artists use in their art. Often there are similarities, and quite often too there are new and cool things that I hadn’t heard of before. I thought it would be a good idea to share what I use to create art, at least traditional art. My Read more…
In starting up my new online stores, I decided that it might not be a bad idea to have a few items that weren’t as much about my art as much as just “cool”. Being that, without a day job, I don’t get to play with graphic design as much anymore, I thought it would be fun to toy with typography. For those reading this that aren’t designers, or aren’t familiar with the term, typography Read more…
While working on a far larger painting, one that’s taking much longer, I decided to do a smaller painting. I had to wait for the larger one to dry anyway, so slipping in a small one was something I could work out. I’ve been thinking of doing continual, small paintings of different ideas that I’ve had. For one, I might be able to put them up for sale, giving folks the opportunity to own a Read more…
I’ve been itching to do more ink work lately, and I decided over the weekend that H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday was a great chance to work something in. The trick, of course, in doing art of a recognizable character (or person) is that you just have to get it right. Sure, there is some leeway here and there, some space to be an artist. But the essence of the character has to be correct, or all Read more…
In the last few years, I’ve done something regularly that I hadn’t in the previous years. I’ve started to complete full sketchbooks, with some kind of art on every page. I’ve noticed that it’s a good time to go back and look through it, to see how things went over time. In this case, this sketchbook was started in June of 2010, and the last image was sketched in it today. Over that time it’s Read more…
Sure, most of the time I’m a happy-go-lucky person with a cherub-like demeanor. But once in awhile I let the world get to me, as I’ve mentioned plenty of times on the site here. I’ve found one thing, that I love to do anyway, that gets rid of the depression usually. Chiclets. Ok, that’s not true. While Chiclets are certainly a delicious treat, they don’t settle my brain any. Especially when the muse is being Read more…
Previously on my site here (well, here), I talked about foil stamp designs. I posted examples of designs from one of the books by Brian Keene, A Gathering of Crows. Earlier this summer I had the opportunity to create the foil stamp designs for the second Maelstrom set of books from Thunderstorm Books as well. Foil stamp design is a bit different than the usual color work, as I explained in that previous article. Briefly, Read more…
Recently, I’ve had a couple of commissions to do ebook covers. Which is great, because I really am a starving artist (unemployed and all), so commissions help me survive. But that’s only part of why we’re here, the other side of it (and the point of this article) is designing for ebook covers. Now, at the end of the day, the design really isn’t radically different. You still have margins, it still has to be Read more…
One of the great things that I like about digital art is the ability for programs (I use Photoshop) to let different layers of art interact. For example, I can have a painting of a character on one layer, with all the shadowing, anatomy, and so on, and on a different layer I can have a texture. By using different abilities in Photoshop (namely Layer Blending Modes), I can use the texture layer to give Read more…
Ok, this is tutorial isn’t about making eyes at someone else, or processing new eyeballs to replace the ones your T-800 lost. It’s just a quick tutorial on one way to create eyes in Photoshop. More specifically, this is about the iris and pupil. There are many ways to do it of course, but this is one way that I started doing many years ago, and I’ve always liked it. First up, I’ve zoomed in Read more…
I originally wrote this article for my Apex Magazine slot this month, but in the long run I decided to go a different way with it. I thought this one ended up a little more about creators than about the things the Apex might need, so I wrote a different one. That said, I think this one says some good things as well, so I’m posting here on my own site for you fine folks Read more…
As a freelance artist (and designer), the need to have a contract template available becomes apparent pretty quickly. I like to think I work hard as an artist, and I want my works to be taken care of and used in the proper manner. So, I did a bunch of research, read a lot of books and websites, and managed to cobble together a contract that works for me. Should you always have a contract? Read more…
Recently, a client of mine (who I used to do plenty of graphic design for) asked me for something a little different. Instead of the graphic design work that I’ve been doing for many years for her, she asked if she could commission a full painting from me instead. Being unemployed and poor, I made sure to answer, “yes, of course I can do that”. She’s also known me long enough to know that, when Read more…
I toy with my procedures all of the time, to try to do things better. If not better, than more uniquely, or to a different effect or feel, I’m certainly a tinkerer. Case in point, clouds. There are roughly 1, 192, 632,325 ways to make clouds digitally (“roughly”, he says), so by all means this is just one way to make them. But it’s worked on a few images of mine fairly well, and it’s Read more…
I think it’s very important as an artist to get inspiration from all different kinds of things. Especially nature, which offers so many unique and interesting features that, as an artist, I can’t help but be inspired. Sometimes it’s worth it to just take a drive, and see what’s around you. That might be cityscapes, or the ocean, or really just about anything that you can find near you. In my case, I’m very lucky Read more…