Short Update

I've been crazy busy with freelance the last month or so- basically getting out of bed, painting, going to my day job, coming home and painting until I pass out- then rinse and repeat.

At the beginning of all that though I did find the time to squeak out a piece for art order (I just couldn't resist the topic). The entries for the Assassin Devil were so amazing though- they put mine to same. Either way, I had fun while working on the piece.

One thing with being so busy with art is that it has shown me what my capabilities are, and when I need to stop or re-asses my work load.

I have found over the last year that I love doing freelance, and I also really love doing my own work, that I like having a few hours of free time a week to play a video game or read a book, and I need the forced out of house "escape" of my day job, but I think they are all best taken in moderation with an equal balance of all of them, and that seems to be what keeps me happiest.

enough!

Sometimes I think you just have to say "enough" and move on. (Many artists would disagree, including 1/2 of the brain of the artist writing this, but I'm ignoring that part now).

Problem is, I was looking at this, and then the older version posted a few posts down (that's an awkward sentence), and almost liked the old one more. *sigh*

conundrums

I've been thinking... (yes, strange)
..about my work (ooooo, even stranger. ok, ok, maybe not.)

What I've been pondering is a matter of style. Back in college I painted with gouache a lot. In fact before that I painted with watercolor since oh..'98 ish. Like, mid-middle school. I wet my brush with my angst filled tears. Right. But I wonder if from that a particular look of mine might have been forged. From painting with gouache I kind of created a way of learning how to render things like smoke or magic in a somewhat different way. I think it brought about some interesting plays on melding two-dementional form with 3d. Probably not entirely sucessfully, but in a way that I think is fairly interesting for the most part. My Jack piece is a fairly decent example of what I'm talking about.

























Shortly after that though I started doing a lot of digital work. I got my feet wet, did a lot of really bad, and pretty much unshowable stuff (actually, I don't know if I even have it anymore). During that time I also did a lot of oils, which I've stuck with until now.

That led to pieces like John, and Fenris the Feared, and a bunch of the ones you can see below you.
















































(like this one of the hands- maybe it would have been cool to make these vines flatten out, fade into a flat painted fresco, or melt into stylized trees. But maybe that would be too much. I like this painting, but I'm sure I could push it a little more)

But in all of that, I can't help but feel that something has been lost. Every once in a while I pull out the two-dimensional card and stylize something again. The Rose piece is a good example.
But I feel for the most part the discovery of oils, and digital, and not forcing myself to fudge shapes in creative ways made me less likely to solve compositional problems in interesting ways, especially as times passed and I kind of forgot what I had learned.

It seems that a lot of my favorite pieces are cropped strangely- part of a head, just the torso, the hands, or feature interesting shapes or patterns. Lots of negative space. Strange negative space. James Gurney also had an interesting post on his blog too which I think also encompass a little bit of what my thought process is on what I like in art : Shape Welding

Take some of my favorite artists for example: Jon Foster, Sam Weber, Emanuel Malin...there's something more to them than just rendering, but a particular way of seeing the world and breaking it into shapes that I just love. Repetition, color choices, 3d and 2d planes...

I guess what I am feeling is that at one point I was somewhat getting on the right track, and then I sort of veered off, rolled down a hill, fell into a crevass, and am now trying to figure out how the hell to get out.

It makes me wonder if I should ditch the oils and pick up the gouache again to see where that will lead me.

I'm usually a pretty big fan of Bioware's products, so lets suffice it to say that I got kind of giddy when I found out that there is an expansion (oh, so duh, there would be one, but its official!).

I did some revisions on the old Drow v. Mindflayer piece that I did a while back.

hmmm...

hmmm
mmmm
ermmm

I've been struggling with this piece since October. It kept getting shoved aside, due to freelance (yay), part time job that pretty much became full time due to Christmas (boo), and getting distracted by making other things(..yay? O.o )

It's still not quite done. It has a level of meh about it, and as I've been a totally perfectionist lately, I'm trying to fix those issues. Especially anything that would help with contrast and composition, and rendering too I guess. But here's what I've got so far.

Besides this piece though, I'm considering neatening up those Moa sketches just a little. Nothing too time consuming, but enough that I feel like are slightly more presentable, so that I could put them in a concept-art portfolio. I do like the designs so, it seems worth it. I'm also planning another set or two.

Moa...

or something. I keep changing her damn name. It seems like whenever I invent a character I have to go through 50+ permutations of a name before I come up with one simple enough that I like it, but interesting enough that I think it captures the characters essence. And it has to seem pronouncable.

A lot of books I've been reading (ok...so like two authors so far) use some pretty simple names for their characters. It's something that I've grown to really like. Joe Abercrombie has his northern men, at least the "named men" have simple nick names like Shivers, or Ninefingers. They have real names, but I like the call signs, so to speak, because they stick in the mind. Glen Cook's characters in The Black Company have a similar system to them and in his case they are even more extreme in that whatever the character's original name was is gone. It gives the character an instant personality, more so than long and fairly unrealistic fantasy names that often stick to the tongue and I usually forget as soon as I put the book down.

That being said whenever I have to think of a name lately I'm drawn to recognizable names, or something that is short. Of course whenever I think of names things like Teacup or Couch pop into my head and the other half of my brain goes wtf and I sprint to a random name generator again...

Avatar

...was pretty damn good.

My goal in life is to get to work on a game or movie of that caliber, visually at least... which would mean that... my work be at that level! lyk, zomg! O.O

wips

today is the day for wips. Two more from the portrait series (one man to prove that I will actually include a few...lol)

I have a lot in progress at the moment. I feel like I've been working a lot but with not a lot to show for it.

I've also been making some jewelery and started a costume project which will involved a lot of sewing (argg, why do I do this to myself?!)

Freelance has been slow which is ok at the moment with working at the frame shop a lot, and the line of personal projects I am working on. I am in progress of starting up a new commission that should take up my time for a while, though if someone has something they would like to propose to me, I will certainly see if I can work it in.

I'm working into trying to build a concept art portfolio, a portfolio for book covers, and hopefully refining a few pieces that I would like to submit to spectrum pretty soon here.

I have to keep reminding myself these things don't happen overnight.

-.-























I'm not sure I'll ever finish this book cover (for ArtOrder), although I like the idea, and I would like to. I got frustrated once I started really coloring it, because I didn't understand the lizard anatomy for the face, and was really really hating my limited capacities at the time. I wish in retrospect I'd just stuck it out and finished the damn thing, but then it would be rushed, and I didn't want to submit a rushed piece to Jon's challenge. By the time I was available again to work on it though I had pretty much half a day to get this from start of finish.

...and onward!


Actually, onward for the next few days is going to be trying to finish up some back-logged work for the Hurakan challenge over at ArtOrder. I'd really like to get the book cover done, but I also want to do all the steps which means finishing up the character (which is thankfully almost done) and doing up some color tests for the cover.