Teenage Mutant "Hipster" Turtle

I've really wanted to post an illustration in process for awhile, but I tend to not keep enough process shots as I work and I'm basically left with a sketch and finished piece. NOT THIS TIME! I was asked by my teacher to illustrate a ninja turtle with a twist, and that was it. With the brainstorming help of my wife we got the idea of a Hipster Turtle. We're looking at places to live once I graduate and Portland, OR is high on the list so hipsters have been on the mind by extension. I started with this sketch:

I found some hipster reference and really like the fixed gear bike.

Started painting value,

and got to this point.

From here I added color on a multiply layer

 I experimented a lot on this with how I colored it. I think I ended up with a multiply layer, a color layer and an overlay layer, each at tweaked opacities to get the desired look.

This was the finished 1st draft so to speak. I brought it to my instructor to get his take, he pointed out the messed up perspective of the sidewalk down the corner, some scale issues and a few other things, so I went to work on changes.

I decided to pull Leo further from the inner city pizza joint since most I imagine they might have a larger walk way in the downtown type store fronts.

And here is the final final piece! I generally find I rush my art due to deadlines and this was an instance where I paced myself and was able to spend more time on it overall. I think I shall continue this approach. Thanks for looking and more to come!

Ramses the Great, or not so great

Got the semester started with a fun piece: Ramses the Great is the most well known Pharaoh of Egypt’s history. Why? Well I think mostly because as pharaoh his image is everywhere on statues to paintings and so on. Was he great? I’m not really sure but I imagine he wasn’t quite as great as legend, or this illustration, might suggest.

Let me know what you think in the comments and all have a great day.

UPDATE: Sorry all for the original image that was cut off and ugly, I've been trying out new blogging software and apparently gotta work on my settings. Here is the re posted illustration in its full form glory.

Ole King Cole, was king of the club...

A new semester and new assignments! For this one I took a well known nursery rhyme and put it in an untraditional setting: Ole King Cole with his fiddlers three in the 20's! Flapper girls and nice suits and everyone jiving at the club. The only thing missing is some secret boozin'.

  Got the sketch done, gotta do the final in gouache so we'll see how that goes. I'll post that once it is finished. I think I'm also going to do it digitally if my gouache turns out terrible. We'll see!

Sunday sketch

More Post Semester Art Dumping

Last post was from Concept Design Class, today's post comes from Digital Painting. My first piece was done with some water color texture and a fun idea:

Maybe this is what the villain in Quantum of Solace hallucinated before he took a drink...

Piece 2 was my final: EPIC Space Dragon Battle!!!

I'm working on some personal work this summer, so more to come!

Post Semester Art Dump: Concept Design

It's over!!!! I survived (barely) what was probably my most stressful and busy semester. Hopefully it's downhill from here. On the plus side I did do a lot of art, so without further ado lets get to it.

Firstly is my concept design class. For the last month we selected 2 characters from this fantasy short story. We did a turnaround of each and a final illustration:

The wizard is named Ezdagor and he was not my favorite by any means, though I do like how the fire turned out. My real effort and fun went into the following character:

This Bad A is HoanDor, some sorcerer character that is described as gristly and sable. I interpreted that to mean he was held up with many tendons and it kind of snowballed from there.
I won the award for most disturbing character, so I'll take that. Stay tuned for pieces from the rest of my classes.

Keeping it alive

I'm right in the middle of the end of semester crunch and as a result my posting here has been slim. Luckily I have a spare moment at work and some images on my iPad of a project from my previous semester crunch.

The assignment was to do an illustration based on a piece from any dead illustrator. I quickly (and naively) chose JC Leyendecker and found this piece:

I took the idea into a more modern era and with my wife and myself as reference I went to work.

I took these horribly yellow progress shots with my iPad along the way, I've never done an oil piece of this size and it kicked my butt for a good awhile. I think by the end I had some kind of idea what I was doing and I learned a bunch in the process.

That's it for now, I shall return in about 3 weeks with work from this semester to show off!

Happy Congrats You Have Cancer Day!

My wife and I no longer celebrate Valentine's Day. It holds no special value to either of us because something else far more personal and shared took place that day. 6 years back we had just started dating and I asked her out for Valentine's. At the same time I was starting to feel very weak and sick pretty much all the time. The day before Valentine's I went to the hospital to see what was going on where I found out I had very little blood in my body and needed a transfusion. That brings us to Valentine's Day. My then friend had come over that evening along with my family and while she was there the doctor came in to tell me I had Leukemia. What followed was months of chemo and treatments and fevers and crappiness all around except for her being there and helping me through it.

As a result we celebrate that "great" news I received every year since because 1. I'm still alive and 2. she is the reason why. For this year I had been working on this piece for quite some time to give to her. She's a Harry Potter nut so there she is with her beautiful yet ferocious patronus. Happy to report that she was quite fond of it as well. Happy Congrats You Have Cancer Day, Love.

Red Riding Hood scares me

In keeping with the twisted fairy tale theme I've given Red Riding Hood a shot. I've decided I might have some vendetta against little fairy tale girls. This is a WIP so I hope to get a finished post up in the next week or two. Just gotta keep this blog alive! Let me know what you think and what I can improve.