You Constantly Try to Punch Holes in my Chest

As requested, here's an attempt to wallpaper-ize Hephaestus. If you're unable to extract the full image from the loathsome death-grip of Picasa, you can try the direct link here. Also, big thanks to resurgere for the lovely texture brushes.

Happy holidays, et cetera.

why so dopey?

Happy birthday, Katie.

Gwen and the Green Knight

Here's another watercolor sketch I've become too bored to finish. I think my interest started to evaporate at precisely the same time that the little girl started resembling Mowgli, but such are the hazards of the occupation.

I do sort of like the knight, though, but then again I would like the knight. It's entirely probable that I'll revisit the design in some kind of digital sketch, as I've done with every other robot knight since the dawn of time, apparently.

White Lotus

Here's another commissioned painting from the same client who requested the map. This time, I was hired to do a simple, tasteful take on the White Lotus pai sho tile. Overall, this was another fun project, and one that went mercifully quicker than the previous two.

Model with Robe

Another figure study, and probably the classiest one yet. You can view the full version here. And as always, the reference came from the incomparable Character Designs.

Idol Hands

Study from this morning. About an hour in pencil.

Quelques Choses

Something about the impending holiday season makes me want to do a little sketchbook housecleaning, so here are a few scrapped character concepts that I never bothered to upload.

A mechanically-minded daughter of privilege, intended as a sidekick to Hephaestus. Design-wise, I think I took a little too strongly after Jason Chan here. Plus, the concept of a cute girl tagging along with a steel behemoth been sort of prominent lately, so I decided to shelf the idea.

I was being influenced by quite a few things when I drew this -- namely a few French animators,with just the barest hint of the new Prince of Persia.  I never got around to drawing more expressions and poses for her.

This is Tom, a zombie who's just the slightest bit miffed about having his eternal reward interrupted. This was back when I was looking at Steve Purcell and harboring vague plans of doing a necromantic slapstick comedy.

Warlords!

A tiefling, Jados Chalat is unfairly profiled every time he goes to the airport.

Harann Pelaar is, amazingly, a female. Suitors may line up to the left.

Galindann Itarr is actually a priest, not a warlord. He's also eladrin, which is going to be my excuse for his funny-shaped noggin.

This Old Barn

A late birthday/early Christmas present for my mom. I still have a lot to learn about landscapes, but it was a lot of fun to try out different stuff with this painting.

Hephaestus

Presenting Hephaestus, my first long-term digital painting since college.

It started out as an aborted pencil sketch which I then took into Photoshop and colored off and on over the next few weeks. The Grudemath sketches proved invaluable here; they were the testing grounds for a lot of the techniques I used while working on this piece. The real challenge was taking those concepts and pushing them towards something a little more finished-looking. I really had to resist the urge to overwork it, though.

Anyway, please enjoy. Comments and criticism are always appreciated.

Details at 100% magnification:

A Leisurely Drive

I was more than an hour late to last night's Grudemath, which ended up having a pretty severe impact on my ability to follow what was going on. To put it lightly, the match had devolved into utter, gibbering chaos. Cars blustering through the air like kites. Sarksus noclipping through the stratosphere. Stalkers losing their brains. And garden gnomes -- oh god the garden gnomes.

For one thing, it turns out they don't like to stay put inside the car. They slide around like mad, clipping right through the seats and tipping out at even the slightest turns. Ramp up the speed and steering even moderately, and the gnome rockets out of the front of the vehicle at dramatic angles. Not suprisingly, progress towards the White Forest base has been frustratingly slow.

A note on the artwork: I took a brief break from ripping off Ashley Wood so I could rip off Makani, a ludicrously talented cartoon artist. You may have seen her fantastic interpretation of the TF2 announcer floating around on sites of note, and her gallery is stocked with even more Valve-inspired goodies. The Gordon and Alyx in this sketch are directly based off of her Half-life 2 drawings.

Anyway, let's hope the contestants can soldier ahead and wrap up the Grudemath later this week. It's going to be awfully hard to concentrate on futuristic dystopias once the zombie apocalypse hits.

Bonus sketches:

Grudemath Process

My friend Exit recently asked me how I went about making the Grudemath speedpaints. My first response -- screw up a lot, desperately try to fix things, then get tired and call it quits -- was pretty accurate but not really that helpful. After all, that's pretty much my artistic process for everything.

So, in an effort to shed a little more light on the Grudemath sketches, here are a few time-lapses of the two most recent speedpaints. Keep in mind that these are meant to be as quick as possible -- the Episode Two one, for instance, took me about 75 minutes. Moreover, both of these are heavily influenced by Ashley Wood, which contributes a little bit of comic book dynamism. Hopefully, this will be useful to somebody out there.

I was having trouble thinking of standout moments from the second half of the Episode One run. My first idea -- seen here briefly at the beginning -- was sQuiz being accidentally headshot by Alyx during the final mission. I roughed it out before deciding I didn't like it, but I was drawn to the train station as a general setpiece. So I decided to stage a straight-up action scene, and I made it a personal challenge to make it look like a frame out of a graphic novel.

As you can see, I start with a simple sketch that's extremely rough -- most of the idea is still in my head at this point. My main goal here is to establish main lines of action, dominant shapes, and a general sense of proportion. After that, I splash in a few rough colors underneath to guide the painting process. Here I took a cue from the actual art direction of Episode One, which employs a lot of warm tones.

From there, I just build up the primary figures and background elements with the hard round airbrush. After several passes of adding detail, I move on to a global layer for finishing effects and texture brushes. I also throw on a yellowish splatter texture at the very end, which is not too different from what Gabe is doing nowadays.

The concept for this sketch was easy because sQuiz told me exactly what to include. Notice that the composition conforms to the standard foreground-to-background scheme I've used for the majority of the Grudemath pics. I've found that it's usually the easiest way to add interest to some kind of interaction or comparison. (Or maybe I'm just lazy.)

Again, I start out with an extremely simple sketch. I also cheated a bit by color-picking from this screenshot, which incidentally was also a very useful reference for the gnome. From there on out, it's a pretty straightforward process of building up the figures, adding lighting effects, and laying in some texture.

Episode Grude

Can we finish the Grudemath sketch before midnight? Yes we can.

The Half-life Grudemath has made its triumphant return, and the two contestants have decided to finish it off with style: god mode on, gravity guns souped to the max, and garden gnomes in tow.

Or such was the plan. Partway through the match, Sarksus has incurred the wrath of the Grude gods by pulling off shottie kills and recklessly ditching the sacred gnome. His punishment? Well, the Grude gods are actually pretty feeble, so he'll have to settle for being the butt of tonight's joke.

Change

Vanity Day

Conceptart.org has officially consecrated the first of November as International Self-Portrait Day, the rules of which are as follows:

If you are an artist, of any kind, do your self portrait.

If you haven't done it yet, do your self portrait.

If you did more than 1000, do your self portrait.

If you want to take part in a massive internet art event, do your self portrait.

If you failed to express yourself through art, do your self portrait.

If your art is better than any of your self portraits, do your self portrait.

If you have reconsidered art after seeing Android's SPOD's, do your self portrait.

If you want to make a step to a brand new ZEN EXPERIENCE, do your self portrait.

If you want to take part in a world record, do your self portrait.

So there you go. As you can see, I took some pretty bold liberties and drew a picture of a caucasian male. Sketched in Photoshop and referenced from a digital photo.

If you're interested in seeing other people's submissions (and trust me, you are), then you can check out the official thread right here.

Elf Quest

Erdan Sarkell left a lucrative career as shooting guard for the New York Knicks to pursue his lifelong dream of Fightering.

I tried to mimic Witchblade artist Stjepan Sejic for this sketch of Firalle Nemis, a Rogue stricken with inexplicable muteness.

Oilbending

I've recently wrapped up work on a commissioned painting for a client in Maryland, who plans on presenting it to his wife for Christmas. You might recognize the source material; suffice to say that it was tremendously fun to work on. Perhaps more importantly, it finally got me painting again.

As with all of my projects, I started off the painting with a round of concept drawings, which were sent to the client for approval.

The initial concept sketch, drawn freehand from a reference.

Concepts for a more illustrated approach to the borders, which we ended up deciding against because it might have looked too busy. Probably a good choice, even though I thought some of these looked pretty cool.

Symbol practice, with a few locations on the side.

Major location concepts. Pretty much all of these made it into the final, albeit with abbreviated detail.

Minor locations, which ended up being so boring that I quickly ended up doodling.

Naturally, after the concept stage I dove right into the painting. Here are a few of the progress shots.

The entire map, roughed out in pencil. I used a grid to ensure as much accuracy as possible.

Base colors and shading applied to each of the landmasses.

Water and sparing detail on the Earth Kingdom landmass.

More land features, base colors around the border, and a little bit of detail work in the corner.

Near-finished border and landmasses, and a second base coat over the water.

Just thought it's cool how it catches the light in the dark.

First wave layer.

Second wave layer.

Light and dark glazes over the ocean.

The final product.

Sympathy for the Short

Continuing the series I started here, this is Corrin Reswald, halfling warlock.

Fallout Girl

Two things I'm immensely enjoying right now: learning from Ashley Wood, and playing through the classic Fallout games.

Exit 17

Episode One has drawn to a close. sQuiz has secured victory once again, but not without a challenge -- Sarksus did an absolutely superb job of catching up in the final levels.

I stalled for a long time before finally deciding to try something a little different: a sketch in the style of comic book artist Ashley Wood. I failed miserably of course, but it was a lot of fun and I got to try out different brushes and rendering techniques.

Natalie

An excerpt from today's figure practice, referenced from here. The full-length NSFW sketch can be viewed after the cut. In my defense, it's entirely artistic.

Some day, I'm going to have to learn how to do these in color.

Dwarf Fortress

I've recently started work on a stack of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons characters created by my brother. This is actually shaping up to be a pretty fun project, so I hope I make it through the whole roster. Here are the first two characters.

Adrik Ungart, dwarf wizard

Bardryn Garleth, dwarf fighter

Paraphernalia

A modest proprosal for how one might substantially improve ballet.

An unabashed attempt to satiate fish enthusiasts, the most crucial demographic in my readership.

Some guy.

A quicky Leo study.

Stylish ladyfolk.