Spectrum Fantastic Art Live!!!

Hey gang,

Guess where I'll be next week? Where all the cool art nerds will be, of course. In Kansas City, Missouri.

(Record Scratch!!!)

Say WHAT? Why? Missouri? Really?

Ya, I'll be at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live along with the who's who of the fantasy illustration community. I'll be sharing a booth with some guy named Greg Manchess. (whomever the hell THAT is?)

No, Greg is a really good friend of mine and was (and still is) a hero of mine all through out college and beyond. I'm deeply honored to be stinking up his booth with my crappy artwork. ;) I'm doing my best to crank out some new work and finish off stuff that's been on the drawing board for a number of months now. I'll also have prints of some of my most recent illustrations, some of my nudes, and some of my coloring books for Dover.

Here's an image of said recent piece.



It's a mix of oils, acrylics and digital.

I'm still alive - 2012 edition

Howdy all.

It's true I'm still alive. Once again I've gone forever without an update. I'm amazed by how many people check this blog daily even though I'm largely absent.

I have a ton of stuff to post from 2011, but I'm more excited about 2012. So here is something I'm working on (still in progress).



I'll go in detail about this piece when I finish it (hopefully not another 6 months from now). What I will say is this is my attempt to get over a big creative rut I've been going through. I've been having a hard time just getting myself to a drawing table. And with deadlines looming this was a scary place to be. So in an attempt to overcome this rut, I decided to make today (02.18.2012) Illustration Day. My girlfriend and I took the day off from our commissioned assignments to work on an illustration with the object of the day to start and finish it. Rebecca succeeded in finishing hers. I succeeded in overcoming my rut. And I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. I'm gonna take another day later in the week to try and bring this to a final.

Stay tuned.

Late Spring Update: L5R and Call of Cthulhu

Summer is almost upon us and it's been months since I checked in. I'm still alive (just barely) and still plugging away at this whole art thing. In a few days will be the 1-year anniversary of my life as a freelance illustrator. The year has had it's ebbs and flows and I'm still struggling to get used to them. But I'm currently in the "flow" stage which is why I have been neglectful of this blog. Unfortunately, I can't share all the work I've been doing in said "flow" stage due to those pesky NDA's that gaming companies love so damn much. So you'll have to settle for the work done during the "ebb" stage, in 2010.

First up work from over a year ago, done back in February 2010. These are for AEG's popular Legend of the Five Rings CCG game. These are a long time coming. They are from the War of Honor set that just came out a few days ago.





I was still new to the world of L5R when painting these, so I really messed up on the characteristics of the particular clans I was illustrating. The female in that last illustration is supposed to be wearing a mask to hide part of her face dress way sexier than the conservative outfit I have her in. The male's colors are way off and don't even get me started on that samurai armor. UGG! But the AD never mentioned anything to me about these important story elements and the cards were approved. Maybe that's why I didn't get more L5R work until the end of 2010.

In November 2010 I got an email from a new AD to work on the Forgotten Legacy expansion. This set is coming out next month, but the website has already spoiled 2 of my cards so it's safe to post them here. (I'll update the blog when they spoil the third card):

(click on the images to see them in card form)




I'm not happy with these either. The figure in the first image is shameful. Someone has to beat me senseless for doing such a crappy job, especially since I practice painting the human figure on a weekly basis. Goes to show once again, that there is no substitute for good reference.


I also had the chance to work on Fantasy Flight Games' Call of Cthulhu: Silver Twilight expansion.



This piece was done mid July as a "break" from apartment hunting in Portland after just moving there. Another one I'm not too crazy with.



I think the issue for me is working digitally. I get hung up on the details (zooming in WAY too close) and fail to see the image as a whole. This is definitely something I've been trying to fix in 2011. My process has changed and evolved in the early part of this year and I can't wait to share the results with you. I'm actually proud of a few of them.


Before I go I'd like to highlight another milestone (bet you know what's coming). In a few day's I'll be celebrating the 4-year anniversary of my Nude of the Day blog and I'm running a sale throughout June. Click the banner for details:



AND as an added bonus, if you're a member of the Nude of the Day Facebook Fan Page you get an extra 20% off your order!


Thanks for being patient with me. I'll be back real soon with some updates on my work for Dover and some watercolor illustrations.

Happy 2011!

Howdy Everyone,

Happy New Year to all of you!

A year ago I wrote that my biggest goal for 2010 was to pursue my freelance career full time. I'm happy to report that I was able to accomplish it in 2010. I went full-time freelance in the summer after quiting my day job at Royal-Athena Galleries and moving 3000 miles west to Portland, Oregon. It hasn't been an easy transition and 6 months in I'm still trying to work out a lot of the kinks that come with the freelance life style.

The biggest change, one that I don't think I can ever get used to, is the absence of the weekly paycheck. I had to drastically change my standard of living. Good bye weekly sushi outings, hello PB&J. This hasn't been that hard mainly because I haven't found a good sushi place in Portland yet. But worrying about how I'm going to pay rent next month has not been fun. On the plus side, this experience has been a crash course in living within your means, something every freelancer need to learn to do.

The other major issue is not having a daily routine fully worked out. I don't need to be anywhere at any certain time, so it's pretty easy to loose all structure and sleep in past noon. In NY, my freelance work day would start in the evenings after coming home from the full time work day. It has largely remained the same here in PDX. I typically start my workday way too late and burn the midnight oil a lot. So one of my resolutions for 2011 is to slowly edge this schedule down to the less vampiric hours.

There are a few other changes that I'm still struggling to get used to, but I'm sure you really don't want to hear about this minutia. So on too some art.

Last year I previewed a dragon head from a coloring book I did for Dover. Well the book just hit the shelves a week or so ago. Here is the front and back covers (note: I just did the art, the covers were designed and colored by the Dover art department):






...and some interior pages:










This was a fun project. I had to make 2 big illustrations that had to split into 12 individual images and each individual image had to be interesting enough to stand on it's own. It was a fun challenge that I took to my usual anal-retentive extremes. Here's another one I did immediately after, Fairy Princess:





The first scene was you typical Princess in a magical garden scene:





...but for the second scene I got to draw a Princess defending her castle from an attacking horde of Orcs:






I also got to do a fun, glow-in-the-dark paper-dolls book that will be coming out some time before Halloween 2011. Here are some rejected sketches that sadly will not be in the book. We ended up dropping the demon and using a different pose for the Werewolf:



And the Zombies were a little too gruesome for kids so I PGed them for the final product:



I can't wait to see how they'll turn out in all their glow-in-the-dark glory.

I was hoping to show off some work I did for the Legends of the Five Rings RPG, but AEG pushed back the release date to late February 2011. I've been working on a number of cards for them over the last few months and I'm starting on a new set soon that I'm very excited about. I also have some personal work that I'm very eager to get started on as soon as I finish my current obligations. I'm really looking forward to what 2011 has in store for me, and I hope to be able to share new work with you more often than I did this past year.

Thank you all for checking in and being super patient with me.

Oh and before I forget, today is the last day to take advantage of the Holiday Sale on Nude of the Day.



I realize that I never gave the readers of this blog a heads up about the 2-month long sale. So if you're still interested in getting some Nudes once the sale is over I'll be happy to extend the 50% off rates for you. Just email me and I'll take care of you.

The WAY Overdue Summer 2010 Update

Summer is almost over and I am WAY overdue for an update. And what a summer it was. I started it by quiting my day job at Royal-Athena Galleries and heading up to Amherst, MA for the Illustration Master Class. In between freaking out about no longer having a steady income and the upcoming move 3000 miles west to Portland, Oregon, I managed to cobble together a sketch and slap some paint on the canvas. And, according to Greg Manchess, I even had a breakthrough, though I'm still not 100% sure of that. I didn't finish my piece, but planning to get back to it in a few weeks after I finish off some freelance obligations.

So immediately after the IMC I spent a week in a daze of cardboard boxes and packing tape. It's amazing how much crap you accumulate in 5 years. But while all that turmoil was going on, AEG released an expansion for their popular Legend of the Five Rings CCG. I was only able to do one card for the set:


Here are the sketches I sent to the AD:


Also, at the same time, I received a package from Fantasy Flight Games. It was a copy of their Talisman expansion. As with L5R, I was only able to do one card for this set. And it was a stretch for me. An environment piece with no figures:


The AD gave me the option to put a crazy monster into the illustration, which, in retrospect, I should have done. But I chose the literal route and decided on a landscape. Here are the sketches I sent the AD:

I liked the third sketch the best, but the AD picked the first one, because it best depicted the chaos he was looking for. As a compromise, I used an element from sketch #3 in the final. See if you can spot it.

July was a mad dash to find an apartment in Portland and getting acclimated to my new surroundings. I also managed to do another piece for Fantasy Flight. Unfortunately it is still under NDA.

And August was pure insanity. After getting ripped off by the movers and paying twice what I expected I found my savings dwindle to just $50. So it was Ramen noodles and PB&J for a while. The watercolors from my Nude of the Day blog survived the trek west, so I decided to get rid of them in a month-long and a way overdue (get the theme yet?) sale:


But in my usual fashion, I failed to promote the sale, so it was a bust. If anyone reading this blog is sorry they missed the sale, I will gladly extend it for you. Just shoot me an email.

And, if you have some spending cash left over afterward, check out what my girlfriend has been up to and send some cash her way:


August also was the end of my 3rd decade on this shiny blue planet and the beginning of my 4th. And on my 30th birthday, Dover released my Vampire Nights Stained Glass Coloring Book. Here are a few pages from the book:





And now in September I'm starting another "Vampire" project for Dover. I, too, am riding the Vampire craze as far as it takes me.

I hope this makes up for my lack of posts over the past few months. Here's another small nugget, a sketch for another portfolio piece I'll try to squeeze in when I have the time: