Wild Boy

Wild Boy

9 x 12 acrylic on canvas

I painted this for my best friends' baby shower, they're conveniently making my son a best friend, so they get a painting. I've never painted something out of my head with acrylic on canvas. The surface was a bit too rough, but I had a lot of fun being able to paint over my mistakes instead of hiding them like I do with watercolor.

Facebook Portrait #2

Tyler 1/18/12

My friend Tyler, who also posed for me awhile back for my Little Shop of Horrors painting.

Facebook Portraits

John 1/18/12

In an effort to paint as close to every day as I can, I've started a new project where I'll paint one of my friend's facebook profile pics every week in my sketchbook. These are 4 x 6, which allows me to work on them upstairs whenever my 10 month old refuses to go into the basement studio.

The Tour

Here's the process behind my latest painting, "The Tour".

The initial sketch. To get the composition right I used Photoshop to help me with the layout.

Inked with with a crow quill pen (good ol' Hunt 102).

Painted with watercolor, highlights with colored pencil (mostly in the nebula which was a blast to paint). Archival prints are available of this image through Imagekind HERE or signed copies are available on my Etsy shop HERE

October is the best

Everybody needs somebody. If a scarecrow was going to love anybody, it'd be a witch.

The Secret Admirer

 pencil and photoshop

Roller Derby Fire and Water Process

Here's the process behind my most recent poster for the Rose City Rollers.

1) Initial sketches sent to their Art Director, these were done separately and then arranged in Photoshop. Babs gave the okay so I moved on to polished drawings.

2) I decided to do the drawings in charcoal in order to force myself to figure out how to paint over charcoal drawings in Photoshop (yes, I really really really wish I was James Jean in his Fables years). I used so called "white charcoal" for the first time to tone down some of the stark blackness of the charcoal. I usually do my figures for the Rose City Rollers separately because the art director likes to have the freedom to move things around for all their print formats (posters, ads, signs, etc.)

3) I figured out how to paint on charcoal in Photoshop! I'm not going to describe it because its involvedish (mostly using a lot of layer masks) and I'm not sure how many people would be interested in it anyway. Needless to say, it works!

"Clean" Cover Process

Here's my process for the cover to the short story "Clean" that I did with my good pal Justin Zimmerman. I used a technique that I saw on William Stout's website (he made that Dinosaur book in the 80's that every boy has, he also most likely worked on every fantasy film you like).

Initial rough penciled concept, getting all the pieces in place

Inked with a crow quill using a mix of black and sepia ink

Raw Umber under painting

First washes of color

Final painting, but since watercolor looks washed out when you scan it in...

...I did some digital color correcting in Photoshop.