Late Night painting

I woke up in the middle of the night and my mind was racing with an idea. And such a mood strikes me in the middle of the night, i cannot for the life me fall back to sleep so I get up and draw, paint, write, whatever. I do something to get the idea out of my head and on to paper.

So I painted a caricature of my friend Nolan. He is a innocent bystander in the idea. But when i got up and sat down to get the idea out of my head, he was so vivid in my mind at the time I had to start there first. My hope is that over the next few weeks i can get both him and the other characters animated for a little 30-60 second short in toon boom. That is if my life and all the other projects I am working on allow it. :D

Website Update

I am updating my portfolio website and as such any one who would be normally trying to get to my portfolio site will be redirected to my blog. It is my hope that the website update will not take too long, but until then please take a look around my blog.

A copy of my resume can be downloaded here.

The Animated Arts

Last Wednesday, I and a dozen other artist held an art show to show case the work of local arts who work in the media arts industry; from cartoons to video games. Along with us show casing our select work, there was a drink and draw held up stairs where you could watch a bunch of preforming artist perform their acts. The performers would hold a 30 second pose before their set and then do longer held poses in the back afterwards.
The night was fantastic and all the art was great. The hiccup I had was being held up in traffic for an hour while on my way over to hang up my art work before the start of the show. Anyway, if you want to check out the fantastic work, it will all be hanging up til the end of the month at Analog Cafe on SE Hawthorne and 7th in Portland, Oregon.

The few of the samples I hung up are from the series of illustrations that i am working up for my table top rpg. The Illustration are coming along nicely and I still hope to have the kickstarter for it set up by the end of the year.

Here is some of the work I have hung up. These are 2/3rds of the Illustration for the races that are in the game.

These can be brought as prints in my Redbubble Shop. 

Here are some more photos from the Art Show:

My wall Space.

Some of my friend Morgan's work

One of Becky Steel's Self Portraits.

And Some of the 3 Dimensional work that was used in Stop-motion projects.

My Friend Danny Popovici has posted a lot of his drawing from the Drink and draw on his Blog, check them out Here.

Redbubble

Recently, I opened a shop on Redbubble to sell prints and such of my art work. I am slowly putting pieces up on the site. Right now I have a few of my Halloween Cards up, one of my favorite piece a tentacle headed alien, and last night I just put up a new piece to a series of illustrations I am working on called "Cool Dads."

You can check out the shop here, and keep up to date on what I am selling.

When I started to look at opening a shop I had looked at three sites. Redbubble, Society6, and Cafepress. There was a third one I looked at, but that site had a a board of judges that you had to get through in order to join. If they didn't like your work, then you couldn't join the site. I'm pretty sure I'm not ready for that.
Society6 had an interesting social network element that help cross promote your art, but based on what I was reading its probably just as much work, if not more, to promote yourself and get people to your shop. That being said, Society6 has the better profit system, but they also have a higher minimum amount that you need to make before they pay you than the other two. Redbubble has the same type of profit system as cafepress, where you can see how much you'll make off each item sold and have control over that. If you want a bigger return you just increase the percentage of profit, which in turn does increase the price of the item. I went with Redbubble though, because they have the best stickers, since everything else was just about the same. This is my first time doing this so its kind of an experiment for me. I'll try to do an update in a few months to record how this experiment is going.

Illustration Work

Recently I was contacted by a friend of a friend who I have not seen in many a year, from back when I was in High School. Anyway, this person wanted to hire me to illustrate a scene that was similar to what you see with Magic: The Gathering, for a series of playmates, card sleeves, and deck boxes.

Here is the original Sketch

He wanted a Zombie that was about to eat a fairy. This pretty much sold me right away.

Here is the painting at two different stages. I did the background on a separate layer to make it easier on myself. Also While painting I saw that the right hand was way to big and shrunk it and the fairy down a little.

With all the final details like blood; plus you will note that I changed my mind on how I had the Fairies wings designed. They are still butterfly inspired, but now a slightly more realistic shape and color. She looks like a the perfect damsel in distress.

A little something I am working on

Currently I am working on a storyboard that will be for an animated short I want to use for my kickstarter. The Kickstarter is for the table top rpg game I developed and the animation will be used to get people jazzed up for it. I'll post some of the boards once I have them were I want them to go.

Until then, here is a little big monster I sketched up for the story.

Outside my own personally projects, I have been working on some storyboards for a up coming Pop-tarts commercial which is themed after the 2014 winter Olympics. 

Iowa

Here is the only Plein Air painting I was able to do while on vacation, visiting my wife's family in Iowa. I got to see the Mississippi river and watched a boat go through one of the locks - which takes at least an hour. So I had time to sit and paint for a time. This was the only time I was able to do this. The rest of the family are not artist an so everyday we went somewhere where we didn't stand still for any length of time for me to paint.

I didn't like this painting so much after I finished it, but now I like it a bit more. As always it is a learning experience, which is all that counts.