IMC Final

It's been a while but I've been busy:) Here's the final barring any tweaks...

The illustration is from a design brief for a book called Green by Jay Lake that is due to be published soon by Tor books. Dan Dos Santos has the honor of illustrating the real cover and it's a beauty. I'm fortunate enough to have had some great input from Dan, Scott Fischer, Greg Manchess, Donato, Boris and Julie, and the rest of the IMC alumni of 2008. Thanks all! I could not have progressed as far as I did without your help and encouragement!

Medium: Digital and Oil on Panel

Mudbox WIP

I'm a little hesitant to post this, as I seem to have taken over the blog lately, but what the hell- Here's my latest mudbox doodle. Done over a few hours at a coffee shop. I'm thinking I will take this one a bit further into texture and detail than the last skull. I may end up doing some hair stuff in max as well if i stay motivated enough by this one.

Mudbox Skully

HaHA Samson! My turn to hog the blog.

Here's a lunchtime mudbox doodle. I should have looked at some skull reference before i started, but i didn't really plan this one out.


Also, a quick beauty render.

Digi Life

I brought my laptop to the life drawing session this time around. I'm pretty happy with the results of my first digital life attempt.

Vyle Video

We watched a video on speedpainting and brush creation by David Levy. I made a few quickies based on the stuff he taught. Good stuff. Both under an hour.

Painting

Hey guys. Sorry to overrun the blog like this, but I find posting quite enjoyable!

Here are a couple painting WIP's I wanted to show. The parrot is from an old sketch I am fond of, and the troll was done mainly to study that old worn-beaten metal helmet (which I copied from a LOTR sculpture I found on the web)- I posted the sketch of the troll a while back though. I may finish them someday. Hope uh you likey!

Sketches

Here are some new creatures, and an old page of sketches so you can see the linework for that previous post. I am going to try to do a larger fully illustrated scene like in LOTR.

Beast Illustration

Hey Guys, here's a piece of a painting I'm trying to work on in my spare time. It's been pretty rough so far, but I'm starting to feel better about it. It's a bit more complicated than what I'm used to painting, but I feel like if I ever finish it I'll come out much better on the other end... hopefully!

some drawings, new and old-

Creatures

I like drawing creatures...

Samson

Hey everyone. I'm Samson. I started at Idol about a month and a half ago now, and it's a blast working with these guys here and skuntching with you NetDevil guys. Here are some recent skuntchies...

sketchbook doodles

Sketches!!! The first and second sketches are a raksasha and kali from hindu mythology; some girl sketches; a chinese imperial guard dodging some arrows; and a girl with gloves... i havn't decided which set of legs i like on that one. that is all.

Life Drawing - 25min poses

I had a pretty good morning at life drawing Saturday.

I threw away a few disasters but salvaged some lessons from today's experience.


I'm beginning to utilize some of the advice of Richard Schmid from his book Alla Prima in identifying edges and blocking in values while also incorporating line drawing to identify my proportions and add some flourish here and there.

Tess Sketches

As you can see I am still working on the 'sun-kist' section of my sketch book. I did some drawings of Tess a couple of nights ago - from life, sitting at the dining room table. Pretty quick, maybe 45min. total for the page. She's pretty cute. :D

Viking Sketch

Ahoy, Dudes Galore! I have not popped though in a while, so I though I'd drop off a quick sketch and say hello. No specifics for this... one of the last Skuntch drawings from about two weeks ago. Nate sent out a thread with a bunch of groovy viking pieces, so I drew one.

Rane's B-day Gouache Painting

This week was Rane's birthday so as a surprise I painted her this little gouache painting. That meant the studio was off limits for the last couple of days. I'm pleased to say she was surprisingly good about not peeking. (she's a peeker.) Gouache, 6x9 inches.

I found this great pre-made shadowbox frame at Aaron Bros. It fit perfectly.

The cover that never was... sort of...

Blue Series

"Say hello to my little friends"

Col-erase

mar.2008

A couple of sketches from last week's skuntches. I am going to turn the guy at the bottom into a goblin pirate holding a sword up. The nude is a bit awkward I think, but it was fun to render/invent.

Childhood Hall of Fame

another...

skuntch drawing turned into a painting. I'm going with the excuse that his right arm is way larger because he uses the cane ;)

Also - I'd still love any feedback on my portfolio... I updated it a bit - http://www.thatmikeguy.com/Portfolio/

hmmm....

I think I may have tried too hard on the 'story' and ended up a little cliche. It was worth a little more time to play around with it, but I'm moving on to some others... thought I'd post it though. I should probably have gone with a less goofy looking bird-head. Maybe even -- god forbid -- have used reference ;)

I'd love some feedback/criticism

... of my art that is - http://www.thatmikeguy.com/Portfolio/index.html

Here's a painting that came from a weekend skuntch too, since I never post anything.

Orange Dream

Started a section of orange paper in my 'homemade' sketchbook today... Her left arm and hand are a bit off/odd...

The Baron

Ok this weeks Challenge over on Unleaded Artists was Dune. My riff on the Baron and Feyd walking around on Geidi Prime.

Weekly challenges reborn?

Hey ya'll, I started a blog for GPG artists a while back that (aside from one long dry spell) has been somewhat successful in terms of participation. One of the things that seems to inspire more contributions is a series of weekly challenges we've been putting to ourselves. I know we did that for a while and it seemed to go well but I think the random topic generator was a bit off putting sometimes. So I've been suggesting much simpler topics, usually vague, just to get things rolling. I think the Flight comics have the right idea. ie: Make a story that incorporates flight somewhere in the image or narrative. You get the idea.

So I'm thinking every Wednesday I'll post the same challenges I've been posting over at Unleaded here on Skuntch. Hell maybe we could even have a friendly vs contest like fist-a-cuffs? It might be cool to try and get the ArenaNet guys in on it too? Just some thoughts.

The latest challenge?

Frank Herbert's Dune.

If you'd like to see what we've been up to over here.

http://unleadedartists.blogspot.com/

Not terribly impressive but we're having fun:)

Anyway feel free to participate or not. Just thought you might get inspired to do something. I'll put up another topic on Wednesday.

first post from out of state! -something I started in seattle, and got tired of noodling on it so I`m calling it done and moving on-

NEW BLOG

Hey guyz

I've decided to open up my own sketch blog.

http://davekangart.blogspot.com/

Keep sketchin'!!

Wonder Woman!

As a kid I had a crush on Wonder Woman. ...ok *I STILL* have a big ol' crush on Wonder Woman!

[edit]After some feedback I made a few tweaks...