Shadowcore: Painting

Showing posts with label Painting. Show all posts

January 21, 2015

Kaijudo - Gone but not forgotten...

2014 saw the release of my first, and last, Kaijudo cards because in 2014 the game was cancelled. I joined the Kaijudo team a little later then some, but before it was all over I had a chance to work on some really fun pieces. It was a huge blast to work on such a colorful and less realistic universe.

I was sad to see Kaijudo go and I am sure I was not the only one. Thankfully before the end I was able to create five pieces for the game. Of those five, three saw print, one was released digitally, and the last was never released but I was given permission to share it. Here are my contribution to Kaijudo...

"Virulent Worm" - Kaijudo - Eye of the Storm

"Rock Bite" - Kaijudo - Unreleased

"Decay" - Kaijudo - Vortex

"Lava Burst" - Kaijudo - Vortex

"Overshields" - Kaijudo - Vortex

RAWR!

November 4, 2013

ImagineFX 102 - Be Clever With Your Colors tutorial

Want to learn ALL my secrets? Want to see how I go about making a painting from start to finish? Want to hear me rant for an hour and a half like a crazy person as I narrate and discuss my painting process? Then you NEED to pick up the December issue of ImageFX (#102)! That's right, in issue 102 of ImageFX I have a 4 page tutorial focusing the creation of a battling pair of monsters... did I say monster?! Yes I did, and here they are...

Be Clever With Your Colors - Tutorial

My copy of ImagineFX #102 arrived recently and it was definitely an unexpected surprise. I am not sure this issue is even out in the US yet. To give you a sneak peek of what you can expect from me in issue 102 here are some poor scans of my article...

Be Clever With Your Colors - Tutorial pages 1-2

Be Clever With Your Colors - Tutorial pages 3-4

To get the entire experience as well as the rest of the magazine full of other GREAT article and information I strongly suggest you picking up a copy as soon as possible. For those who just can't wait to experience me ranting and raving, here is the accompanying youtube video that goes along with this tutorial, now you too will know all my secrets...

July 17, 2013

MORE recent monsters - Dragons, spiders, kitty cats... OH MY!

I have been neglecting my duties over here... which has resulted in a lot of monsters needing to be posted. Just got about every monster you could want here today, dragons, spiders, oozes, aliens... kitty cats. In no particular order I have for you today a bunch of my recent work...

P’an Ku

Ungoliant's Spawn

Eye on the Realms: Forgotten in a Chest

The Anatomy of Elemental Evil

Agathion Familiar

Angel Spell

Angelic Familiar

Shei

Tannagar

I had a chance to return to the Illustration Master Class again this year and managed to not spend the entire time in bed sick. I worked traditionally this year and picked the Game of Thrones assignment. Well, I picked the assignment that allowed me to do a painting of three dragons destroying a city...

The Three Dragons

24 x 14 - acrylic on board

Lastly, I have for you my second set of four Marvel Comic aliens that I redesigned for the very awesome The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe REDUXE Edition (OHOTMU Reduxe) blog...

I think that should cover all the recent highlights... but don't worry, there is a lot more on the way! RAWR!

April 12, 2013

More recent work - monsters, Monsters, and more MONSTERS

A lot of my monsters have come out recently and I thought I would share them all in one post. I will start things off with my contributions to the March issues of Dungeon and Dragon magazines. I got to do a portrait of the deadly Ogre mercenary Lubash as well as redesign and illustrate an entire army of Mephits...

Lubash the Ogre - The Village of Hommlet

Air, Dust, and Earth Mephits

Mist, Steam, and Water Mephits

Fire, Ice, and Magma Mephits

Heading now to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The mighty Icetromper joins the ranks of the ever growing Star Wars card game by Fantasy Flight Games...

Icetromper

Lastly, I have for you a set of four Marvel Comic aliens that I redesigned for the very awesome The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe REDUXE Edition (OHOTMU Reduxe) blog. The blog's goal is to redesign and celebrate 1000 plus entries in the Handbook to the Marvel Universe. I started off my contribution to the project with these four aliens. You can see a side by side comparison here, Alien Races - Horusians to Judans...

RAWR!

March 5, 2013

Recent Works - Mushrooms, Dragons, and Kaiju

I have had a several projects all come out at about the same time so I figured I would just lump them all together into one post. Some of these were done relatively recently and some are at least a year old now.

The first piece is from issue 420 of Dragon magazine. I was asked to design and illustrate the lord of all myconids... who is insane... but a good mushroom man all the same.

The next two pieces are the first of the Smaug pieces I was asked to create. You might remember the three Smaug pieces that I had come out this past August for the Gen Con 2012 Battle for Lake-Town deck. Those pieces were done months after I was asked to originally design Smaug for Fantasy Flight Games and to do these two illustrations. It was nice to have a chance to go back and revisit and build upon the Smaug design for the later cards, but this is where they all began.

Lastly is my contribution to the most recent expansion to the Legend of the Five Rings CCG, Torn Asunder. They wanted a giant monster demon that appeared capable of destroying whole provinces. It was hard to not make my very own Kaiju... so I gave in and made one...

The Carrion King

Smaug the Golden

Smaug the Magnificent

Mumoku no Oni
© 2013

RAWR!

February 5, 2013

Wookiee Navigator

Here is the first of my Star Wars work for Fantasy Flight Games new line of Star Wars gaming products. This piece is from their new Star Wars card game core set that came out in January. It is a might Wookiee and the card is aptly named... Wookiee Navigator.

Yes, the Wookiee is at a gunner station - You don't sit in one place the entire time you are in a star ship, remember that time when Han was in a gunner station?

No, this is NOT Chewbacca - From the very beginning the card had to be very much the "NOT Chewbacca" card, hence the vastly different fur color and pattern.

Now that the two things I keep hearing OVER AND OVER again are out of the way, here is the Wookiee Navigator...

Wookiee Navigator

I think in fact he is saying, "RAWR!" in the illustration. Here is the drawing that I did for this piece...

Wookiee Navigator - Drawing

It was very important that this piece read, "NOT Chewbacca" so after I submitted the original version of the final there was some concern that the piece still looked too much like Chewbacca. If you are at all familiar with how Chewbacca looks it would be immediately clear that this was not everybody's favorite Wookiee. The call to change it still came down and my art director was there to save me from myself and made sure they got the changes they wanted to see. Here is the original version...

ORIGINAL Wookiee Navigator

Here is a progression of the painting in 8 easy steps.... it is just that easy and that hard...

Wookiee Navigator - Process progression

And now a handy dandy side by side comparison of the two final stages of the Wookiee Navigator. I was really resistant to the final production Wookiee for a long time, but I think it is finally growing on me. It is hard to have such a major change made to the first piece done for a product that has been a love of mine since I was three years old. But I got over it... maybe...

Wookiee Navigator - final and original comparison

Last but not least, here is the how the actual card turned out. I think it is funny that even though it says 'Wookiee Navigator' and nowhere does it say Chewbacca people are still complaining that Chewbacca is the wrong color... oh well...

Wookiee Navigator Card

RAWR!

December 6, 2012

Deep One and Chimera

I recent made some time to try my hand again at working traditionally. I had some ups and downs earlier this year with my first attempts at working with real live paint and had been hesitant to do do again. With Illuxcon fast approaching in November, I knew I had better step up to the plate of bow out completely... in the end I had two new piece to share at Illuxcon. Here are the pieces, the Deep One and the Chimera...

Deep One

Chimera

The Deep One is my third traditional piece and the Chimera is my fourth. The Deep One was painted as a gift for a friend and fellow artist that was also attending Illuxcon. The Chimera is part of the huge and long term personal project I am working on whenever I can. Here are some process photos of the paintings coming together, I tried to take a photo once an hour as I worked...

Deep One steps 1 - 4

Deep One steps 5 - 8

Deep One steps 9 - 12

Chimera steps 1 - 6

Chimera steps 7 - 12

Slowly but surely this whole crazy thing of working traditionally is becoming less scary and maybe just might be something I do more often... maybe. Had a lot of fun with these and I think I learned a thing or two... or three. When I complete some more traditional pieces I will be sure to share them here! Here are some last looks at the piece, funny how putting a frame on them really finishes them off...

The Deep One is getting ready to head off it its new home.

The Chimera rests up after an exciting trip to Illuxcon. Maybe if it is good it will go find a nice home with someone.

RAWR!