Wizards of the Coast: A boy and his hammer...

The above illustration ©2009 Wizards of the Coast, LLC.

Jon Schindehette over at ArtOrder released this image today. I did this illustration for Jon / Wizards of the Coast through Empty Room Studios and since the piece was made public today I can share it with those looking at my corner of the internet. Jon refers to this piece as "A boy and his hammer", and that keeps reminding me of the movie A Boy and His Dog...I'd love to see that again!

I remember being a kid and wanting to see this movie since the VHS box cover appealed to me. My dad said no though! (rightly so! Thanks dad.)

Jon, thanks for the shout out today! Rick, (owner of ERS) thanks for the opportunity!

ArtOrder: Catastrophic Dragon (Earthquake)

Whoah! Dragon time. I've been trying to work on some environments in my downtime lately and yesterday I started getting really antsy. Environments are challenging to me since I usually draw things with legs and faces, so I decided to take a quick creature break. How convenient then that Jon Schindehette made this week's ArtOrder topic a dragon challenge! The topic this week was to create a catastrophic dragon...it's a new dragon subtype they're trying out that is sort of a container or carapace holding back elemental fury. The natural force for the topic is "earthquake". I thought about it and a really earth ripping earthquake would probably spill out magma like crazy. It's insides is a burning hot tumble of rocks, gems, and magma, while it's outside is like a rough and cragged hillside. It's body is almost composed like earth strata.

O.K. Dragon break is over, time to get back to drawing places.

Environment thumbnails 2

More thumbnails. I decided to shelve the creeper castle one for now in favor of something different. Most of my horizon lines were safe and in the middle before, so I wanted to try some more extreme angles (birds eye, worms eye...high and low vantage points). The upper left one in this new batch has me really excited so that's where I'm headed next.

Environments: Cradle of Life

I think this is done for now. I added in little white birds flying around the tree and nesting near the water pools. Now, onward to the creepy castle!

Four demon girls

I had drawn these demon girls a few months ago and completely forgot about them. Wow! They're all iterations on one character I was trying to create but they're interesting enough to me on their own.

Environments: Cradle of Life in progress

Here's as far as I got today. I'm calling this one Cradle of Life, depicting a tree / oasis in the middle of an arid desert. I'm going to try working in some birds and little critters flying / crawling around the place.

I sort of feel like it's not totally an environment piece but a design for this tree, but it's got me working on stuff that's not character / creature related for now. Gotta start somewhere!

After doing this image which is turning out to be very optimistic like I'm probably going to want to do the skull and spine castle...

Is that Bambi over there behind that root?!

ArtOrder: B&W Vampires

Here's another submission for
Jon Schindehette's ArtOrder blog. This week's theme was a b&w illustration based around two vampire characters: Gwenth and Gareth. Jon provided this bit of info about he pair:

Gwenth: A female vampire, once a human, who excels at stealth and ambush attacks. She wears leather armor and carries two short swords. She should look both seductive and dangerous, but let’s avoid clothing that’s too revealing or risqué. She has short, dark hair, and is an effective assassin. If we see her partially obscured by shadows, that’s great.

Garreth: A male vampire, once a human, who is more of an up-front bruiser. He wears leather armor, and carries a heavy shield and short sword. He’s standing in front of Gwenth, almost protectively. He has pale, almost white hair, and the scars of several battles. He’s thickly built and muscular, and his mouth is open to reveal his fangs and vampiric nature.

I added a bit more to the brief too:

The way I interpreted the illustration was that before attacking their prey, Gwenth cuts, scratches and slashes Gareth (hence the scars). This gets him twisted up into a masochistic frenzy before she turns him loose on their unsuspecting quarry. Once Gareth's bloodlust is kindled and he has the front lines occupied Gwenth will slink through the shadows and strike their true target. The few travelers who have survived a run in with the masochistic pair recall the expression of grim delighted arousal that they shared on their faces.

I included the Empty Room Studios logo for shared recognition, since Rick Hershey introduced me to the ArtOrder blog. Rock on ERS!

Spot blacks rule and so does hatching with a brush. Woo!

Environment thumbnails

So Daily Demons are on hold again. Work has been keeping me busy (a good thing!) In my spare time I'm gearing up to get back to portfolio development time in the area of environments.

In most of my recent illustrations I've been including settings, but I don't have many pieces that are environment only. Time to fix that!
Look Bill! It's not all creepy stuff! Sure there's a skull cave / castle in the mix but there's also a big tree, cliffs, giant crystals with anchors...I'm going to pick a couple of these to render over the next couple weeks. Then back to thumbnail land and repeat.

Carney Art Show: Glitter Spitter Raisin Face

Here's Glitter Spitter Raisin Face! He's the painting I made for the upcoming Carney Art Show at Monkeyhouse Toys in LA. The shows theme is circus freaks. I hope it arrives on time!

I took this photo before adding a little more red to the background, but it's pretty final. I won't make it to the opening but if you're in LA you should go check it out.
The show opens on Saturday, June 27 and will run through July 12. monkeyhousetoys.com for more info!