Fox in Socks

This week I handled a freelance job designing t-shirts. I worked with the phrase "crazy like a fox", and drew some fox stuff and illustrated type.

This piece is one of the rejects, taken to the next level. The way I handled the stylization of the figure made it unsuitable for the demographic the t-shirt company was going for. However, I thought it was a good character concept, at least. So, after finishing the job I put in a few hours to polish up the drawing, and here are the results:



P.S. A special prize goes to the first person who can spot all the vulpine references in the costume.

The Monstrous Manual Project 002

The next installment of this nostalgic project was a little harder to pick than the first. I decided that there was no way I could continue going in alphabetical order, or any organized order, for that matter. But that posed the problem of an over abundance of really inspiring options. In the end, I decided to pick creatures based on what would be good for my portfolio. So instead of painting nymphs, dryads, or other humanoid creatures, I chose:

Wyvern

Pronounced why-vern, this two legged cousin of the dragon is a terrible airborne predator. They swoop down on their prey, attempting to sink their talons into it and lift it up into the air, where they bite and use a deadly, poisonous stinger on the end of their tails. Around forty feet from nose to tail, propelled by a fifty foot wingspan, these things can fly carrying two man sized creatures at once, and could even prey on larger fare.

Self Portrait

Here's a piece I did recently for a self-portrait contest on deviantart.




Unfurling our dreams
To annoint our backs
Hoping paint won't melt like wax

Into the Heart of the Machine

Here is the second piece for the contest going on over at Palladium, a role-playing-game publisher.

With this piece I decided to try out a lighting trick I had seen many times before and read about recently. The idea is to use a series of different colored lighting, creating zones of color, to enhance the sense of distance in the painting.

For this image, I wanted to generate a feeling of caution and unease. I tried to do that with color, composition, and narrative. I tried to choose colors that clash a bit, and as you get deeper into the city, where the characters are, the color and angle of the light becomes more and more artificial. I tilted the composition to give the viewer a sense of disorientation, a trick I stole from film noir cinematography. I tried to design the structures in the background so that their function isn't completely clear, making them more alien, then added the human element of graffiti on the foreground wall. The back two characters are stooped over and aware, but the foremost one is calm. My hope is that these disorienting contradictions establish a mood of simultaneous fear and exhilaration, anxiety and curiosity, that comes with embarking on an epic adventure, because the adventure is what RPGs are all about.