Thirty-Year-Old Mulberry Field

Here is a link to a page I commissioned to give the imagery from my graduate exhibition a place to inhabit on the web.
thirtyyearoldmulberryfield.com

Definitely a different environment than a "white box". I worked with my designer to give you two experiences. The one (archive) will give you images of the work in a preset order for easier viewing. The other (exhibition) will hopefully give you an experience that connotes the heart of the body of work. The page containing my "artist's statement" may not be up yet, so I have pasted it below:

Through people watching and self-reflection, I found breakdowns in our social interactions. I saw verbal and non-verbal exchanges being made without either party giving pursuit to clarity or resolve of any possible misunderstanding. I could take half an hour to write a two-line email, quadruple checking for any potential ambiguities in my word choices, and still receive a frustrated reply from a reader that saw my email as hostile or passive aggressive.  Even the simple matter of eye contact while conversing could be seen as engagement, desire, or hostility. I saw us coming to our social experiences with highly unique, undisclosed indexes of perceptions that contributed to these unresolvable breakdowns between intention and meaning.  This created a difficult limbo between community and isolation, between an inner and outer self, where we seemed to have a desire to seek out company, but more often than not sought refuge in shallow personal disclosure and self-reliance.  This body of work is intended to embody that difficult limbo as a response to our social fumbling through my visual language.

Hope you enjoy the experience. 

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions, and I will do my best to respond as my time allows. Cheers.

grad school

In the midst of progressing through grad school at a local University. I'm about halfway through at the moment, and ready to kick into high gear. The program culminates with a final gallery exhibition, which is now my biggest focus. Here is a small sample of work as exhibited in a group show to determine our candidacy for progression through the program, as well as a sample of other work from the semester. I will post more once I have them archived. Thanks for waiting!

Updated Website

Haven't done a full overhaul yet, as I'm still new to this html thing, but one of my very good friends showed me how to update my portfolio, so I did.
Site has been flushed of some oldies, so just the newbies remain. I went ahead and streamlined it with a dash of lightbox too. Link to an extensive costume illo site, for all of you who wanted to see my work from the films I've been on.
More will be done, and more pieces added, hopefully before Spectrum publishes, but at the least its a site with work that isn't three years old.
Have a visit and enjoy.

Back again

So I've been working on samples for potential clients here and there, and whilst on this quest for green pieces of paper with which to buy food, I decided to "re-work" some pieces into a different color format.
I added a few adjustment layers to make them look antiqued, like they may have been shot with a polaroid. Now granted-this effect would have more impact on more realistic paintings, but I do kind of like the final color schemes. More new stuff, and maybe a new website soon--I hope.
--Oh, and the piece that got into the upcoming Spectrum is my "Shadow Over Innsmouth" (the drowning man) piece-the original from a couple posts ago, not the color altered one here. Hope it turns out proper, I have a habit of being disappointed in the printed results of my work, even when properly calibrated. Fingers crossed I guess!

Great Jumping Jehosaphat!

Just checked the Spectrum "in" list. All the regulars were on it...William Stout, Gregory Manchess, Jeremy Geddes, and ...hokey smokes Bullwinkle, me!
Had know idea I would qualify to be in such a great publication with such talented artists. I'm really humbled to be mixed in with this wonderful group. A big thank you to all the Spectrum judges and staff, if you happen to mosey this way.
Not sure which one or ones got in, as I recently found out, that any publishers I've worked for in the past year, could have sent in work I did for them. I'll let you know when I know, if I can let you know.
Guess that means I'd better get my rear in gear on practicing, samples, and updated websites!
In the meantime here are some ape gestures from our visit to the zoo last week. The mandrills were grooming and the bonobos were lounging and doing back-flips, awesome.

artorder

Just sent to Jon at the ArtOrder blog. Not that bad for a few hours. Will try to spend more time on the next. Concept is property of Wizards of the Coast. Goodnight.

Sent to spectrum

Fingers crossed, I sent my menacing mouse pawn image as well as these two Lovecraft-themed images to Spectrum for review. The drowning man is "The Shadow over Innsmouth", and the shadowy seated figure is "The Music of Erich Zann". Wasn't sure how I felt about these when I was working on them..I like them now that I'm coming back to them with a fresh eye. I probably just had artist's rage before as I did a re-paint for each of these. Both are mixed media: pencil, ink, watercolor, oil, and digital(like the Pawn)
These are two stories I love, so I'm sure there will be many variations on these through the years, as well as others. Hopefully becoming even more bizarre and unsettling as my mind truly drifts off into...

The Music of Erich Zann

Here is a color rough for my weekend project. I finally have some time off in my schedule, just enough, I think, to finish this piece. Its an illustration inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann". The story's title character is an old, weathered man that lives in a strange apartment whose window happens to be a gateway into a dark dimension of unnamed terrors; he keeps these shadows from the stars at bay with his bizarre, haunting, and horrific violin melodies.
I hope to actually finish this over the long weekend so that I have at least one painting I could potentially submit to Spectrum this year. The other potential piece is a secret...I'll post progress once any is made.
Also included in this post in the charcoal under drawing. Enjoy it while it lasts, 'cause it'll be covered in gesso by tomorrow. That's right its a free-wheelin' painterly painting. An attempt to repeat, if not improve on my results from my "Frank" painting.

D&D

Had some time to post today. On another film, so time is a true rarity...Here are the published images I did for Wizards of the Coast this past year. The Cockatrice was for their latest Monster Manual released awhile back. The other three were for the Eberron Campaign Guide that was recently released. I did two other paintings for Wizards that didn't show up in the books, so I can't show them to you yet, in case they use them later on; but in the meantime enjoy these. They were great to work for. I'm hoping to make some time to drum up some "client specific" portfolios, one of which would be a Wizards style related collection; a handful of images that are my take on their IP. All images and concepts are property of Wizards of the Coast.(And yes the Rakshasa Tiger Demon's hands are supposed to be reversed...and you thought I goofed)

Frank

I did this oil sketch of my Grandpa from a JamesDean-esque photo we have of him in his younger days for my dad this father's day. Frank passed awhile back and it was really hard for our whole family to see him go, so I thought this might bring dad some good memories. I was really happy with technique, likeness, and the piece overall, so I thought it deserved a post. Oh, and it was done in only three hours. Tons of fun to do. I will try this technique in the future with full color, see if its still fun...

Nurgle Terminators

I had some time this past week, so I started up a few sample paintings. This was a fairly quick one for Games Workshop. I remember reading in some of their submission guidelines that they need to see how I would paint some of their characters. So here are some grimy, bloated Nurgle Chaos Terminators standing over some fallen Biel Tan Guardians. This was really fun too do. It's 100% digital, and literally started as a page of scribbles, which was a venture for me, because my art ed. background is as a draftsman. Worked out pretty well though. Scratchy, messy, dirty (like Nurgle should be) was great fun to paint, especially when contrasting it with the well-designed Eldar. Hope you like.
The next two sample paintings will be primarily for Irene Gallo over at Tor Books. One will be the robot sentry oil, and the other is the undead ambushing adventurers in mixed media...

the PAWN

I'm working on developing a new painting system, at least for me, where oils are layered on top of water colors. Normally I don't know if this even chemically works, but with the magic of fixative and matte medium, boom! Oils on water. Then I add digital paint to refine detail and alter color tone. Here's a little one I did of a PAWN in a series I'm working on where the units in chess are woodland/field critters caught in a gritty world war. The orange-tinted one is the oils on water color (actually its ink this time around), the grey one is the final with digital paint.

Blog Portfolio

The Feeding Pool: finished

Here's the final version of the piece I did a color rough for a couple days ago.
I like it. I haven't used this style for awhile. Kinda nice how certain skills stay with you. The finish has a sort of creepy Frazetta edge to it I think. Triangle composition, scantily clad amazon warrior confronting a slimy tentacled fiend. By the way, legally, the creatures and concepts related to the creatures are property of Wizards of the Coast, I did not make them up. One thing I did add is the small pyramid on the Mind Flayer's head. I thought it would be a cool/decorative way for the Flayer to protect his brain from rivals.

The feeding pool

Here's a color rough of another sample I'll be sending to Wizards of the Coast soon. Hope they enjoy it. This time I'm using one of their creatures from D&D, the Mind Flayer or Illithid. Squid head, zaps your mind, sucks your brains out...cool.

The Sentinel

This is a color rough that i got a little carried away with for a little oil painting I'm hoping to start soon. Good grief, I haven't done oil in years...

New Technique

So I've always wanted to be "painterly" on the computer. For the most part my experiments have ended up being colored drawings to one degree or another. I've been practicing this technique for the past few days and viola!
My action sequences needed action even in the way it was painted, trying not to even think about the airbrushes. So I studied some rockin' guys like Foster, Berry, and a little Hale(even though he tends to cover and "finish" his stroke a bit more).
This is what I came up with.
It starts a great deal like a traditional oil. Sketch, then oil drawing complete with "shadow edge". But instead of laying appropriate color in appropriate spots, I began pushing and pulling with the knife. Then figuring out color areas, in this case minor tints. Softening with bristles. More knife. Details with smeary bristle. Then final details with smeary round or detail brush. I really like it and intend to continue on this track for most action sequences.

Orc Slayer

Tried another sample for Wizards. On this one I combined the techniques used for "Djinn Hunt" and "The Oni". I feel like it came out rather well. I wanted speed to the piece. I think by leaving only some areas within the focal point fully resolved while letting everything else be loose and painterly, we get to feel the crash! Haven't done traditional fantasy characters in a awhile. This was really fun.

published work

These were actually in stores a few months ago. Plum forgot I had 'em around. Just a few spot illos for a table top gaming company called Privateer Press. They own all the rights, so no snagging. Both characters belong to a sort of druid army. The witch is called Morhvanna the Autumn Blade, and the beast man (2 views, man and beast) is a Tharn warlock that can transform between his human and Ravager form.

Oni redux

This is another re-vamp. This one is a re-do i guess of the "in the mist" from my website. Most of it is "real" paint with just a dash of digital. Runny, dirty, misty fun.