Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Jon's Concept Art Interview

I just finished up with some work for a 4th edition DnD book, Legends of Norrath Card and SWG cards. I'll post that work once the NDA is lifted. In the meantime. Jon was kind enough to post some of my work in his interview with concept art.

I'm off to Disney world for a week for our family vaction and will be busy when I get back on a DnD manual cover!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

I got to paint an Undead Treant!

Here is a piece I have been wanting to share for a few weeks now and it's finally out so I can post it :) It was for the cover of Dungeon magazine. It was pretty complex but tons of fun to make. The main focus was the blackroot treant which is standing above the viewer, ready to stomp on em, in a crystal coliseum with the shadow of a green dragon on the wall and a stained glass window at the top of the ceiling.

I was really inspired by pollice verso by Jean Leon Gerome.
A big thanks to Chantal Pare who was kind enough to let me use one of his patterns from his site for my inspiration for the glass window. Also thanks to Jon Schindehette who was fantastic to work with and who really helped me make this piece successful. I have included a few steps that I did along the way just for fun. Enjoy.

Here is a really rough sculpture that I made of the face on a blackroot treant to make sure I got the lighting right. It was fun to make, my son even helped too.



... and this is the sketch...



mid way thru...



...and finally done. Someday soon I'll do a full blown tutorial.



And below is one of the interior art illus. that I did for that article. Here is a bit of a story about this image. I had the opportunity to spend a week in North Platte Nebraska at the High School as a guest artist in late April and had a fantastic time. However, I didn't realize that there was an overlap between my time at the HS and my deadline on this round of work. So I would spend all day at the HS and then rush back to the hotel about 4pm work on this image until 1 or 2 in the morning each night. But in the end it was a great time and it all worked out, and I got all the images done on time. Anyway enjoy...



All images © Wizards of the Coast

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Some recent work...

The force is strong in my family :)
This was an image that was tons of fun to do. I finally got the opportunity to use both my son and my wife in a SWG card and it's currently a BG Desktop at SWG TCG web site. My son is a HUGE star wars fan, so he really got a kick out of dressing up as a padawan (however he was bummed that he wasn't using the lightsaber tho)




Boll Deevil
This is a weekly exercise that Jon Schindehette http://artorder.blogspot.com/ puts together. It's a great exercise and really a fantastic way to keep yourself loose. I am in the middle of a couple of pieces for DnD and SoE so I decided it would be a perfect time to play around with speed painting. I gave myself a 1 hour time limit and came pretty close to hitting it. It's not as finished as I normally work, but it was fun to work with a set of limitations. Enjoy:

"Basically, we've taken a small and not very terrifying (unless you are a farmer) Boll Weevel and tossed him into the D&D Easy-Make Monster Maker™ and popped out the Boll Deevil. A terrifying incarnation of epic proportions...sometimes."