Painting Skulls for Dale Jr., Nascar, and the National Guard

I recently completed an awesome job with a company called Keyscaper.

Keyscaper makes awesome fan gear for all of your favorite professional and NCAA teams including mobile cases, audio gear and office accessories.

They mainly deal with already established icons and logos, but for this job they wanted brand new illustrations made up for Dale Jr.'s line of Nascar / National Guard products. I was asked to paint a few skulls in line with some of the other products for Dale Jr.

These are skulls

Above is the final illustration that I handed in. Since they plan on using this illustration on a variety of items, they asked to have each skull and the background smoke/texture on separate layers all on top of a transparent background. This way they can adjust the skulls and move everything around to their liking for each product and they don't have to worry about fitting to a specific background color. I don't usually work this way, so this project provided a unique challenge, but it all worked out nicely.

These are headphones...with skulls on them

Above is a preview of what my illustration look like on one of the products. The illustration features the National Guard logo as well as Dale Jr.'s signature and car number. Headphones are just one of the many products being released with my work on it though. Once the rest of the products are available for purchase I will be sure to make another post.

It was a great pleasure working for Keyscaper on this project and I really look forward to working for them again in the future as it's been a really rewarding experience thus far. Special thanks to Kelsey Erck for seeking me out for the project as well as her very professional work Art Directing the project!

P.S. I made a new post where you can get a look at the initial sketches for this project, as well as a list of available products featuring my skulls. Just click HERE.

Fixing things up

A few months back I submitted some portfolio pieces to Paizo art director Andrew Vallas and he recently got back to me with some really great feedback on my work. He recommended some changes to the pieces that he would have asked for if they were commissioned for Paizo. Here are some before and after shots of the pieces after receiving feedback.

Andrew's feedback: Revise Feiya's and the fox's faces. They are just a tad too cartoony for our style (especially the fox, whose expression is maybe a bit too expressive).

Andrew's feedback: The mushroom woman and owlbear could use a little more texture and realism.

Recent work with Rite Publishing: Lostling Spider

I've been super busy this past month with lots of freelance work. I've been meaning to make this post for a while now.

I recently did my first job with Rite Publishing, painting a Pathways cover. The covers showcase a featured monster sitting on top of a painted background panel. Here is the final illustration on the cover:

 And the individual paintings:

Lostling Spider

Lostling Spider's crib

It was a pretty fun piece to work on, and working this way is something I had never done before so it was a new spin on things, which I enjoyed.

I've got a bunch more work in the pipeline, some really exciting projects I'm looking forward to showing off. Until then, thanks for stopping by!

More Pinnacle Work: Hell on Earth

I wanted to post a couple of the full-scene pieces I did for Pinnacle recently. I was pretty excited upon completing these illustrations, as I usually don't paint this many figures/creatures in one scene, and it was a really nice learning experience. I need to force myself to do bigger scenes like this more often. I hope you like the work!

Worm Attack for 'Hell on Earth' ©Pinnacle

Templar Defender for 'Hell on Earth' ©Pinnacle

Grim Prarie Trails - Monsters

I had the pleasure of doing some work for Pinnacle Entertainment Group's recently published 'Grim Prairie Trails', the latest Deadlands Reloaded book. I contributed 3 monster spot illustrations which you can view below and enjoy some descriptions of the creatures as well!

Hodag

 First up is the Hodag. In short, it's a zombie bull. I was particularly excited to tackle this piece because I knew there would be a lot of opportunities to flesh out some nasty looking details. I threw in some maggots and flies, purple and green discoloration to show that it's rotting, lots of uncovered and torn muscle, and some flesh slopping off into puddles. The only downside to working on a piece featuring this much gore is the reference hunt in preparation for the piece. I looked up a lot of depressing photos of dead and decaying animals, some more brutal to look at than others, but this kind of research is ultimately necessary in order to come up with a successful piece. I probably wouldn't have thought to add in the purple discoloration if it weren't for some of the photos I came across.

Raven Mocker

 Next up is the Raven Mocker. This one was a bit of a challenge for a couple reasons. For one, I had to paint the creature appearing out of smoke, which is something I haven't really done before and it took me a few repaints to get something I was happy with. In the end I'm happy with how the transition turned out. The other challenge was that I had to show that the creature ethnically appeared Native American. I thought the easiest way for this to come across would be by skin tone and facial structure, but the description in the art order specifically stated that they have pale white skin. So I looked up a bunch portraits of Native Americans on good-ole Google and I noticed a particular hairstyle that seemed to come up in a few of the images, so I tried to use the braided hair to allude to the ethnicity of the beast. This was another brutal search for reference though, as the creature had to look emaciated. It was pretty tough to look at some of the reference, though again it was very crucial to making the piece successful.

Terrormental

 Lastly we have the Terrormental, probably my favorite out of the batch. Throw earth, wind, water, and fire into a blender and you get this walking horror. The idea of having to incorporate all 4 elements into this one creature was a little intimidating at first but through sketching things out I came up with a way to blend them all together. The walking mountain of mud makes up the earth, the swirling leaves hint at the wind, the waterfall coming from the tree stump for water, and the molten core shows the fire. This piece was a huge blast to work on and I'm really happy with the end result. I got lost in painting all of the slopping mud and the fiery glowy parts.

Thanks for checking out my new work, I hope you enjoyed reading about the pieces. Don't forget to swing by the Pinnacle Store and pick up a copy of 'Grim Prarie Trails' where there's much more art to be devoured. Until next time!

Goblin Test Pilot, creating my own art for an exisiting magic card

New piece!

"Aiyeee!"

I'm a big fan of Magic: the Gathering. Whenever a new set comes out I make sure to look up all of the new cards coming out as well as the artwork for each one. In the latest set, Dragon's Maze, (part of the Return to Ravnica block) they have a card called Goblin Test Pilot, illustrated by Svetlin Velinov.

Card

Original Goblin Test Pilot illustration by Svetlin Velinov

I really love this card, it's flavor is really silly which is reflected in the really fun card mechanic and the illustration is completely badass. Svetlin did an awesome job on this piece and he's become one of my favorite Magic artists. You should really check out his other work HERE.

However, back in the original Ravnica block, another one of my favorite Magic artists, Matt Cavotta, did the illustration for a card called Goblin Flectomancer, which I absolutely love as well. The expression of the goblin, the outfit, the pose, all emphasizing the silliness of goblins. By the way check out Matt's work too, he has a great sense of humor in many of his pieces.

Card

Goblin Flectomancer illustration by Matt Cavotta

 I have a tender spot for goblins due to their silly and somewhat dopey nature. And while Svetlin's goblins are super cool and look intimidating, I really love seeing silly goblins like Matt's. So I decided to take the concept being the Goblin Test Pilot card and make my own art for the card, focusing on more light-hearted and silly idea and execution. How do you prefer your goblins??

Mock-up of Goblin Test Pilot featuring my art

I'm really happy with how the piece turned out. I tried some things I've never done before (like paint a figure upside down and tried my hand at some architecture) and I think it's a good step forward for me. I still think Svetlin and Matt knocked their work out of the park compared to what I made but I took cues from both of them and it helped me create a piece I'm proud of.

Mind Eater Process and Thoughts on Revisiting Old Sketches

Meet Skully Mc-Slurp-Your-Brains

Not too long ago I finished the above painting, however it was started way back in October 2012, when I came up with this sketch:

Birthday: October 2012

At the time I thought there was a cool idea in this piece and there was some potential, but for whatever reason I lost steam with it and left it sitting in folder full of sketches. Seven months later, I was having trouble coming up with ideas so I flipped through my sketches folder and saw the sketch, suddenly wanting to rework it. Here's a step by step...

Working up the face and skull

Adding some brightness, giving the face some form

Adding the magic glow from the skull and the head

Rendering skull, adding more magic effects, trying out ideas with the eyes

Darkening the edges of the image, reworking the eyes, adding more detail to the skull

Added chains to fill empty space, removed pupils from the eyes, added some more glow effects

I'm pretty happy with how this piece turned out. I think if I tried to take this piece all the way to final back in October when I first came up with the idea, it would have fallen short. It reminds me that it really pays off to hold onto your old ideas, you never know when you'll look at a sketch and see it differently and get inspired to push it to something cooler than what you originated with. I hope you enjoyed the process!