Monster Portrait

I've been busy finishing up my children's book lately and I haven't had much time to work on any personal work. I made some time to finish painting up a piece I drew a little while ago and I thought I'd share my process with everyone in case anyone's curious as to how the piece evolves as I work on it.

1. Quick, loose drawing just to find something fun, threw some value down to pop the silhouette
2. Basic under-painting. I usually like to work from dark to light
3. Starting to render, not too contrasty just yet, just trying to figure out colors mostly
4. Getting more detailed, render render render
5. Upping the contrast to give things more pop
6. More of the same, adding some nastiness in the face to add more interest
7. Adding a secondary light source to pop out the silhouette more and to vary the colors
8. Color Dodge layers to introduce subtle color shifts in flesh, adding more interest
9. Even MORE detail
10. Finishing touches...

This is the final product! I hope you enjoyed seeing my process. I'd like to show more of these in the future.

Art Order: Brother's Grimm Challenge

Tomorrow is the deadline for the new Art Order challenge: Brother's Grimm. I went with the story 'Little Red Hood'. My take on the scene where riding hood sees her "grandmother". Lineup should be coming in the next few days.


Right now I'm working on a project I should be finishing up in the next month or so. Hint, hint, it's a children's book ;) After that project is over I'll be building up my portfolio some more. There's a lot of fun stuff to look forward to!

Phillustration 2011 Opening

Today was the opening for the Phillustration show at the Philadelphia Sketch Club! I had 2 pieces of my own in the show and I even won an honorable mention for one of them in the Student category. Here are some of the photos I took...

Matt Stewart(left), Best of Show winner Joe DeVito(right)

Charles Santore


Julie Bell

Boris Vallejo


...more artwork (the pics that didn't turn out ridiculously blurry

My good friend Anthony Briglia got 2 pieces into the show as well!

Here's me with my 2 entries, the one on the right won me an honorable mention...

...and here I am receiving my award along with my goodie bag of art supplies along with a copy of Star Wars: Visions, the Star Wars tribute art-book.

It was a fun day and I got to talk to a bunch of cool people and saw some amazing artwork! The show will be up until around July 17th...look up hours the Sketch Club is open as well as directions on their website.

2 of my pieces were selected for Phillustration 2011

The Philadelphia Sketch Club's annual Phillustration show just announced the selected works for this year's show. Juror Dave Palumbo has selected 2 of my pieces to be in the show...

"Gentle Treefolk" will be submitted to the Self-Promotional category

"Elephants Love Pogo Sticks" will be submitted to the Student category

Both pieces are done in Photoshop and I've made 14"x17" prints. Both pieces will be for sale, prices pending. The Juror's selection for awards will be made on June 24th and the Artist's Reception will be on Sunday June 26th from 2 to 4 PM at the sketch club on 235 S Camac Street. I will be attending along with my good friend Anthony Briglia, who also has 2 pieces in the show. Some notable artists who had work in last year's show included: Charles Santore, Dominick Saponaro, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Matt Stewart, Dave Palumbo, Roger DeMuth, John Thompson, Richard Williams, Eric Braddock and many others. They're likely to have work appearing in the show again this year as well, so if interested swing on buy.

Digital Ink Sketch / Painting

I haven't been doing as much doodling for myself as I would like to, so after I finished up working on Blue Shift I decided to mess around with some bold line-work drawing in Photoshop and I was really enjoying the results I got so I colored it up. I hope to do more pieces in this style in the future.

Blue Shift issue 2 wrap up

*This piece not done by me

After almost a year of working on the project, Blue Shift issue 2 has reached completion and all the pages have been published. You can check out issue 2 in it's entirety on MTV Geek. This has been a really awesome experience. I've learned a lot from working on this project. I want to thank art director, drawer and inker and friend Dave DeVries for having me onboard as well as the rest of the Blue Shift creative crew for providing such stellar work for me to contribute to. This is the end of Blue Shift for now. If there happens to be any more news on the title further down the road I will be sure to share it here on the blog, but until then it's goodbye Blue Shift.

As for what's in store for me next? It's fairly unpredictable at the moment. But I would like to mention that I am about halfway through working on my first children's book and I'll be working on that over the course of about the next 2 months. I can't share anything else on that yet but I will when I can.

A piece to say "thanks!"

I finished up this piece a little while ago for all the people who made comments on my work at Lubin House and I decided to share it on my blog as well. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's ever shown me support and given me help.

Thanks!!