Work for Savage Mojo

Here's a couple of black and white illustrations I did a little while ago for Savage Mojo.

 

Stone Hound

Fire Wizard

Mutant Rat Attack

4th Week of Studies

The holiday made things tough, and I have a good feeling the same thing will happen for the next holidays coming up soon. I couldn't always do a study each day so I at least made sure to do some sort of practice drawing like #24. There were also some days I was just not feeling good enough to do the studies so I decided to relax and do some Magic card alters. I'm still learning from the Magic alters are though, I'm getting really confident with my color mixing and matching, and it's nice to be able to use the traditional materials every now and then. Anyways that's all for now, check back for more later.

Inspiration Spotlight #13: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Ok, this one might be a little obscure, but I remember reading Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz all the time when I was little.

Me and my friends were really into them and one of the things that stood out the most were the pencil illustrations that accompanied each story.

This was probably one of my first real encounters of illustrations that really impacted me, at least since I my children's books.

To this day, when I make drawings more along the lines of the horror, you can often see similarities between my drawings and the drawings inside Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, done by illustrator Stephen Gammell.

The stories are a lot of fun, and some of them are really creepy for a kid to read. I still enjoy looking through these books from time to time, though I have no idea what happened to my copies.

New Magic Alterations

I've been hard at work on doing more Magic: The Gathering Alterations. I've been trying some different methods of doing the alters. If anyone reading this is interested in having some of their own please let me know and maybe I can do some for you! Now onto the cards!!!....

Cards and their original artists:

Demystify - Christopher Rush
Thallid Germinator - Tom Wänerstrand
Chandra's Spitfire - Justin Sweet
Grim Poppet - Kev Walker
Kessig Wolf - Wayne England
Child of the Night - Ash Wood
Utopia Mycon - Anthony S. Waters
Doom Blade - Chippy
Sudden Death - Dave Allsop
Full Moon's Rise - Terese Nielsen
Cone of Flame - Chippy

3rd week of studies

I'm really happy with a lot of the stuff in this batch, particularly 15, 16, and 17. These studies are turning out to be a lot of fun and I feel like my work is already improving from them. I'm going to give a warning ahead of time, the start of the next batch was a little rough due to the holidays and some traveling, and some aren't so much studies as much as me staying productive. I'm still making the effort though so that's the most important thing to me. Anyways, enjoy the new batch!

Inspiration Spotlight #12: Ninja Mountain Podcast

Ninja Mountain is a collective of Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror illustrators. They regularly make a podcast appropriately called Ninja Mountain Podcast. I found out about the podcast last summer and I started listening to a few episodes a day as I worked on art projects. They are jam packed with fun and interesting conversations about the art world, they talk a lot about the business involved with being a freelance artist, and they are more than happy to answer any questions from their audience and from time to time they have special guests like art directors and other awesome artists.

Ninja Mountain has been a great influence on me because they really opened my eyes up to exactly how the illustration world works, and they kept me company during my long days working. There are currently 107 episodes, most are around an hour and a half (sometimes more) so if you're looking for something fun and inspirational to listen to while you work, here's another one to add to your list!

You can find all of the episodes on the Ninja Mountain Scrolls Blog, and you can subscribe to the podcast on itunes HERE.

From the Moleskine #4

Lots of dragons this time around. I think I'll wind up using the first image as a sketch for a finish sometime.