This is a Post

The First image is my progress on the painting I've been working on based on the final drawing that I had posted before. I'm learning a lot from doing certain painting exercises and I think its helping with this painting. We progress a lot in life and over the past year my girlfriend has helped me realize a lot about myself and my artwork.  Its a never ending learning process. I hope to take what I've learned from everything and move forward with it to make better artwork in the near and distant future.

 Here is a test painting exercise I worked on. It helped me to understand a bit more about fire and just paint in general.

And these bottom two images are some scenery sketches that I tried out. Turns out that paint sketching scenery is a bit more difficult than I first imagined. I'll keep working on it tho.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time, Keep Drawing! :)

Dragons in a Fantasy Land

 I've been busy with a bunch of things. I'm still making (be it slow) progress on a scenery painting that I have posted a few progress shots on already. On top of that I'm in the process of trying to secure a commission from one of my co-workers. He likes dragons, I like to draw dragons. So I posted the quick sketches before. He picked one that he liked but I wanted to do another, so I'm working on 2 of the dragon drawings. The top one is a completed sketch.

This sketch above is in its work towards a final sketch but isn't finished just yet.

And here (above) we have the landscape painting I've been working on. As you can see its a fantasy landscape. I don't do a lot of landscape paintings so it has been a slow progress for me making sure all the details are accurate. As it is, I still need to tone down the intensity of the green on the front-most mountain, beyond putting in more details. Thats what i've got for now.

Until next time, Keep on drawing!

Some Dragon Sketching

Some sketches that I drew.

Till next time,
Keep on drawing!

Happy Halloween! Here's a non-festive painting

Happy Halloween everybody!

I haven't really been all that festive these past few years. Maybe that'll change in the future. We'll see. So I didn't take time to create any really spooky or halloween-ish paintings or drawings this year. But here's a post of a painting that is currently in progress. Its a zoomed in shot, so there is more to the painting than what is shown. You'll have to wait and see :)

I hope you enjoy! Keep up the drawing!

Landscape sketching!

Hi All!

Here are some landscapes that i've decided to paint sketch. I've been needing some practice with landscapes and scenery. So I've decided to finally jump into working on them. Here are 3 that I've done.

They are quite loose and painterly, as they are also quick sketches. So anyone who has seen my previous work, this is quite different from that. I hope you enjoy!

Keep on drawing!

CHOW 265 Completed! Mutant!

Hi everyone! Here's what I've got to show for my first ever finished Character of the Week!

Thank you! Keep on drawing!

CHOW WIP Painting

Rawr!

Work in progress on the Character of the week @ conceptart.org .
Keep on drawing!

Conceptart.org Posting!

Hi everyone!

I've been wanting to do this for a long time. And now I'm finally able to participate in one of the conceptart.org 's community activities. I'm working on an illustration for the Character of the week. Here's my front and back sketches of the character!

Thanks for checking out my blog! Keep up the drawing!

Spider Warlord

Welcome!

Today I've been finishing up some work on a new character design. I say finishing up, but it still has a lot more to go. There will be another design of his face to the left of this image shown below.

I've been spending a lot of time watching some video tutorials by the famous Feng Zhu, of Singapore. He's a tremendously talented individual and he's an amazing teacher (I can tell even tho I've never taken one of his classes... but I would eventually love to.). His videos can be seen at http://www.fzdschool.com/free_tutorials.htm which is related to the FZD School of Design which he started and teaches at. I've learned a lot from his tutorials and I hope to learn a lot more.

Until next time, Keep up the drawing!

Book Dummy Cover, plus a Wizard

I've been super busy recently, working up to 55 hours a week at a day job (not illustrating), but with what little time I do have free I've been drawing and painting.

I'm almost complete with a book dummy that I'm preparing to send out to publishers. The dummy itself I suppose is done. But I was advised to create a decent looking cover before doing so, which I felt was great advice. So here's a picture of that, without the cover text.

And for those unable to get a hand on my book dummy I'll post another sketch of the interior work here ...

Because I prefer to keep my attentions on at least 2 projects at the same time, usually, I've been working on another painting. This one is of a wizard. Probably inspired by both the anime that I'm watching (Fairy Tail) as well as the book I'm reading (Belgarath).  Both involve either wizardry or sorcery. It's still in progress. Keep checking back to see how it turns out!

Until next time, Keep drawing!

Paint Sketches

 Here are just a few paint sketches that I've been doing every once in a while.

Some Insectoid creature.

 Some rock type creature.

And some tank machine.

Machines are new to me in painting. I don't draw many of them. Probably something I should practice more often. These aren't as developed as some of the previous photoshop paint sketches. But they're mostly just intended as things to get me painting. To get some ideas flowing, or just a warm up.

Keep drawing!

Sketching

Story book page sketches.

The main character (the boy) walking to bed.

The main characters walking together 

as they see a house in the distance.

I've bee working slowly on a children's book idea. I think I started the first drawing, where the idea started from, in January of this year. I have since then worked out the story (currently in its editing process by friends), and worked out nearly all the sketches. Soon I'll be ready to set up book dummies and then I'll send them off to see what will come of it. 

That's it for now.

Happy drawing!

Creature Madness!

The dinosaur.

A flying creature.

And some Giant Alien Cyborg.

The three images shown above are some creature designs that I've been working on over the past week. It amazes me how much faster I've gotten at painting these kinds of things. 8 months ago just painting one of these would have taken me at least a full week. Now I can do one of these creature designs in about an hour. I never used to be very good at creating creatures. But I've found recently that for me, the best way to make some creatures is to have no plan or idea of what its going to look like. Just start sketching odd lines and then try to make something out of the linework you see before you. It keeps it fresh and uninhibits the mind I feel. Until next time. Keep Drawing!

Creature in the Closet!

This is just a quick (very quick) creature design that I did in photoshop. I built it off of a silhouette based on a quick gesture warm up that i do before I start drawing each day. I'm pleased with the way it turned out. But as all artists usually do, even tho I called it done for this phase, there are still things that I'd like to fix or re-arrange or add. But I'm restraining myself haha. Still working on a book storyboard and book dummy. More things to come! Happy drawing!

I've been watching some online tutorials and learning a few techniques which have been useful. In this image I tried fusing a man's face with a bear. It came out ok, but could use a few different variations if I was working to develop the character further. But for now it was just a quick study. Which is also why it looks fairly rough. I'm pleased with it, especially being that it was created, to this point, in about an hour and a half. Thats my quickest time yet. This new technique I'm using might be utilized a lot more.



Here I just tried a few different color variations. The two ends I realized afterwards that they looked very similar. I was trying different approaches for the colors but in the end I kept thinking fur, so i edged towards the brown.

Stories and pirates. One begins as another finishes

I'm currently on a pirate fix. This one is still in progress.




But the one below here is completed just recently. That makes 2 pages of a Children's book that I have completed. I have more sketches to work on and then I should bundle it into a book dummy and send it out to some publishers.



One page closes as another ends. Progress is never ending. Keep drawing!

Pirate!

While I'm sorting out the final details of the storybook illustration I finished I wanted to start on a secondary illustration.



This pirate has just climbed aboard another ship and is about to do his job. Create havoc to an enemy pirate ship. Anyway, this image is all sketched out. It'll be painted in photoshop in the coming week or 2. The idea with it is to turn it into a birthday greeting card. This would be the front side, and then the inside fold would be an image of a small kid with baggy pirate clothes on with words to tie it together.

On a minor note, I'm still waiting to hear back from the Limkokwing University of Creative Technologies which I applied to school for. It would be an Advanced Diploma in Education. The best part? The school is in Malaysia, which I can't wait to get back to. Why? Because my Girlfriend lives there. And its also a very beautiful country. Hopefully they respond back soon.

Another page Painted

As I finish another page of the book (with added text soon to come) I feel like I'm starting to make some progress. There's still a long ways to go before its ready for a book dummy stage. But at least we're getting somewhere. The characters are coming to life finally. Keep Creating!

Detail of page 14

The above image is a detail of the story book page that i'm working on. It's nearing completion. This is a very close up image of the full page. Almost done with this illustration. Its been great creating it from the start.

Mish-Mash on a Wednesday

Now, the above image is the now-final image for one of the book pages I'm working on. I made some minor adjustments based on some input I was given, and I think it made for a much stronger illustration.




And this image of the leaves I'm showing to display one of my recent happy accidents. I was working on a different illustration and making a pattern/texture. I wanted to save the specific work on a separate file, and in doing so I changed the canvas size and this was the end result. So I wanted to just go ahead and post it.

Start of a New Page

The above image is the next full-color page that I have started working on for my Children's book project. I'm still changing some finishing touches with the previous page with the dragon silhouette, but I like to keep my ideas rolling. Not much time for rest in the life of an illustrator. The image was inked with Micron black pen simply because i don't have a scanner thats big enough to take in the full photo. This was so that I could still see all of the details when I begin to paint the image in photoshop. I'll post more photos of my work later on.

Finished page

Thanks to my good friend Sean McManus for giving me some pointers with the design aspect! Here's what I would call a finished page to a children's book. Lots more pages to sketch up and at least 1 more to fully color still.

1st draft

Here's a first draft of the children's book page that I've been working on. Anybody who wants to give me critiques feel free. In fact I encourage it.

Other than this I've recently been drawing a few sketches of horses. Just a couple that I've drawn...

Book page Progress

Life is rough so my progress has been slow. I've gone through more stress than I would have liked to live through. I'm still working on this page, but its getting closer to being done.

Pg. 5, Still Alive

I'm still alive. Here's some work I've been hacking away at slowly.

Here We Are

Ok. So its been about a month and a half since I posted. Wow. I've been busy with a new job and getting my life together. I know. No excuses.

I've been tinkering away with a few things here and there. Trying to get my mind organized basically. Here's some a character that I've been working on for a while. I'm doing 1 more color test and then I'll be able to post a color test sheet of the character to the blog.

Until next time (hopefully not another month), keep on drawing and painting!

Practicing Scenery

So I'm trying to figure things out. What my strengths and weaknesses are. Mostly focusing on trying to strengthen my weaknesses at the moment. And I've boiled it down to the fact that I need to get better at creating and drawing/painting scenery. Landscapes, Cityscapes, interior settings, and what have you. As of now I've completed just a few sketches of some outdoor settings, pictures that I found on the internet. After a few of these I'm going to start painting 1 or 2 of them because I certainly need some practice in that as well. I found for me that doing a bunch of gesture sketches of the human figure helped me understand the human figure a bit, and I tried to apply it in a sense to drawing scenery. I haven't gotten into the full gesture drawing, maybe I won't i don't know yet, but doing smaller sketches that include detail but not all of the tiny details helps to at least get a feel and understanding of how scenery is made up. Below are the rest of the sketches I have so far.