I had a lot of fun with this piece, which was commissioned by a friend of mine.
Some of you may remember the Art Order challenge about the Bromide race. Well, I've actually had a bit of free time lately and I started working on a color illustration based on the initial graphite sketch, which can be found here. I'm using mainly gouache with a bit of watercolor on hot pressed watercolor paper.
I'm only working on this in between other obligations, so progress is slow. I hope to have this completed before the deadline of the "Best of Art Order" book submission deadline in January. Read more about that here.
I'll have some prints and several originals for sale. If you are looking for a unique gift, this is a great opportunity to get some reasonably priced art. If you don't live in the Atlanta area and are interested in purchasing prints, visit my Etsy shop.
Check out some prints that I have listed for sale on eBay.
A sample from the sketchbook.
This guy is my entry for the Catastrophic Earthquake Dragon challenge on Art Order. Check out what's happening on the blog here.
I did this sketch a while ago to practice for a quick sketch contest. As the title states, it took 16 minutes for this guy.
Below is the progress so far. I still need to punch up the highlights a bit and define some areas. His hair and eyebrow are not completed, yet. I've been contemplating taking this into Photoshop and combining some digital elements. Using digital and traditional media together is very interesting and I haven't quite been able to mesh the two in a satisfactory manner. Perhaps it will work well for him.
I got a bit ahead of myself and started coloring it before I scanned the line work. My under paintings are usually really bight and obnoxious colors, so I figured I would spare the wizard pirate the embarrassment of having a bright neon yellow head in public. His face has been grayed out to preserve some dignity.
Art Order had us illustrating an "Unfamiliar Familiar" this week. Of course, I couldn't decide on just one animal and why should I when I can combine several different ones into one awesome Chimera Familiar? Well, that's exactly what I did and I think he could be quite useful in many situations. He has all the attributes of the normal familiars (cat, raven, snake, etc.) but with their powers combined (just like Captain Planet) he becomes a creature capable of much greater power than that of the individual familiars (but without a mullet).
Also, summer is fast approaching and that means convention time! I'll be listing any conventions that I will be attending on the right side bar of this blog. The first one is Heroes Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina from June 19 - 21.
The concept behind this critter is that he is a weapon and armor eating beast. These guys roam around searching for unsuspecting humans that just happen to carry their favorite food - metal. They use their long frontal dexterous appendages to seek out and procure edible material. Because of their size and strength, fighting back proves futile and the unfortunate humans are robbed of all armor and weapons. The beasts eat the objects, metabolizing the metal, which is then secreted as alloys to form a nearly impenetrable exoskeleton.