Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Website now live!

Hey everyone, the past month has been a really crazy ride.  First I have to say thank you to everyone who backed and shared my kickstarter, it was fully funded on the first day and ended up receiving more than double what I was initially hoping or asking for.  If that wasnt enough the very day the kickstarter ended I traveled to Chicago for C2E2.

Last year C2E2 was my very first convention ever and I had big hopes for an even better performance for year number two.  What I wasnt expecting was just how good of a show I was going to have.  With my new and improved booth setup I more than doubled my sales from last year.  Not only that but my Saturday alone I earned more in sales than I did in the entire weekend last year!

After returning home from Chicago I began packaging and shipping all of the backer rewards from the Kickstarter.  I also in that timeframe attended another show, Supermegafest in Marlborough Mass and had yet another successful weekend (man am I on a roll).

If that is not enough in between C2E2, packaging rewards, and attending Supermegafest I also completed my very first album cover.  The cover is for a band called Dungeon Brothers.  While you are gawking at the cover be sure to check out their album here http://dungeonbrothers.bandcamp.com

The last bit of news (and as the title suggests) is that I have finally gotten around to building my website.  I can officially say that Najarianart.com  is now live.  This is now the place to go to check out my portfolio, check out what original paintings and or drawings I have available for purchase and where to see what upcoming shows I will be attending.

Please check out the site to see all of the latest news, new work and to even buy prints online!

2016 has be off to a great start so far and it is my hope that it continues to go well.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Conjuring New Worlds Kickstarter



Hey everyone, after a super busy week last week I finally have the time to share/post that I am currently running a kickstarter of my work.  There are prints, gaming playmats, limited edition prints an original art from my various fantasy illustrations available to backers.  the money raised from this campaign will go directly to funding and developing new personal work, telling new stories and conjuring new worlds.  Check out the video and check out the link to the campaign here to see all of the goodies and see what is available for backes.

Monday, February 15, 2016

New Work

Here are two new paintings that I have been working on for the last month or two.  I am really happy how they both came out and I am already working on ideas for future pieces.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Forest Goddess

Finally gotten back into oil painting after a several month hiatus.  this is also a return to some themes and stylistic choices that I was developing and exploring a little over a year ago and I am excited to develop them further.  This painting is 16X20 oil on board.  Stay tuned for more updates on my work in the coming weeks.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

The Mighty Thor

This has been an idea that has been kicking around in my head for several months and I finally had some time to work on it.  I had an absolute blast painting in the clouds.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

New Work

As always I am really bad at updating this as often as I should, a lot has happened since my last post.  I attended my first GenCon as both an attendee and as an exhibitor in the art show.  I had a ton of fun catching up with art friends from past shows and workshops, finally got to meet some people that I only new online and also got to meet and hang out with some very cool new people. The show was absolutely amazing!  I sold a lot of prints...I mean A. Lot. of them, talked with some new publishers about future work, I won an award!!!! and I also sold an original piece of art.  The plan right now is to try and see what other shows and conventions I can do.  After I came home from GenCon I was really excited to get back to work with my newfound confidence and motivation and I painted these two new portfolio pieces.  Now that these are done I looking to get back to doing some more oil paintings and traditional stuff.  I you are interested in following my sketches work in progress and other whatnots the best place to follow me is my instagram here instagram.com/stephennajarian/ and my art page here facebook.com/Stephen.Najarian.Illustration

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Intimidation Tactic


So I realized that my L5R card was released and I can finally show it!  This is my first card and first time working on L5R, I can say I had a blast working on it and I think it is safe to say that you can be on the look out for many more cards from me in the future.

I though to commemorate my first card on the set I would share my process on how I worked on the painting (yes I actually remembered process shots yay!)


Okay first off here is the brief I got for my assignment

A very big young Crab Clan samurai stands intimidatingly with a huge ax chest puffed out as he stands in front of his much older shorter smaller thinner but wise old Crab general who’s sent him ahead of him on the castle bridge. 

Okay so now that I have my prompt I started coming up with an image in my head of what is happening in the scene.  Usually I will try to do a couple different ideas and send in about 3 sketches for each assignment but because the prompt was so straight forward (there are only so many ways you can depict that particular scene) I just went ahead with the one sketch.  When I do my sketches I make sure the document I am working on is the size requested for the card, nothing looks more unprofessional then submitting work that does not fit the dimensions requested.  After I got the figures and composition placed I added some color so my Art Director will have an idea of what I am looking to do for the final, also it gives me a great reference point to work from as I work on the final, to make sure I do not change things too much from the approved sketch.

I am always super nervous that the Art Director will not understand/see what I am trying to do I also write in a description of what I am doing/planning on doing in the painting 

the main figure arrogantly standing in front holding his axe over his shoulder, ready to kick some ass with the general behind watching.  Everything is mostly in shadow with just the light hitting the figures down to their torso.  they are on the bridge and you can see the bridge span overhead.  there is smoke in the background (laying siege to a castle maybe?) and smoke and embers from a fire flying around in the foreground.  I am going to keep the armor of the young samurai plain and simple as opposed to richly designed and embroidered armor of the general.

After getting a little bit of feedback from my art director, he asked for me to place the helmet of the foreground figure in his left arm it is time to start the final.

I did some research on Samurai armor and right on top of my sketch I drew out the design of the armor.  I also shot some reference of me arrogantly holding a broom (I was very intimidating looking) and pulling out a sword for the general so I had good reference for the hands and a basis to work on for the faces.  Here you can also see I began to lay in the base colors on the two figures.

I spent most of my time here working on the foreground figure, at this point I am working on a layer on top of the drawing painting in the armor.  I was also tweaking the colors of the image, I was really looking for a warm light/cool shadow so I lowered the temperature of the shadows to a more purplish blue as opposed to a warmer looking teal color from the sketch.

Here I am finishing off the armor on the foreground figure and beginning to work more on the background general, I changed the shape of the axe, I wasnt liking how it was looking so I changed the design to a more traditional looking axe.
Here I am starting to render the General and I also finished painting the axe

Here I started working on the background, I wanted you to see there was an army back there but I also wanted them obscured by the smoke/fog so your eye stayed focused on the main figures.  Blending between the organic shapes of the smoke and the figures was more challenging than I thought.  Also this is where I realized the large bridge spans from the sketch were not going to work so I changed it to a more simple wooden stakes and rope.  I made some final adjustments on the main figure, I fixed the swords (I had the curve backwards) and I also finally gave up on the tassels on the breastplate...I felt they looked too much like, lets be honest....nipples.  Not the look I was going for so they had to go

Remember I said I was having trouble with the figures in the background?  I decided I did not like what I was doing so I erased them out and started over.  I also did another color adjust to get the colors more where I wanted them.

Here I added the army in the background and did some final color tweaks (have you guessed that I love color adjustments yet?) and sent this off to my AD

 I got an e-mail back from him asking me to tweak the colors on the figures, their overall color was not looking like the color associated with that particular clan/army, I did a few adjustments and sent this off.

If you made it to the end of this congratulations, you have an attention span!  I hope this was in some way interesting/helpful and I will see about doing more of these in the future.