A Message for the Bloody Gate

I know that it has been a while since my last post, but freelance work and some small personal pieces for my upcoming convention C2E2 have gotten in the way of me posting more updates to my big Game of Thrones painting.  I am still working on preliminary  designs and sketches and now that the freelance work is out of the way I will have more time to work on it and post updates to it so stay tuned.  In the meantime here is smaller and less ambitious Game of Thrones painting of mine, a painting of everyones least talked about great house House Arryn.  Stay tuned for some more Game of Thrones inspired work, including updates to my huge Daenerys painting.

Taking that next big step

     So with the beginning of the new year and everyone talking about their goals and plans for 2015 I thought I too share what some of my big plans are for 2015.  For the past two years running I have started my new year with an ambitious painting that is meant to set the stage for my work for the rest of the year.  In the fall I look back on my work and I look at all of the things that I want to improve and work on for the following year and decide to tackle them all in one large ambitious work of art.  The first year I did this I wanted to work on something grand and epic, an epic fantasy landscape.  I wanted to throw everything I could possibly throw into this painting, I wanted to work on my architecture so medieval fantasy castle check, I wanted to work on my landscapes so I added mountains, grassy plains, rivers, and waterfalls check,  I wanted to work on depth, atmosphere, detail and overall rendering.  It seemed like a daunting task but with some perseverance and almost two months of hard work I ended up with this.

    This at the time I finished it, it became the best painting in my portfolio, got me my first professional illustration work and helped me take that next major step in my artistic development.  This past year I had some portfolio reviews with two art directors that I really wanted to work with, one told me that they thought that my figurative work was my strongest and that I should focus on that, the other told me that they thought that my landscape work was my strongest and that I should focus on that.  I got two very different reviews from two companies that I both want to work for!  It was then that I decided to please them both by painting a figurative landscape painting, taking the critiques I received and turn them into one grand painting.  I wanted to take everything that I learned from my last epic landscape, improve the things that I thought needed and I wanted to improve while also adding figures to the mix.  To give myself an even bigger challenge I noticed that my portfolio had no animals or monsters so I added some into the final painting.  I wanted to work on my overall detailing, keeping the foreground elements super detailed to help push them foreword from the background.  After a few months of work on and off I ended up with this

    This painting got me even more work and helped set the stage for even more better work throughout the year.  So this year I want to push myself even further and harder, the goals of this years painting is going to be a large multi-figure oil painting.  I really want to start getting into working on and with book covers, so one of my main focuses will be on my storytelling and narrative.  The idea for this painting is going to be a massive multi-figure scene from one of my favorite book series "A Song of Ice and Fire" and for all of you non book readers also known as the hit HBO show Game of Thrones.  At times in the past I have taken shortcuts the "I will make it up as a go along" routine that is almost always to the detriment of the final painting.  With the an ambitious piece like I am planning and with all of the figures and dragons (yes there will absolutely be dragons) the only way to do this is with a lot of planning, research and studies, studies and reference for every aspect of the piece.  I thought to make this even more interesting I am going to post all of my reference, all of my studies so you watching at home can follow me from start to finish as I work on my painting "Daenerys Targaryen accepting the surrender of the slave families of Meereen" 

The Conjuring

So I am in the final stretch of getting everything ready for Illuxcon in 2.5 weeks and I though it would be cool to show a little bit of my process on how I completed this most recent oil painting.  This was a piece that I have been working on and off on since May, it is my first oil painting in about 9 months or so, I have to say it felt great to getting back to painting in oil and smelling all of those wonderful toxic fumes, I had a lot less fun constantly picking out dust and hair from my image as I was working on it, that is probably at the top of my list of things that I hate most about painting traditionally, (and the fact that you cannot use adjustment layers!) 
At my previous job working in the mail room of a law office I had lots and lots of down time either during my hour lunch or towards the end of my shift (I worked closing shift) and I would spend that time drawing in my sketchbook.  I have almost an entire sketchbook of drawings from while I was at my day job, many were pieces that I wanted to elaborate further and turn into finished pieces.
In May I finally got around to scanning the images into my computer and begin turning some of the sketches into finished pieces and 1 small sketch/doodle caught my eye, I thought there was something interesting in the sketch that made me want to develop the image further.  This is my initial sketch from my sketchbook.

I then started to gather reference and refining my drawing, the initial inspiration for this piece was a sample Magic the Gathering card, (I am a huge fan of the game and have always wanted to work for Wizards of the Coast illustrating cards for Magic).  I was imagining a Blue creature or spell, that the character is drawing energy to cast powerful magic or sorcery.  With that idea I went about expanding the image, making the horns more graphic and ornate and adding a torso and hands so my evil sorceress isnt just standing there with a scowl on her face, that she was actually doing something. 

I made this rough line drawing in Photoshop, paying extra close attention to the face and hands.  In this stage I wanted to get all of the major forms and proportions in place.  I then printed this out on my 13X19 printer and printed it on newsprint, I then used a light box to transfer the line drawing onto bristol paper so I could render the final drawing.  I do it this way so I can make changes to the drawing without the lines from the printed image getting in my way, there is nothing worse than being half way though a finished drawing realizing you want to make a change to the drawing but realizing you cannot because you are drawing on top of your printed line drawing.

After hours and hours of drawing (and even more hours) I finished my drawing and scanned it back into the computer and began playing around with color and getting a color under painting.  I kept it really lose, I used all multiply layers and never painted on top of my drawing so the pencil lines stayed visible through or on top of the color under painting.

After I was happy with the colors I then had my image printed out onto watercolor paper from a local printer.  I then mounted the drawing onto a piece of hardboard or masonite using matte medium.  I then coated the top of the piece with matte medium and I began to render the final image with oil paint.  And after several weeks and some long hours painting I got to my final image here

Malmar the Apocryphal

So I realized I completely forgot to post this up on my blog, here is a card art I did for Romance of the Nine Empires expansion pack, Malmar the Apocryphal.  I can say I had a total blast painting the frosted/foggy window in the back.  This is my first interior piece and I have to say I am really happy with how it turned out.

A Soul of Fire

For months now I have been doing tons of sketches in my sketchbook while on my lunch break at work and have been meaning to turn some of them into some finished paintings.  This started as a fun little sketch and I have been wanting to flesh it out for a while now.  I dont have a lot experience painting monsters and it is something that I plan on working on, so plan on seeing a lot more monsters from me.

A Coming Storm

So this painting is finally finished.  I feel that I took a major step forward with this piece.  Looking back at my portfolio one the the glaring things that I noticed is that I have way to many saturated colors in my paintings, there is subtly to my color pallets.  With this painting I was determined to keep my colors under control and keep the majority of the pallet in the green and violet range.  Another major focus of this painting was to work on my rendering and detail,  I wanted this painting to have tons detail on the rocks, wall, the figures, and the wolves.  The goal going into this painting was to do something ambitious that focused on everything; landscapes, architecture, figures, detail, animals, and atmosphere and I think I accomplished it.  Now I have to come up with an ever better painting next, no pressure....

Progress

So I have been chugging along working on this new painting and thought I would post a progress shot of it so far.  I feel I still have a long ways to go, I dont think there is any part of the painting that I would call finish; though that being said when I looked at my color study I am really surprised how far it has come so far.  Looking forward to getting this piece finished and to start working on some more ideas that I have for paintings.