This Slide of Winter

So, now we are mostly settled into our German apartment. And it's winter. The dead of winter. Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE snow, but that doesn't mean I love dark cold winter. Thankfully Germany gets it's share of snow, though there was a space of a good 3 weeks here where there wasn't any, just the gray and bone-chilling-damp day in and day out. Each day I walked by twisty brambles and craggy ancient trees covered in dark moss, the whole palette quite drab. It was monotonous in a way, yet fascinating in another, as there was (and still is) a sense of newness about even the smallest things here, like the dark twisting vegetation.

"This Slide of Winter" was inspired by an old German playground slide that I pass every day on our street. The slide is located in a little "garden" plot surrounded by gnarled old trees and underbrush, overgrown from winter disuse. The slide fascinated me, something about the distinct design reminded me of a archway or doorway. Combine this with my longing for beautiful fluffy white snow and you have the seed for this image...

This Slide of Winter

This Slide of Winter: Detail of Children

Dragon Blossom

It's been a while and I have a new personal piece to share! This one's entitled "Dragon Blossom." It was inspired the beautiful flowering spring trees around my neighborhood a few weeks back and also by the Northern California Cherry Blossom festival, which I attended while on vacation in the San Francisco recently. (Note: the writing on the scroll is completely made-up -I thought it a better solution than trying to blindly cobble together Japanese characters.)

Dragon Blossom

 

Details:
 

Moss Dragon - Final =)

After many many many hours more of work and re-envisioning... Two months "late" but who's counting? (I had my wedding in-between start and finish!)...I've arrived at a final painting of the Moss Dragon piece.

I love how closely it matches my original vision: warm morning sunlight, a cute little Irish gal, and dragon that looks so happy I can hear it purring. =) =) =)

Huge 'thank-yous' to my critique buddy illustrators, especially Mike Sass for his awesome paint-over toward the end!

Moss Dragon - WIP3

Made some more good progress on the 'Moss Dragon' piece today. I got a number of good critiques from my wave group yesterday evening. I found Cynthia's suggestion to go more "wide-angle" with the forest background especially helpful.

Also, trying to make the greens work in a more harmonious manner. I darkened and desaturated the background, shifting the hue, and adding bits of red-ish tint here and there. I do want this to be a primarily green piece, but I don't want it to feel like a war between greens! =P

Moss Dragon - Sketch & Color Rough

Trying to get better about posting updates as-I-go for pieces (when I can). Today I started a new personal piece. The idea is an ancient moss-covered well in a magical forest. In this well lives a friendly "moss dragon" who enjoys sunning himself and having his chin scratched. =)

I've been listening to the Princess Mononoke soundtrack as I was working today ;)

The Deeper Darkness - Book Cover

I'm currently working on the second wrap format book cover for K.E. Stapylton's Prism series (YA fantasy). It's great to be working with Kareyn again and I'm quite excited about how this one is coming along!

Kareyn's blog: http://kestapylton.blogspot.com/

Terror of Prism Fading site: http://www.theterrorofprismfading.com


The sketches so-far:

The Hare King!

New personal artwork! I've been working hard lately to rearrange my time and schedule so that I can put more energy toward personal pieces. This is the first piece to come out of such efforts.

The concept came from one of my mid-morning sketchbook brainstorms over jasmine-green tea. It was the glimpse of a young boy standing in a circle of snow hares, being crowned their king. Like many of my self-motivated pieces, the image did not need to arise from a full understanding of an entire story, but rather came from trying to fully envision and illustrate the scene I had snared in my mind's eye. I'm still having fun imagining the story behind the scene...

A Hint of Magic - Cover WIP 5

The "almost done" for A Hint of Magic. =)

Mother Goose and Steph Portrait

First up. I just started another lovely book cover for Kalliope Audiobooks. This is for the audiobook version of The Mother Goose in Prose by L. Frank Baum. The story I chose for the cover is "Little Bo-Peep."







Also onto the next character portrait for Tom Tancin's Time Warriors series:

Time Warriors 1: Final Cover

Just wrapped up the Time Warriors: Induction (TW1) cover! It has been added to my site, in both the gallery and shop. =)

Time Warriors 1: Painting WIP

Much more work on the Time Warriors: Induction cover... Among other things, I decided that the water snake needed more visual interest.

(Why does it not surprise me that this, my 111th blog post, falls on November 11th?)

Time Warriors 3 Cover

An update! I've been working on the cover of Time Warriors: Division (TW 3) for author Tom Tancin (his site: Destifire Books). Today I was working specifically with the background layer, cleaning things up, smoothing, giving more form and shadow to the shapes. It's been a bit of a challenge painting a "newly built" sphinx in ancient Egypt, as my time machine is broken so I can't quite get the reference photos I want. ;)

In other news, I was so super psyched to learn of Penny Arcade's "Photoshop Hero" t-shirt. Only to find that they are out of mediums in their girly sizes! Gah! They say it'll be a couple of weeks before they get 'em back in stock.

Fox Pirates and Post 80

My 80th post wow! It's been practically a month since I last posted too... er. What can I say? I've been super busy with a variety of projects. Below is the progress for one I'm currently working on. Besides other people's stuff, I'm again stirring the waters of the River of Dreams. I'd like to have it in submittable from for the Red Cygnet Press contest (ie December 31).

Fireborn Cover Progress

Further work on the girl's hands and such. Also, I did a page of potential title text choices.

Lachlei Final

Just tweaking a bit more. This is 99.9% done now, I swear!

Fireborn

Still far to go on the main girl. I do think it is starting to get somewhere though...

Lachlei Getting Closer to Done

This is nearing the finish line. In the past couple of days I've done a considerable amount of tweaking of the composition, as well as the positioning and poses of the wolves. I've also done a bit of selective blurring, as I wanted a greater sense of motion.

Lachlei Painting

I think I'm finally starting to get the Yeth to work. The initial sketches for most of them were far too stiff and as this is supposed to be an action scene that had to change. Still a way to go yet... but after many many hours and switching from ArtRage to Painter and back to Photoshop, I'm ready to give this a rest for a day or two.

Skyscape and L-24

Been working on some G-14 classified (or maybe L-24?) artwork. Yep, my children's book. I finally decided to dust off the book dummy and get those remaining two finished "sample" paintings done. I spent a good deal of yesterday and today paining and repainting and re-repainting a certain 'scape of ocean and clouds. Urrggggg! I now have the utmost respect for those artists who are good at such things. I do think I've found a solution to my problem though, but it calls for one killer skyscape.

Art Rage and The Key

So I discovered a really nifty new computer paint program... It's called Art Rage. One of my favorited artists on CG Portfolios had updated with a new image and listed this little program as one of the softwares. I liked the effect so I googled it. After playing with the free version for a few hours I bought the paid version. This $20 program it has Photoshop and Painter beat for oil painting on the computer. There is such a wonderfully visceral feeling of paint about it. Not to mention it is fast, has a nice interface, and even lets you tack reference images up along the side. And the tool shortcuts are all numbers! (Something I'd wished for in both Photoshop and Painter for years). Below is the product of my playing around with Art Rage 2 for a couple of hours this morning. I love the oil painted look.



I did indeed see Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix in IMAX. It was almost too big. I think part of the problem is that the seats we got were far to low. If you ever go to an IMAX the highest middle seats are best! I have mixed feelings about the film itself: I loved the acting, the effects, the direction, but I hated the way they left so very much out. To say they cut out the plot by 1/2 is being generous... It was also very choppy feeling in parts, like they'd tried so hard to include certain things that they only showed a few seconds of certain scenes, giving the movie itself a trailer-like feel (complete with one-liners) that was unsatisfying. Fun to watch, but certainly not my favorite Potter movie. All four that came before this were better by far. But what was I expecting when the longest book is made into the shortest movie?