1 Hour study Talia

I feel like I could've done a better job all around if I had spent more time rendering the painting as a whole instead of focusing on specific areas like the face, hair and arms. Oh well will keep that in mind for the next one.

Still life study 2

This one was quite a challenge for me, especially the bottle and the shape of the spoon head. I had to call it quits though and move on to something else because I was spending too much time rendering again. I would've liked to finish the bottle but maybe someday I'll come back to it :) (yeah, right).

Still Life Study

Well even though I'm in my 30's, live with my Dad and just got my hours at the only job I have cut in half basically I still have the ambition to make (and hopefully get better at) art. (Oh and did I forget to mention that my car just died).
 I've wanted a job in art ever since I can remember looking in awe at the way comic book artists like Jim Lee made the super heroes pop out of the page. It was so epic that ever since then I've wanted to create art like that. I was on that road until I got to be about 19 and then decided to lose about 10 years of artistic growth to substance abuse. So now I feel like I'm in a race with myself to get better to the point where I'm at a professional level and can feel somewhat confident in putting together a portfolio.
 I've been really studying hard the past two and a half months, since I can't afford school I'm re-teaching myself the fundamentals of drawing. Waking up an hour earlier on days before work and trying to use any free time for studies. I cannot thank enough Matt Kohr of ctrl-paint.com and David Rapoza & Dan Warren from the Crimson Daggers site, I just wish I had found out about them before they basically stopped doing the Bloodsports challenges.
  Anyway, I'm trying to make a schedule for myself like: 1-2 hours in the morning for anatomy study (Andrew Loomis), 2 hour still life painting, 1-2 hour life drawing and 1-2 hours of practicing to movie stills for lighting and color, etc. I am more focused now than I've ever been and a lot of it is out of a necessity for paid work.

Medieval Helm digital study

Hello all, I've been very focused the last couple of months on my fundamental drawing and painting skills, anatomy, values, compositions, etc. This is a medieval brass helm, I got my reference from a picture on the website http://www.raisonsbrassband.com . The site is great for armor reference and I may buy an item or two if I ever get some money. I know that the colors aren't quite right for brass but I ended up liking it this way so I left it.

Switching gears back to fantasy illustration.

Phosphorescent stone drake part 1

This is just my basic pencil sketch drawn on Canson illustration board.  The drake is a rare mount from the World of Warcraft and I took the original image from a stock photo from the actual game. I think that what this will end up being is practice for a larger 24"x36" masonite oil painting when the time comes. But for this one I feel like what's drawn here should give me enough to work with for laying down a acrylic underpainting and then the oils on top.

This is showing the quick underpainting that I did with an acrylic burnt sienna, I skipped over adding a lot of the details in this step because I have reference and believe that this should be enough to go by for when I paint in the oils.

Here is a quick pic I took at the start of the oil painting process. This is the first time I've ever painted with oil on an illustration board and only the second dragon I've ever made so it should be quite the learning experience. I'm finding that because I'm using Liquin as my medium (so the paint will dry quicker) it's causing the paint to be thinner thus allowing me to paint in thin layers. I'm guessing that I'll try and get most of the base colors down and then once it's dry I'll go over it again with more details.

Honestly, I would consider this to be about 65% finished, there's a lot more detail that I'd like to add in. In saying that, now that I have most of the oils down I'm going back through parts that I might want to change like making the jaw a bit bigger, adjusting some of the dark and light colors and then going over parts that I feel need more detail.  I've been thinking about if I want to put a background in. I may even import this into Photoshop for that and for some finishing touches.

How "Not To" avoid overcrowding the composition~Violet Forest~ Acrylic on canvas

This image looks a little too sharp for my taste and there's too much light hitting the lower left hand corner of the canvas. I may upload a better image because I've been quite interested in the photography of my paintings lately. Shot with my new Canon T3i, love it but theres a lot to learn about using a D-SLR.

The Cobalt Trees~24" x 48" Acrylic on canvas

This was shot with my new Canon DSLR camera. Before I upgraded to the 18 megapixel model.

Another misty blue forest~18" x 24" Acrylic on canvas

Working in the influence of Alan Kingwell~ 10" x 20" Oils on canvas

Twinergy (thumbnail painting) Oil on canvas 8" x 10"

I got this idea from running around in the World of Warcraft, not that it really has anything to do with the game. I was basically just trying to capture the essence of some of the zones. They have an amazing amount of beautiful lands to explore in WoW and after playing off and on for the past 6 years I'm surprised that I haven't done a lot more, there's certainly plenty of inspiration there.
 Anyway, this is the first version of the larger painting I'm working on now.Basically a thumbnail painting which now I'm glad I made because it's given me ideas of what to put into the bigger piece. It's also given me a chance to put some rocks into my work, something that was previously non-existent. I'm thinking of some large crystals (WoW) and maybe more energy floating around. We'll see.