Keyword Sketch Cards

Some more keyword sketch cards (clockwise): unique, mermaid, Avalon, quilin, fertility, release, cat, fox, hope, spontaneity

Firefly Hunters

Firefly Hunters
Medium: Watercolors
Size: 15x20 inches
Prints and original painting available -here-

Cold Foggy and Wet

It's been cold, foggy, and wet lately. Yay, California Winter is finally underway. I woke up this morning to find the hills on the far side of the ravine adrift in a sea of mist. It had a bit of the feel of this painting, though perhaps more blue-greys for the live oaks and evergreens. The rain has been making it a bit more difficult to find the chances to spray fixative layers (since I like to leave the painting outside for about half an hour after spraying to let the fumes dissipate a bit). Making progress. Perhaps it can be finished by the end of this weekend?

Greeeeeeeeeeeens

Mmmm...lovely dark greens.

Firefly Hunters Sketches

A new piece that I'm ready to start painting tomorrow if I can drag myself to the desk to feel up for it. Sniffly with another cold. It's ready to go though, sketched out on the board. Some of the sketches that sparked this final form:

An extremely rough thumbnail scribble when I was brainstorming for "Breathe". This was a tiny composition idea. A coiled up dragon nestled in the hollow of the tree roots. It never took for "Breathe", but when I was flipping through my sketchbook a few days ago, it caught my eye again. I started to play with the dragon's shape and in particular that spiral that unfurls from its body.

As I sketched a more detailed dragon, the rest of it quickly started taking shape in my head. Ghostly shapes moving through the woods. Firefly Hunters. Some alternate titles: Ghosts, Silent Shadows, Ghost Shadows. I scribbled a new thumbnail as well, for a more horizontal composition.

After I had the composition decided, I started sketching a whole lot of foxes from various angles, with the plan being to scan these and then play around with size and position digitally.

A shadowy figure wanted to make an appearance in the distance as well. Sketched a few thumbnail possible poses for her.

Scan the disparate pieces, and fit everything into the initial thumbnail composition with layers, cutting, cropping, resizing, flipping.... Until I'm happy with where all the pieces are, and how it meshes into a whole. Then I print it out and transfer to the final sketch, redrawing and refining much of it in the process!

Some L5R Art

Found a bunch of these that I had forgotten to post when the product was released last year. Some Legend of Five Rings cards that I did a while back.

From the set Before the Dawn:

Wisdom of Fukurokujin

Blessing of Inari

I teased Jim Pinto, the art director on the project with this initial sketch for Inari instead, which in the initial art description was called "Fortune of Rice":

Spite of Ekibyogami

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From the set Empire at War:

Ride the Wave

Samurai Vessel

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From the set War of Honor

Wall of Air
The original watercolor paintings for all of these are available if you click on the images.

Wind Machine

Wind Machine
Size: 17x31 inches
Medium: Watercolors
Prints & Original Painting for sale -here-

Somewhere at the edge of the world, spinning out cloud wisps and phantom winds.

My favorite part of working on this one was doing the clouds and sky. First piece completed in 2012!!! Always feels odd to sign the new date at the beginning of the year. This piece fits in with an "Inner Workings" series theme that I have in mind to pursue with a few more paintings to come!

Wind Machine (painstakingly slow) Progress 2

Painstakingly slow, but progress is being made on this piece. The background is mostly done. I think that once the foreground is done, I'll spray it all with fixative and do a final wash over some parts to further tint sky and mountains. I wanted to keep the spray minimal over the foreground elements, because I've found it makes doing fine details harder, since the paint beads and sits on top of the more heavily sprayed areas.

Oh and yes, there's my -actual- teacup over there on the far left. I've pointed this out before, but since someone mentioned my paint-water-bowl-cup again last time, yes, there they are. Somehow I've landed on the exact same size and shape for both. But you know, I don't think I've quaffed from my paint-water cup in years now. What I'm usually more in danger of, is swirling my brush around in my tea instead, then uttering a few choice words that I have to cover Claireling's ears for (especially these days...she's turned into a little myna bird), and stomping to the kitchen to clean it out and refill.

Inklings 3 released!

Shipment of Inklings III finally arrived, and the book is on sale now, only from Shadowscapes. 8.5x8.5 inches, softcover, 58 pages of b&w ink artwork done over the past two years. Lots of drawings that have only been viewable in this blog, travel sketches, and keyword sketches. The book is $20.00. And as always a sketch option is available for an additional $15.00

Wind Machine Progress

Finally getting a chance to sit down and start this painting. Feels like it has been forever since I've done a full sized piece. I think end of October was the last major one I completed. This piece is 30x17 inches, the biggest that I've done in a while. I really need a bigger desk...working on something this large gets kinda awkward. There was an npr segment I was listening to the other day about a guy who was looking for the perfect couch. He spent 20 years with a ratty old so NOT-perfect couch simply because he was waiting to buy the one. Well, that's how I feel about my desk. One of these days I'll find it!

So far the cloud-swirls are emerging mostly as I have in mind. It's almost like painting abstractly though. If you look at the previous post I made with the sketch, I only had very simple and light lines marked for some basic cloud shapes. The rest is coming out as I paint, pulling out the irregularities of the washes and emphasizing certain elements.

At a stopping place for tonight because I intend to spray some fixative tomorrow morning and try to get the sky colors even darker. Don't want to spray tonight and have the fumes stinking up my office over-night. I've learned a bit from my experiments with fixative layers in previous paintings these past few months, so I've cut out a very rough mask from some scrap pieces of paper that I lay over the bottom unpainted areas. I didn't feel up to cutting out all the branches and arms of the windmills in a mask, so for the main bulge of the machine/tree, I just loosely taped a plastic bag so that there would be a softened border for the masked area.