Here's a little digital painting I did a couple of weeks ago based on Simon's robot character design.
I did this in about two hours in Corel Painter. Hope you like it!
I did this in about two hours in Corel Painter. Hope you like it!
Friday, March 09, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Super Simon Sunday: Robots & Ogres!
Its been quite some time since I posted any of Simon's work. For those of you who were wondering, "I wonder what Simon's been drawing lately?" Well, here are some recent drawings.
Friday, February 10, 2012
A New Magazine Cover Illustration
This month I was commissioned to do a cover for Mac Times magazine, McMaster University's Alumni Association magazine.
The client asked that I create something that would convey the idea of many generations of a family being McMaster graduates. They mentioned that a "family tree" of graduates was something they'd like to suggest... so here are a couple of thumbnail concepts I came up with based on that theme.
They liked the one on the left.
One sunny Sunday last autumn I had taken a bunch of photos while out walking the dog over at the golf course, and these photos served as inspiration and visual reference for the look I had in mind for this illustration.
I really wanted to try to get a bit of that gorgeous Bernie Fuchs "sunlight filtered through leaves' quality in this illustration. When I Google Image Searched Bernie Fuchs, this image came up.
Perfect.
I began roughly painting the base colours in Corel Painter. I used the Oil Pastel tool to lay in the beginning of my colour scheme.
Here's how it looked after I'd 'painted' in the base colours, building up some tonal contrast.
Next I began adding filtered light (à la Bernie Fuchs)...
... and textured the whole thing with one of my favourite Painter tools; the Scratchboard Rake.
Final touch: some "lens flare" effect (although NOT using an actual Effects filter - just oil pastel).
Here's the graduation cap (or "mortar board") painted in a separate file.
The finished piece, after dragging in, resizing and rotating many copies of the mortar board.
Once the magazine is printed, I'll add a scan of the finished piece with text in place!
You can see more of my editorial art here
and some of the other magazine covers I've done are here
The client asked that I create something that would convey the idea of many generations of a family being McMaster graduates. They mentioned that a "family tree" of graduates was something they'd like to suggest... so here are a couple of thumbnail concepts I came up with based on that theme.
They liked the one on the left.
One sunny Sunday last autumn I had taken a bunch of photos while out walking the dog over at the golf course, and these photos served as inspiration and visual reference for the look I had in mind for this illustration.
Perfect.
Here's how it looked after I'd 'painted' in the base colours, building up some tonal contrast.
Next I began adding filtered light (à la Bernie Fuchs)...
... and textured the whole thing with one of my favourite Painter tools; the Scratchboard Rake.
Final touch: some "lens flare" effect (although NOT using an actual Effects filter - just oil pastel).
Here's the graduation cap (or "mortar board") painted in a separate file.
The finished piece, after dragging in, resizing and rotating many copies of the mortar board.
Once the magazine is printed, I'll add a scan of the finished piece with text in place!
Monday, August 08, 2011
Painting 'en plein air'
Last summer I went up to the LaCloche Mountains with some artist friends. We stayed in this little place called Whitefish Falls and spent a week painting 'en plein air.' Actually, my friends spent the week painting... I spent the week starting and abandoning paintings. By the last day I'd really produced almost nothing of value - and then I managed to squeak out these two small oil studies in one day.
They were done when our group went out to Willisville to paint on location. I was actually pretty happy with them and wished we were staying longer. It was my first time painting landscapes, first time painting with oils... and because of my schedule back home in the real world, that was it ...
... until last month, when we all went back to Whitefish Falls again! This time I was determined to sink my teeth into painting - inspired largely by the discovery of the work of Albert Pucci in a couple of old Grumbacher "How to Paint..." books I had found in a used bookstore earlier this summer (you can read about Albert Pucci on my other blog, Today's Inspiration). As well, I've been following the progress of a couple of friends, Michael Cole Manley and William Wray, who have been doing some fabulous, inspiring landscape paintings over the last couple of years.
Anyway, things started off quite well... on the first day I managed to get one painting done.
I spent about four hours on this, which was done mostly with palette knife, a technique I was really curious to try after reading the lessons in the Grumbacher books.
Day two (Tuesday) and I'm starting on my second painting, using a burnt umber ground like the one Pucci uses in one of his lessons. Initially I included the bass boat you see just beyond my artboard... but I was struggling with this piece, getting more and more frustrated. Ultimately, my friends advised me the boat was the problem. They said the painting needed a dose of "Boat-be-gone."
So I scraped it out and went with just the natural features in the scene. This was met with hearty approval from my ' painting advisory committee' and I have to agree. Sometimes you need to edit your scene or else, as our instructor Richard Edwards explained, you get a painting that actually has two or even three paintings crammed into it.
I passed this old rusted bulldozer every day on my way to get the morning paper at the variety store. Finally, on Wed. morning I went out at 6 AM and sat down to paint it in the rising sunlight. By 9 AM the light was gone so I planned to come back the following morning and finish it - but we had cloudy weather both Thursday & Friday morning. I hope to still go back in and work on this further. Interestingly, it was particularly well-received by a lot of the husbands of the women who were in the painting class!
This is a tough read, I know... its the view of an old abandoned hydro generating station built right into the cliffside on the opposite shore of a waterfall (which is not visible in this angle). The cliff is made of multi-coloured stone and part of the back interior wall of the station is exposed cliff face. Very cool, but probably looks very odd in my painting.
They were done when our group went out to Willisville to paint on location. I was actually pretty happy with them and wished we were staying longer. It was my first time painting landscapes, first time painting with oils... and because of my schedule back home in the real world, that was it ...
... until last month, when we all went back to Whitefish Falls again! This time I was determined to sink my teeth into painting - inspired largely by the discovery of the work of Albert Pucci in a couple of old Grumbacher "How to Paint..." books I had found in a used bookstore earlier this summer (you can read about Albert Pucci on my other blog, Today's Inspiration). As well, I've been following the progress of a couple of friends, Michael Cole Manley and William Wray, who have been doing some fabulous, inspiring landscape paintings over the last couple of years.
Anyway, things started off quite well... on the first day I managed to get one painting done.
I spent about four hours on this, which was done mostly with palette knife, a technique I was really curious to try after reading the lessons in the Grumbacher books.
Day two (Tuesday) and I'm starting on my second painting, using a burnt umber ground like the one Pucci uses in one of his lessons. Initially I included the bass boat you see just beyond my artboard... but I was struggling with this piece, getting more and more frustrated. Ultimately, my friends advised me the boat was the problem. They said the painting needed a dose of "Boat-be-gone."
So I scraped it out and went with just the natural features in the scene. This was met with hearty approval from my ' painting advisory committee' and I have to agree. Sometimes you need to edit your scene or else, as our instructor Richard Edwards explained, you get a painting that actually has two or even three paintings crammed into it.
I passed this old rusted bulldozer every day on my way to get the morning paper at the variety store. Finally, on Wed. morning I went out at 6 AM and sat down to paint it in the rising sunlight. By 9 AM the light was gone so I planned to come back the following morning and finish it - but we had cloudy weather both Thursday & Friday morning. I hope to still go back in and work on this further. Interestingly, it was particularly well-received by a lot of the husbands of the women who were in the painting class!
This is a tough read, I know... its the view of an old abandoned hydro generating station built right into the cliffside on the opposite shore of a waterfall (which is not visible in this angle). The cliff is made of multi-coloured stone and part of the back interior wall of the station is exposed cliff face. Very cool, but probably looks very odd in my painting.
We spent the morning on top of Willisville Mountain, which is to the left of this scene, picking wild blueberries. So I only had about an hour and a half to whip this up. Looking across toward the tiny hamlet of Willisville.
That was my last effort up in Whitfish Falls. The next day I drove to my friend Wade's family cottage, near Dwight, Ontario, on the Oxtongue River for our annual fishing derby. I painted the piece below over about three hours on the Saturday afternoon of that weekend.
Oh yeah, and I won the derby!
That was my last effort up in Whitfish Falls. The next day I drove to my friend Wade's family cottage, near Dwight, Ontario, on the Oxtongue River for our annual fishing derby. I painted the piece below over about three hours on the Saturday afternoon of that weekend.
Oh yeah, and I won the derby!
Friday, June 03, 2011
HBD to Me from Super Simon
June 1st was my 47th birthday. Super Simon presented me with this awesome birthday gift. Thanks Si!
I need to post more of Simon's recent work. Hope to do so soon!
I need to post more of Simon's recent work. Hope to do so soon!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
What IF...
What IF... popular video game concepts had existed as paperback novel adventure series back in the '50s and '60s? I've been intrigued by the illustration styles and the graphic design of that era for some time now. Intrigued enough to want to try my hand at creating some mock vintage paperback covers of my own! Participating in Illustration Friday gave me the perfect opportunity to have some fun exploring the possibilities.
Here's my concept for the Illustration Friday word "Dusty"...
... and "Surrender."
I was struggling to get GTA 4 star Nico Bellic to look right at that angle - so I built a model in Corel Poser to help me work up my initial sketch.
Now I'm working on the word "Reverse" (I know, I know, I'm, like, 3 weeks behind).
I've already got something in mind for the video game I'm going to mock up. I really want it to be a bit of an homage to the great Robert McGinnis' paperback covers...
... and that means spending some time doing some drawings of gorgeous ladies.
Oh, what a chore! ;^) For reference I used some old girlie magazines for these figure studies - just to - *ahem* - get the right period 'look', of course.
I'm really going to take my time on this one, so check back now and then - I'll be adding more drawings as I work my way through the development of this piece.
* More of my Illustration Friday pictures here.
Here's my concept for the Illustration Friday word "Dusty"...
... and "Surrender."
I was struggling to get GTA 4 star Nico Bellic to look right at that angle - so I built a model in Corel Poser to help me work up my initial sketch.
Now I'm working on the word "Reverse" (I know, I know, I'm, like, 3 weeks behind).
I've already got something in mind for the video game I'm going to mock up. I really want it to be a bit of an homage to the great Robert McGinnis' paperback covers...
... and that means spending some time doing some drawings of gorgeous ladies.
Oh, what a chore! ;^) For reference I used some old girlie magazines for these figure studies - just to - *ahem* - get the right period 'look', of course.
I'm really going to take my time on this one, so check back now and then - I'll be adding more drawings as I work my way through the development of this piece.
* More of my Illustration Friday pictures here.
Monday, January 31, 2011
IF "Chicken"
This time around the word for Illustration Friday was "Chicken." Since I've decided to build up portfolio of video game-related artwork I racked my brain trying to come up with something fun that involved chickens.
Simon reminded me of the chicken attack in Zelda. Perfect!
I remember watching the boys when they were young, playing Zelda - and how weird it was to see Link being chased around by a bunch of chickens. So here it is - my version of a Chicken Attack from Legend of Zelda!
More of my Illustration Friday images here.
Simon reminded me of the chicken attack in Zelda. Perfect!
I remember watching the boys when they were young, playing Zelda - and how weird it was to see Link being chased around by a bunch of chickens. So here it is - my version of a Chicken Attack from Legend of Zelda!
More of my Illustration Friday images here.
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