Note for Life Drawing session participants, Seattle area

I had a great time at Life Drawing this morning at the UW.

During the break, our model courteously offered his business cards to introduce himself to any other drawing session participants in the room.

He's a great character model, and I thot I'd put my artwork up here and say, Give Bob some work.

Roberttheredhorse@hotmail.net is his email if you want to contact him re modeling.

Monster a Day 20 -- Death of Vision

It steals your eyes away.   It doesn't mean any harm, that's just what it does.

Started this while waiting for Life drawing to start, and finished it later at home, watching a CSI: Las Vegas rerun.  Don't know why it has bird claws but bat wings.  

Monster a Day 19 -- skull fly

I've spent the day laboring to pack up our too-many books (so the contractors can get at the walls) and raking leaves (so they can carry material up the stairs) and clean the garage (so there's somewhere to carry it from) and this little fellow was hacked up during a late afternoon break.   The little maggot looks so happy... :)

On the plus side, while packing I ran into a book of concept art from Doom 3 (?) (quite inspiring).  Also the Disc world children's book, "Where's my Cow?"(a bit less so.)  Seems like creatives who are motivated to work on a project "BECAUSE IT'S COOL!!!" (and also paid) will have a heaping advantage over those artists working primarily to be paid, and/or because somebody else will like it, and/or because somebody else ought to like it.  More reason to work on work that inspires you.

Artists working on projects because its cool (!!!) but not getting paid, they tend to starve to death.  Hard to do much work after that.

Monster a Day, 18 -- Leathery-Winged Pit Spawn

Again, this started with reference photo of an environment -- a ruined castle wall -- and the critter grew out of the environment.  For me the interesting part was figuring out the foreshortening on the near wing wrist.

Once again, a smidgeon of background forces choice about value into play, making for a more interesting drawing.

I'm having some trouble with Facebook today and don't know if/when a link will get up on my wall there.  Oh FB, why so tedious?

Monster a Day 17 -- Alligator Pig

I started out drawing a picture of an empty landscape and put a monster in it, which turned out to be a Sumatran Alligator Pig.  This is extremely odd, since the landscape was from somewhere in South America, or perhaps Macedonia.  (As a survivor of the US educational system, my knowledge of the world outside of Real Murka is allowed to be a bit shaky.)

I've drawn worse, lately.  Wound up getting an anatomy book out to see how that foreleg moved forward around the neck, maybe some remedial quadruped practice is required...

Dang, that head should be larger.

Monster a Day 16 -- teh Teeny Tiny Harpy

Oh look, it's 6:10 pm.  This is a harbinger of things to come, a week of contractors and me working on my laptop in coffee shops and last minute posts to maintain the daily ritual I set for myself, monster art that goes up online when all my local friends are driving home for the night.  Also last-minute quests for doorknobs and drawer pulls.  Ah well, so it goes.

Actually, I'm kinda curious what kind of monsters and sketches get drawn in coffee shops.  As someone who's spent a lot of time tied to my studio set up, I'm easily amused by the outside world.

Bluegrass Magic Dragon

Behold, a full-color dragon logo I painted in Photoshop for Brennan Moody who heads up a Magic (tm) players' group called Bluegrass Magic, out in Louisville, KY. The basic drawing was done back in 2006 and finished as a piece of b&w line art.  Last month he contacted me looking for a color version and I went back to the original pencil sketch to produce this piece.

Thing is, I'm a terrible Luddite and this is a digital painting.  Hokey smokes, it's a digital painting.  Digital!  Gadzooks!

I've got a few words and pictures about the process of translating this little guy from line art to painting here, on my site.