I've recently started playing D&D again after a 15 year absence. Playing as an adult with a kid (with other adults with kids) keeps the game rather casual. Here is a drawing of my character, Garth - a Half-Elf Ardent. If that means absolutely nothing to you then how about this: Look! A guy with a huge sword!

(click the image for a larger version)

Done in Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop CS5 using the Wacom Cintiq 21X.

Lately George Lucas won't shut up about the whole Greedo/Han Solo controversy. Many people don't realize that when A New Hope comes out in 3D, it will feature yet another of George's "clarifications."

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Done in Sketchbook Pro using the Wacom Cintiq 21X.

Sometimes when you are working on a piece of artwork you kind of get tunnel vision. One skill an artist develops is to occasionally step back and re-assess the piece with fresh eyes. It's the only way you notice big flaws that you were too close to see while you were working on it. I kind of failed to do that this time.

Now that my "The Last Dragon" art is done, printed, framed and gifted to my sister... Only now do I notice a major oops. 

Well, first a minor oops. Bruce Leroy (the central figure) looks like a vampire. I was just trying to draw the back teeth curving away into his mouth, but I should have darkened them so they really hung back there. As it is, they look like fangs. But that's not a big deal and I can live with it.

The thing that's going to keep me up at night is that I completely blew the composition and somehow didn't see it until now. Every major compositional element in the piece is pointing towards the center of the art. In fact, all the characters and the type are in a circle around the center. And what's in the center of the piece?

Yup. Bruce Leroy's crotch. I mean, his little brother is actually looking right at it! How did I not see that during the two weeks I was working on it???

Sigh.

Why am I taking the time to point out my own failure here in public? Partly because I think it's an interesting illustration of how we artists can miss the things that are right in front of our eyes if we're not careful, and partly because I think it's pretty funny.

Okay, mainly because it's funny.

Man, it's been a dry summer here on the sketchblog. The primary reason for that is a very large project I've been working on in fits and starts for a few months now. I don't want to spoil it until I'm ready to unveil the final art, because it's pretty awesome. (or at least, I hope it will be!) Most of my drawing time has been taken up with that, and as a result, I haven't had much of interest that I could show here.

Until now!

I took some time away from my massive project of mind-blowing awesomeness to do this much smaller project of mind-blowing awesomeness for my sister's birthday. If you know the movie I'm paying tribute to here, then you get why this was an incredibly fun piece to work on. If you are sitting there going "what the hell is The Last Dragon?" then get thee to thy Netflix queue posthaste. You won't regret it.

Generally speaking I have to wait my son goes to sleep before I can get a few hours of quality drawing time in, so this was done over the course of about 2 weeks, getting in time on it when I could. I had the final art printed at 11x14" and framed it. My sister loved it. 

Click on the image below for a much bigger version. Enjoy!

I'm working on a new project that will be absolutely badass when it's done. More details later, but here's a tiny preview. PS - It's not a Flash Gordon piece. 

This would have been more relevant if I'd posted it a month and a half ago when the episodes they filmed in Utah actually aired. What are ya gonna do? 

I'm pretty pleased with how this one turned out. I will admit that I drew and redrew Matt Smith's face about a dozen times before I liked it. That dude is tough to draw. I'm particularly proud of Rory here. Even in a cartoon nobody listens to the guy!

The characters were drawn using Sketchbook pro, then imported into Photoshop where I inked it and did the color and the background. Enjoy!

(Click the thumbnail for a bigger version!)

Here's the finished version of my Alien piece. I altered a few of the shadows since the last pass and obviously added color. I'm fairly pleased with how this turned out. 

(Click the thumbnail for bigger version!)

I recently picked up one of my all-time favorite movies, Alien, on Blu-Ray. Watching it again inspired me to start a piece based on what, to me, is the scariest scene in the movie: the death of Lambert. There's just something about the way she just stands there, paralyzed with fear, while the alien approaches slowly, like he has all the time in the world.. It still gives me goose bumps.

Anyway, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show a little bit of my process, which is really pretty typical for any artist. It begins with a fairly rough sketch. I don't usually thumbnail (starting with very small loose sketches) per say, because working digitally makes size a little irrelevant. I do tend to work layer to layer though, dropping a rough sketch on one layer and then lowering the opacity and doing the next sketch on a new layer. I can build up 10 to 12 layers just redrawing and refining an idea.

That sketch is followed by some tightening, adding important details. I don't worry about getting everything right on this pass, sometimes all I need is to create some landmarks that inform the next go-through. In this case, I was mainly fleshing out the alien's anatomy a bit, as well as Lambert's costume. Don't even ask me why her hands are three feet long in this one.

This is the "ink" phase, though as I work all digitally, there's no actual ink, just another, tighter pass - adding detail as well as background.

Next I added solid blacks, because I wanted this piece to rely heavily on shadow. One lesson I learned long ago was not to be afraid to draw something the way I wanted it, and then lose parts of that drawing in shadow if the drawing required it. 

I've still got work to do on this one. There are some things I'm just noticing now that I want to alter, plus I'll add color. I save all of that for another post.

Everything drawn on the Wacom Cintiq in either Sketchbook pro or Photoshop CS5.