#162 Illustration Friday: Suspend

Suspend

8.5 x 11" Watercolor & Digital

Being cast from his ship, the noble Nordic warrior finds himself suspended between the inky depths of death, and a terrible sea monster. He has two choices: succumb to a watery grave, or take hold of a legendary sword to slay his foe and rise again to air and life. I think he will choose the latter, don't you?

Done for Illustration Friday, a weekly artistic challenge.

#161 Lieutenant Oliver, Soldier Dog

Lieutenant Oliver

Pencil & Digital

Yesterday on Twitter & Facebook I decided upon very short notice to take drawing requests. You would choose something for me to draw, and I would draw it, then put it up on the blog with a link back to your site. So, it was pretty short notice, but I got a few responses. I had time for only one today, but I would like to do this again in the future! So stay tuned, I would love to get more people involved and we could really get some cool art done this way.

So, a little about this drawing. I can safely say, this is the best drawing I've done in a long time. I am so happy with it. This request was from my lovely aunt, J. Rachel Reed who is currently writing a book about dogs during WWII. I'll leave it at that so I won't spoil anything. Her suggestion was as follows:

"A Stylized Soldier Dog"

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen. Aunt Rachel has a very wonderful springer spaniel named Oliver who lives with her, and he and I are great pals. I like to hang out with him, especially at Thanksgiving. And I knew he had to be a lieutenant in WWII, and of course, he would have to have a kilt on! So, a little googling for reference, an hour of drawing, an hour or so of Photoshop magic, and voila! Lieutenant Oliver! I hope you like him as much as I liked drawing him.

If you'd like to learn more about my Aunt Rachel and her book project, check out her site here:

http://jrachelreed.com/

#160 Farmer Giant

Farmer Giant lives peacefully in the valley, happily tending his crops to help feed the humble peasants who live nearby. They are very grateful for his services!

#159 Tristan & Iseult: Tristan Study

Tristan (Study)
Sepia & White Pencil on Toned Paper

I wasn't as excited about the way this one turned out. However, the drawing comes very close to the original idea that I had. I'm going for a very stern, Richard Armitage look. The helmet design is spawned from an actual Celtic helmet design that I discovered on the internet. I added a lot of flourishes. The Boar design comes from Rosemary Sutcliff's story, which portrays the shield that Tristan carries as displaying a wild boar design (which I hope to include in the finished illustration). I carried this a bit further to being part of the crest that runs along the top of the helmet.

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So, signing off for now. I'll be back in 2 weeks with a full IMC 2012 recap!

-Will

#158 Tristan & Iseult: The Morholt

The Morholt (Study)

Sepia & White Pencil on Toned Paper

"Tree-tall, and thunder-fierce with the strength in him of four men"

Getting down to the wire on preparations for IMC. I'll be illustrating the battle between Tristan and The Morholt. Still have a long way to go, but made some good progress today. I'll post more as I get the rough sketches finished.

#057 Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Well, it's been about a month since my last blog post, and it's been a pretty bland month art-wise. Not much coming my way as far as creative ideas. But I'm going to have to fix that fast - the Illustration Master Class 2012 is coming up soon, and I am going to be racing to create plenty of exploratory sketches ahead of time. We have several assignments to choose from, but I haven't chosen mine yet. It will probably be a toss up between

TARZAN

or

TRISTAN & ISEULT

Stay tuned for updates soon, I will be updating the blog more with progress leading up to IMC. In the meantime, I leave you with a Tarantula Warrior (above).

You can also let me know in the comments which of the above assignment choices you would like to see me paint. It may help me decide what I want to do.

Until next time...

#156 Owl Sketch

A rough sketch of an owl.

While bemoaning the fact that I did not have any toned paper to draw on, I remembered that I had stowed away an unopened pad of 18 x 24 charcoal paper in various tints. I simply folded a sheet in quarters, ripped them apart, and had four sheets of decently-sized drawing paper. Admittedly, the texture leaves a lot to be desired. I threw it all together pretty quickly, so there's not a lot of blending there. Brown Prismacolor Col-Erase, white Conté.

#155 Ancient Weaponry (Sketches)

Some quick sketches from today's lazy drawing session.

#154 The Admiral

A quick break in the posting about my Sketchbook. The progress has been slow lately, but I'm trying to do some quick comic-y sketches on a regular basis to keep me sharp. This one is a bit of fan art of everybody's favorite Admiral Ackbar, who has been rendered here with a Pentel brush pen in my Moleskine, and colored with Photoshop. Hope you like.

"IT'S A TRAP!"

#153 Sketchbook 2012: The Falconer's Blade Part III: More Local Color

Sorry for the lack of updates lately - I've been busy with various things. This is the progress on the first painting for the sketchbook so far as of yesterday. I thought it was finished and ready for digital, but I started seeing even more areas that needed contrast and shadow. This really needs to be done in the painting stage, so some more work, and then we push into the wilderness of Photoshop! And after that, more drawings. Stay tuned!

#152 SKETCHBOOK 2012: The Falconer's Blade Part II: Local Color

Started in on the local color for the dragon & falcon. The red became a bit purple, but I think that in the end thats what I wanted anyway. Next: more color!

#151 SKETCHBOOK 2012: The Falconer's Blade

The Falconer's Blade - 10" x 14" pencil on Arches watercolor paper

(click for larger image)

I am really excited to show you guys the first piece of art for my upcoming sketchbook! I did this one on Arches 140-lb. cold press watercolor paper with (my new favorite) Prismacolor Sepia Col-Erase pencil. I won't be releasing all the art for the book on the blog, but I'll be giving away a few sneak peeks to whet your appetite. There are spots in the drawing that are a bit weak, but I felt like I needed to just move on to the painting stage and not dwell on any particular part of the process too long. Now that I have scanned the final drawing I can paint - I have to have high-quality scans of all the parts of the book before I move on to the next step. This will be in water color, but I plan to include a variety in the book. I hope to do some experiments in oils in the next couple of weeks, and I hope to get them into the final product. Stay tuned for some watercolor!