Phillip vs. Maleficent

I felt the need to practice coloring something with slightly cartoony, saturated colors. I didn't have any linework of my own available that fit into that category. However, I've been a long time admirer of Brianna Garcia's artwork and I thought it might be fun to try and color one of her pictures. Plus, if I colored this one then I got to paint green dragon flames! And Maleficent and Prince Phillip's battle has always been a classic in my book. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun coloring this one.

So like I said, I didn't draw this, I only colored it! The awesome original drawing is by Brianna Garcia and can be seen right here.

Commission: Book Cover - The Voyage to Ruin

Last September I was contacted by another artist on deviantArt who was writing a piratey sailing adventure type story. Kat wanted me to illustrate the cover for the hardcover version of the book. This is what I came up with. It features Flynn, the main character in The Voyage to Ruin.



Kat then turned my illustration of Flynn into this beautifully designed book cover.



Pretty exciting, huh? A picture I made is now the cover for an officially published book! I received my copy in the mail a couple weeks ago and it looks beautiful. The hardcover version of the story also has interior illustrations by Kat. The paperback version has a cover by Kat and no interior illustrations.

The Voyage to Ruin is currently available for purchase from Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Commission: Custom Halloween Invitation

I was recently contacted by a family who saw this custom Halloween invitation I had done for a party my family was throwing.



They wanted me to modify the invitation a bit to suit their party, so here is the newly revised version of the Halloween invitation. They wanted a little scarecrow boy added to represent their son, and then just some small changes for their party info. I've left out the contact and RSVP details about the party for privacy reasons, but everything else is there.

Vineyard Haven sketch

A quick little pen sketch done while sitting outside Mocha Mott's on Sunday.

Fisherman Portrait

There's an older fisherman on the island who has the most interesting face. He always has his slanted fishing hat on his head and his pipe clenched in his mouth. I've thought on many occasions that his face would be fun to draw, so when a photo popped up in the island magazine I had the perfect opportunity.

Blue Mermaid

Just an ink sketch from this weekend, with a bit of color thrown on in Photoshop. Tada!

Sammy Sketch

It was slow last night at work, so I decided to sketch a picture of Sam since season 2 of Supernatural is coming out on DVD next week. I used one of my smaller travel size sketchbooks, this time the one with brown paper, with brown, white, and a tiny bit of blue colored pencil. After I scanned it I added a hint of color in Photoshop, but not much. I didn't spend too much time on this, maybe an hour total between interruptions from helping gallery patrons.

Vintage Lady Sketch

Just another page out of my sketchbook. I did a "design your own movie poster" day with the kids during the last week of class, and they wanted me to draw with them, so this is what happened. One of the girls in the class picked something out from the stack of reference books and magazines for me to draw, so I was using a subscription tear out card from an issue of Vogue that had a photo of Keira Knightley for a loosely based inspiration.

Ink Paintings

During the last week of the children's art class, I taught a lesson on ink painting with bamboo brushes. I did two demonstrations - one in a more traditional Chinese style and one showing how they could adapt those methods to paint something based on subject matter from around the island. For the one about the island, I painted a picture of the cliffs on the beach in Aquinnah.

Sand Sculpture

I made a big sand sculpture on the beach yesterday. It's a giant fish, maybe about 8 or 9 feet long. My only tools were a shovel and stuff that I found on the beach, including rocks for his scaly fins, a plastic cup used to make scale shapes on the body, and some random sticks used for carving. It looked much more detailed and three dimensional in person than it does in the photos, but the sunlight was kind of washing things out in the pictures so you'll just have to take my word for it.