RavenTower

Alright, below you will find the final result after coloring in Open Canvas. I think the verdict is in - I still like Open Canvas more than Photoshop for coloring. It really feels like painting.

Here's a closeup of some of the detail work. I like how her skin tones came out. The wings were simple but fun.

Last winter I started working on an illustration set in an apocalyptic fantasy world. The line work came out pretty nice, but I never got around to the colors for some reason. I forgot I was even working on it until I came across it a few months ago in my illustrations folder. I'm really tempted to do the colors now.

I call it Earth and Sky.

Back in 2006 I did this piece for a Weapons of the Gods modern campaign. It's a character named Cang Bai and there is definitely some more anime influence at work. I'm kinda happy with the results.

The was the first piece I sketched solely in Photoshop in a long time. I think I read an article about someone else who gave up scanning in their pencils. After the line work I used Open Canvas to do the color and then brought everything back into PS for some post work.

While searching through an old hard drive I came across several illustrations that I've never published. There's a horror study I did as well as some sketches for an old Exalted campaign and a piece for a setting I call Empyrean. They're all over the place in style with some strong anime influences on all except the horror piece.

Horror Study from 2006

Exalted Sketches and Painting from 2005

The New Frontier captures the Justice League at it's finest - with a dash of Watchmen thrown in. I was very excited when I heard the movie had been announced and I have to say it didn't disappoint in the slightest. Bruce Timm really captured the art style and feel of the books.

From a web perspective, I thought it was cool that my DVD from Target came with a free download copy for my PC.

Here's a video from the official site:

This piece was inspired by the book of the same name by Robert W. Chambers. I settled on a more modern interpretation rather than a literal scene from the book.

I sketched the layout digitally and painted it entirely in Photoshop. I was aiming for a more painted effect than my usual comic book style art. I think for my next work I'll switch back to Open Canvas for the colors.  I'm still not happy with the way brushes work in Photoshop.

I put up page to archive all of the work in my old gallery. I'm quite fond of some of them, but I want to separate the old from the new. I'm not sure if I'll setup a page for new works or just leave them as blog posts.

Archived Gallery

Here are some of my favorites:

Here's a quick rundown of the process I used for Lightning Strikes Twice.

First I sketch out a wireframe of where I want the figures. I also indicate the general focus of the image. I'm using Photoshop here and my Wacom tablet. I use a dark blue color with a soft brush on a separate layer about a white background.

I have a superhero setting that I toy around with occasionally. It's probably pastiche and not terribly well thought out, but I have a fondness for some of the concepts and characters. One character I particularly like is a Japanese fellow named Okuninushi (based on the Shinto god), the Son of Storms. One of his defining traits is his ongoing struggle with another Shinto god named Susanowo (who happens to be his father).

It seems like for years I have been too busy to work on my own personal site. Well I finally drop kicked WordPress onto my site to give it a go. What do you know - it's awesome!

I've gone a little plug-in crazy, but I still haven't found one that smooths out the thumbnails. Might need to use a different underlying image library.

I'm going to post some recent work first, then talk about the piece I did for the site. You know, the lovely heroine being harassed by the undead at the top of the page.