Happy New Year!

Just wanted to say thanks to everybody who stopped by this year, I really appreciate the comments & feedback! All the best in the new year!

Robo-Snowman

Return of Rusty

Follow-up to this post, a concert poster from 'ol Rusty's '74 World Tour.

Character Design Interview

I did an interview for Randall Sly's Character Design blog. You can check it out here: http://ryan-wood-interview.blogspot.com/ Thanks Randall!

Boogie Woogie Santa

A tribute to two great things at this time of year: Santa and Guitar Hero 2. btw, if you're tired of the same ol' Christmas tunes here's a few recommendations: Rev. Horton Heat, Brian Setzer, and Los Straitjackets.

Sancho Panza

Don needed his trusty sidekick.

Don Quixote

It's one of my favorite books, I would like to do a series of all of the characters sometime.

Scared of Flowers

Another slobbering monster...

Gobble

Turkeys...hideous yet delicious.

creatures from the deep

Unfinished stuff from the last art challenge.

Rusty McGee & the Wonkycogs

Yee-haw, it's a robot hoedown.

random monster doodles

Boaring

A boar from Tak, Todd did the original design & I painted it. Here's the texture map & 3D model, too.

Phineas J. Saltoni III

Theme : Creatures from the deep.

Last Halloween goof

...more orange, bow tie & slobber.

Ghoulsmire sketch

Orange Crushwitch

This one is part of a Halloween themed collaboration over at Penelope Illustration. Go paint something black, orange & Halloweenish today and submit it already!

Scarecrow no-no

An older Halloween painting I tried to fix up a little--by adding glowy eyes. How original.

faux wood painting

I was messing around with layering textures-n-stuff in Painter and a goofy squinty sketch emerged.

Green Queen o' Diamonds

One for the Avalanche blog, the topic is 'royalty'.

Mr. Kingly

I guess he's a king 'cuz his crown says so.

Disneyland field trip

I went to Disneyland last week, so I neglected the blogging a bit. Back to normal soon, hopefully.

Cap'n Chippy

The mascot for a new cereal, a mix of Cap'n Crunch and Cookie Crisp. His nickname is 'CiCi'.

Get a haircut & get a real job

More Halloween junk, same ol' stuff.

dude!

From the Avalanche blog we're starting, the theme is Lost. Only 2 days til season 3... dude!

I heart skulls

Skulls are one of my favorite things to draw(I know it's juvenile). But I figured with it being close to Halloween-n-all it would probably be ok. And oh yeah I almost forgot the fire, I like fire too.

Dead Jujus

In the spirit of all the Halloween-ish posting going on, here's some old unused Tak concept that could be considered appropriate to that special holiday.

Sasquetch

A doodle of what would happen if Alf, a raccoon, and captain caveman got together.

Impy McFly

I drew this imp for the Monsterosity blog, check his fact sheet there too. I hope it's not too annoying to add the web address to the signature. Don't ask why he likes flies, I have no idea.

Smarty Pants

Yeah, he's stuck in the 80's. Maybe he just likes cubes and squares and things.

Squinty

Why do cowboys squint? Because squinting is cool.

Sneaky Snake Witch

I wanted to try a different take on a regular witch, so I added a snake. I like her less the more I look at her. Ick.

Sketchy Vikes times two

A couple of vikings, one cartoony, the other kinda cartoony. They both share the same expression. I guess vikings do walk around with their all mouths agape like that. Cretins.

Jibber Jabber Tribe color

OK, this is the last of the Tak tribe colorings, The Jibber Jabbers. Based on Todd's original design.(BTW, if Todd gets 100 comments on his blog, he just might post something....or not.)

Goofy Kraken

I know the kraken from Pirates is way cooler & such, but I wanted to take a stab at a goofy kraken who had just broken wind...err umm.. bubbles.

canhead tutorial

Since I've had a few people ask about process, I decided to post a brief tutorial I did a while back on how I translate a pencil sketch into a painting in Painter. It's a little out-dated, clunky & whatnot, but the basic principles are still there. The brushes I cited toward the end aren't all that relevant, so there you go. Proceed with caution.

Step #1 Pencil Sketch

I started off by scanning in this pencil sketch at 300 dpi, then modifying the Effects> Tonal Control> Brightness / Contrast to eliminate the muddy gray areas. Then go to Select>Auto Select. in the Auto Select dialog box, use Image Luminance and click OK. Next, I copy and paste that layer (ctrl+C>ctrl+shift+V). This made the white areas of the sketch transparent. However, it produced a washed-out version of the original sketch. To correct this, I selected the sketch layer in the Layer palette then filled (Effects> Fill...(ctrl+f) with black. This restored the sketch to its original tonality. At this point I now had a floating version of my pencil sketch that was transparent in its white areas. This allowed me to paint on the canvas below and not disturb the sketch floating above.

Step #2 Rough Background Painting

Before painting the character's head, I put down a rough background on the canvas behind the sketch. I used the Opaque Flat brush (Brushes Palette> Brushes> Opaque Flat) to block in the different areas of color in the painting. I turned the opacity down to about 10% using Brush Controls> General> Opacity, which helps the brush strokes build up a variance of color as they're applied over each other. As far as color goes, I try to use fairly saturated colors because I can always tone it down later, and it's harder to go the other way. After I blocked in the clouds and mountains I was ready to move onto the next stage.

Step #3 Rough Background with Sketch

Now that the background was roughed in, I could start on blocking in the colors for all of the elements in the foreground. At this point, I selected the sketch layer in the Objects> Layers palette and dialed the Opacity down to about 60%. This helps me see what's going on with the colors underneath. Once I had all the colors blocked in, I had to select the sketch layer to collapse it with the canvas (Objects> Layers> Drop) so I could start the long process of "noodling out" all of the edges. The end goal is to get rid of most of the sketch lines. The next part took the longest, but I feel it's the most rewarding.

Step #4 Rough Colors on Subject

After the larger areas were blocked in, I used Brushes Palette> Brushes> Digital Airbrush set at a small size in Brush Controls> Size (5 or less) and a high opacity in Brush Controls> General> Opacity (80% or greater) to add highlights and render out the detailed areas. To work color into dull areas, I used a big (30 or greater) airbrush at a low opacity (10%), and lightly applied a saturated color. To blend rough edges, I used a variant like Brushes Palette> Brushes>Smeary Round. This brush smears and blends any existing color on the canvas with light pressure and applies the Current Color to the canvas with increased pressure. The individual brush hairs of the Smeary Round brush provide a "painterly" quality.

Step #5 Final Details

Next came the finishing touches. This is the polishing stage where I focus on the highlights of the paintbrush, the guy and his can... I always save the highlights for last.

Tribe Logos

Here's some more Tak designs, for the 4 different tribes competing in the Great JuJu Challenge. It was used to figure out the basic color & design flavor for each tribe before I painted the characters.

new fancy banner

fixed version

Impending Desert Doom

When we started talking about doing a spaghetti-western themed draw-n-paint, I thought about dusting this one off and finishing it. What makes it so strange is that it's in oils(24 X 30). I really should do more painting with real paint, you get so used to the immediacy of the computer. Well, the computer is just a tool, blah blah etc. Sorry, I'll shutup now.

Dark Temple wall

An abandoned wall design from Tak 2, something I kinda liked the sketch of but never bothered to color. The final design ended up more structured(gothic), less 'swirly'.