Long Time Away

Oh dear. I've neglected this.
Around the last times I posted I was talking about how busy I was and that I was about to get married. Now I'm coming up on my one year anniversary and a lot has changed.

I'm going to make a few posts with work from the past year over the next weeks, but I'll start with a page from a major undertaking: Circus Saudade, the webcomic I've been working on for a few months now. It can be found here.

Hope everyone is well. More soon.

Koala Warrior

Just a meeting sketch for fun.

Quick post

This was a quick painting while my class working.

New plan. Long time away.

Soooooo I haven't put anything here in awhile.
A few things have been happening.
1) I'm getting married in a couple of months.
2) My fiancee and I are moving and bought our first home.
3) We're working to finish Reckoning at Big Huge Games.
4) I finished teaching at MICA for the spring.

All of that pretty much means I've largely had to put down my brushes until I'm past a fair bit of it.
That said, I've decided I still need to keep posting, even if it's just little sketches to keep me working on my own stuff a little bit while everything else is going on.
So my plan is to try and post something as much as possible, hopefully a few times a week.
I'll start with this:
It's a commission I finished a short bit ago for a novel cover.
It was a very specific composition requested, so it was a unique challenge.

Process of Peace

This is something I did for an upcoming show called "Process of Peace," in which artists were asked to investigate how they try and find peace in their own lives and world around them.
The show is curated by the ever-engaged and evolving Sarah McCann. She also curated the "What's Your War" show here in Baltimore last year. I'm a big fan of hers.

Some sketches

Some recent sketchbook pages. Some from sitting in meetings at work, others from sitting... in church.
I know.
But the church Jess and I have been going to is beautiful on the inside, and I'm still listening just as much. It's how I used to doodle in class. It usually allows me to stay more focused on what's going on. I think my coworkers have gotten used to it, too.

Stasya and the Gryphon - Year 4

For four years now, on a very dear friend's birthday, I have given her a page of a growing story. It is about her and, thus far, a gryphon she befriends. (They're also spelled griffin, or griffon, but I like the way the first spelling looks)
The first one of these I did was before I would have considered myself an illustrator at all, or was doing much professional illustration work. Now, to whatever extent that I even think the titles of artist or illustrator are separate, I happily embrace it, so it's interesting to look back on these.
Usually done in watercolor, this latest was in the middle of a number of deadlines so I begrudgingly did it digitally.

Chaper 1: In which Stasya meets the Gryphon and offers him a pear.
(This one is still my favorite, even being the oldest. There's something in the subdued ferocity of the gryphon, intimidated perhaps by the equal fearlessness of the girl, that I've yet to recapture completely).

Chapter 2: In which Stasya reads to the Gryphon and they fall asleep under starlight.
(This is when I realized I was actually making a series).

Chapter 3: In which the Gryphon unexpectedly takes flight.

Chapter 4: In which Stasya, not one to wait around for the whims of flying creatures, finds a boat and begins her own journey.
(Interesting how much my colors changed, and the environment became so much more substantial. I think this is a direct product of the digital approach. It also takes a huge compositional departure without the Gryphon dominating the scene, but to tell the girl Stasya's story he had to leave, at least for awhile.)


The next chapter, if I'm more on time than I was this past birthday, will be posted in November.