My personal work from last year

I'm pleased with a lot of my work from the previous year. It looks like there wasn't much in the way of professional illustrations, although I did a good bit of work in the way of video editing, animation, and compositing. Even with all that, there's nothing I really can or want to show here, but instead, I'll be putting up my personal work. As I see the list all put together here, it's quite a lot. I think there's some good work here, with a good bit of variety and it showcases some different directions is subject matter and technique that I have been trying.

This little guy was my first painting of the year. I came across a funny little photo of this frog and I just had to paint him. I used a bit of a different process on this one, painting with different brushes and utilizing a looser method. I liked the end result and am thinking about trying more like this. But the original photo needed something, so this little guy gets some swim trunks for modesty. I hope you can tell that those are flies on them. And since he's a bit nervous around water, he has his water wings on.

This is an example of photobashing. I'm teaching a new class in advanced digital painting and included a photobash assignment, so I felt I should do a few of my own. This is my attempt at a sci-fi scene and I'm not sure it's completely successful, but it's okay.

Here's my next photobash that I jumped into right after the previous one. I went for a different genre, a bit of an adventure type of setting. I think this one turned out a bit better. Even though photos are used instead of a lot of painting, it still is quite a creative process and I find it challenging to do.

I had been wanting to do a portrait of Grogu for a while and finally had a few moments to bang this one out. There are a lot of cute images out there and I was trying to find one that would be interesting. I liked the mood of this one and had some fun with the lighting.

Back to my figure drawing. I hadn't done one in a while and wanted to make sure I could still do it. I do like adding a bit of color with Nupastel to the charcoal drawings as a way to accent the greyscale approach on the figure.

In the summer, I had my figure drawing class again. I tried out some new models and some I hadn't worked with for a while. This is Cassandra posing for the long drawing at the end of the class. This one was about an hour and a half, but when she was done, I spent a good bit of time finishing up the background. I really tried to put a lot into this one and I like how it came out.

I've done a lot of drawings of Gordon and I can really get his likeness down pretty easy. There are some models that I can't quite do that with. This was another longer pose from my summer class and I was going for something a bit moody here. I was experimenting with limited color palettes for these drawings just to see how much I could pull out of just a couple of colors. I thought it was good enough to submit to a juried exhibit on the nude, but I guess the panel deciding on the submissions didn't think so.

I taught figure drawing again during the fall, which I don't often do. I tried out some new models this time and enjoyed seeing what I could come up with. The only problem with these classes is that they are a lot shorter, so it's hard to fit in a long drawing with my students. This is Ivy, a new model I worked with and I do like this resulting pose, which is a bit unusual. I didn't have as much time as I really needed, but I did what I could.

Another new model for me from my fall class. I tried to do something different on this one with some unusual bits of color. I don't do a lot of rear views of the figure, but I tried to find something interesting this time. Again, I didn't have much time, so I rushed through it and tried to get some level of completion.

Here's a very different thing for me. I was collecting images to submit to that exhibit on nudes and I decided to create a brand new image for it. It's a digital painting as usual, but I haven't really done a figure like this, so I tried a new way of painting to experiment. I created custom brushes and worked in a way that more closely mimics a traditional approach. As the painting developed, it went into more of a fantasy direction, which I really don't do, but I took the opportunity to try it out to see what would happen. This year I've really been trying to switch things up and see if I can expand my style and this is one result. I do like it and thought it was a strong image to submit to the show, but again, the panel doing the judging didn't think so and it wasn't selected. Bummer.

Something else new. I keep a large selection of photos I've collected over the years that I find interesting. I was wanting do do a city painting, so I worked from this one. The foggy scene and overall feel make me think of San Francisco. I used the same set of brushes that I had used on the previous image and really concentrated on how the colors interacted. But surprise, my small reference image wasn't a photo; it was a digital painting by a concept artist called Daarken. You should check out his work. It's really good. So what I did was pretty much a copy, but that can be a useful exercise.

Now here is something else unusual for me. I was watching a very artistic stop-motion movie with a lot of wild and varied imagery. For a couple of seconds there was some imagery If found interesting. It involved a moai of the sort found on Easter Island and some modern mechanical structure. I was intrigued by this visual idea and started painting this. Moai aren't just big heads; they are full figures that are mostly buried. This is my idea of what we might find underneath the ground.

Another odd entry that could be called whimsical, fantastical, or otherworldly. A student of mine created an illustration that involved alligators swimming around at night and I liked the imagery of their glowing eyes, something I have experienced myself. I wanted to try something creepy and eery with the illuminated eyes acting as lights reflecting on the water. The mystical structures in the back are just there. Perhaps the alligators are the guardians. Judging by the shape of the snout now, it looks more like a crocodile. I'm still working on a looser, more painterly style using my new brushes and trying to get acceptable results.

This traditional drawing was about my last of the year. As I've used before, it's with charcoal and Nupastel. It's a portrait of my granddaughter, created as a Christmas gift for her parents. I worked from some photos I had taken of her around Hallowe'en, so she's wearing a jack o'lantern costume, her first. Painting and drawing babies and small children is challenging because their proportions are so different from grown adults. I was really trying to nail her likeness here and I hope I did it.

My work in juried shows this year

As usual, I try to find online exhibits to enter. It can be challenging, Gallerium and Exhibizone are good places for that. Each show has its own theme and if I can wrap my head around what it is, I try to find something I've done that will fit or I paint something new for it.

Early in the year, the theme was I See U. I used a digital painting that I had done a few years ago. I always liked how it turned out and it was the perfect image for this particular competition.

In March, the theme was Scenic. This painting is of a favorite vacation destination of mine: Stanley, Idaho. It's notable that this scene is in winter because Stanley often has the coldest temperature in the continental United States.

The last one was Nuditas, obviously based on the nude figure. I actually did a new digital painting for this one and thought it was pretty cool, but it was not selected. This traditional drawing in charcoal and pastel did get selected. It was done a while ago, but I've always liked it; it's my take on Death and the Maiden. I entered another drawing I did from life, but this is the one that got accepted.

Click here to see my entry for I See U on Gallerium.

Click here to see my entry for Scenic on Exhibizone.

Click here to see my entry for Nuditas on Exhibizone.

More cautions on NFT creation offers

I felt I should add a bit more info about my experience losing a substantial amount of money on an offer to mint NFTs from my artwork. The person who contacted me claimed to be in Dubai and used a gmail address. The significance of this is that it could have been anyone from anywhere; there is just no easy way to track that down. I would now advise against this kind of contact, which is impersonal and distant. Demand some more direct way of communicating. But it's important to realize that no one is going to contact you out of the blue and legitimately offer thousands of dollars in crypto to mint your artwork. There's a greater than 90% chance that such an offer is a thinly-veiled scam.

I am completely convinced of that now. The buyer offering me Ethereum (ETH) required me to use his preferred website, Mintplazza, to mint the NFTs at a rather high cost to me. That website no longer exists; it has disappeared, along with any 'profit' I might have realized. I'm thinking that Mintplazza was never a legitimate minting platform, even though it looked real enough to fool me. Insist on an established website with affordable minting fees, not a site that you don't know.

Another warning I would give relates to scams in general. I had initially sunk a good bit of my own funds into this endeavor without seeing the promised profit from sale. The 'buyer' kept telling me that I just needed to put in a bit more to cover the fees to withdraw my profit. As the NFTs kept getting sold (supposedly), the increasing cost required increased fees to withdraw the crypto. I was basically goaded into throwing more money down an endless pit. Scammers are well acquainted with this tactic. The approach is that you've already paid so much money and you are so close to a big payoff, what's a little more? With all that potential profit just around the corner, it seemed foolish to throw it all away. The hard truth is that it's foolish to keep pouring money into a lost cause. That's a hard realization to come to, but when you realize or even suspect what it is, cut your losses, the sooner the better. These kinds of criminals know that you are reluctant to come to this realization and would rather believe that the big payoff will come your way if you just pay another 'fee.' 

My last counsel is trust your gut. If there is high pressure, walk away. If some attitude or direction of the conversation feels manipulative, walk away. As I dealt with what appeared to be Mintplazza's tech support, I had a bad feeling. They were often unresponsive and their replies were very unprofessional, but when I had money to send, they got back right away. I kept on, ignoring my better instincts and hoping against hope that this was a legitimate business deal. It wasn't. Trust your suspicions and bail as soon as you can. It's better to not make any money than to lose it. But remember, it's better to lose just $1000 than $5000 or more. That's the lesson I needed to learn. I'm recovering from this substantial loss of funds, but I am writing it off as a business expense, so that's one way to deal with it. But I hope you can learn from my example and not make the same mistake. 

A cautionary tale about NFTs

Recently, I was contacted by someone unexpectedly who claimed to have seen my work on ArtStation and wanted to purchase some as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). This is a deep topic, but through a process called minting, digital imagery can be converted on a blockchain into a unique file that somehow has value for trading, like stock. He was offering a good bit of money for each one and it seemed like a good idea. Anything like this is done with cryptocurrency, in this case, something called Ethereum, which I've been told is a kind that is not energy efficient and costs a lot to create. In case you didn't know, cryptocurrency requires a lot of computers and energy to create, so it's not so 'green.' 

I say seemed like a good idea, because there is a scam that works very much like this. At any rate, I needed to jump into the cryptocurrency market, set up a wallet, and find out how to purchase Ethereum with my hard-earned cash. To mint NFTs from digital images, a marketplace must be used. In this case, the potential buyer would only use Mintplazza. I went along with this, although Mintplazza charges a hefty fee upfront to mint each one. I was hesitant, but looked at this as an opportunity to make a profit by investing my own money.

In the end, I minted the four requested images, the unknown buyer bought them, and it looked like I have a decent profit, but Mintplazza is making it impossible for me to withdraw it to my own online wallet. After I went through this process, shelling out a few thousand dollars, Mintplazza initially charged me a 16% 'marketing fee' to withdraw my profit That's steep, but what makes is worse is that they won't take it out of my profit, but are requiring me to pay them more Ethereum before I can withdraw. Some of the NFTs have supposedly been resold, so my profits are increasing. Cool, but as they go up, so does the fee to withdraw them and for some reason, the percentage is also increasing. I've tried to get some questions answered by Mintplazza's support, but they have so far been unhelpful and are suspiciously unavailable when I really need them. They have very strict and unrealistic policies to withdraw profit from their marketplace, but none of this is mentioned on their website. I had a short window when I had enough paid to them to withdraw my profit, but their withdrawal page did not work then and their support would not respond in a timely manner.

Am I the victim of a scam? It would seem so, although I'm not sure who the real culprit is. My warning to anyone else that receives an offer like this: Don't use Mintplazza. There are marketplaces that will mint NFTs for much less or even have what are called 'lazy' minting fees, in which the buyer pays them. Don't put out much (if any) of your own money to start the process. Find out beforehand what the fees are to withdraw your profit and how they can be paid. I didn't enjoy this process or the money I lost, but perhaps this can be a lesson to future me and other digital artists out there. Learn from my mistake. Money can be made by buying and selling NFTs, but maybe this was not quite the right way.

Read about an NFT buying scam that sounds eerily similar to the offer I got. 

Wrapping it up

And here it is. I think it's the final version. There's not that much difference between this and the image in the last post. Often, it's just small, significant details that get that last push to 100% complete. To get to this point, I added more highlights to the water wings, the shorts, and the top of the head. This is to pop out a bit of contrast in those areas. I also wanted to give a rougher feel to the rock he's sitting on. This was done by painting more defined highlight and shadow areas. I also added a layer with Noise to give it a bit more. I hope it comes through. I think this image is finally done. I think I like it. I would call this one successful. In case you were wondering, there's no message or commentary; it's just a frog sitting by the water.

It's the little things

My intention all along was to add some kind of fun, colorful designs on the swim trunks. Some of my students suggested flies and that seemed like a good idea to me. That's what those little blobs are if you can't tell. I also painted the valves on the water wings. One is out and one is pushed in. I don't know why, but that's just how they are. It's good to avoid too much symmetry and that's important in a scene like this; the left side should not be a mirror image of the right. It was also time to start thinking about the bottom of the image where the frog is barely dipping his toes in the water. Reflections like this can be simple scribbles. They don't need too much precision. And for reflections, they should not be as bright or saturated as the item that's causing them.

Working with shadows and more details

To increase contrast and work toward a finish, shadows must be considered. I paint shadows on their own layer, set to Multiply mode. This is in addition to any value ranges underneath. In this case, I painted the shadows with PMS 7526, which is a very reddish brown. I want to keep a lot of warm colors in the shadows. This also helps with the translucency I'm going for in the amphibian skin. The shadow layer is above everything and not clipped to any one layer, so I'm able to use it all over, not just on the frog. This might tie disparate colors together a bit. I also paint some details on the water wings, going brighter and darker than their base color. It should be noted here that these images don't represent a strict step-by-step approach; I didn't wait until this part to start on shadows.