Just a quick note here: I'll be giving an online presentation about my work to a local library. You can watch it live from wherever you are. It will be 16 February starting at 7:00 pm EST. Click here to watch. Since I wan't be seeing you, I hope you see me there.
11 February 2021
01 February 2021
An important step toward tenure
Today was a deadline for a big milestone for me: my pre-tenure portfolio at UNG was due. I've been working on this for a while, as I had to put together lots of documents, create a full CV, make mini-CVs out of it, put in reports, add student evaluations, respond to all that, and get it organized for the committee to go over when they meet. It was a bit stressful, but I've been working toward this for three years now. It was a bit of a surprise when it was offered, but I'll take it. This review is to see if I'm on track for the full review, which will come in another two years. I'm judged not just on my teaching, but also my research and service to the university and community. Challenging for a digital or commercial artist, but we'll see how it goes.
06 January 2021
My work from 2020
As I look back on my posts for the year, I see it has been a bit slim. I don't know that this worldwide plague we've been enduring has given me much extra time. I certainly haven't done as much freelance work this year as usual, but not as much personal work, either. For one thing, I didn't get to teach a Life Drawing class this summer, so I didn't get any nice drawings like that done. Even though classroom teaching was different and there was less face-to-face time in class, that doesn't mean it's easier for instructors. I think I spent more time trying to create online content for distance learning and figure out how to do things differently. But we all just keep going, right? So gathering it all together, here is what I was able to accomplish during the year.
One rainy day, we were informed that a dead cat was in the street in front of our house. I went out to check and at first I didn't think it was him, but when I opened his eyes to look at him, I knew it was Mighty. That was his name. Picking his body up to move him out of the road and telling my daughter was one of the worst days of the entire stinking year. Anyway, when I saw her Facebook post about him, it included some interesting photos she had taken. I like this one and had never seen it before, so I decide to to a painting of it. I did change the eyes to have more open pupils than the little slits from the picture as this reminded me more of him. I also had to come up with a lot of detail that was only barely there of his black fur in the shadows. I made a canvas print of it and gave it to my daughter as a gift to try and cheer her up.
But I finally started on it and worked on it bit by bit during downtime in my classes. I started with the wires, cables, and all that hardware just to get it out of the way first. After a while, I got into a groove and began enjoying it. But I actually stopped work on it to work on the previous image, which I cruised through in a few days and then I returned to this one. By the time I finished it, I was quite pleased and glad I finally made myself get it done.
So that's it for 2020. Not a great year for my artistic output, but like all of us I just pushed through and tried to accomplish something. I actually did more than this. I worked on creating animations based on some of my past work and tried to gain more VFX skills in After Effects. I'm also involved in projects where I'm creating imagery for products and technologies that are currently in development and there's a lot I can't share. I'm also putting up more tutorials on my VFX playlist on YouTube. So there's always something going on. Still, it's nice to be able to have something nice to show when the year's over. Let's all look forward to something better in 2021.
06 December 2020
Creative Quarterly competition
For Issue 59, I got submissions chosen in the professional illustration and fine art categories. No money or anything like that, but it does help me in my research work going toward my tenure application. I also had entries chosen in Issue 61 in the professional illustration category.
It takes a while to get the winners up and online. I'm still waiting for the printed copies to arrive and they are now accepting entries for Issue 63, but the gallery for Issue 59's winners is up and you can see it here. I'll try and see if I can come up with more work that they might like.
Click here to see my fine art winning entry.
Click here to see my illustration winning entry.
04 June 2020
More places to see my work
Click here to see my work on ArtStation.
03 January 2020
My work from 2019
Oddly enough, I almost forgot about this one. I did it early in the year as a little exercise in speed painting and then had my class do something similar. The brushes are all taken from photos of various objects and then almost stamped down. It's a quick way of putting in detail quickly. I started on monochromatically, then tinted the image on higher layers in Photoshop. I also did some painting with my standard brush to put in highlights and tie things together. It's not great, but it is interesting.
While teaching the class, I always use the opportunity to do a lot of drawing along with the students and I got quite a few from this class and drew some models I hadn't worked with before, along with some old favorites. I actually ended up with a lot that I liked. Some were quick sketches and some were more finished. These are some of my favorites that I feel were more successful. I keep thinking about uploading more.
This is the last drawing we did for that class. It's a bit unusual, but it was for a specific exercise. The model was our class skeleton. I had named it Dr. Bones, but later I was told that a previous class had already given it a name: Saul. The two names are not mutually exclusive, I suppose. But we used this opportunity as a practice doing drapery, a skill just as important as drawing the figure. I liked how it was going, so kept on it, even after the class was over. I entered some in drawing competitions during the year, including Saul here, but sadly, none were accepted. Maybe someday.
Here's yet another little in-class demo. I had found this photo years ago and thought it could be turned into a cool digital painting. Textures like this are always fun. I changed it significantly from the original and did my own thing with the color scheme. There may be a hint of photo brick texture in there, but other than that, it's all painted by hand. I am quite pleased with this one.
Nothing new here. It's just a Pettibone and pipe on a train. I've done a zillion of these over the years, in all sorts of combinations. This one is not necessarily for any one particular client; it could be for any of quite a multitude of them, or none at all. It looks a lot like past work. Maybe it is. There's nothing here unique to any one end job. In fact, I like pipe and Pettibones and trains so much, I paint them just for fun. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Ditto.
I'm quite sure everyone recognizes this guy. It's another image I had been wanting to paint for a while now. I started it during my fall digital illustration class as my portrait demo. It was harder than I expected at first, due to the complex mix of warm and cool lighting on the face. If you know anything about how I start out digital paintings, you may know I try to use PMS colors, at least initially. That was harder here, but I kept going and eventually as the colors mix, new colors appear that work.
At first, I wasn't sure I would paint Andúril, but metallic objects like this are fun. I did change its orientation and position from the original photo, as I felt it made more sense outside of the context of this scene in the film.
My last freelance project of the year. I can't say I'm too proud of this one. It is what it is. I had to do it quickly and without much accurate source material, as usual. It went through a few iterations until it got approved by the end client, but as you can tell, it's mainly 3D, so that makes for easy changes. There's really not that much to it. The geometry is simple to build and for multiples like this, I use instances, so when I change the master version, all the copies of the object update. After the render, it's painted up a bit in Photoshop it give it my signature look. I hear it was well received.
And the last one, just completed a few days ago. This one was inspired by a painting one of my students did in my last digital illustration class. An avid comics fan, he did a portrait of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. I thought his image was pretty cool and thought about doing one myself. I chose this one because of the cool pose, lighting, and textures. One element I wanted to add was a strong light wrap from the window behind her. It's just my little touch. The costume elements are successful, I think. Metallic or shiny surfaces are fun and easy to paint, once you have a system down for it. I simplified the background a lot to focus on the subject. I think it actually came out with more detail than I had originally intended. I like it, but I hope I did Gal justice. She was a great choice for Wonder Woman and made her a serious character. I like that her costume became more Greek armor than a bathing suit, which seems to be what a lot of female superheroes wear. I tried to capture her beauty and strength, but I'm not sure I did. When really studied for detail in the face, the source image was not as good as I had thought at first. I really worked on it and kept coming back to fix problems, but what can I say? Female faces are hard.
I guess that is a lot. There is actually more. I did a lot of production work, web images, brochure layout, photo editing, and some animations that I'm still involved in. When it's all put together, I guess it's a good bit of work for the year. Out of all this work here, there are a few that I really like. I hope you like them as well.