Infinite Scroll Project - Space!

This week's Art House Project was a variation on the 'Exquisite Corpse' exercise.

The Exquisite Corpse, or cadavre exquis began as french surrealist exploration into a collection of words within a group. Each participant would write a word without any knowledge of the word that came before, creating an amusing string of nonsense, or maybe even a semblance of a story. From there it was adapted with various sets of rules and grew to encompass images as well.

For this version of the exercise, all the participants drew something inspired by Outer Space within the confines of a few wavy lines provided by the Art House.

This was my entry.



The rest of the entries can be seen on their flickr group, or by watching the twittersphere for #infinitescroll.

A few Skyrim WIPs

I finally picked up Dawnguard, the expansion for Skyrim last weekend.

A few minutes into my illusion-based thief's story and I was already itching to make a new piece of Skyrim art.

I started thinking about my character's journey and how incredibly movie-like the last 45 minutes of play time had been. With that in mind I decided to try my hand at a Drew Struzan-esque movie poster.

Drew Struzan was one of my childhood favorites. His work is probably most recognized in his massive collection of illustrated movie posters, like the late 90's StarWars collection. Mind blowing stuff. And all done on gessoed illustration board too... so incredibly impressive.

On Friday night, I started sketching out a movie type poster using characters from Skyrim that had a major part to play in my Dragonborn's story.

This has taken most of my weekend, and is still super, mega WIP (What is going on with Ulfric's forehead!!??) But I am excited to continue it. Please ignore the eyelessness of the characters -- I like to save those for last :)

Ulfric Stormcloack.

Brynjolf, my fellow thief.

Uthgerd, probably my favorite follower.

My Imperial.

When I finished my tribute to Mordin, from Mass Effect I made a mental note to avoid complicated armor sets the next time around. And what do I decide to do next? Dragonscale armor. It's like I enjoy the frustration of teeny details or something.

I'm hoping to finish up the value study this week and start adding color by the weekend. Lofty goals indeed :)

Saying Goodbye.

So I finished Mass Effect 3 last week. (I know, so late!)
I decided to say goodbye to the series I've played since winter of 2007 with a painting of my favorite character. Seemed fitting.

A few random WIP shots: (I need to get better about taking WIP screenshots...)

Mordin was a fantastic character. The final scene on Tuchanka was rough.

Manatee -- painted

I love manatees.

I've been sketching the gentle giants a bit more since our excursion to Key Biscayne and decided to turn a few of the sketches into paintings.

They are just so cute.

Inspiration and a Hibiscus

I was literally smacked in the face by inspiration today.

While I was out on a run this afternoon, I took a shortcut behind a hotel to avoid the Miami Boat Show traffic. (It's been crazy here all weekend!) Little did I know, but the shortcut quickly ended in a hibiscus-covered fence. With my face now in said plant, I was struck by the beauty of the large flower that I see so often, but rarely stop to admire.

When I first moved to Miami, I swore I'd never get used to the beautiful plant-life that abounds here. That seeing palms, banyons and bird-of-paradise blooms would never cease to cause me to smile. Based on my face-to-plant incident today, I can see that I have been slacking in my appreciation for the beauty of south florida.

When I got back from my run, I set to painting a few of those flowers.

As I worked, I thought about what else I might be missing out on. What else have I literally 'ran' past without stopping to truly look at?

A crime for an artist.

I really enjoy working with florals. And living where I do - I really think I should be doing more of it.

Starting something new...

Few things are as terrifying and exciting as a blank page.

I love (and occasionally despise) the moment before the pencil makes it's first mark, when it's poised above the paper ready to bring some idea into existence and the ability to translate imagery in my head to imagery on paper is directly challenged.

Most of the time I stare for a bit, soaking up the feeling but trying not to let it overwhelm me. It's so easy for me to be intimidated by the blankness of the paper - and I have to make a rather concentrated effort to push past it.

So I scribble.

I scribble all over my paper with light wavy strokes and the fear of the white empty page just floats away. I usually then take the resulting scribbles and work whatever image I had planned into the strokes (less erasing).

This sketch started out as a wavy mess of lines, which then became hair, feathers and birds. I liked the initial drawing, so I scanned it - mirrored it and started to build up some color. Right now I'm in love with peaches, teals, and jades so I'm going to try to work with that as my limited palette.

It starting in a pretty different direction from what I usually work on, but I'm excited to try to something new :)

Dragon Seekers -- finally finished.

3 months and one broken Cintiq later, its finally finished!
...and this was supposed to be a quick painting.

Its been awhile since I've worked on an image that went through as many fundamental changes as this one. It started as a vastly smaller, close-up of Farkas and the Nord woman.

Then I decided to redo the bow that the Nord woman holds. The dwarven bow I had painted felt over-done. A few days after that, I found the dog Meeko out in the woods of Skyrim and simply HAD to add him. Which meant extending the image more and giving both warriors *gulp* feet.

--(I don't really mind adding feet, but they used to be a huge source of frustration for me. I've since gotten over a lot of my trouble with their anatomy, but regardless of how many feet I draw -- I think I'll always carry a bit of that nervousness.)--

Then Dan had the great idea to distress Farkas's armor, which meant another evening of small tweaks.

I wanted to give the warriors bloody noses, or black eyes; something to suggest the middle of a fight - but I think I am skirting the line of over working the entire painting... so I'm done.

There are so many fantastic, emotional moments in the game - its hard not to want to draw them all.
Do you have a favorite? One quest that pulls at your heartstrings or causes you to fly into an almighty rage?