Dragon Seekers WIP2

I had a bit of free time tonight to work on the Dragon Seekers painting - so I started to add the faithful companion, Meeko. Here is a close up :)
I'm aiming to finish the whole piece this weekend which is probably not quite possible. I am all for setting unreachable goals however!

A Sketch In Bruges

I was flipping through the moleskine I used while we were in Europe and I found this little sketch done in Bruges.

Being in Bruges was fantastic - completely disregarding the fact we got engaged there :) It's a smallish medieval city with winding cobblestone streets that snake around some incredibly old and well-preserved buildings. We spent most of our 3 days there without a map, just wandering about exploring and eating waffles. Every turn presented a different ancient church, belltower, or some other wonder -- so I did a lot of speed sketching.

This particular alcove was behind our hotel. The buildings were seemingly piled ontop of eachother and combined with the fog - made for a really neat scene.

Watercolor practice + Cintiq Update!

I just started work on a mini-project from a lovely friend and her wonderful family to create a series of watercolor animal illustrations for her children's playroom.
It's been a few months since I've picked up my watercolor set, so I started off today with some practice animals.

I love redtail hawks. Growing up in Michigan, hawks and falcons were a constant source of inspiration for my drawings as I was able to see them in the wild fairly often. Though their habitat does extend into Florida, I haven't yet had the opportunity to see one here -- besides the falconers' tent at the Renaissance Festival!

Florida does have a lot of other awesome birds however - so no complaints there.

I think the final project will include a raptor,(deciding between a peregrine falcon and a redtailed hawk) a toad, a squirrel and a fox. I'm going for a slight Beatrix Potter-ish feel, but that may change as the project continues.

In other news --- my cintiq returned home this week. The wacom tech people did a speedy and flawless job repairing my old friend and it feels so good to have it on my desk again. The fix for the broken backlight was very affordable, so I went ahead and had them switch out the glass as well, as it had a few small scratches in it. Feels like a whole new machine and I couldn't be happier.
I want to go back to work on my WIP Skyrim illustration right away - but I've got a few other projects to finish up before I can get lost in that image once again. It is a source of serious motivation however :)

Project INF gets a few new characters

Project INF got an update a few weeks back.
This time the update featured new models for each class, allowing the players to further customize their game experience.

I love, love, love creating new characters. The brainstorming, the sketching and the actual creation of the characters is some of my favorite work here at ChickenBrick.

These are the new models for the Scout class -- a sneak-based light fighter and the Brute -- a slow, but powerful opponent.

Found an old sketchbook

Today felt like a good day to do some cleaning.

I was reorganizing our shelves, trying to make room for a new load of books when I decided to flip through the pile of old sketchbooks at the bottom of the shelf. I generally fill or swap books every 4 - 6 months...so I've accumulated quite a collection.

I soon found myself losing track of time, buried under pages and pages of memories and ideas that I had totally forgotten about. Most were laughably horrendous, but there were a few decent concepts that I'll probably resume work on.

The book I flipped through today was from spring of 2007, when I was back at Michigan State living in the dorms. I was having a ton of trouble with my masculine figures and remember spending quite a lot of time on my own trying to get my drawn men to appear a bit more manly.

This sketch in particular made me realize how long its been since I've spent time in a life-drawing setting, and how I sincerely doubt I could reproduce that form now. It's probably well-past time for me to find a life drawing class!

So I'll try to post something old each Sunday for a bit here (we'll see how long it lasts!) and I encourage all my creative friends to dig back into their stock of old work. It's humbling, humorous and a good way to spend a few hours :)

A trip to the MIA artfair

Miami is an interesting place.
After 4 years here we've managed to carve out a comfortable niche in this fast-paced, sunburned city but there will always be days (usually when we are stuck in traffic) that we long for the great white north.

I suppose every major city has its ups and downs though.

One of our major 'ups' however, is the stream of art and art shows that dot the calendar. Art Basel in Decemeber, events in the design district, random gallery showings and art walks pop up in my email surprisingly often and we have been lucky enough to stumble into some pretty interesting gatherings.

Last night we made our way to the MIA artfair in downtown. This particular art fair was on a large yacht overlooking the Brickell/financial district area - making for a pretty spectacular view of the water and downtown.
We got there fairly early so the crowd was quite manageable. With 3 floors of art and one floor of a bar and tables, it was pretty easy to maneuver about the ship and spend time in each of the artist's (or art galleries) spaces.

It was a great time. A lot of really interesting work was shown and I wish I had thought to bring out my camera sooner. I wasn't sure if photography was allowed and I am generally hesitant to photograph art in a setting like this. (When we were in Europe, I had my camera poking out of my bag for pictures to be as covert as possible...even though I was fairly sure taking photos without the flash was just fine.) I did however, carry a notebook and wrote down names to look up later.

One of the names I was most interested in was Philadelphia artist Frank Hyder. His massive panels of mixed-media fish immediately caught my eye and I swiftly went to investigate. There were countless layers beneath a heavy coat of clear resin (I have such a soft spot for resin!) and I quickly found myself transfixed by the buildup on the surface. That same surface was also tooled into - creating ridges and waves in the (usually) metallic background that made for a really neat interaction with the solid paint of the fish. I wish I could stayed in that booth a little longer (or taken a photo at least!). Definitely some of my favorite work there.


The other name I scribbled down was that of Lian Jian. His faces were HUGE and incredibly haunting. The flesh tones were mesmerizing and I would have enjoyed seeing more of his works present.

Overall is a great art-filled evening spent aboard a very impressive vessel.
Miami definitely has it's perks :)

Day 8... twitching has commenced.

So we opened up the wacom today. Terrifying. And still no closer to a fix.

The lcd is definitely on (as seen by applying a flashlight to screen) but the backlight is apparently out. Or the inverter for the backlight it out. Without a reliable multimeter, its a bit hard to tell which is which.

The consensus was to send it back to wacom. Their customer service throughout this whole process has been awesome, although I don't think they approve of the opening of the Cintiq -- but we had an electrical engineer with us, it's cool. My fingers are crossed for a speedy and affordable fix!

In the meantime, I've been working on my entry for the Sketchbook Project as the due date is quickly approaching. I'm about halfway through the book, so I'm a tad nervous about meeting the deadline. But that's why coffee exists, right?