Stoned

This image was created for Digital Arts Magazine, as a tutorial on how to create a portrait of a statue. I had a lot of fun creating this one, especially in regards to the lightning as well as the texture work. The tutorial deals with applying both photo textures as well as hand painted textures to create a believable result. Be sure to check out the complete tutorial next month on Digital Arts Magazine!

Persephone

I created this image in order to practice painting drapery, which I view as a challenge. Greek Mythology inspires me heavily as well, so I wanted to show that with this image. Persephone's story mainly evolves her abduction from the Earth realm, to the Underworld, courtesy of Hades. This image deals with that concept (albeit a bit subtly). The figure's pose was referenced from Lockstock as well, who has some great fantasy themed stock photography.

A very lengthy tutorial on how this image was created will be available in June of next month's Advanced Photoshop Magazine as well, so be sure to check that out.

Self Portrait

I wanted to do a fantasy-themed self portrait for quite some time, but haven’t had the chance to until recently. I opted for a fantasy theme with this one mainly because I felt it would make for some interesting imagery. I wanted to emulate the look of those early classical paintings, so I applied what I have learned from doing the Master Copy studies a while back into this painting. I feel like a have a stronger piece of work as a result of those studies.

Digital Artists - Available For Pre Order!

I'm proud to announce that my work will be included in 'Digital Artists'. 'Digital Artists' is a book from ArtSquared.co.uk that will follow 70 of the worlds best digital artists showcasing more than 250 images spread over 172 diverse pages of artwork, including 10 workshops written by some of the best artists in the business.

Click here to find out more >>>

Lost From Sea

This image started off very... unplanned. At first, I initially wanted to paint an underwater scene, but I got bored halfway through and decided to do something a bit different. I'm glad I did at the end of the day, as an underwater scene would have probably been too cliche.

Pose referenced from: [link]

EDIT: I altered the lightning a bit to make the second light source more evident.

Joker Was Here

I recently saw The Dark Knight on Blu Ray, and immediately after decided I had to paint the Joker. I wanted to do something a bit more original, however, so I tried to depict the Joker more as a vampire than anything else (hence the black attire as opposed to the classic purple).

This was painted in a period of 3 days, and I did my best to avoid overworking this piece, so I stopped much earlier than I usually do.

Dancing With The Devil

This piece was commissioned over a year ago, and I had much fun, and frustration, in creating it. I don't usually experiment much with a dark theme, so this was a fun change from the norm. I was asked to do something very Tim Burton-ish, whom I'm a huge fan of, and what you see here is the result.

I wanted the composition to be simple, concentrating on atmosphere above all else, so I decided to keep everything pretty much empty. The more elements I tried to add, the more the atmosphere suffered. I learned with this piece, specifically how to create rainy effects and enhancing atmosphere. I kept the color theme simple and generally cool to add to the atmosphere as well.

The Clockwork Man - Available for Pre-Order!

The Clockwork Man, a project I've been working on along with fellow artists for the past year, is finally available for pre-order! I'm very proud with the work I've done for the project, and how the game turned out as well.

At the turn of the century, in an alternate timeline where steam-powered technology has become dominant in almost all walks of life, this Hidden Object Adventure will take you to exotic locales, while you attempt to compile the parts to the world’s greatest invention!

• Explore unique Scrolling & Zoomable multi-layered scenes.
• Find hundreds of hand-painted Victorian items.
• Solve many adventure & logic puzzles.
• Get spoiled only as much as you need thanks to an innovative hint system.
• Enjoy high replay value as hidden items appear in alternate locations on consecutive play sessions.

To learn more about the game, visit the official "The Clockwork Man" website. For a limited time, you can save 50% on the title now should you choose to pre-order it :)

Wonder Woman

Portrait of Woman Woman. I approached this image in a similar way Alex Ross approaches his paintings; Using a photo reference to obtain dynamic lightning information, but not being a complete slave to it. I really wanted to push colors with this one, so I spent a lot of time working on the colors as well as studying color theory in general. A tutorial on how I created this image will be featured in GoMotion magazine soon, so keep an eye out for that :) Figure referenced from: [link]

*Special thanks to Henning, Baka, and CGDude for their input :)

...

'Wonder Woman' is property of DC Comics.

Blade of Fire

This piece was a commission at first, but due to problems with the client, it fell through so I decided to make it my own. I put a lot of thought into this one, from the color scheme to the composition, and I think it really paid off. I consider this my best work to date, by far. Thanks for looking, and here's to a great 2009!

Master Copy - Biondina

A Master Copy of Lord Frederick Leighton's "Biondina", done for practice. I always seem to learn a tremendous amount when doing these practice paintings, and this time was no different. I tried to capture the likeness of the original, especially in terms of colors w/o taking any 'shortcuts' (no box gridding, color picking, etc). Original image can be found here: [link]

Approximately 2-3 hours of work.

Save Us (revised)

I decided to update this piece a bit, as I consider it to be my strongest in terms of theme. Among the changes were better color harmony, much more texture (I tried to emulate the look of those old Master paintings), and more definition, particularly in the clothing and face. Enjoy :D

Out Of This World - Speedpainting

Yet another speedpainting (I'm on a roll! :). This one was done without any references, which I'm very proud of (my previous portraits were fairly highly referenced). I had a lot of fun with this piece, and I might repaint this as a 'full' painting in the future. 1 hour, Photoshop.

EDIT: Worked on it for 1 more hour, looks much, much better me thinks :)

The Underworld - Speedpainting

Quick speedpainting, approximately 1 hour. Trying to get some more practice in landscape painting :)

Thanks for looking :)

Speedpaint: Fall of Daphne

Just a quick speedpaint done with Photoshop; I'm gonna be doing a lot of these to help me paint faster, as well as refine my technique. This one took me around 2 hours to complete, which is a huge improvement for me (I'm generally a very, very slow painter).

Thanks for looking :D

Edit: Worked on it a bit more. I have a bad habit of not being able to let an image go, even if it's a speedpaint :(

Some Updates and Publications

I recently did an interview with Digital Tutors, which can be read here. Additionally, I'm featured in this month 2D Artist as well. I'm also in the process of writing up quite a few tutorials on digital painting, most of which will be online early summer. I'll keep you posted :D Expect some new paintings later this week as well :)

Lady Gaia

This piece took me quite a while to complete; I started this off in early February, with a much more different concept; Eventually I altered the theme for something more darker. All in all, this took around 100 hours of work; The background was especially difficult for me to do.

Special thanks to Melanie Delon (Eskarina), who helped me out a tremendous amount with this piece (especially in terms of the colors).

Reference used for the figure.

Edit: Updated this piece a bit - altered the color scheme a bit, and enhanced the lightning a bit.

Batman Caricature

I painted this a while back, decided to finally post it. Approximately 10 hours of work.

Catwoman

Portrait of Catwoman. This started off as practice, but got a bit out of hand. Angelina Jolie was naturally used as reference :)

Nature Speedpaint

Approximately 2 hours.