Heart of A Pirate: A Novel of Anne Bonny

The website for Stone Harbour Press is now live, and this book, by Pamela Johnson has released in Trade Paperback. I received my complimentary copies recently and so I know that orders are ready to be filled. Books are $15, and can be ordered from the publisher's website. If you like Historical Fiction, strong female lead characters, and the Pirate Age in general, check it out!

The artwork, including prints, can be found here.

Getting It, Still Trying

A couple years back, I started to catch up a bit about an area of technology I'd let myself fall behind on: social networking. I wasn't proud of that, as I try to keep up with the broad swaths of technology, at least to acquire a passing knowledge. At the time, I think MySpace was still the place where I knew lots of other illustrators hung out. So I made an account, begrudgingly, and...well, it hasn't been updated too much, nor have I used it much. I wanted to be convinced that MySpace rocked.

The thing with social networking is that in some respects it forces those who are otherwise savvy, to duplicate their work. I have a website where you can view images of my work, and I have a blog. Those are two big things you can do on a place like MySpace. The social networking part--the back and forth chatting with folks--is clunky as ever. Overall, yucky. What MySpace is great for, however, and for which I'm glad I got an account, is for discovering music. I haven't spent a ton of time doing it, but it's really easy to start by visiting a band you like, then by checking out their "top 10" or whatever friends, some of whom are other bands/musicians that they themselves love and probably know, you can eventually find some good stuff. My MySpace page is free for all to subscribe to, so feel free. The most I'll probably do there is update the images and maybe chat a little if posts require it. Verdict: despite starting to roll in improvements copied from Facebook, MySpace does not rock.

Facebook came much later for me. Again, after a curiosity to see what the hub-bub was. Facebook I like. It's much more smartly designed, overall, and doesn't have you running the risk of visiting a user's page that's been so heavily customized that it breaks your machine with all the animated backgrounds/automatically starting widgets and all that. As social networking goes, this is what I actually use on a day-to-day basis. However, because I actually value the networking and friendship part of it, I ignore a lot of requests to get added as friends by fans. I consider it a more personal space, so no offense intended. I find I get the most benefit by keeping my circle of friends more exclusive. If you know me personally and want to find me there, I'll be happy to add you.

Twitter I've been aware of for awhile, but again, I wasn't going to do the heavy-lifting of trying to divine what its usefulness would eventually be. I know it's far more than the "I ate udon for lunch!" thing people joke about it (I did eat that, btw). Still, I wasn't sure how useful it'd actually be. I've been following a few users without having an account for some time, and have slowly starting to see the networking and communication opportunities others have made use of it for. So I made an account there, but at the moment I haven't begun actually using it. I'm not sure how *I* might use it still, besides aggregating posts by other folks. But feel free to hit me up since, if I use it, it won't be for private communications.

Figure Drawing, pt. 14

For one reason or another, we don't get a lot of male models. This was true back in Asheville, and has been true even in NYC. Or, at least at the SI. So when we do get a good male model, it's a refreshing change.

L: 2.5x4" brush pen

We've now had the model below twice. Great physique--muscular without being all 'roid-raged, and the dreads are pretty fun to draw, too. Just the sort of thing a fantasy artist needs to practice...although fantasy artists do have a certain unfortunate reputation for making 'roid rage the standard physique for their mutton-eating barbarians. Then again, I can't recall the last time I had to paint a mullet-wearing barbarian, so it must be a subset of the genre. You can imagine that the Venn diagram between men who will model, and men who spend significant effort working out has a pretty small overlap. I think it's a problem with the "men who will model" side of the equation. I'm not sure what it is, but I've been told repeatedly that there are simply fewer male models. This sounds like a perfect supply/demand issue that requires exploitation, resulting in a higher per-hour rate. So, male readers, that part-time job awaits you. Especially if you work out.

L: 3x5" R: 5x5" pencil

The Last Enemy

Originally begun as a sketch on the back of some white-backed Magic cards, I had a little time between assignments, so quickly jumped from sketch to painting before the idea got queued in my 5-year waiting pool. There are many images still in that pool who think it was a little unfair. After doing a couple of value studies, I opted for one in which the Reaper wore a white robe. Basically, I'm kinda tired of dark-clad Reapers. I mean, are dark robes the standard-issue uniform? I don't think so. After all, in China and Japan the color of mourning is white. Surely Death dresses in a culturally relevant manner wherever he might go? More than anything, I just liked how it looked, and when making art that is a pretty good reason to do something.


11x14" Acrylic and oils on paper over masonite

Death, personified, is a very interesting thing in its own right. Appearing in many world cultures over the course of history, he takes on many forms. Sometimes he's even a she. Sometimes he wears white, sometimes rides a pale horse, sometimes a dark buffalo, and often wields a scythe. He's a common fixture in world religions, and rather than title this image something simple like "The Grim Reaper," I've gone for one of the Biblical titles for him, "The Last Enemy," which strikes me as a good character summation of what all these personifications are trying to embody; it also has a sort of final-boss videogame chic to it. A larger view and purchase details are available here.

World of Warcraft Prints, Proofs

At long last, we illustrators have received permission from Blizzard to make available World of Warcraft prints through our websites. These have been available in-person for about 2 years now, but now you all have access to them, finally. I have 3 such that I've made available.

Along with them, I received a couple of new WoW artist proofs, which have also been added with sketch options on them.

Xbox 360: Duel of the Planeswalkers

I generally haven't made note of digital releases of illustrations I've done in the Magic: the Gathering Online PC game, since its release schedule tends to mirror the paper game: when a set releases in physical product, it's available digitally, and both games are really the same.

However, the recent release of Duel of the Planeswalkers is different enough to warrant a mention. For starters, it's an Xbox 360 title, and as I tend to prefer consoles to PC gaming, that's already a good thing. Secondly, it's available via the Xbox Live Marketplace (800 points), so don't go run to your local game store looking for it. Most importantly however, this much simpler release of Magic: the Gathering (because that's still what it is) is being described as a really good way to learn what this "cardboard crack" phenomenon is all about. Granted, a good friend who plays--possessed of patience and good verbal skills--is always the best way to learn to play any game, but if you don't have such friends, you lack a means to learn. This apparently is the way to go, as it has a robust single-player experience. It doesn't throw thousands of cards at you and leave you confused, rather it seems to go the route of pre-constructed themed decks, with other unlockables, so is good for easing yourself in, with an apparently well-done tutorial.

So, check it out. As for the relevance to yours truly, the game reprints a number of cards from various releases, and I believe two of my illustrations appear in the game, some classic ones at that. Giant Spider (originally published in Portal [1997], reprinted a few times since) and the perennial favorite Soul Warden (originally printed in Exodus[1998], reprinted many times since) feature in the game. Expansions are promised, but I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with them for future notices.

Is it weird to refer to such illustrations as "classics?" I mean, each is over a decade old now, after all. In modern terms, that's positively ancient. I swear, I'm not a day over 60!

Experiment Lab: Results

On and off for a week or so, I had a webcam running while working. Years ago I did the webcam thing. The webcam was different but also not very great quality, and I had it on a tripod over my left shoulder in my older and larger studio. This was probably about 2000 or so. Rather than a live feed, it was an auto-refreshing page that would display a new frame every 15 seconds or so. Oh, how the internet has advanced.

I used Ustream.tv this time, a great free service that live broadcasts your webcam feed. You can also record your broadcasts straight to their server, which is nice. Back in the day, I made a few time-elapsed videos of some paintings, with even a little narration on top. When I took a job for a year at Nexon, Inc. that all stopped.

Basically, the live camera feed I'd call a failed experiment. For it to be worthwhile (for both of us!) to try again would require: A webcam with 640x480 resolution or greater--the cam I used was 320x240. At that larger size, a faster internet connection would probably be necessary. Such a cam would probably have a better picture overall, and with 4 times the pixels, you could actually see some detail. Secondly, a different studio setup besides the guerilla art studio I've used since '05 now, something where I could have the camera on my left side again, so my arm wouldn't block the view.

However, I also did a few experiments before the painting, doing greyscale studies live using Webcammax, a free program (which puts a banner on top until you buy it) that worked really well, capturing a configurable portion of your screen, live. The quality is nice and it doesn't slow down my system very much. That experiment was a success.

However, if I wanted to use the second option to show some of my digital preliminary work and such, there's still the issue of where to post the feed in a way that you'd know about it, since I spend more time doing traditional over digital work. All things to keep thinking about. In the meantime, I did record two greyscale studies, and so I'll post them here. I used the value study shown in the second.

The first one I did playing around with a free online flash-based paint program called Sumo Paint, which is pretty cool on a basic level. The second was done in Painter IX and Photoshop.

Star Wars: Padme Escapes

An all-Star Wars week of updates! Having worked on a few Star Wars RPG projects, as mentioned in posts below, I got the itch to do something a little less...spot illustration-y. Spot illustrations are what they are--small, often minimal background, typically character shots or simple narratives. They don't really lend themselves well to more involved paintings. So around the end of last year I started playing around with some ideas for doing a non-commissioned Star Wars piece. Uncommissioned works tend to be done in and around paying jobs, or during a break between the end of one job and the start of another. I worked on it and finished it right around the time of New York Comic-Con in February. I had an easel behind my 1/2 table, which isn't much for displaying larger works, and so half the day I'd toss up this Star Wars painting, the other half of the day I'd put up my Batman and Rorschach pieces.

Having some time to sit with it throughout the weekend, by the end of the show I decided it wasn't done, despite being signed and with a nice layer of Galkyd over it to seal it. So some time after the con I did some digital playing around with the scan I had. Basically all the foreground environment I was unsatisfied with. So I re-imagined it and got back to work, then shelved it, then took it out and continued, then shelved it...until finally I finished it again.

16x24" Oils on paper over masonite

Perhaps just here is where you might expect me to post a scan of the image before re-working it. Well, if I still thought it was worth showing, I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of repainting it! Let it suffice to say that all the foreground rock, sand, the dead battle droid and his gun, the clone trooper in the foreground, and even the sand and rock-wall under and behind Padme were all repainted. Before, that trooper and droid weren't there, there was no desert foliage, and rather than rock, those shapes were entirely sand dune. If you happened to see me at NY Comic-Con, you got to see it the old way. If you'd like to see a zoomed-in version, I'd direct you to the painting's page.