Kind of distracted today. I think I’m going to continue the painting and make it into something more finished for a friend.

Some more progress with the fantasy piece. Redrew the centaur’s right arm to better fit the perspective and I think it works a lot better. Also made the minotaur a little angrier (“needs more battle fury!” as someone from gutterzombie put it) and worked on the lighting a little more.

Also working on a pinup of Sugar Ray Finhead, a character created by Doug Baron, a teacher I had in first year. I’m going for an old-timey boxing photo kind of look, partly because I think it’ll look cool but also because he prints the book in b+w and maybe he’ll throw it in ;).

Here’s the finished drawing for the fantasy painting. I think the human part of the centaur could use a little more work, but it’s time to jump into painting.

[Edit] Some more progress. Quick layout of values.

Sean Murphy came in to school last Thursday to talk to the 3rd years and answer any of our questions about art or the business of comics. He’s an awesome artist, super fast, and very honest about his experiences and opinions. After school I got a portfolio review from him which was very positive, especially regarding my coloring. He suggested that I contact some editors in advance of the next convention to set up interviews and get on their radar. The next day I emailed Sean to thank him for coming in and looking at my stuff, and I asked him if he could put me in touch with some editors because, well, I don’t know any! He put me in touch with Chris Warner at Dark Horse.

I sent Sean an email thanking him for everything (again; I’m sure he’s sick of my appreciation by now haha) and asked if he had any critiques or suggestions for my colors because he tends to rip on them a lot (and let’s face it, there’s a lot of crappy ones out there) so I knew he’d be honest. He replied:

Well I wouldn’t be helping you out if I thought you weren’t any good.  I won’t lie to someone and tell them I like their stuff when I don’t, and only once in a great while do I bother forwarding art.  But the stuff you sent is compairable to Dave Stewart here and there.  Love the textures (not a fan of cuts on my stuff).  And your color theory is balanced and sound, which is the hardest thing for colorists to understand.  Whatever kind of brain a colorist needs, you have it.  Sure there are small things here and there which could use a tweak, but it’s so close overall that it’s best for you to just keep working and figure things out for yourself.

That totally made my day.

But then! I hadn’t been to GutterZombie (a colorist forum) in a long time and decided to drop by and post some of my recent stuff (bascially the same coloring sampler I sent to Chris). Laura Martin (an award-winning colorist and easily one of the best in the business) said:

Oh hell yeah, these are all beyootiful!!

So basically I’m on cloud 9 because I’m fairly confident that reactions like these indicate that I’m not going to starve when I get out of school. Though I’m still totally expecting Jamie Kennedy to pop out and tell me I’ve been “X”ed. (Too dated? TOO BAD. SCREW PUNK’D.) And just so this post isn’t devoid of artwork, here’s some progress on the fantasy/mythology ‘pencils’. Also, I’ve decided to start out grayscale with this painting because I really want to nail the values.

Starting a digital painting for my color illustration class. We have to do an illustration of some kind of mythology. This is a rough b+w comp to figure out the poses, lighting, and composition.

Here’s a look into the process of creating the Conan concept painting.

Quick sketch to establish the pose and perspective:

Added flat color, established light sources and began rendering:

Started on the background, more rendering and started adding accessories:

I used Liquify a lot to adjust proportions all throughout. Here you can see where I started to use it to tweak the face:

Some more painting and tweaking and viola!