A friend asked me to help him design a dragon for the bottom of his longboard.  It was fun to try and figure out how to fill such an unusually shaped space.

I started out painting a grayscale dragon in Photoshop making sure to keep the dragon and background layers separate to make masking easier later on.

(Please note that I do have kind, wise, wonderful friends who care about my sanity and advised me not to worry about painting all the scales. But, as is usually the case with the recipients of good advice…I listened and did just the opposite)

Once I had all the detail I wanted I added color using gradient maps which is something I’ve never tried before. I color sampled from a couple images of copper coins and was able to get pretty good initial color in a relatively short time.

After several (and I mean SEVERAL) layers of this I went back to direct painting and finished it up! Which took forever. But it was probably faster than it would have been without gradient maps.! I’ll definitely experiment with them again in the future.  Here’s the rectangular version:

It’s very liberating to paint just for practice with no ambitious masterpiece in mind.  Here’s a little head study I did a couple nights ago.  It was extremely satisfying just painting for painting’s sake, I need to work on little pictures like this more often!

I’m pretty sure that when Rebecca was born all of the regular baby-delivering storks were booked, so whoever is in charge of such things decided to send her via owl instead.  It would explain the nocturnal habits she has exhibited from the moment of her arrival.  She also seems to have a particular affinity for the birds.  On family trips to the zoo, sleepy owls inevitably wake up at her approach and turn their heads to say hello.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  But I thought it deserved a painting :)  And while I was at it I threw in some stars since her favorite song is (appropriately) “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

So here’s a twinkling star for my adventurous little night owl.

Rebecca was peaceful and content at night… as long as someone was holding her.  If we laid her in her crib she started to cry and would not stop.  So I held her night after night and well into the mornings.  While I held her, I painted this picture, baby on one arm, Wacom stylus in the other hand.   I did this for a few weeks until she learned that night time was for sleeping then I put the painting aside and got some sleep for myself. 

About a year later I rediscovered this abandoned painting and began working on it off and on until I finally managed to finish it for her 18 month birthday!

The time has gone so fast.  I had no idea what happiness Rebecca would bring to our family when I first began this painting.  Since then I’ve been delighted to discover her silly, vivacious, enthusiastic, passionate, and absolutely radiant personality.    I’m so glad she came to our family.  I love you Rebecca!

…And just for fun here are some of the audio books and shows I watched while working on this painting!  Every time I see a certain area of my picture details from the corresponding book will pop into my head.  For example whenever I look at the faces I think of Darwin categorizing barnacle species and I will for years because I painted it into my picture.  (Though I sincerely hope my face doesn’t make you think of barnacles!) Here’s how I see my painting…

(Yes this picture DID take a long time, but not as long as it might seem based on this picture.  I didn’t work on this picture the WHOLE time I listened to these books, or watched Star Trek)

Daniel asked me to draw a monster for him so I sketched this quick Trolloc boy…I sketched a bit more…Daniel went to bed, I sketched a little more and my once lonely little Trolloc found himself in a pet store full of odd creatures and the gloop that would soon become his closest friend.

Back in October Daniel would go around the house saying “I love owls, and owls love me.”  I thought it was really cute and decided to paint an owl for him.  I got this far:

Then made the mistake of asking Daniel if he liked it.  He said, “No.  It’s too scary.”  So I never finished it.  Still, I thought it was kind of fun so I decided to post it anyway.  My poor little unfinished owl with no feet 🙂

Here’s a sneak peek of a new project I’m working on that Daniel DOES like (although he has recently decided the dragon ought to be blue):

The photo of Daniel is just a placeholder, I’ll use it as reference to paint him in later, once everything else is right.

I had fun experimenting with a new Photoshop technique as I worked on these card characters.

I scanned my pen drawing and after adjusting the levels to get rid of background noise from the scan I set the pen layer’s blending mode to “multiply.” 

Then I painted each object a solid color on it’s own layer.  This allowed m to use the hue/saturation slider to easily play around with color schemes. 

After I had the right colors I created a layer for the shadows  by painting the shadow areas with a single dark color and setting the layer’s blending mode to “color burn.”  If your image has a white background this blending mode works extra well because the shadow color will disappear on white, which means you don’t even have to stay in the lines!

I created the highlight layer by painting the light areas with a single light (almost white) color, and setting the blending mode to “soft light.”

Add a few little details here and there and viola! it’s finished!  This is SUCH an easy method for quick digital art.  I should have tried it out ages ago.

Every summer my mom produces and directs a Shakespearean play performed by community high-schoolers.  She puts so much work into these productions, making the sets, the costumes (ALL the costumes, which is a BIG deal, and they are fantastic!), casting, directing…she does pretty much everything except the posters…because that’s my job of course! 

Here is the poster I created for this year’s performance of Romeo and Juliet:

I was a little rushed on the color work, but I think it turned out pretty well considering.  What I’m most happy with is my initial line drawing:

To me it seems to have a life, elegance, and confidence that didn’t quite make it into the color version.

This is a head painting of another friend of Sala’s, the lovely Rachelle.  I actually had her dress up for me over Christmas break and we had a photo shoot.

I did a basic pencil sketch to start out with then scanned it into the computer to paint it digitally.

This was just supposed to be another study, but I was having so much fun that I ended up creating a mostly finished painting.  She reminds me a bit of Maid Marian so if I were to name this piece it would be “Dreams of Sherwood.”

Here are some close ups, I’m rather pleased with the clasp design I created:

Sometime I may come back to this piece and refine the border on her hood,  but I’m happy with it for now.  Thanks for posing for me Rachelle!