New digital painting, "Unfinished Melody"

I want to share with you my new digital painting, Unfinished Melody:



A girl, despite being injured and surrounded by death, is captivated by a melody in her head, and attempts to rise up so that she can finish playing it.

It’s simultaneously a narrative painting and a dramatic metaphor for the current state of my artistic career, as well as a minor nod toward my 2009 painting, Half Her Heart’s Duet, created during a time at which I also wanted to (figuratively) burn all my paintings and start over.

Unfinished Melody toys with various themes: obsession, vulnerability, strength through adversity, and creativity. Music and musical instruments represent creativity/creation in both this painting and the earlier Half Her Heart’s Duet, and the small, half-shadowed stringed instrument in this piece intentionally resembles the shape of the guards’ shields, suggesting that creativity is a form of protection. While painting, I thought of each arrow as a bad idea, or a piece of shoddy career advice I received somewhere over the last four years. Some of them were deflected, and some stuck. The broken one that's stuck in her (my) leg is the notion that just good enough is fine. It's not. Just good enough will kill you, slowly. Her intent to rise up mirrors my intention to bring my whole self back to my art, despite so much advice to the contrary.

The specific imagery I chose also (I think) relates to various bits of media I consumed during and just before creating this piece. For example, HBO's Game of Thrones had just aired its infamous Rains of Castamere (Red Wedding) episode a week prior, so [SPOILER] the idea of mass slaughter was fresh on my mind.[/SPOILER]

There’s also a tiny part in one of my all-time favorite TV shows, BBC’s Sherlock, where Moriarty is telling the famous tale of Bach hearing his son playing one of his songs at the piano and stopping before it was finished, so the dying composer got out of bed and finished it. That's where the title came from. I thought the idea of being 'unable to cope with an unfinished melody' was a perfect way to describe this painting and what it stands for to me personally as the obsessed artist.

In my next post, I'll talk a little bit about how it was made.

Death to the Old, Long Live the New

Have you ever wanted to burn all of your paintings? You'd think that would be an upsetting feeling, but sometimes it's the best thing, because it means you've outgrown your old work.


"Fallen and Forgotten" adapted from a piece for ImagineFX. 2012-2013, Digital.

Allow me to speak from my heart for a minute: I outgrew my work a long time ago.

After starting the full-time illustration career, I lost sight of where I wanted to go next, so I just drifted on, and tried some things that worked and others that didn't work as well as I planned. Even "successful" pieces from last year like Omens were a stab in the direction I want to go, but fell just short of the mark. Then last week everything changed. I finally completed a piece that (I feel) is more worthy of my signature than anything that came before it, and is a clear starting point for the look and feel of my next body of work. I can't show off that particular piece for at least a year, because it's under nondisclosure, but waiting to release it gives me time to settle into a cocoon and undergo a period of intense growth and change.

I need to use the time to meditate on what my future career looks like, too. I want to continue working in games, and pursue more books after re-tooling my portfolio, but I might wait to pursue gallery work for a few years. Some might be upset by this, but after trying for a couple years to make it work, I'm putting oil painting on the back burner. I still plan to use traditional media, but probably more in the form of graphite and charcoal drawings. I think I jumped into oils prematurely, naively thinking I'd be able to put in the same level of quality as my digital work, but I need more training and practice in the medium itself before continuing down that road professionally. My sincerest apologies to original art collectors who expected more oils- it's not you, it's me.

As for burning my body of work so far, obviously that's not a real option (unless I build an Archimedes death ray like James Gurney). Growth is about building on the past, so while a lot of work will have to be retired, it won't be forgotten.

I'm so excited. Time to shut up and go draw.

Shogun Rising, a Graphic Novel

Do you enjoy stories about Samurai warriors? Forbidden love? ...Zombies?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you should watch this short video:


"Shogun Rising is an original story and full 48 page color illustrated graphic novel about love, samurai, and zombies. Near-future Tokyo is zombie apocalypse ground zero. Survivors are forced to flee to a remote samurai village. Hiroshi, a samurai prodigy, and Mizuki, the daughter of a ruthless Tokyo crime-boss, attempt to navigate the new world and their forbidden love. Tensions arise as cultures clash and the chances of survival diminish. And yes, samurais will totally fight zombies. But who will win?"

The Awesome Horse Studios team, (Marc Scheff, Aaron Miller, Noah Bradley, and I) did all of the concept artwork for the upcoming graphic novel Shogun Rising. We're currently using Kickstarter to fund the project. Go here to find out how you can help make this happen!

"A Saga In The Stars" at Gallery Nucleus, Opens Tonight!

"A long time ago, in a gallery far, far away..."

I'm so excited to be participating in A Saga in the Stars: A Tribute Event to a Galaxy Far, Far Away, with a new painting:


"Undoing"
11x14 inches
oil on illustration board


All framed up in the studio

"...I considered painting a scene much like the end of the final battle in 'Return of the Jedi,' where Luke embraces his father as the dark side of the Force leaves him. In the end, I stripped that concept down to what I felt was its most important element- Darth Vader's severed hand and his light saber, flickering with its final glow, portraying the moment Darth Vader ceases to exist, and Anakin Skywalker is reborn."

If you're in Los Angeles, definitely go check out the show. My paintng will be displayed among the work of many talented artists (see the list below). The painting will also be available for sale on the Gallery Nucleus website after the show officially opens. UPDATE: The painting has been sold! Huzzah!

Magic Card Art: Bribery (DCI Judge Promo Foil)

Card Name: Bribery
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

Gatherer Link: None

Medium: Digital
Original Art Available? No
Artist Proofs Available? No

Artist Notes: This was printed as a DCI Judges' foil promo only, so it's unfortunately not a widely-known piece.

Magic Card Art: Wake The Reflections

Card Name: Wake The Reflections
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

Gatherer Link: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=369012

Medium: Digital
Original Art Available? No
Artist Proofs Available? Yes

Artist Notes: As a nice, unexpected surprise, this piece was accepted into Spectrum 20. :)

*This Weekend!* StarCityGames Open Series DC

I'll be a special guest at the StarCityGames Open Series DC this weekend, March 16-17th. Come say hi! I'll be sketching things and signing cards, and will have a few prints and playmats for sale, too.

Painting Daenerys: A Time-Lapse Digital Painting Study

So there I was, labeling some spice jars and looking up recipes for a Game of Thrones S3 premiere-themed dinner, when I decided that it would be fun to make some sort of art to put on an invitation for my friends. For fun.

Several hours later, this happened:


Youtube link if you want it in HD: http://youtu.be/sz9bXePMWbQ

What's cool about accidentally making a fan art digital painting demo is a lot of people have asked about fan art lately. Some students wanted to know if it's a worthwhile practice for learning painting skills.

I'd say yes- if you're talking about photo-referenced fan art studies, it's about as useful as any other photo study for learning how to mimic visual images with your digital brush. Try to approach photo studies in a way that helps you get the most out of them. For example (as shown in the video demo):

• Paint by sight instead of tracing or painting on top of a photo. You get a different learning experience when you make the extra effort to measure proportions by eye.
• Pick your own colors instead of sampling from the photo. Same principle.
• And for an even deeper practice, don't faithfully recreate a single photo pixel for pixel- reference two or three images of the same subject if that's available to you. Many portrait artists do this to give their paintings a more lifelike feel.

Digital Study of Daenerys Targaryen

Magic Card Art: Shadow Alley Denizen

Card Name: Shadow Alley Denizen
© 2013 Wizards of the Coast

Gatherer Link: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=366307

Medium: Digital
Original Art Available? No
Artist Proofs Available? Yes

Artist Notes: My first card released in 2013. The year's not over yet as I'm writing this, but 2013 has been a good year for me, and I think this card art kicked it off nicely. It was the start of my putting more detail into my cards- if you go back and compare this next to, say, Scorned Villager, you can see how rough the older art looks in comparison.

The Month of Love: 20 Illustrators, 20 Sketches Every Day in February

Awesome lettering design by Jeanine Henderson

The concept is simple: 20 illustrators create one sketch every day for the month of February, with the overarching theme of LOVE. I'm so excited to be a part of this amazing team of artists, and to see what kind of awesome work is generated here.

Visit the Month of Love Blog: http://monthoflove.blogspot.com/

Meet the Artists:

• Scott Bakal
• Scott Brundage
• Kristina Carroll
• Narciso Espiritu Jr.
• Kate Feirtag
• Sarah Gay
• Jeanine Henderson
• Tara Jacoby
• Jeffrey Alan Love
• Carly Mazur
• Scott Murphy
• Terese Nielsen
• Chris O’Neill
• Ricardo Lopez Ortiz
• Tim Paul
• Marc Scheff
• Cynthia Sheppard
• Kyle Smart
• Alice Stanne
• Jaime Zollars

For me, free-form sketching like this is a great way to generate ideas for future paintings. In fact, the very first seed for my painting Omens started as a red pencil sketch on the back of a Magic Card proof (trivia!). And this challenge couldn't have come at a better time— I've been "cocooning" lately. That is, I've been holed up in my studio trying to find a new direction to take my personal work. Imagine the grumpy old writer repeatedly wadding up paper from his typewriter and throwing them in the garbage... soon enough I will emerge, changed.