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.

Take-Home Commissions & Happy Holidays

Convention season (for me) is officially OVER until March 2013. Allow me a sigh of relief:

---Ahhhhhhhhhh---

Don't get me wrong, I love going to conventions and working tables. Love it. But it does wear me out, especially when there's travel and/or long hours involved. I'm ready to hibernate for the winter, but that doesn't mean things have slowed down in my studio. I need the help of my toes to count the assignments I had to finish before mid-December, and there's still a heavy handful of projects I'm working on through the holidays (one final is even due Xmas Eve). This has left very little time for blogging, or having an online social life at all, but I thought I'd take a quick break and show off a couple of the small commissions for Magic card alterations I had to take home with me from the StarCityGames Open Series earlier this month, because I think they're neat:

At the risk of getting flooded with requests for these, I've been dabbling in acrylic border extensions...


I've also bought an unprecedented number of extra-fine Sharpie markers for jobs like these... how am I just finding out that Sharpie released a limited edition 80's Glam color pack?!?! I had a set of crayola pens of the same color variety in the actual 80's. Memory lane, I am walking down you.

I expect I'll be pretty quiet for the rest of 2012, but I do want to share one more piece of good news... I just found out yesterday that a jury found me fit to show my work at the IlluXCon 6 Weekend Salon -the first of its kind- in Allentown, PA September, 2013. More news on that closer to the time, but I'm very happy to be accepted, and it will be a great motivator to keep oil painting with gusto.

I hope everyone has a cheerful holiday and best wishes as 2012 comes to a close!
-Cynthia

Interview with StarCityGames [Video]

November. Was. INSANE.

I'm still catching up on email and work after that crazy brutal month, recovering from IlluXCon, hosting Thanksgiving, trucking across state lines to deliver a painting, and (probably most of all) devoting a lot of time to caring for my physically disabled mum-in-law while she visited from her assisted living home in NC.

Continuing the nutty trend, December kicked off with a bang, with a guest appearance at the StarCityGames Open Series: Baltimore. The SCG fellas were nice enough to tape an interview with me on Sunday. As a side note, this is the first time I can recall that I don't utterly hate the sound of my recorded voice; I attribute the random husky smoothness to exhaustion, so maybe I should avoid sleeping before I go on air from now on. Anyway, check it out:



Bonus! They did a similar interview with Noah Bradley, which was taped right before mine.