This is the 3rd post in this series. You can find the first one here (describes design & composition notes), and the second one (colour concepts) here.

This painting is finished, it is in the galleries under the Love’s Call cover art page. I’ve also posted it at my other haunts, though without the layout work done by the publisher.


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This is the 2nd post in this series. You can find the first one here (describes design & composition notes)

This painting is finished, it is in the galleries under the Love’s Call cover art page. I’ve also posted it at my other haunts, though without the layout work done by the publisher.


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I slipped into sketchfest on Sunday morning. Saturday was spent working on some commissions and chores. I’ll be going back and doing some more business stuff this afternoon as I have contracts and emails to work through, as well as more painting, but I wanted to get in at least one piece for sketchfest. This is what happens when you have a day job ( Read more... )

This is a continuation of characters from the same series as Lada where the world is a fantasy taking notes from late medieval Russia and Eastern Europe.


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I don’t like gore, but when it comes to painting RPG (role playing game) characters, sometimes the character may have a few battle scars. All of us have scars - some from childhood, some from being an idiot, sometimes from being tired, sometimes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Regardless, scars tell a story about the person or ( Read more... )

Basic oval gem, in greyscale


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These are the general steps for this formal approach to painting a character

1. Rough anatomy sketch, just grab blocks to suggest weight and balance. I was working from a reference because this was mainly to practice character design and to be honest I didn’t want to spend a huge time thinking about anatomy.

2. Detailed the face. At the time I was ( Read more... )

From April 2007.  Nowadays I tend to completely work in Photoshop CS5, but many of the techniques are the same no matter the software.

This painting was completely unplanned. It started out as a gothic vampire piece… ended up something completely different! These are some of the notes I posted to LiveJournal while painting, and subsequently ( Read more... )

Step 1: The Sketch

As this piece was only an exercise I skipped my normal preparation. I merely clipped it to a board as I knew I wouldn’t be doing any washes or heavy wet into wet sections. The paper is Arches Cold Pressed 300gsm 100% Rag gelatin sized. It’s fairly thick and has a lovely tooth.

I sketch fairly loosely in a HB/ B pencil, preferring ( Read more... )