"Wednesday's Child"

pencil, then digital.

"Tuesday's Child"

pencil, then digital.

"Monday's Child"

pencil, then digital.

"Vicarial Squire: Fall"

pencil, then digital.

pencil, then digital.

"Vicarial Squire: August"

pencil, then digital.

"Vicarial Squire: December"

pencil, digital.

"For L.Bond"

4" x 4". watercolor, pencil.

A little "Thank You" painting for a former teacher who is leaving the department.

"Caroline"

ink, then digital.

Made for a friend of mine who is a big Sonic the Hedgehog fan.

"Lord of The Flies"

digital.

A speedpaint composition that I finished as a simple poster design.

Watercolors

I got a new little moleskine watercolor sketchbook and have put some simple quick paintings into it to help loosen up and sketch more in color.



And something from my regular sketchbook when I didn't have my moleskine on me.

"Minotaur youth"

~8.75" x 6.25". pencil.

"Banrai and Kasan"

"18" x 24". gouache.

Made for commission.

Face details.

Fonts :)

When I'm bored, typically during the life drawing sessions after I've drawn a couple sketches and am no longer inspired to do more from the model, I'll doodle up alphabets and letterforms. Sometimes students are playing music in the rest of the studio space and I'll just draw out a phrase or verse that I'm hearing in the lyrics or whatever is said in conversation.


1. "Coconino Moon" - Named for the way George Herriman always drew the moon in the old Krazy Kat comics.


2. "Woog"


3. "Lauderdale"


4. "Hooksie" - I was thinking of Earthworm Jim.


5. "Ploog" - Not the random name it might seem, but named for Mike Ploog, who did all the design (though clearly after Vaughn Bodé) and such for Ralph Bakshi's esoteric animated opus Wizards (1977). See it, if you don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I had this on my mind at the time.

Drawing letters is fun because they totally have their own gesture, but they aren't real objects, so you don't have to really worry about exactitude or whatever; they are already abstractions. There is enough of a constraint to force creative problem-solving, but open enough as subjects to allow for stress-free, exploratory mark making.

And here's a little random test of the Lauderdale letters as actual type.

"The Questing Beast"

pencil, then digital.

The questing beast is a creature from Arthurian mythology. I'm currently reading Le Morte D'Arthur, and just finished the passage featuring this creature.

The description in the text is extremely vague, however there are other versions of the tale that give more visual cues. From these, it seems to be a typical case of fanciful elaborations of real-world animals, in this case: the giraffe (also known as the "cameleopard" in Medieval times).

The questing beast is described as having the head and neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. Which would make sense if you were trying to explain what a "giraffe" was to the folks back in Europe.

The name itself comes from the description common to all versions of Arthurian legend, which describe the creature as constantly emitting a noise like of a pack of hunting ("questing") dogs. So.. fill a giraffe full of yelping beagles and foxhounds, and there you go.

It appears after Arthur has a troubling dream about the fall of his Kingdom at the hands of his incestuously conceived son, and so the questing beast is thought to be a bad omen: a symbol of incest and its negative consequences.

Ironclaw: A Bestiary

Woot! The book came in the mail and looks great :D I compiled the illustrations I made for Ironclaw (offsite link) that I made earlier this year into an "Art of..." book, along with my texts for each entry. I printed this over at blurb.com and a copy of the book just arrived yesterday! 80 pages. Contains 41 full-color illustrations with accompanying text and commentary. Here's how you can get yours.

"Buraq"

digital. A depiction of the mythological steed from Islam, renowned for carrying the prophet Muhammad around the Holy Land and on up to Heaven, way back in the day. Abraham apparently also had a ride. It's supposedly a kind of flying donkey with a human head, how cool is that?(!) I just made the above picture, but it's not new imagery for me. I first learned about it back in 2003 and made these: Later, in 2005, when taking my intro digital class, I felt the class was too basic and challenged myself to try more digital painting on my own. This was one of my first real efforts: I didn't get very far though; my ambition often outstrips my abilities with new mediums/techniques. I particularly like the "baked potato" he ends up standing on :B Of course now the Illustration department offers an advanced digital painting class, specifically :)

P.S. Across his chest it reads "Love and Peace" in Arabic. The mask/antlers are also "Love" just mirrored left and right.

Ironclaw

Ironclaw: A Bestiary by Chris Goodwin | Make Your Own Book

Earlier this year I finished a huge illustration project: creating images for use in the latest edition of the Ironclaw roleplaying game manual. The setting involves animal characters in a fantasy, pre-industrial European setting - from the Medieval period through the Renaissance to the early 1800's.

I was featured along with other artists in the book. And so, after it was done, I collected mine together to publish as a stand-alone portfolio / "Art of-" companion book, including my writings for each image. My process involved first writing something for each entry, and then basically illustrating this text.

Contains 41 full-color illustrations with accompanying text and commentary.
For those of you interested, the book is finished and available :)

I didn't make much fuss about the project here as I was working on it, I figured I'd just wait until now to point to it. The little preview widget above is cool, but might take some time to load all the thumbnails :P

"Quarter Melon Moonshine"

digital.

I was working on a business card redesign and got distracted by the small format. "Doodled" in Illustrator.

BREMEN: Warren related stuff.

Here are some face studies for Warren. He's not that complicated a character, visually.



Plus a random spot of calligraphy, since I had my pens out.

BREMEN: "California Dreamin'"

digital.

Not the old The Mamas &The Papa's original, but this quick and sloppy phonetic cover by Japanese punk band Hi-STANDARD who sound like they have no idea what they're saying.

I imagine that regardless of whatever the band is actually playing, Warren hears it this way.

BREMEN: "Amateur Night at the Fireball"

digital.

Some environment design.

Dogs everywhere!

haven't been updating here so regularly, but here's some stuff!

finished the design for the dog character, named Warren, from the BREMEN stuff I'm still chewing on.



and just now this little gouache painting (about 3"x5") for my friend wyatt who likes great danes.

BREMEN: "Dock of The Bay"

digital.

featuring Miah and Gerick.

She's strumming a simple cover of the the classic by Otis Redding.

I'm starting to think more about the setting. While the city of Bremen itself is someplace impossibly glamorous and unrealized like The Emerald City of Oz, or the aura around Hollywood/NYC in the late 70's, most of the road trip setting will be strip mall suburbia hell, or some kind of run down post-industrial urban blight mill towns.

BREMEN: "Miah Faces 01"

digital.

D'oh! I forgot that I hadn't put these here.

Squishy face is squishy.

BREMEN: "Miah"

Designs for the cat character. She's supposed to be a kind of lanky midwest tomboy/tomcat who wants out of her smothering, conservative, country upbringing and into the urbane tolerance she believes she'll find in the big city of Bremen. She also wants to rock out and nobody seems to understand that back home.

She's a sphynx cat, for those who aren't familiar. Which also contributes to why she doesn't feel like she fits in among her fluffier "prettier" peers.

My research into names shows that "miau" is German for the "meow" sound that cats make. "Miah" is a name that sounds close to this, and is also both a boy's and girl's name.

"Oracle" and Gamma

9" x 12". gouache.

A spontaneous portrait of The Yellow Kid. I needed to paint badly today.

If you don't already know who that is, I'm sorry - I'm not going to get into it now.
The wikipedia entry is perfectly adequate.

The other image is the same painting, just digitally altered by moving the gamma
correction slider over a half-inch.