W hen I started posting to this gallery project—now going on its fourth year—I never imagined the staying power of these accidental creations and warm up paintings executed with leftover paints. Fans seem to love the casual drop-ins to the studio that these paintings...
Over the past two years, I’ve been documenting an ongoing gallery project made up of accidental creations and warm up paintings executed with leftover paints. These exercises not only offer fans a peek into the studio, they also help me build momentum...
Creative exercises can help keep an artist focused and productive. That was the thought going into 2016 with the Leftovers & Palette Gremlins project…and boy did the project prove essential in a year teeming with distraction. Looking back it’s hard to...
Leftovers are little spur-of-the-moment doodles or sketches created from paint left over from a work in progress. Most of these quickies end up in the trash, but some are kind of cool on their own and others have lead to full scale paintings.
I’ve been doing this since my art school days: THE PEEPER came from the paint left over from a piece done for my first professional portfolio.
Palette Gremlins are small creations found in random shapes, usually paint on a palette or the mat board I use to protect my drawing table. Often what I see is an alien or a face, but PASSAGE: THE RED STEP was suggested by shapes in the over-spray left from a complex airbrushing session.
In either case, when they spark an idea that leads to a larger work, it feels like a gift from my Muse! The point of it all, however, is to play with some paint — and see what happens.
Anne McCaffrey loved Michael Whelan’s covers—and so did the fans.
One of the things that sets Michael Whelan above some other cover artists is that he reads the books before he illustrates them, and that brings a level of detail to his covers that really makes them shine.
LUMEN 9 originated from an idea that I brought home with me from the hospital in May of the year 2000. When the idea came to me, the only thing I had to draw on was an advisory pamphlet for patients, so I used the back of it for a rough sketch of the composition. I...
Assembled here for your delectation is a hodgepodge of images selected to fit the Halloween season. They come from a wide variety of sources, including concept renderings for book cover assignments, studio sketches, a digital experiment and a couple of more recent...
My approach to A MEMORY OF LIGHT was dictated by unfamiliarity with the series. Not having read The Wheel of Time books, I focused on the scene provided and the characters therein while also keeping in mind that this book was the culmination of many years of reading for devoted fans.
It seemed best to start with the focus of the painting: Rand himself.
My initial sketches explored the pose he might adopt as he entered the dark confines of the cave. I attached light sticks to a wooden bokken and descended a flight of stairs with the lights off, trying to get a feel for how he would be holding the sword to light his way into darkness. (Since early in my career, I’ve found a kinesthetic sense of the figure’s pose is helpful before attempting to recreate it in it’s variations.)
I wasn’t feeling in the holiday spirit this year, and as usual it took a painting—a gift for visitors of my new website—to get me into the mood of the season. “Yupo paper” is an interesting surface. Don Maitz first recommended it to me, and I was pleased with...
The general concept for this work was spelled out to me by my art director and contact at Blizzard, Jeremy Cranford. We had met the previous Fall at IlluxCon, and despite being in an annoying loud bar lounge we were able to outline the basic assignment and agree to move it forward.
Before starting, the smart thing to do would have been to examine the actual game to become familiar with the feel of it, but instead I just jumped into exploring dramatic dragon poses and having fun with that. Being told from the onset that the image would depict a raging dragon emerging from a giant ocean maelstrom, I felt I had enough to go on.