Brains

This is a sample of a recent commission it did. The request was to make him look like the walking dead. Very fun to do! Enjoy!

He lost his stuffing

A painting I did today for my sister-in-law for her birthday. Maybe I'll do some more of these Wizard of Oz characters in the future. This was fun.

And in other news I was recently accepted in to the UVU illustration BFA program. I'm pretty excited about it. :D

I'm also excited for the semester to be over. :D

Oh! I have a blog

So, school started up again. Thats why I havent posted in while. I'm finally taking some awesome art classes. One of them is  an acrylic painting class and I'm very much enjoying it! Above are a couple examples of how the assignments are turning out. Painting 4-6x8 paintings a week is enjoyable. I've never used acrylic paints before so it's challenging.

And then some sketchbook goodness. Enjoy! 

I'm really loving the prismacolor gray value markers. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

This is a painting I did for my father-in-law. It's Santa's reindeer and sleigh waiting for Santa. It was a lot of fun to do.

Done in Painter X with a Wacom tablet.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Bill Perkins color class

A couple of months ago, I took a three day color boot camp taught by Bill Perkins. This workshop focused on color theory, which I really need to know more about. It was an awesome and frustrating experience for me. The workshop involved oil painting live models in differing lighting situations. Since this was my first time using oils it was very frustrating. But, overall I thought it was an excellent experience. These are the paintings that I produced during the whole boot camp. They were all done in 40 minutes each. Plus, I met some awesome artists who were also taking the boot camp. I'd like to take it again when it comes around. Thanks to Dave and Tyler for letting me know about this.

CD cover process

This is the process I used to make a CD cover for my cousin Bret Slack. He's been working on a jazz music album and wanted me to create the art work for it.

I started with a rough sketch of the gesture in painter. This was only after I sketched some ideas in my sketch book to get the idea right.

Then, on a new layer I quickly drew in the environment and the phonograph. I used some basic photo references for the phonograph and the skeleton to get the details right.

Then, I used another layer to fill the whole picture to appear much darker. And I experimented with the glow brush to see what the lighting should look like. The direction was sort of a night club in the 1920's.

I wasn't really digging the glow brush idea. So, I desaturated everything and put most of the values in. And I rendered out a lot of the skeleton and background.

Then, I finished up with putting the color back in, but not as saturated. I also put in smoke effects and the feather in the fedora. Then, I applied some texture to give a used effect to everything.

Because of school and other projects this CD cover took way longer than I expected. Also, while doing this project my painter application somehow reset itself, and I lost all of my custom settings and brushes!!! Which was kind of frustrating! So, remember to always back up everything!

On a side note: After I remade all of my brushes and set all of my custom palettes, this started showing up after opening files:

I hate this... whatever this is!!!!!!! After I click on any painter or photoshop file this shows up. So, I click on OK. And the loading-into-memory sign comes up for about a second and then this same warning comes up. And it just goes in this cycle until I finally just force quite the application! If anybody knows what this is, I would love to know so I can turn it off!!!!

Dunk Team

This is the first of several images I'm doing for the Suns: Verve Sol Patrol. I would love some feedback on what's working and what's not. More to come.

Jazz Van Update

I'm excited to share these images with everyone. They show the outcome of the new Jazz Van wrap featuring my art work of Bear. Everything else that's not the Bear was done by Vision International. I really like how it turned out. It was a lot of fun to work with the Jazz and Vision International. I hope to see it in person some time. Thanks guys!

Now I have to get off the Internet and draw.

Digital Figure Drawing

This is my first attempt at digital figure drawing. It was done in 45 min in corel painter. Jenny while she watches a movie.

Jazz New Logo

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Utah Jazz have changed their logo back to the jazz note and updated their colors as well. I think it looks a lot better than their last several logos.
I was recently commissioned to update some of the illustrations I had done for them in the past. It also gave me an opportunity to touch up some things that I wanted to fix on some of them.
So, next time you are at a Jazz game, look for these pictures of the Jazz Bear. They are also going to be on Bear’s Van. I’m pretty excited that they would want to put these on their van and drive everywhere. Thanks Bear!
Oh! And, on a side note, I’ve finally updated my phone to a Motorola Droid X. I hope there is some kind of doodling or drawing app for it. I’m pretty excited about it.

Happy 4th of July 2010

This was just a quick value study of Darth Vader that grew into this. I added some color. This was done in Corel Painter X with a tablet. Also, Star Wars is an excellent movie! Happy 4th of July!

Father's day

This is what I did for my Dad for Father's day this year. He's always been asking if I could put my nephews face (Mayson) on a picture of his dad in cowboy hat. Well, I couldn't find one so I took a picture of his great grandpa in the service and combined them. It took about 3 hours in Painter. And He liked it.

Jenny's Thing

Well, this looks gross! But that's what it looks like. My wife had a procedure and temporarily has this thing on her leg . It's sort of a blister. I believe it has bones and baby teeth inside swimming in the puss. So I had to capture it. I did this in painter in about 5 min. Gross! But my wife is still hot :)