Autumn Webb Sketch

Some of you may recognize this character, I've drawn her in the past but with no consistent style on the details. So this was a sketch in Mischief trying to pin down details on her to keep a more consistent look. Like the slant of her eyes, angular face, the type of brow she has, etc. It still being played with but I'm getting closer. You will probably see more of this character of mine in the future.

For first timers, Autumn Webb is a character from a table top RPG game known as 'Geist: The Sineaters', which is one of my favorite World Of Darkness books. In the game you begin with your character's death. In her case was aluminium poisoning the water. We had a very unique story that unfortunately didn't get completed due to the players splitting up into different things. I plan to attempt to finish her story in some way. Also you can see it on Mischief site here.

Late Sabriel Day and Changes on the Way

So, May 11th was Sabriel Day. For those who don't know what Sabriel is, it is a book by Garth Nix and the main character's name in that book. It is the first of the Old Kingdom or Abhorsen series (heard it called both). I personally love all the books of his I've read. He's one of my favorite  authors. He decided to hold a raffle on his Facebook which I participated in. This is a rough piece since I did it in like 2 or so hours before midnight.

Once again done in Mischief. I really like the program and find it great to play in. Though I did run into trouble with it on this piece and experimented to get past the trouble now. The key design on her tunic was done by copying and pasting the key over and over again. However the code or math formula in vector images to do it was intense. It was because I would copy it then place the two together then copy the two to make it bigger, and repeat the process. This apparently causes it to lag a lot. It was fine the first few times. I actually manage to crash the program with this. So then later experimented a couple of different ways to fill it with copy and paste that won't cause it to lag/crash. It seems it's best to copy one (or better yet draw a few then copy), paste it till you hit the max number of layers (which is around 40 I think). After merge the layers together then select about ten or so (too many of them in a group seems to cause lag as well). then paste it over and over till either you complete the pattern or got to merge layers. If you merge layers, do not make a new selection, use the current. Each new type of copy is more stressful for the program. So the second file I made was able to work with easier with less lagging and no crashing. It still did lag though, but in a workable fashion.

Now, the other big news is I'm going to be doing a lot of changes and updates. I've determine to focus on my personal work some and get the website remodeled, change hosting company, update designs, upload new works, and hopefully some time to focus on some personal projects. I'm eager to work on this it's been long overdue. Why I haven't done so sooner you ask? Well, I focused too much on some other work that honestly didn't pay what I was worth in both web design (even as low level I am I'm above the curve) and as an illustrator. So, I vow to only look into what I'm worth and focus on my own site that I should of redone like 2-3 years ago. Good news is that time did get a lot of research done and evaluation of how to proceed. My current hosting ends around October, so you can expect to see a new website before then.

Thanks all for sticking through the slow rough times, it will be worth it.

Pinterest and Toddler Practice

So in case you haven't noticed yet. I do have a Pinterest account now, so you can follow me or boards your interested in. I have two boards so far for my art, an art tutorial board, anatomy, and a few other random things. So feel free to pin image I've got it coded to let you pin.

This time around is practicing toddlers and babies. The proportions and general trends of the face are very different from an adult. Some features are bigger such as eyes, ears and cheeks, others are smaller like the nose and mouth. So it is good to study and practice. Later on I will have some on the body proportions and how they change from baby to adulthood. Once again like before if you click on the picture you'll see them on Mischief.

Face Practice 01

 More practices. Snowy weather and losing my voice made me focus on practicing and researching more techniques. These are more Humanae images used; example of the younger ages. Click on images to see these on the Made With Mischief website, which obviously was made using 'Mischief'.

Face Practice 01

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm posting some face practices using the faces from Humanae project on Tumblr. The advantage of that project is it has a variety of people from different genders, ages, and ethnicity allowing me to practice and gain more varied knowledge of the human face. All of these made in Mischief. You can click on picture to see the image on the 'Made With Mischief' website.

Wine & Design and Humanae

The painting to the right is one I design as a causal artsy word painting. A lot of people like to paint words for decoration. I had several inspirations in creating this one. Celtic art, illuminated letters, and spring and love related themes. It is always a balance between my vision and making sure that it can be painted in 2 hour time frame.

In general capital letters are more well define and different therefore easier to recognize and balance in design. Lowercase varies too much in size of how much space it takes. This comes with some studying of graphic design or at least typography. I do recommend all artist to study the basics of typography.

By the way, sorry this is a bit late with the storm on the East coast it has caused some internet problems and caused extra demands. So I've added some practice images below done in Mischief. I've been working on improving my skills of painting a variety of faces. This should increase my visual memory so when I design characters they'll become more unique and varied. You can click on the photo to go see that image on Mischief. I will post more of these practices in future blog posts.

The source I'm using to practice is the images from the Tumblr page, Humanae.  All photos are taken by Angelica Dass who is working on creating a chromatic inventory of human skin tones using the PATONE color schemes. It is a great reference and a great reminder of how varied our features and skin tones are. So you can randomly pick one as practice. Hope you enjoy these.

Valentine and Wine & Design

   Here is some more paintings from the Wine & Design business I work with. This was inspired by an older painting for Valentines which we'll see if it is popular idea or not soon. For those of you who are local to the Triangle area in North Carolina, you can click on this link to check out the paintings of the location I work at.


The original painting was finding a way for a the human face to be simple and interesting for people to paint, which lead to the painting to the right. It was the first inspired by various cameos. Having it like this allows simple customization without having the details of the face to worry about. It allows the use of bright colors still which contrast nicely with the black. This painting I created about 2 years ago, while the one above was within the last couple of months. I kept the same premise but themed it and made one for each sex so we can have a couple paint each one canvas to represent themselves in the image.

Below is the male silhouette I came up with at the same time as the pair to see how it would look in comparison to the female version. We're always looking for more ways to encourage male painters to come in. If any of you have painting suggestions, I will gladly consider them for future Wine & Design paintings.

Traveller: Space Scene

Another sketch done in Mischief for a mini contest on their website. I have it online on their website here. I decided since my fiance has been rolling up planets using the Traveller RPG system that I would go ahead and paint one of the major planets he plans to use called New Iapetus.

I was given a description of it's temperature (below freezing), type of atmosphere (dense), how much water on planet (about 50%), and the like. From there I looked through different NASA images doing quick research what would create such a world and what planets to use as reference. I decided that if it was around a dwarf red star and further away from it that it would create a cold world. I used a mixed of Pluto, Venus, and looking at the possible habitable planets in the Kepler system to create the main world. It was done relatively quick since I didn't have much time to work on it. I may post future work on this planet and others.

For those of you who like to look or want space reference images, you should go to NASA site here. All their images are royalty free and can be used as you like with their attribution, which you can click on the link about that on their website for more information.

Christmas Gifts and Fanart

 I made some acrylic paintings on canvas board as gifts for my sister's friends. Each one I was given the general theme of the painting and then I created the composition and finalized the look. Now to be clear, no I do not own the copyright to Minions from 'Despicable Me' or Ariel from 'The Little Mermaid'. It belongs to their respected owners which are in part Universal Studios, Illumination Entertainment, Disney, and all others who put work into it.

So the painting to the left, I was told Minion dressed in a vampire costume. From there I thought of what minions would do as a vampire. One idea that came up with him attempting to fly, which then gave me the idea to have the dog. It works both as a recklessness of the minion and vicious nature of the dog.

The full moon and roof just became a good and natural setting for this. I had a lot of fun realizing how much my painting technique has change over the years. I've always sketch with paint on the canvas, but never did I pick random or bright colors usually I would go with a burnt sienna or a subtle color such as ultramarine blue. Instead I picked like bright reds, purples and bright blues such as phthalo blue. It was a great experience to see my confidence and the fun in having like a red under a blue sky or a blue under a yellow minion. So both paintings had a higher than usual layering of colors.


 I did create the initial rough thumbnail idea in Mischief for my sister's approval before I proceeded on, which you can see below. The other painting is the focus of Ariel on the coast; it also had the requirement of something to represent Belle from 'Beauty and the Beast'. I gave some different ideas such like yellow earrings Belle has, shell with a rose imprint, and the one that was chosen, the mirror from Beauty and the Beast.

So I created Ariel having lots of fun with reflective color hints in the water, fin, shells, etc. It originally didn't have the seagulls in the sky, but that changed after I sent a picture to my sister who mentioned the sky seemed too empty. Which is why it's good to get a fresh perspective either by walking away from the painting or getting someone else to look into it.

Hope you enjoy looking at these fan works. Sidenote: Sorry on the day late. I forgot that I hadn't scheduled it. 

Drawing: Cranial Unit

There are many approaches to drawing the human form. The one most people know is the head counting where you compare their proportion by number of heads. If this works for you, that is great. But for me it left a lot to be desired. Most of the chosen spots are things that change a lot from one body type to another such as the navel, nipples, etc. It gets even more awkward with multiple characters as their head size will vary and trying to keep them in proportion to each other. However the skeleton structure tends to stay much more similar than the skin.

That is where the Cranial Unit comes in. Instead of measuring the entire head, you measure just the round part of the skull, the cranium. Where the head unit is about 7.5 for a person height, the cranium is 10.5 and hits more consistent landmarks, such as where a bone ends or begins. It also has the advantage of if you can't see the head you can still find the cranial unit for proportions using the clavicle, sternum, or scapula bones, which are all a size of a cranial unit. Also I find a square is much easier to use for perspective than a rectangle. To learn more read it on Studio Incamminati's post on the 'Cranial Index'. It has great detail images and general text overview. There is also a video by Proko that can help you with the concept.

Some practice on finding and using the cranial unit

I'm always working to know more and improve my art techniques. There are places that create gesture practice lessons on this site which has one for Figure, Animal, Hands and Feet, and Faces and Expressions. I find it a great way to warm up or practice when one feels little out of practice. For new artist, it is a great way to learn. So as a sum up, if you find a method doesn't work for you, search for a different one. For me, heads didn't work, but cranial makes much more sense to me and helps a lot more. Sidenote, all gestures was done inside the program called 'Mischief'

Face gestures and some expressions

Cauldron of Lost Ancestors

The sequel to 'Masks of the Lost Kings' is out now. Been out for a while on Kindle, took longer for paperback this time around. For those who are new, I did the cover for Tom Bane's first book called 'Masks of the Lost Kings' and now I've done the cover for it's sequel 'Cauldron of the Lost Ancestors'.

It stars the same main character, Suzy da Silva, going on another adventure. For a general idea about what type of series it is action, history mystery with some conspiracy theories. I think of it like a National Treasure on a global scale.

The first one had elements from Egypt and Mayan with the secret connection of those. This one focus on Avalon (Think King Arthur) and Celtic Druids.

Mask of the Lost Kings can be found here on Amazon as ebook or paperback.

Cauldron of the Lost Ancestors can be found there  as well in both formats.

Painting Shoes- Christmas Theme

As promised a post for the week. This is an older project. I had a client who loved to have custom painted shoes. So I decided to post one of the Christmas ones that were inspired by her favorite Christmas ornaments she own. She didn't like her shoes to match, but rather each to be unique.

The one with Santa Claus I had change the dog of the ornament to be her dog instead. The right shoe theme was mostly of her favorite angel series of ornaments, the right shoe was her favorite Santa Claus ornaments. I have a series of shoes I've done that will be posted in the upcoming months.

I made this post a bit late, but I plan to have future ones to automatically post on Mondays in the morning. I had debated on a day, but considering Sundays tend to be my catch up day. I figure it be good way to insure future blogposts to be regular.

Other view of the shoes below. Enjoy