I’m Alive, I swear!

I’ve been slacking again on updating this thing – my apologies.  Life has taken us by storm, and my wife and I have been busy with a variety of different things.  My birthday came and went on August 13th, and as a wedding gift we headed to IKEA to get some furnishings for our apartment.  I’m typing this from a new work desk, with plenty of surface space to spread out all my art supplies, paints, knick-knacks, and laptop.  Next to me is a new bookcase; I finally have my reference books within arm’s reach for easy reading in case I need to look something up.  We also have a few items in the living room that look really great.  IKEA is an easy and fairly affordable option for making your apartment look nice on a budget.

I’m working still on illustration, and was lucky enough to receive an Amazon gift card for my birthday.  It promptly went into purchasing some new art reference books – James Gurney’s two books, Color and Light and Imaginary Realism, as well as a few picture books, for inspiration.  I found out that two of the hosts of the WIP Podcast actually live here in Atlanta, which is all the more reason to improve my art skills.

Etsy has revamped its search results to focus on relevancy instead of recent listings, meaning that it’s now possible to find items you’re looking for based on descriptions, tags, and titles, rather than inputting a search term and having the first six pages of listings be the most recently renewed items that fall under that heading.  To that end, I’ve done some reworking of my tags and titles, and am hoping to see an increase in traffic based on relevancy.

I also have a Back to School sale going on currently.  Use code BACK2SCHOOL for 15% off – I figure that school starting up again is a good reason to get a reward once the house is empty of kids.  My shop can be found at http://www.greyedout.etsy.com  - the sale will most likely run until around September 10th.

Current projects, both personal and work-related, include a leather Moleskine cover, a few monster skull illustrations, and some figure drawings for myself that should help with painting and technique.

The monster skull is based off a hyena, with the proportions and teeth somewhat skewed… I sprayed it with a matte coating earlier, and am planning on doing some light acrylic washes on top for color.  A preview:

Here Be Dragons.

Dragons are magic.  There’s no other way to put it.  I’ve been fascinated by the big scaly things for as long as I could remember.  I can’t recall when I first found out about them, but it was at a really young age, because I’ve been enjoying stories about dragons since I was a tiny child.  Whether your dragons are winged with four legs, or winged with only two, or even with no legs or wings at all… they’re incredible.

One of the first books I remember reading about dragons was called The Book of Dragons, by E. Nesbit.  It’s a tiny, slim little volume.  Collected inside are stories of dragons from myth and legend, with enough fire to spark any boy’s imagination.  Then, in fourth grade, at a school book fair, I picked up Bruce Coville’s Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher.  The book is about a young kid who, running from bullies one day, gets lost in a fog and finds a magic shop.  There he buys a dragon’s egg, and hatches it, and gets to watch the young dragon(whom he names Tiamat) grow up.  It’s completely magical and wonderful.  In high school, I read the Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman.  That led me to Dungeons and Dragons, and in my time around the gaming table I’ve killed a dragon or two.

The other day, inspired by my long love of the dragon, I sat down to do some inking.  I sketched a few ideas first, and when I was satisfied, I broke out the steel nibs and black ink.  I didn’t want to do this project in Micron pens.  I wanted the old-fashioned method.  A while later, I had a dragon skull sitting on paper in front of me.  I’m not quite sure it’s done yet, but it was fun to do, and I can’t wait to try further projects with the steel nibs and ink.

Here are a few pictures:

A Mixed Stew

The last few days have been busy; my wife had a four day weekend off at work, so we spent as much time together as we possibly could.  On Wednesday we picked up some farm fresh milk and pastured eggs, and on Saturday we attended the Sandy Springs Farmer’s Market.  The market runs every Saturday from 8:30 to 12:30, and is located in the parking lot of an old closed Target on Roswell Road.

It was pretty great to see everyone out and about even though the day started off rainy and overcast.  Thankfully, the temperatures were down, and walking around outside was comfortable.  This was my first farmer’s market experience, and I enjoyed seeing the variety of vegetables and products on sale here.  We picked up a bunch of the best peaches I’ve ever had, some giant zucchini, some leafy greens, and a pastured chicken that will become dinner for us tomorrow night.

The Sandy Springs Farmer’s Market website:  http://www.sandyspringsfarmersmarket.com/index.html

After reading several books on real food we’ve been trying to adjust our diets to that lifestyle – eating vegetables that are in season and organically grown, getting pastured eggs when we can, and going for grass-fed meats.  That’s meant a lot of salads over the past week , which, it turns out, isn’t that bad.  I’ve been making a great salad dressing that’s tasty and simple all rolled into one.  There isn’t even any measuring involved!

Simple and Tasty Dressing:

olive oil

white wine vinegar

spices to season

honey

mustard

Take a bowl and add a splash of the vinegar and olive oil.  I think a 1:2  vinegar to oil ratio will probably work best.  Try to go for enough liquid to coat the salad leaves, but not leave a pool of dressing when you’re done with the salad.  Season to taste with salt, pepper, etc – dill works well – and add a tablespoon each of honey and mustard(Dijon works really well).  Take a whisk and whisk your dressing until everything has been incorporated into one smooth liquid.  Add your salad leaves to the bowl and toss until the greens are coated well.  This dressing depends a lot on personal taste, so feel free to experiment with the best ratios for everything.  

On the illustration front I’ve been doing more anatomy studies – I inked a pig’s skull and a bear’s skull from the Cyclopedia Anatomicae, and both turned out well for first attempts.  I did them in my Moleskine, which I’m finding works very well for these inked sketches.

Considering New Directions

This should be subtitled “An Introspective”.

The past few months I’ve been listening to many episodes of the Drawn Today and W.I.P. podcasts, both of which are focused on fantasy and sci-fi illustration and narrated by groups of illustrators themselves.  I’ve always been partial to podcasts while I paint or sketch, rather than music.  It’s one of the few times that I can listen to something and absorb the material without being distracted.

Recently I’ve been considering making an attempt to become an illustrator, and by recently I mean over the last few weeks is when I started considering it.  Giving it thought.  Analyzing, very loosely, some of the pros and cons.  I graduated with a degree in technical theatre with a costume design emphasis, and while I didn’t get a fabulous grounding in the arts, I feel as if I’m at least a small step ahead of the curve thanks to costume and theatre design courses I’ve taken, and sketches I’ve had to do for projects.  I’m not nearly as well-versed in the art techniques as someone who solely focused on getting a fine arts degree, but I’m willing to learn.  I also believe that I can work on costume design and improve my costume illustration skills at the same time as non-costume illustration.  After all, says my brain, costume design feeds into fantasy illustration, and my progress toward freelance illustration work certainly would benefit from costume design opportunities.

I talked with Kathryn about the idea the other day, and she agrees that there are many ways that the two careers can go hand in hand.  I’m glad I have her support in this.  It’s not going to an easy road, but I believe that hard work will pay off, and that art and illustration is a skill that can be learned.  From reading the Drawn Today, W.I.P, and Muddy Colors blogs, I’m noticing a trend – that inspiration is everywhere, and that reference is OK.  I do need to work on drawing more, every day regardless of whether I’m feeling inspired or blah or under the weather.  I won’t improve if I don’t. And the number of subjects that I need to work on improving is almost mindboggling.  But at least I’m aware of that.

I’m going to be trying to update this blog more regularly, and even if I’m not able to post about cool places to be in Atlanta at least I’ll be trying to do some art posts every week.  I don’t own a scanner, so for now I’m taking pictures of my sketches with my wife’s DSLR.  You’ll be able to get an idea of where I’m going and how I’m progressing, and what techniques I’m working on.

A few examples of recent sketch work.  I’ve got a long way to go… but it should be a fun trip.

And a small painting of the skeletal hand that I did today: