Grocc

Commission for an online children's storybook. Our intrepid hero has found himself in a bit of a quandary. The creature he faces is the Grocc, king of the swamps. A chimerical mash-up of a crocodile and scorpion. 

Lightning Lure

Critter sketch. A sharky, bone jawed, tentacled cat thing. The whip I imagine behaves like a stingray's spine or a jellyfish tentacle. The creature is immune to its own sting, but prey is stunned/paralyzed by it. Could also use the whip as a lure. The tail is good for whacking things, that's about it.

Yule Deer

My obligatory holiday themed drawing. Saw some reindeer at a garden center and drew this later. The Elder Futhark runes carved into one of his antlers reads "yuletide". 

A belated Happy Holidays to everyone!

Talk Sketches

Doodled during a talk at Digipen. Given by people from various game companies ranging from Bungie, to Valve to Airtight games. Got a lot of good names to look up, Carlos Huante and Jordu Schell for example. Already loved their stuff, but will definitely pay more attention to them now.

Basic rules reinforced were form over detail. Detail can always come later and should compliment form. Go back to the basics whenever you struggle. Always approach character and creature design from anatomy. Characters should have dramatic roles, not just exist to fill space. Think of them as actors. Look to nature when searching for abstract forms. And always always seek improvement.  

Beastrider

Sketch

Arthropod

Mash-up of various creepy crawlies. 

Werewolf Sketch

Sketch'agons

Wargs

I love wolves, and I love monstrous demon wolves. So Wargs are just fantastic. These creatures originate from the Norse mythological legends of Fenrisulfr, Hati and Skoll. The Norse and old English word for wolf is warg or vargr. They appear as well in Tolkein's Middle-Earth, and so though I have a great love for Smaug, I chose to redesign the Wargs for The Hobbit's Middle-Earth design contest. (John Howe already painted the perfect Smaug anyway). 

I prefer my Wargs hairier than the hyena-inspired creatures from the Lord of the Rings movies, and was inspired specifically by the old illustrations of  Dorothy Hardy and John Bauer.

Odin and Fenrir, (1909) by Dorothy Hardy

Tyr and Fenrir, (1911) by John Bauer

Prowling Wargs

The contest entry can be found here: http://www.thehobbitdesigncontest.com/entry/5773

Wargs and Spikey Things

Some critters and Warg concepts. First one is a creature for the Aerie, an omnivorous descendant of wyrms .

Autumnal Qilin

A Qilin/Kirin. Revamp of an old drawing, now with an environment background. I don't know where the idea of Kirin as fancy unicorn horned deer came from. In Chinese/Japanese myth and in ancient illustrations and statues they have antlers, and look more like cloven hooved dragons than anything. The more unicorn-like variations on the creature remind me more of another Chinese creature called the Sin-You. 

Anyway. Here's the process I used for this one.

Thumbnail drawing, for establishing composition, lighting and rough values.

Lowered the opacity and sketched the critter in more detail overtop.

First, painting underneath the sketch lines, I started painting things in more detail/figuring out what was going on. Tossing textures around. Then I painted overtop the critter sketch a tad.

Next, make a color overlay layer, for ya know colour. Then started painting over top that once satisfied.

Then detail detail, and finished.

Big Fox

This image went through a lot of changes. Was initially inspired by some much more subdued looking nature illustrations and somehow, turned into this. Had lots of fun towards the end though with the teeth and slobber. 

Daily Dragons

Going to start drawing a dragon head (or creature) a day to relax from schoolwork and stay sharp. Here are some from mostly this week.

Crocosus

Fun and practice with Copic markers. Here's the painting and process of a creature I originally doodle/sketched a few weeks ago. This includes the original pencil/Micron pen sketch, the first few marker washes and the final. He's some kind of bat-nosed, hairy, crocodile-pig, with long hand hooves.

Sketch Dump #2

Tree Studies

Arrogath

 Wanted to paint more dragons, and Arro (The protagonist of my Aerie story/world concept) needed an updated look. Here are some wips of the painting process. Went with straight colour for this one, so not too many steps other than detail detail detail. Was inspired by some of my fave dragon artists, Todd Lockwood and L.D. Austin.

Final image is on the very bottom.

Edmund B. Leighton Study

Mastercopy/Study of E.B. Leighton's "Forest Tryst". Saw this image featured on James Gurney's blog and immediately wanted to paint it. I love forest scenes and medieval clothing. Didn't worry too much about the specific details except for the figures; primarily did this for colour and lighting practice. Looks like I found a new artist to admire.

Wyvern at Dusk

Haven't actually painted a dragon in a while. So here's a wyvern for practice.

Started in grayscale, threw some colour on top via color and overlay layers, then detail detail detail.

8212 Figure Study

Couple hours, people practice.

Enviro Flotsam

Doodlin' around. First image is a photo study. Second is a practice speedy.

These next three are all wips, to hopefully be tidied up and finished eventually.

Sketch Dump

A bunch of critters, some I had forgotten about, others recently doodled.