Reddaydreams

New Cover Illustrations

2012-01-26T16:37:00.010-05:00

Greetings all,

My last two posts, while setting the ground work for the coming year, were extremely text heavy posts. So for this post I am happy to unveil two new cover paintings that I completed at the end of last year.

'The Lucky Cricket', 3900 x 6000px, pencil + Photoshop

'Thomas the Poisoner', 3740 x 6000px, pencil + Photoshop

These two illustrations were commissioned by the author Kelly R. Martin of Myth/Logic Press to serve as the new cover illustrations for the second editions of his two novels 'The Lucky Cricket' and 'Thomas the Poisoner' which are due out later this year. I had the pleasure of meeting Kelly while exhibiting at GenCon and it has been a fantastic experience working with him. I invite you all to check out his website: mythlogicpress.com as well as his two novels. I'll be sure to post an announcement when the second editions are released; at the moment, however,the first editions are still available on Amazon.

If I saved my progress files correctly I am hoping to attempt to create a tutorial / process style post using one of these paintings next month. So, keep an eye out for that. Hope you all have a great day and I look forward to being back with you next week with more art.

A Balanced Life: ~Goals for 2012

2012-01-16T17:44:00.002-05:00

Writing one’s goals down is extremely important so I like to begin each new year by setting and writing down goals for myself and my life based upon my current long term (5-10+ year) goals and where I am at. By having achievable goals I give myself not only something to aim at with my actions, choices, and work, but they also serve as a guiding rod so that I can better judge my progression and the measure of any current activity I may be engaged in throughout the year.

I am in the process of reading a book about job hunting titled “48 Days to the Work You Love”. So far it is a great book about the process of how to conduct a fruitful job hunt. I am only in the beginning portions of the book so check back in with a few months from now to see if it proves good. That being said in chapter 4 of the book which is all about goal setting the author, Dan Miller, introduces a cool concept and chart that I am using to help set my personal goals for 2012. Below is Dan Miller’s Wheel of Life Chart. In the book he describes seven areas of achievement and then has the reader shade in the corresponding area on the wheel to the degree that one feels that area of your life is great. 10 being great and 1, in the center, meaning you need a lot of work there. Below is the chart as I viewed my current life situations, and in using this self-knowledge/reflection I have create goals for myself in each of these 7 areas hoping to better round out my wheel because as Dan Miller points out, “You know what an unbalanced wheel does. An unbalanced life does much the same.”(56)

My 2012 Goals:

As for my goals in personal development I plan to maintain a sketchbook, which I sort of failed at last year. I will monitor this by forcing myself to have at least one sketchbook blog post a month and will fill 2 sketchbooks by the end of the year. My sketchbook is separate from the notebook I use to do my thumb-nailing and brainstorming in; the sketchbook will be a place for the practice and study of drawing. I will also pick back up my study of Japanese, which I have missed with the goal of being back to the place I was at when I left off studying two years ago. Back then I was able to speak in polite form quite easily, write in Hiragana & Katakana just fine, and was beginning my study of Kanji. Lastly, I will begin to seriously develop my graphic novel idea with the goal of having a solid detailed plot and a majority of the concept art done by the end of the year.

Spiritually I need to serve others more and to actively seek out opportunities to do so; putting other people ahead of myself. To this end I have already created a list of local charities that could possibly use volunteers and will be calling them this month to inquire about volunteering. Plus, I will pay more attention to those around me in my daily life and be aware of their needs. I will continue with the goal to read the Bible and pray daily.

I need to find a better paying and more creative day job so I can pay my student loans and move out. This will not only allow me to move into the next stage in my life, but hopefully help me to better focus on my freelance, which is my long term career goal. For my freelance I plan to land work with the top two clients I am targeting, namely Paizo and Wizards of the Coast. This means creating new and better samples for these companies, which I am currently in the process of doing. I will maintain this blog weekly. I will make more art this year then I have in any past year. Lastly, I would like to have one freelance job a month at least, which would begin to build the habit of looking for clients & actual freelance work vs. always doing personal work or samples.

My financial goals are very much hinged upon me completing my career goals. No work, no income, no finances. But via having a new job and more freelance work I will attack my Debt Snowball. I will continue to keep a written budget and stick to the plan I established in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University this past winter. As for my Debt Snowball my minimum goal is to have paid off top three loans on the list by the end of the year. I will also begin a sinking fund for a cheap used motorcycle or a laptop.

Physical goals…one of the areas I struggle with the most on the wheel. I will keep these simple and straight forward. I will begin with a daily stretch routine like I used to have. Then once that is established (say by March or April) add in push-ups and sit ups, plus a little time with weights. Then once I move out I will find a personal trainer or someone who can help me setup a full blown workout routine.

I intend to move my friendships a little higher on the priority list in working towards my social goals. I will spend more time with them, and work to build those relationships because I neglected them badly this past year. To that end I have scheduled a trip to Grand Rapids this month and hopefully a trip to Chicago next month to visit my two best friends and their families.

Family goals: I need to move out of my parent’s home, which is hinged upon me finding a better job. That way I can begin to socialize more and entertain ideas of beginning to build my own family. Similar to my social goals I want to spend more focused time with various family members including my cousins and grandparents.

In Conclusion:

As a freelance illustrator I have found maintaining balance in one’s life is a constant struggle because there are always more paintings and illustrations to create and I am always at my work area, home. Plus, being that I currently work a retail job where my work hours constantly change each week setting up a work routine is not possible. That is why I found this chart and the idea of classifying my goals, applying some to each area of my life, so intriguing. I keep my goals posted on the wall of my studio, so that they are always on my mind. I hope you too have goals for yourself this year and work towards them with all your effort.

I would like to leave you with these words from the book “Talent is Never Enough” by John Maxwell in which he quotes the orator and attorney William Jennings Bryan:

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

See you all later this week with a two new paintings!

Bidding Goodbye to 2011

2012-01-06T13:44:00.005-05:00

2011 was a semi productive year for me. I hit three major goals as a freelance illustrator, though in all honestly looking back from a business perspective I could have accomplished more had I shifted my focus slightly to finding more freelance work vs. simply convention prep, but thanks to God it did all work out well. (Take note self, and apply this needed extra focus in this new year that is upon us).

The first half of 2011 I was mainly focused on making sure I was completely ready for my first time exhibiting at Gen Con. I took the lessons I learned from my first experience exhibiting at a convention back in 2010 at the Mid Ohio Con and applied them to my preparations. I made new displays, lots of new art, buttons, promo cards, connections, and many more prints. All this preparation work over the course of months culminated in my successful show at Gen Con in August.

During this process of making painting after painting with a clear focus on the type of client I was aiming for really helped me in taking, what I feel are, some pretty big steps in finding my own personal style and in defining my artistic process. Looking back I think this step forward in artistic style & process is best represented in my dwarf painting. That was a turning point for me as an artist and in how I currently work, which has been heavily influenced by the working process of the amazing artist William O’ Connor. I’ve linked to it before, but just in case, here is a link to the article he has posted on his website in which he talks about his own artistic process. In preparing for GenCon I also put together my first artist sketchbook, which I sold at my table. Seeing my drawings printed in a book format was thrilling, and I am very pleased with the way it turned out.

Post GenCon, I hit two more milestones for me as a freelance artist. Back in October I had my first book cover published. The book is “While the Morning Stars Sing”.

It is an anthology of spiritually infused speculative fiction edited by Lyndon Perry and published by the Michigan based publisher ResAliens Press. That was a fantastic feeling the day my copy of the book arrived in the mail and I held it in my hands for the first time. While at GenCon I met an author who hired me this past winter to create two cover illustrations for the second editions of two of his novels. These editions will be coming out this spring and I will have more information on them shortly. So, more published cover work on the way.

The third milestone I hit in 2011 as a freelance illustrator occurred in November when I completed my first freelance illustration assignment for an actual game company. I was commissioned by Gamer Ingenuity, whom I met while showing at Gen Con, to create ¼ page interior illustrations for an upcoming product. I’ll be sure to post those illustrations once they have officially been released. That was an exciting experience as well and I cannot wait to see the final product.

I then ended the year with my tradition of end o’ year cleaning. Instead of having spring cleaning I do a total cleaning of everything I own at the end of the year so that I can start the new year fresh, clean, and ready to go. It’s a great feeling beginning the year in a completely cleaned clutter-free work & living space.

Much of 2011 I spent working to find my own unique voice as an illustrator, especially during the GenCon preparation months, and not much time in hunting for new freelance assignments, which leads to my shifting in focus for 2012. 2011 flew by even faster than any previous year for me and I imagine 2012 will be even quicker. I give thanks to God for 2011 and in helping me to reach these three milestones. Now heading into 2012 I need to continue to grow as an illustrator & small business owner by focusing on finding more freelance commissions and making lots more art.
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Next Week: Looking forward to 2012

Gomen

2011-11-13T18:36:00.004-05:00

Greetings All,

Sorry for my absence over the last month. Throughout October the balance between my day job, illustration work, and life was completely thrown off and is just now starting to return to some semblance of equilibrium. I am happy to report that during my absence from the interwebs a couple nice milestones occurred in terms my illustration work. The first is that I had my first book cover published. It was for the Michigan based publisher ResAliens. They licensed a painting I had previously created and used it as the cover to one of their most recent anthologies. It was quite exciting to receive a package in the mail containing my complimentary copy and seeing my artwork on the cover to a book for the first time. The second milestone is that I am in the process of completing my first freelance assignment within the gaming industry. I’ll post more specific info on that once the project is officially announced by the company.

At the moment I am currently engaged in completing a pair of illustrations for an awesome author that I met at GenCon this year. Based upon the opportunities that have arisen since showing at the convention I must agree now even more resolutely that showing at an industry appropriate convention is a great way for an artist to meet new clients and network.

Art wise my current focus is still on continuing to develop a style appropriate to the clients I am targeting, while still maintaining a semblance to the comic art I love and nailing down a painting process to boost my production speed. I am making some progress on the process end of things, but I feel there is still a ways to go before I come to any concise conclusion concerning style.

I’ll keep this post short for now, just wanted to let you ll know that I am still around and will hopefully be much more punctual in my posting as I work to keep life, art, and work more in balance. Below is a sampling of some of the sketchbook studies I have been doing in effort to continue to maintain the discipline of keeping a sketchbook. Some face studies from photos and of a few Pathfinder Iconics.

Hope you all have a great week,

Lance

Paizo Sample: Finished Under-drawing

2011-09-16T15:31:00.005-04:00

Here is the final under-drawing for the first Paizo sample illustration I am working on. [I ask pardon for the poorer scan quality. I am currently house-sitting for an old friend of my family and used their scanner/printer.] I took my time with the drawing wanting to capture all the wonderful costume details that Wayne Reynolds created in the original designs. All these great little pouches, buckles, medallions, and doo-dads. Layers upon layers of costume, which I find I need to start working into my own designs and in how I detail characters. Usually it is one layer for me with all the details on that single surface, but after examining a lot of my favorite artists work I see that their details are built up and that in one layer in particular their might not be that much detail, but through creating multiple layers of detail the overlapping multiplies the complexity. While this might create some cumbersome costumes if made into real clothing, some of these characters would have to spend hours just getting dressed, visually I find the layering quite striking and appealing.

In this drawing I incorporated more lighting information. Most of my drawings in the past were pure line-work, which when used as an under-painting does not convey much information and is a remnant of the days when I was going for more of a comic style in my illustrations. Also in looking into the processes of artists I admire I saw that their under-drawings where more about overall shapes, accuracy, and light & form, then tight edges and a finished look. Being that I greatly enjoy drawing I still kept the drawing fairly tight, but over time this will probably loosen up. I am unsure. Spending so much time on creating a tight drawing slows down the overall process, but drawing is the part I enjoy the most.

One of the critiques I received at GenCon was to have more realism in my faces and less of an animated look. So, I will be especially focusing on the rendering of the faces in this piece. One concern I still have is the foreshortening of Ezren's arm. I've taken reference for all the characters, but something about it still bothers me. However, I need to more forward on the piece and will just readdress the arm in the painting phase after spending some time away from it to see if when I come back whatever is bothering me will jump out.

The Sketchbook Rises Again

2011-09-03T15:33:00.008-04:00

I brought out my nemesis, the sketchbook, again to take another crack at keeping one on a consistent basis. It is a constant battle against my perfectionist tendencies. These are a sampling of study sketches from the past week for the Pathfinder samples I am working on. The purpose of these are to help me get a feel for their iconic characters. Here featured again is Ezren, Seelah, and Merisiel from their iconic lineup.

New Project: Pathfinder Sample 1 Underway

2011-08-23T12:05:00.009-04:00

At GenCon this year I once again had the great opportunity to meet with Mrs. Robinson, the art director at Paizo, for a portfolio review. Meeting with art directors at conventions is a fantastic opportunity to get solid feedback on one's work from the people who actually are in control of the hiring of artists. Plus, meeting people whom you would like to work with face to face is always good.

Overall the portfolio review went fairly well. The sense of action in my newest illustration Aria & Ire was well received as well as the level of detail in my work. However, my style is still too animated in its nature; a remnant of my animation background. I will continue to work on adjusting my style moving forward ever seeking the elusive balance between realism and stylized work. Samples featuring Paizo’s Iconic Pathfinder characters were also requested, which makes sense. Clients need to know that as an artist they can count on you to make the artwork they specifically need.

So, here is the beginning of my first Pathfinder Iconic sample. Stage one: thumbnailing. For my first sample I want to do an illustration featuring Ezren the iconic wizard, being that he is different than any other character in my current portfolio.

Things are very simple here as you can see. I already had a pretty solid idea in my mind of what I wanted this illustration to be before starting. I wanted to do a simple character heroic up-shot like you would see on a main character card in a TCG. So, in the thumbs I was mainly concerned with getting the figure’s overall pose/gesture right. Once I had the pose solved for I advanced to stage two: the comp.

During the creation of the comp I decided to add more characters in to make this a better sample, plus I feel that this fills the composition better and makes this a more entertaining illustration. Now I have a group of adventurers: Ezren the wizard leading the way followed by Seelah the paladin, with Merisiel the rogue in toe making their way through the swamps of Sinaria. Though being a tight character shot not much of the background can be seen. I should note that in between the thumb and comp step I enlisted my brother’s aid and took some reference photos to prepare for the final drawing. After reading this great article by Donato Giancola in which he talks about and shows his process for a recent book cover illustration I decided to go traditional for the comp vs. my usual digital path. It was fun to bust out the toned paper, colored pencils, and white gouache for a change. Next up is the final under-drawing.

GenCon 2011 ReCap: Part 2

2011-08-18T15:48:00.005-04:00

It has been about two weeks since GenCon and I am for the most part fully recovered and back into full-swing production mode. I had the great fortune to acquire a couple freelance jobs while at the convention as well as plant a few seeds that will hopefully bear fruit in the coming months. Exhibiting at a convention is a great way to promote oneself as an artist as long as the audience and attendees at the convention are the type of future clients you would like to work for. I went through most of my postcards at the con as well as all of my business cards, which means that I can finally design a new card.

I finished the bard and barbarian illustration just in time for GenCon and have now posted it on my website: www.reddaydream.com. This illustration features two sister characters from a D&D game I was a part of a while back. Be sure to head to my gallery to check it out. I think I took another good step forward with this piece and am excited to start the next round of illustrations. I also posted the cover-drawing I did for my GenCon sketchbooks in the drawing gallery on my site as well if you are curious to see a larger image of it.

As I started introducing last week while at GenCon I had the pleasure of meeting many fellow amazing illustrators, authors, and individuals involved in the gaming world. It was great to see Alayna Lemer again at GenCon. She is great illustrator who has done work for L5R and Dominion. I was able to briefly meet one of my heroes in the fantasy illustration world, Wayne Reynolds. I was ecstatic when I found out that he would be exhibiting this year. After debating it for a couple days at the con, I ended up splurging and bought one of his original paintings. I could not pass up the opportunity. The original is his painting for the Magic Card: Armadillo Cloak. Another individual I met at GenCon was Kelly Martin, an author who was promoting his two novels: “The Lucky Cricket” and “Thomas the Poisoner”. I was intrigued by his books and he by my art so we traded prints for books. I love books, so any chance I can get to trade some art for more great books is a wonderful opportunity, especially when they come directly from the author.

Convention Notes~ if you are looking to have your own artist table in the future:
After having gone through the process of having my own table at GenCon I observed a few things that I will definitely adapt in future shows. The number one thing I observed that seemed to help many of the artists around me have great shows is the selling and creation of original art. I am not one for quick sketching, but more than a few artists around me kept themselves busy and had many sales by offering convention sketches. Attendees really seemed to want original sketches in some form or another. If on the spot sketches were not available simply having smaller original art for sale was also very popular with attendees. Now most attendees that I saw were not interested in spending hundreds of dollars on a large original, but a small painting or drawing that was decently priced was well within their domain. So, I think next year I may try to incorporate sketch-cards into my product line. Canvas prints sold well, but framed prints seemed to not garner too much attention. A final observation that I made was that people like to rummage. So, if you have enough individual illustrations/prints to warrant having them standing in a box for people to flip through that would probably be better than having them laid out on a table.

I hope everyone out there is enjoying their last few weeks of Summer. X) gah…I can’t believe it is so late in the year already. I wish you all a great week and I will be back next week with more art adventures.

~As always if you have any questions on art or anything really or are interested in commissioning an illustration I can be contacted via email at lancered@reddaydream.com.~

GenCon 2011 ReCap: Part 1

2011-08-11T14:19:00.009-04:00

First I would like to send a big 'Thank you' to everyone who stopped at my table, said hi, and picked up a piece of my art to take home with them. The turnout was far more than I had hoped for and it was great to meet you all. I would also like to send a word of thanks out to my fellow artists I met at GenCon whom have helped me over the last few months by answering my questions online and at the show over the weekend. I hope the show was a success for all of you.

I met a lot of great people at the convention. A few of these people in no particular order: Lorraine Schleter, a fellow freelance illustrator currently working on her own graphic novel. Her work can be viewed at http://lorillustration.blogspot.com/. Derek Miller, a fantastic sculptor who had one of the tables next to mine. He has created sculpts for many of the major toy companies and works on creating his own personal sculptures in between projects. To see his work you can visit his site at http://mentalmalfunctionstudio.com/. His Medusa bust is awesome. I had the great fortune to meet that maestro of monsters, Chris Burdett, in person. While there I picked up a copy of both of his sketchbooks that he has released: Creatura Libri 1 & 2. To see more of his work go to http://www.christopherburdett.com/ and http://christopherburdett.blogspot.com/ and be sure to pick up a copy of his sketchbooks too.

So here is me at my table all set up and waiting for the hordes of gamers to descend upon the main convention hall on Wednesday. The banner I designed and had printed at M&B graphics, a local print shop, turned out awesome. I even had some people stop just to take a picture of it. As for my table set up to the left 12”x18” art prints laid out to be flipped through, my pricing sign in the middle, and my sketchbooks plus a B&W print on the right.

I am glad I was able to put the sketchbooks together in time for GenCon. They proved to be really popular and added more variety to my table. I will definitely keep making new ones for each convention I go to in the future. The buttons were also well received. I left them out as free takeaways to anyone who made a purchase. Thankfully setup on Wednesday went smoothly and I did not forget anything vital back at home. After setting up and meandering my way through the convention I have come to the conclusion that for future cons I need to come up with a better organizational system for behind my table.

It looks fine from the front, but behind it was really cluttered making it somewhat hard to process larger orders for prints, especially since I needed to put them into the mylar sleeves with backing board every time I sold one. Plus having the prints simply stacked proved to be an ineffective way to store them especially when I needed to find a specific print that was somewhere in the middle of the stack. I think I am going to start storing them in a larger box in 12x18 folders (if I can find them). This would make it so much easier at conventions alone.

I would just like to thank God for answering my prayers and having my experience at GenCon exceed almost all my hopes and after months of fretting and preparing it was a complete joy to be a part of the Artist's Alley. Over the four days of GenCon I met many more amazing artists, gamers, and authors. I will highlight more in my next post this coming Monday. Next up- GenCon 2011 ReCap Part 2: so what did I learn about having an artist table at GenCon.

GenCon 2011 Approaches: Descending into Madness

2011-07-24T13:52:00.004-04:00

Extra unused prints strewn about the room, canvas prints sitting out to dry, boxes of all shapes and sizes stacked in every available space, a tiny cascade of odd supplies and extra boxes tumbling into the hallway, business cards and postcards sitting out waiting to be packed, the thick smell of varnish lingering in the air, Gen Con is almost here.

Just a little more than a week till GenCon and still so much to do! Ahhhhhhh! This weekend I stretched my canvas prints onto their wooden frames, which I made, touched them up in some areas with paint, and coated them with a thin layer of varnish.

The dwarf print on the far left is still to be stretched and then the others are stretched and waiting for varnish.

My drawing board converted into a workstation for stretching canvas. You can see the frames I made here.

It is much cheaper to stretch them oneself then to pay others to do it, though it does take up more time. I am extremely happy with the way they turned out and am getting excited with hopefully how my table will look. It continues to be a mad rush for me, but the feverish pace is nice and a lot is getting accomplished.
I’ve also continued to work on the last few paintings I would like done for my portfolio at GenCon, ordering prints to sell and a new table runner/sign, which hopefully does not print too dark. I’ve bought frames for a couple large size prints that I will be having made this week that will be displayed on my wall at the Con. One thing that I have learned in preparing for conventions is that one has to constantly adapt to changed plans and situations without freaking out, and these changes all seem to happen in the final hours. One thing that helps me to keep everything organized and semi-on-track is that I take a half-hour or so every day to take stock of what I’ve finished and what still needs to be done. This helps to tame the madness and makes everything manageable. Plus, it’s encouraging to see everything coming together. As my to-do list shrinks in size the nervousness is lessening and the excitement is growing. Now if I can just get these last few paintings finished over the next couple days and hopefully the local print-shop that I use has had their printer fixed X).

Back to painting. I’ll have another update soon once I go pick up some special items from the print-shop. Hope you all have a great week!

GenCon 2011 Coming Soon!

2011-07-16T14:19:00.004-04:00

I would like to take this opportunity to let you all know that I will be at GenCon 2011, August 4-7, selling prints and sketchbooks of my art in the artist alley. Last year was my first year ever going to GenCon. I went as a regular attendee and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This will be my first year as an exhibiting artist. For the last couple months I have been busy making new work, getting prints ready, and reading up on how showing at conventions works. I have been looking forward to this since last year and am both very nervous and very excited. The nerves/excitement are building with each passing day as Gen Con draws ever closer. Only 18 days left! Still so much to do: a few paintings still to finish, more prints to order, a banner to design and have printed, potential postcards to make. It feels like finals week back in college sprinting like mad to get everything done in time. As things come together I’ll be sure to post pics of all the convention prep in case anyone out there is curious about what is going into it all.

This is a cropped sneak peek at the bard and barbarian piece I have been working on. The piece keeps growing in size and by the time I am finished this will be the largest piece I have created since my college days. In the future I will definitely be working smaller to speed up production time, plus making pieces in access of 30” especially when digitally painting portfolio pieces to be viewed on a computer monitor is just not necessary. Due to its size and all the activity in the composition I intend for this piece to be the large piece that will hopefully draw people to my table to see what’s going on.

Cerebral Inquisitor WIP

2011-07-05T23:13:00.005-04:00

Greetings all,
It’s been a busy few weeks. I have a few pieces all in various stages of the painting process. This image is the under-painting for an illustration that will hopefully serve as a sample in my portfolio that will be in line with the Magic the Gathering card game.

For this illustration I am taking one of my favorite Magic cards (Keeper of the Mind by Matthew D. Wilson) and doing my own rendition of it. I don't really have any villains yet in my portfolio so I decided to make her a bit more sinister. So this will be my Cerebral Inquisitor. As for the color scheme I am going to try to stick to a color scheme similar to what the original card possessed. I am still unsure of what to do with the knight's head. I want to see the blood dripping down from where her claws pierce his skin, though I am just a bit nervous about leaving it a plain bald head. I may put some sort of warrior tattoo on his head or maybe some sort of magical effect tearing at his skin. I'll be sure to post updates as this one progresses. As always any feedback or input is greatly appreciated.

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

2011-06-13T09:54:00.008-04:00

This past weekend I had the good fortune of being able to borrow a button maker because my friend Mark, whom upon hearing of my button needs, asked his wife Jen to ask her boss the eye doctor if I could borrow the doctor's machine. I spent a good portion of the weekend subsequently making buttons to give away during my upcoming convention trip. I am quite happy with the way they turned out and they should hopefully serve as nice little promos.

The idea of buttons came from last year’s GenCon where Paizo gave away a new button every morning of the convention to the first couple hundred people that visited their booth. I love the two Paizo buttons I was able to acquire. As is shown in the picture below I created four different buttons so that I have a little variety.

As for distributing them at a convention: I have been listening to various podcasts and reading blogs on the subject of free-giveaways at conventions, especially at artists' tables. Some say having a free-giveaway is a good form of promotion, while others contend that by giving away a free art object you fulfill people’s desires to have a piece of your work so you will sell less. I have had only one artist's table thus far, which was last year at the Mid-Ohio Con. There I gave away free postcards featuring my illustration work plus contact info. (They can be seen here.) I know there it did seem like most people opted to take a free postcard rather than buy a print. So, I am still up in the air as to how exactly I will give them out. At the moment I am leaning towards giving away a button to each person that buys something rather than to one and all, plus I do not have hundreds to giveaway and would like them to last the whole convention vs. being swallowed up in the first day (unless of course that means I sell out of prints on the first day, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwhich would be simply fantastic). And since I still have a stack of postcards I may keep those to serve as the free-giveaway. What do you all think?

The button machine I borrowed from a friend came from umakebuttons.com. I highly recommend them. The machine was well constructed using metal (vs. cheap plastic), easy to use, and worked beautifully. The buttons came out very professional looking. As soon as I have some extra money I will be ordering a button-press for myself. At first, before I learned I could borrow a machine from my friend, I was looking into ordering buttons from various online printing companies. At the average rates I was quoted online for the price of three button orders (100-150 buttons for each order) I could instead by my own machine.

I would like to throw out a special thanks to my best friend Jenna for being patient and helping me cut-out all 190 buttons and also to Mark, Jen, & the eye doctor for hooking me up with the button press and materials. It made the task go so much quicker and smoother.

New Illustration: Guild Red Lotus

2011-06-04T20:12:00.006-04:00

Greetings all,

Here is my latest illustration I have been working on for the past few weeks. This was originally a drawing I created to commemorate my first convention table, which was at the Mid Ohio Comic Con last year; I sold limited edition B&W prints of the drawing there. Since then the drawing has been sitting in my stack of drawings-to-be-painted for a some time just asking to be completed. I am pretty happy with the way this turned out and am definitely homing in on a solid painting process with each new piece I make, which personally is really encouraging. However, I am still working to find the right balance between the comic stylization I like and the more realistic fully painted/rendered look many table-top gaming companies prefer. I have not quite gotten there yet.

I hope you all are having a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Tiefling Sorceress Final

2011-05-02T19:45:00.003-04:00

Hot of the digital drawing board is the final version of the Tiefling Sorceress illustration that I have been working on. (A more robust title is in the works.) Enjoy. As always I greatly appreciate any feedback or critiques that help me to improve the quality of my work.

This piece was a lot of fun. Especially in playing around with the different colored light sources and making the magic work. I am still trying to find a nice balance between comic style rendering and a more traditional painterly style. I feel I made some good progression with the rendering of this piece, but even now I can also see some ways that I will change it up for my next illustration. In particular the drawing and how I shade the drawing. For this piece I drew it with solid blacks and line work, very much like a comic page, but this I don't feel transferred over well into the painting portion especially in areas like the lower cape. I think I will try more gradated shading in my next drawing and see how that translates in the painting stage because I still want to maintain some of the drawing in the final illustration and I think it will blend more nicely with a traditionally painted look. < shrugs > Will have to see, but that is the fun part; the experimenting. Another thing I learned is that if I want to paint with a palette where purple is a prominent hue I should paint in RGB. I painted this in CMYK and just could not seem to get smooth blends in color when I wanted really dark purple. It just jumped to black. But overall I am happy with the painting. Especially when viewed at its larger full size, cause then all the little details, like the rendering in her irises, can be seen.

I wish you all a most most happy week and I will hopefully have a new painting to show next week, too. Hopefully...need to go paint more.

Thumbnails: a Glimpse of Things to Come

2011-04-17T18:25:00.013-04:00

While I battle away with the coloring and painting of my tiefling sorceress I thought I would share some thumbnails of illustrations I will be working on soon and thumbnails for illustrations that may or may not come to be.

If you are unfamiliar with the term ‘thumbnails’ they are the small often thumbnail size scribbles that many artists use to sketch out their ideas for paintings. These small sketches allow us artists to quickly test out our ideas on a small scale rather than spending a lot of time on a larger version to find out the composition or the design of the image doesn’t work. By being small and quick they also allow us to test out a lot of different ideas for an illustration. By creating many thumbnails for a given idea I often come across concepts and new ideas for an illustration that had not occurred to me before hand. For me it is the first step in my art creation process and it is where I can really push my creativity.

Thumbnails are often never seen by anyone other than the artist. Mine as you will see below are usually very loose, like an artist short hand, but that is because they are meant to quickly capture an idea. They are typically not something I show around. For a client or even other artists whom I need to present an idea for an illustration to I would take the few thumbnails I really like and then go a step further creating more detailed roughs for presentation.

Below are some sample thumbnails from illustrations currently in production and some that I will be working on in the future:

This first set o' thumbs are of possible layouts for the cover to a convention sketchbook I hope to put together for later this year. I know I want a character to be the focal point of the cover, but at the point of creating these thumbs I was unsure of what that character would be, my main concern at the time was the layout of the text in relation to the figure. So, in these thumbs you can see how I focused more on the major shapes of the cover text in relation to the overall cover and the quick gesture of a figure.

Focusing on the larger shapes is important in creating thumbnails. They are so small that details are not important at this stage, what is important is finding solid shapes that work together to form a good composition. Once the composition of an image is solved for the details can be worked out.

As I have talked about and mentioned in my last few posts I am currently working on a series of illustrations centering around fantasy character portraits. This next set of thumbnails is of a possible piece for that series: an arcane scholar. You may notice all the scribbling and note taking around the thumbnails. As I draw thumbnails I often have ideas for the coloring, lighting, or rendering for the image that can't be expressed in a little scribble. So, I make note of these for future reference. Both this and the previous set of thumbnails came out of a small little notebook I keep on me wherever I go. I just never know when an idea will come to me for a new illustration.

There is no telling what will inspire me to create a particular illustration. Most often for me it stems from the desire to create an image of a particular subject matter for personal work or as I am directed by the client for professional work, but sometimes ideas for illustrations have come from the desire to use a particular composition and the actual portrayed elements come later. These thumbnails to the left are an example of this. I had recently been perusing through my comic book collection and took note of a few covers that used triangular compositions often featuring the main character on one point of the triangle fighting against a larger villain or a horde of bad guys that filled in the other two points of the triangle. This created a nice powerful thrusting motion in the composition which placed great emphasis on the action of the villain(s) attacking the hero. The three smaller simple thumbnails with the red dots by them show the basic idea for this composition. Then next to those are the thumbnails with figures using those compositions.

Thumbnailing is one of the favorite parts of my artistic process because it is during this part that I begin to see my ideas take form and they begin to come to life. I hope you enjoyed this look into thumbnailing and I hope you have a great week! As for myself I must return to the digital easel and battle with the unruly colors of my sorceress illustration. Back to the fray!

Tiefling Sorceress WIP

2011-03-28T21:23:00.003-04:00

This is the B&W under-painting for the fourth piece in the fantasy series I am currently working on: a mystical and magical tiefling sorceress. For this process I really wanted the B&W under-painting to be very tight, so that there is less rendering to do in the coloring process. Though I left out the rendering of the magical effects and pattern on the cape till the coloring stage; it seemed like it would make more sense that way. The community over at WIP have been a great help thus far in making this piece the best it can be. WIP is a great podcast, blog, and online artist community that I highly recommend. It has a nice small active community and the podcast is entertaining, informative, and focuses on art, gaming, and life as an artist.

As for this piece the next step will be to make some small color comps to test out different color schemes and then colorizing the B&W image begins. As always any feedback or critiques to help me push this piece further would be most appreciated.

Hope you all have a great week.

If you are interested in seeing the first 3 illustrations in the series they can be viewed at my website at www.reddaydream.com.

Sorceress WIP snapshot

2011-03-21T21:13:00.003-04:00

For my next piece in this fantasy series I am trying a slightly different process. As I have talked about before I really want to maintain more presence of line in my finished illustrations, but they still need to look painterly (to an extent) to satisfy the clients I am targeting. So, I’ve really gone in and cleaned the line-work on the sorceress piece and will be colorizing the line like it is done in many current comics. I am also rendering the entire image in gray-scale to completion first because I have been told and have read that it makes the digitally coloring process much quicker, which is usually where I get all hung up. Conveniently this month in issue 67 of ImagineFX is an awesome tutorial by Adam Hughes, doing this exact thing. I highly recommend the issue. It also has an article by the awesome illustrator and visual storyteller Justin Gerard on drawing and his process. If you are not familiar with his work check out his site here. I have been studying Adam Hughes’s illustrations in his book Cover Run to try and grasp the whole concept of maintaining line, while appearing more rendered because he does it so well in his illustrations. Here is a snapshot of the sorceress wip: I am currently in the middle of rendering the image in gray-scale.

I am very excited about this piece, lots of things going on: multiple light sources, detailed costume, magical effects, plus I like the flows in the composition. Should be fun.

New Illustration: Elves of the Sacred Grove

2011-03-14T15:52:00.004-04:00

Greetings Everyone,

Here is my latest illustration for my new fantasy portfolio. I spent many hours on this one, far more than I had originally planned. However, I am very happy with the way it turned out and felt like I have taken some good steps forward with this piece. I hope you enjoy this and as always an feedback is greatly appreciated. I really want these pieces to be the best they can possibly be, so if you see a way that I can improve this piece I would love to hear from you.

~Elves of the Sacred Grove by Lance Red

Have a great week!

Monitoring Your Business:

2011-03-07T22:44:00.002-05:00

an eye study based on a drawing by Joe Mad

Recently I attended a small-business conference in D.C. where one of the speakers, who was an accountant, addressed the topic of legitimizing one’s business via documentation so that one can build up a record of one’s business and its growth. This sounded like an awesome idea and possibly a tool I could use to help build my business if created and used properly. I’ve been doing a lot of business reading and have gotten into the habit off goal making and working to make more solid plans on attaining my business goals. After hearing this gentlemen’s speech I came back to the studio and put together what I call my ‘Business Growth’ binder and have started to use it to establish my goals for the year, each month, and each week, as well as monitoring my progression towards those goals and how my business actually grows each week/month.

I decided to implement this monitoring system because first and foremost this type of self-analysis ensures that I am always moving towards my goals. It allows me to check my heading and then if I have strayed off course a bit it allows me to see the course correction I need to make. This has also helped me to break down my larger yearly goals into smaller more manageable pieces and put them within a time frame; making the bigger picture clearer. Also, in John Maxwell’s book ‘How Successful People Think’ he talked about the importance of setting aside a consistent time to think and mediate on one’s plans, business, and issues that the business may be facing. This growth-binder has helped to give a defined context to the time I spend critically thinking about what I need to do to grow my business/life and has helped to also direct my thoughts by showing me the areas I need to work on developing. This practice of documenting my progression and plans also works to keep my dream before my eyes constantly (it’s written on every page in one form or another) lest I forget it and helps to keep that fire of desire burning. By keeping this binder it also forces me to write down not only my goals, but also my plans to reach them and writing down one’s goals, dreams, and plans always helps to give them more substance and life.

The creation of this business binder also stems from my desire to operate my freelance illustration more as a business vs. merely a hobby. So at the time I was also seeking out various ways other artists had monitored (on paper) their own businesses. As for how I use it in practice, inside I created these sheets:

-Yearly Goal Sheet (1st page so that I see it and remind myself of these every time I open the binder)
-A couple sheets of motivational notes and business tips I thought were important enough to review that I have collected from conferences and reading
-Monthly Goals Sheet (I write down the goals for each month of the year)
-Monthly Progression Sheet (record what I actually accomplished for any given month)
-Weekly Goal Sheets (To do list for the weeks of each month to reach that month's goals)
-Weekly Progression Sheet (record what I actually accomplished over the week)
-Monthly review sheet: a list of questions I created from a couple different illustration business books that help me to analyze my illustration business and really see where I may need to focus more in the future

I now set aside quiet alone time to think (critically) and reflect on my business actions and plans. I sit down for a couple hours on the first of each month to look at the past month and plan for the new month and then sit down for an hour or so every Sunday to do the same on a week by week basis. So far this practice has really helped to keep me productive and has begun to also serve as a motivational tool because I can see my progression towards my dreams more clearly now. I think this practice of documentation will work well for me because I am academically minded by nature and I have always created to do lists (a practice I inherited from my grandfather). The binder format just helped to organize them and put them within the constant context of my goals so that they could be monitored and structured together. (It’s all about the big picture.)

So I do highly recommend some form of written progression-monitoring whether that be in a more loose form like a journal or a more structured system like a binder of forms. Either way it is a means to an end, a tool I am using to build my business and to be more productive by showing myself where I need to focus my efforts so that I can reach my dreams. I just started really using this system a couple weeks ago and will be sure to report back some time in the future after I have had a chance to really use it and see how it grows and/or changes in the months to come.

I hope you all have a great week and will see you again next week with some new art!

Tiefling Sorceress Drawing

2011-02-10T11:35:00.003-05:00

While I am still toiling away on the elves painting so as not to fall too far behind I have started preparing the next illustration: a tiefling sorceress. For this next piece I am going to be trying a new process where the line-work will play a far more prominent role in the finished illustration then in the current process I am using, which creates a fully painted piece with no line. Because of this I did much tighter penciling and cleaned up the line-work in Photoshop. I also tried to step up the detail level with this piece and will continue to do so once I start rendering it. Here is the finished cleaned drawing. Enjoy.

click on the image to view a larger version

~looking at it now I think I may try to give her more of a seductive smile in the final illustration...will have to play around with the expression to push it more. As always any feedback, critiques, or questions are always welcome.

Have a great week & weekend,

Lance Red
www.reddaydream.com

A Continued Search for Process

2011-02-04T11:21:00.004-05:00

~a cutout from the 3rd painting~

The third painting in my current fantasy illustration series is nearing completion…*finally*. I am continuing to use the same process I used for the first two, the merfolk and the dwarf, which is a modified version of William O’ Connor’s process as he describes in his online tutorial here and in his awesome book Dracopedia. I first began with this experimenting to help define my own personal process, which in turn would help me to produce work faster. Also, I am seeking to create a more painterly look to my work, which is far more appealing to the clients I am seeking to work with.

What have I learned thus far?

First, that the zoom tool is not my friend. Being a perfectionist I have this unfortunate compulsion to make sure that every pixel is in its correct place. I am working to rid myself of this habit. The first piece in this series, the dwarf, started off being the size of a bookmark, which is what I originally intended these illustrations to serve as. Through the painting process the image grew in definition, thanks to the zoom tool, till in its final state I can make 2ft tall prints of it without losing any quality or detail. And with each subsequent piece they just keep growing. I am extremely happy with the pieces and the tight rendering, however, when a piece gets larger there is more space to fill, more detail to add in, and production time goes up. So, I need to lay off the zoom tool and accept the fact that not every pixel needs to be accounted for.

When doing full paintings like these three illustrations I also feel I need to loosen up a bit and not be afraid to have large bold brush strokes showing in the final. Some of my favorite illustrators, like J.C. Leyendecker, were great at this. I have yet to conquer this compulsion of needing to blend, fade, and zoom in so much as to hide all my strokes; much like classical oil painters do with glazing. For me this compulsion does nothing but kill some of the life in the illustrations and prolong my painting process, which I am endeavoring to find ways to shorten.

More importantly I have also come to a cross roads in that I need to decide to spend less time on the drawing side and more on the painting side of my process or visa versa. For these three pieces I have created tight detailed drawings and then have proceeded to paint over them completely in Photoshop. The tight drawings served as great under drawings ensuring that the paintings had proper proportion, defined the textures I needed to create in the painting, etc. However, that tight level of rendering in an under drawing seems like wasted time being that I am going to have to solve all those visual problems again in the painting and things like line-weight and drawn textures, which eat up production time, are irrelevant being that none of it is going to be seen in the final. I could loosen my line work up, be more gestural and leave the detailing for the actual painting. This would cut my production time. Or I could spend more time on the drawings making them very tightly rendered like a traditional comic penciler would, then maybe going as far to ink them, and then instead of painting over the drawing colorize the line-work and work it into the final illustration; being careful not to be too comic-booky with it.

For the next in this series I am going to try out this second option, being that I do like drawing so much. I took out the sorceress drawing again and have reworked it focusing on line weights, blacks, and tightening up the drawing overall. I just need to add in more texture, more core shadows, and the magical effects coming off the hands and the book (on a separate transparent overlay to be scanned in on a different layer). I am greatly looking forward to starting the rendering of this piece. I have high hopes for the process. I’ll post up the completed re-worked drawing next week.

I hope you all have a great February. One month down already, eleven to go O_x …so much to do...back to work.

2011 Let it Begin! Let it Begin!!

2011-01-19T14:04:00.003-05:00

2011 is here and I must say I am very excited about this new year. I’ve already sent off my first promo-postcards, my entries to the Spectrum art contest, whose deadline is the 28th of this month, and just returned from the Crowe Winter Conference in D.C. At the conference I learned some great ways to better run a small business plus some new mindsets as a small business owner. A lot of good stuff, which I will be sure to share here over the next couple posts; at the moment I am still processing it all.

This is going to be a great year and I will be working diligently to take my freelance to the next level. I’m implementing new working methods and building better habits for myself including being more devoted to my sketchbook. I love doing thumbnails, but as for studies and sketching I’ve always been lax in that area; due to my perfectionist tendencies. No longer. To start the sketchbook off I’ve begun with just doing simple face studies working on noses, eyes, hands, emotions, etc. Also, I’ve been doing master studies recreating drawings done by my favorite illustrators (Joe Mad, Chris Bachalo, etc) to try and understand how they simplified the human form, the choices they made, which make their style unique and appealing to me. Here’s a sampling of the sketches thus far:

2010 Wrap-up and Looking ahead to 2011:

2010-12-31T12:58:00.002-05:00

This year was a good year and while I may not have accomplished all that I sought to in it I did accomplish a few of my major goals and have set forth a plan for reaching the rest in the coming year. I have created a solid platform for my freelance business (website, active blog, peripheral sites like Linkedin, joined a couple online communities: WIP, DA, and a now have a specific target to aim for: freelance illustrator in the table-top gaming industry).

In 2010 I turned a new leaf in my art with the dwarven warrior painting. In that piece I feel like I took my artistic skills to the next level: such as how the image is rich in detail, character focused, and in its nice execution. In the creation of the piece I also figured out a little more about my process as an illustrator. And in 2011 I will work to build on that process and also focus much more on my drawing skills. I already have many drawings ready to be painted, so while finishing those I intend to only work in my sketchbook and hopefully have a lot more art on this blog weekly. I will be working to bring more emotion, life, and storytelling into my drawings and illustrations.

In 2010 I had my first convention table. I solid prints (both canvas and regular) of my work and put forth a good showing. (Pictures can be seen here in my post-con article.) It was a great experience and one I hope to have again in the new year, but at different conventions. This past year I also went on my first pilgrimage to Gen Con. I was completely blown away by it; four days of round the clock gaming, met many artists I admire, and introduced myself to art directors that I plan to work with in the coming year. In 2011 I will return to Gen Con with a strong portfolio of 10+ illustrations showing a consistent style and a high level of quality and I will find work.

In looking ahead: In the first month of the new year I will be having the 2011 official grand opening of my freelance illustration business. I will be sending out my first wave of postcard promos, using the mailing list I put together in November, and will be doing a special art print give-away so keep an eye out for that in the coming week.

I wish you all a most happy and prosperous 2011!!

In keeping with the theme of things to come here is a wip shot of the next painting in my bookmark series that I am currently working on:

Digital Artists and Computer Skillz:

2010-12-14T21:09:00.003-05:00

The innards of my PC.
Recently my tita’s computer died (tita = Filipino for aunt). She went out and bought a replacement and gave unto me her broken down computer; turned out the motherboard went on the system which is why it stopped functioning and would not even power up. I happily cannibalized the non-working system incorporating some of its components into my own PC, Valeriya. (Yes, I name my PCs, much like shipbuilders name their ships. A practice I picked up from the artist of a web-comic I used to follow.) I was able to add a second hard-drive, a second DVD RW drive, and a second monitor to my current setup ^_^. So, now I am rocking dual monitors! The reason I bring this all up is that as a digital artist my computer is one of the main tools I use in creating my art, (the other if you are curious is the drawing table), and having even just a slightly above average understanding of how a computer system runs, how they are built, and how to fix them (both software and hardware) I feel is a very important knowledge-base to have as a digital artist.
I cannot tell you how many times having just an understanding of the workings of my computer have helped me out, so that I was able to avoid having to send it out to be fixed at a local nerd herd, which is both time consuming and costly. With just the little extra understanding I have gained through a class or two, from generous friends, and from working on a PC for years I have been able to build my own PC, install the extra components when they come my way, reformat and completely reinstall/reset my entire system from scratch a few times, build and maintain my own website, as well as maintaining the health and stability of my system.
Just as a truck driver has an understanding of their truck, or a an athlete has a deeper understanding of the human body and how to build it up and maintain it properly, so to should a digital artist have an understanding of their computer.
As I said even just a slightly above average understanding is all one needs to take care of most PC maintenance and should PC issues occur allow oneself to tech-support their own system avoiding costly bills and lost time. Just reading a book or two that covered the basics of PC building, or computer maintenance from a local bookstore would offer a pretty solid foundation or better yet if you have a friend who is into computers ask them to kindly take some time to teach you. Just as with art nothing beats hands-on training. Also, gaining this knowledge would help you learn to speak and understand the language of IT so that when the time comes you need to work with actual IT professionals you can speak the same language making the whole experience much easier and hopefully faster due to clear communication.

~some new art coming soon
~also check out my finished Merfolk painting on my main site: www.reddaydream.com. can't recall if I announced it as there already or not

B&W Drawing Created for the Mid-Ohio-Con

2010-11-16T13:20:00.002-05:00

Greetings all,

In finishing up my chronicle of my Mid-Ohio-Con adventure here is the drawing I created to sell at my table as a run limited prints. The characters were inspired by the guild I created in the game Etrian Odyssey II (an amazing old-school fantasy dungeon delve game series for the DS). To see a higher res image of the drawing I invite you to visit the drawing gallery at my website: www.reddaydream.com.

Also, my website revamping for this month is underway. I have posted the finished merfolk painting in my site gallery as well as created a new Enter page for my site, which is more inline with the direction I would like to go with my art and business.

Hope you all have a great week!

The Mid Ohio Con: There and Back Again

2010-11-10T12:29:00.008-05:00

Greetings all,

Well, I did it!! I ventured to the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus Ohio this past weekend and had my first table in an Artist’s Alley. I am most definitely glad I went and I learned quite a bit from the experience. I also met a few cool artists while I was there as well as seeing the amazing Kaite Cook again (you can just see the edge of her standee on the right side of the photo below).

Here is my table just after finishing setting up. Behind the table is my ‘wall’. It is made up of two Knock-Down ProPanels; felt panels often used to make artists’ booths at art-fairs. I got the idea to use these from attending GenCon earlier this year because that convention supplied four for every artist in the artist’s alley to display their work on. I like this versus having a tall banner with a splash image and my name because these while still showcasing my art allow me to hang and display sellable items to con-goers while at the same time still promoting my art. The name sign atop my wall is a custom hangover display I created from acrylic and wood. The image can slide in and out so that as I make new art I can change it for each con I go to. On the left side of the table I had my colored prints (one copy of each with the rest hiding below) sealed in crystal-clear bags with backing board available for people to flip through and next to them is the limited edition black & white print of the drawing I created for the Mid-Ohio Con. I think I am going to make it a tradition and create a new limited edition black & white print for every Con I attend. In the center is the postcard stand I featured in a previous article with all the artwork in place as well as the Contact-Postcards themselves. And lastly on the right side of the table is my portfolio stand complete with portfolio available for people and potential clients to flip through.

I am delighted to say my work was well received by the people who were kind enough to stop by my booth and that my high level of detail seemed to really resonate with most people. The postcards went over well too. Though I think they may have hurt my sales being that they were free and I think people decided to take one of them instead of buying a print. However, they are a great promotional tool and not really that expensive to have made. I'll be sending these out as my first mail-promo later on this month.

I was fortunate to have the pleasure of meeting some cool people and artists whose work you should all check out. In no particular order here are their links:
-Andy Price (very nice artwork with a slight animated style)
-Jeremy Bastian (amazingly detailed B&W illustrations, with beautiful line quality + a very cool comic)
-Jeremy Sorrell
-Kevin Leen (excellent watercolor painter of heroes and villains + a pro at the convention scene)
-Katie Cook (hilarious and dangerously cute artwork + an authentic Star Wars artist!>

Overall this was a great experience. I have heard this before in podcast discussions, but have now experienced it first hand: that at Comic Cons unless it is artwork of super heroes or unless the artwork is by a famous artist fantasy art does not seem to sell to well, but no biggey this time around; after all my goal was merely to have a table for the first time. For next year I am going to be looking more into Fantasy/Scifi cons and gaming cons (like GenCon and Origins) to attend and I hope to at least double the amount of work I will have available.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by my booth, for your compliments and encouragement. And a big thank you to all the artists and people I met at the con that made this a most enjoyable experience. I look forward to hopefully seeing you all at the cons to come in the 2011 season.

~A couple more con related pics:

~my Portfolio stand complete with rear compartments for storage space while on the table

~the awesome view from my hotel room overlooking downtown Columbus

~Now that I am back in my studio I'm working to finish up a few more of the bookmark paintings before the end of the year as well as working to get my self-promotion off the ground.

Con Prep Chronicle 4: Canvas Prints

2010-10-30T22:42:00.004-04:00

Over the last few months on many of the podcasts that I listen to I have heard talk of digital artists creating canvas prints of their work to show and sell at conventions. During my first trip to GenCon this past August I saw that a few artists there had some really nice canvas prints hanging at their tables as well. So, I thought I would try out canvas prints for my fist con table at the Mid-Ohio Con this coming week ^_^. During my scouting at GenCon an artist there recommended Uprinting.com. I shopped around online, and found that Uprinting has very competitive pricing and they offer the important option of ordering stretched or unstrecthed canvas prints, the later being greatly cheaper.

I went with two canvas prints through Uprinting.com: one of my dwarf painting and the other of my new merfolk piece. The prints are each roughly 7-9” x 22” and were very cost effective. The quality of the prints themselves is pretty good. They printed slightly darker then they are on screen, which is no surprise because that usually happens when going from light to pigment and can easily be adjusted for. The only real negative is that some small areas on the dwarf print are light where the pigment did not fully cover the canvas so the white of the canvas shows through. I think this is just a result of printing on a textured surface and can only really be noticed when examining the print very close to your face. It only occurred in a couple very small areas and will easily be fixed with the application of some actual paint.

I ordered unstretched and so built my own frames to stretch the prints onto. This saved my over $50 dollars per print and was very easy to do. Below is a picture showing the back side of my stretched print and how it is stapled to the framework. This is simple and easy to do as long as you have the appropriate tools (chop saw, drills w/ appropriate bits, wood glue, staple gun, hammer, etc). It only took a single morning to build the frames and then stretched the canvases the next morning. An important note: make sure to leave enough empty white canvas around the image when you have it printed so that the print can wrap around the frame and onto the back to be stapled without cropping your picture.

Finally, I treated the canvas prints with a thin layer of varnish to help ensure a longer life for them. I tested out four different companies on a separate test strip I had printed before applying the varnish to my actual prints. Below is a picture of the products I tested along with the corresponding test strip to see how the product affected the print.

What I found is the two aerosol spray-on varnishes on the left created a white haze over the test strip and ruined them. The UV resistant Clear-coat (the white can) seemed to work fine without altering the coloring of the print, but it did leave its usual strong smell. It also did not add any gloss to the print, which may or may not be a good thing. The final product I tested was Grumbacher’s brush on Picture Varnish. This product brushed on and dried clear, just as long as you don’t apply it too thick. It also added a slight gloss to the print (very slight) and once dry the varnish smell went away. For my final prints I went with the brush on varnish. Now, if you do have canvas prints done and wish to treat them always be sure to test the treatment you will be using first because your results may vary depending on the printing company you go with and the inks they use. Also, I should note that none of the four products I tested were designed to be used on canvas prints, but on oil and acrylic paintings.

Overall I am very happy with the way the final prints turned out. This experiment turned out to be a solid success. I plan to continue to have these done in the future. Now, hopefully they sell at the Mid-Ohio Con this coming week. More Con Prep Chronicles coming soon.

Con Prep Chronicle 3: New Promo Postcards

2010-10-24T16:02:00.004-04:00

A week and a half till the Mid-Ohio Con X_X...
Things are progressing. Still a lot to do: a drawing to finish and ink, canvas prints to stretch, prints to have done, a painting to finish, prints to mat, but it should all get done. (sends up a prayer to God for speed and that everything goes smoothly). My excitement is growing with each day and I am greatly looking forward to this. Below is the new version of my contact postcards, which I first made for GenCon this year. Instead of just being info cards I have designed these ones to double as actual mailable postcards to serve as my first mail promo! Look out gaming companies here comes my art, woot! The first wave of mailed promos should go out shortly after the convention.

A card with art focused on fantasy gaming illustration.

A second card with a more comic book style in case any comic companies at the Con are looking for illustration artists.

Oh, on this one you can see the finished Merfolk painting. The larger version will be up on my site this week.

More preparation pics to come soon!

ConPrep Chronicle 2: Black & White Print Thumbnails

2010-10-19T13:05:00.006-04:00

Only two and a half weeks-ish till the Mid Ohio Comic Con O_O. Very busy getting everything ready for it; not quite to the point of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but I can see it on the horizon. I plan to have 6 different color prints to sell at my table and one B&W print. Below is the second wave of thumbnails followed by the final design for what is to become my B&W print. Currently, I am penciling the piece and then will be inking it traditionally to make it pop more; though I have considered leaving it as a drawing for the prints vs. inking. I will wait to see the final pencils before I decide. This piece is inspired by a guild of characters I created for a DS game I am currently playing.

Also, earlier this month the 18th episode of the WIP podcast came out. It is a fantastic episode, where the WIP crew discuss a great article about the 9 warning signs of an amateur artist as well as the notion of deadlines in personal work and how they help or hinder productivity. So, head on over and check it out.

Con Prep Chronicle 1

2010-10-10T21:53:00.004-04:00

Greetings all,

One of my major goals this year is to have my first table as an artist at a convention; this being inspired by my friends and other artists I have had the pleasure to meet over the last couple years that have told me it is a great place to start and to meet other artists. It is now less than one month away from the Mid-Ohio Comic Convention and I will be having my first table there in the artist alley, this will also be my first time attending this particular convention. The Mid-Ohio-Con will be happening November 6-7. I go from feeling very excited to completely nerve-racked every few minutes or so in between working to finish paintings, creating displays, doing drawings, create company lists, etc.

In light of this I plan to focus the posts this month on chronicling my progress as I prepare for this event. I’ve attended a few conventions this year with the focus of scouting artists’ tables to see what works, what does not so that I can have the best foundation as possible. I decided upon the Mid-Ohio Convention because it is a semi local convention (within a few hours driving distance), the date it occurs (was aiming for something closer to the end of the year), and I wished to first go to a more intimate convention vs. the larger shows like GenCon for my first foray into the convention scene. However, this year is actually an anniversary year for the Mid-Ohio Con so it is looking to be an awesome mega-show. There are so many amazing guest artists coming this year; I am greatly looking forward to hopefully meeting some of them or at least buying a sketchbook or two or twenty of their art. Check out the Conventions blog to see the full list:Guest List.

To start things off: One of the aspects of convention tables that stood out to me during my convention table-scouting trips was that tables that had vertical displays on them attracted more people vs. simply having art laying flat on a table even if that art is amazing. So, I am working to make a couple standee displays to break the flatness and hopefully make my table pop more.

This is a display I created last week to serve as a stand for my postcards/business cards to entice people to come over and take one. The tall vertical column has a clear acrylic front that slides out allowing me to slide a nice character illustration behind it and the clear plastic piece coming off the card-stand on the right is where I can clip the word bubble of the said character inviting people to take a card. I went with the clear acrylic fronts so that I could replace that art with each convention and reuse the display multiple times while still keeping it fresh. My many years of working in retail and setting up/designing product displays is really helping in making this things, plus I love wood-working so this gives me an opportunity to play with the power tools while making something very useful. The two little blocks in the front are miniature versions of the tall vertical art display area, so that I can insert small pieces there to turn this into a small diorama display, hopefully giving it a little punch.
Also, in the picture is the red table cloth I will be using on my table. Once of the most important messages I keep hearing for freelance artists is that solid branding is monumentally important. In keeping with working to develop a solid brand image for myself my table will be having a red & white color scheme so that it matches both my portfolio site and my blog, as well as my business cards, postcards, etc.

Be back in a day or so with more developments. If anyone out there has any advice about having one’s own convention table I would love to hear from you.

A Burning Desire

2010-09-23T13:56:00.003-04:00

Greetings all,

Life + Illustration = a madhouse, a fun crazy delightfully delirious madhouse ^_^ (I like it here.)

Things have been sort of crazy for me over the last couple weeks and will continue to be, picking up steam as November and the Mid-Con draw closer. Currently, I am working on a few new illustrations that will be for my table in November as well as a wedding gift for my friends who are getting married Oct 1st. I am creating a wedding portrait for them and need to have it ready to print by this coming Monday. It is going well. I am doing a Mucha-esc piece very much akin to his opera posters and am playing around with using colored line work like in Adam Hughes work. I’ll be sure to post it here after their wedding.

I have also been continuing in my self-education, via reading many business related books. The current book I am reading is “Think Rich Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. Thus far it is a pretty amazing book that contains some very practical and productive philosophies + practices that are not only applicable to making money, but to many aspects of one’s life. The first idea that really stands out to me as being a great concept for an illustrator, because I have heard this idea repeated over and over from many different sources, is the idea of creating, having, and nurturing a burning desire. In the book he talks of having a burning desire to acquire money and then goes in to how to nourish that desire. However, the idea of having a burning desire for illustration, to be a great illustrator is something that I feel all illustrators should seek to possess and to actively feed the flames daily.

I do not speak of just a mere wanting, but a long burning passionate desire dancing on the edge of obsession. A desire that one can keep at for 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, a lifetime. I love illustration and drawing, currently working to build up my love of painting, but I know that I need to constantly be nurturing my burning desire to be a great illustrator in the face of the daily grind, bills, and all the other little things in life that seek to squelch its flame. This got me to thinking about how I nurture this flame. The most common way I pour gasoline on the pyre of my passion is through making art as often as possible. Nothing ignites my passion to illustrate like completing an awesome illustration. Another source of fuel for me is art books. I keep myself surrounded by the work of great illustrators, which in turn reminds me of the long path ahead of me and makes me want to run down it all the faster.

Another way that I have neglected in the past, but am now building up, is staying involved in the illustration community. Some of the ways that I am doing this is via this blog, following and commenting on the blog’s of artists I admire, as well as posting work and giving quality critiques on art community forums (currently an active member at WIP), listen to podcasts, and reading up via books & magazines on illustration, new techniques, and current happenings. Unfortunately, where I live there is no active community so as you can see from the previous list I mostly do all this online, save for a convention every few months. However, as I research where I wish to move in the coming months a bustling lively art community is one of the criteria I am looking for in my new home. As suggested in the ‘Slight Edge’ by Jeff Olson I am also working to go back and finish all the unfinished projects that are dragging behind me slowing my forward momentum down. So, finishing projects, of any nature, is important to keep one from being burdened down.
Always push forward and be persistent about it, even when you don’t feel like, especially when you don’t feel like it. And don’t let oneself surrender or recognize failure accept as being something to learn from and nothing but a stepping stone towards one’s goal.

So, how do all of you keep your passions alive? I know we each have an inner fire that we are born with, but what do you do to build that fire? Go to frequent gallery shows? Conventions? Do collaboration projects? concerts? I am most interested in hearing.

I will leave you this week with this link to a great inspirational video of clips from Will Smith I came across as I was venturing through the internet the other day.

Blog Update >>>Resource Links>>> Look to the right column>>>

2010-09-05T22:27:00.003-04:00

As you may recall a few posts ago I highlighted the awesome resource-site ‘Escape from Illustration Island’ created by illustrator Thomas James. One of the ways I am working to build myself as an illustrator and build my business is that I am trying to become more involved in the online community and am working to offer more to the community (what little I can, being an illustrator just starting out). This notion of giving back to our industry, helping to build it, and build up our community is something that Mr. James and many others in our community have mentioned many times. To begin my part in this and to work to make my blog something a little more helpful to others than just a personal memoir of my experiences I have added a new links section to the right column of my site.

There are three sections: resources, communities, and Podcasts. The sites linked here are by no means the only good relevant sites out there; however, each of these pages listed are sties, communities, and resources that have helped me personally, sites that I personally follow, and are all sites that I recommend. Over the next few weeks I’ll try to high-light each one because these are great places for illustrators to go, peruse, and become involved.

This week I would like to bring your attention to two of the Podcasts that I have found both highly entertaining and very informative: SiDEBAR and Ninja Mountain.

SiDEBAR is an amazingly entertaining Podcast/blog put on by Dwight, Swain, and Adrian in which they talk about comic books, art, and pop culture. What makes this podcast so great is that with each episode they bring in guest artists or individuals to interview and talk about art, their industry, etc. These gentlemen have conducted interviews with some of the greatest artists out there creating today. A few of my personal favorite episodes are: Adam Hughes, Josh Middleton (this one had me rolling), and Dermot Power. On the Podcast site you will notice a Barchives section in which they have all their previous episodes listed alphabetically by artist making it very easy to find the interviews that may interest you.

Ninja Mountain as defined on its blogger page is “a collective of artists who work mainly in the fields of Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, and comics” who come together a few times a month to create a wonderful podcast in which these ‘ninjas’ discuss the in’s and out’s of the illustration world with a particular focus on the fields of fantasy & sci-fi illustration mostly in games. The ninjas discuss many varying topics all applicable to freelance illustrators. For me, as one who is working to make my way into the fantasy illustration industry, this podcast offers a glimpse into that world through the experiences of the ninjas.

One of the habits I have started as of late is that while I am at the computer spending hours throwing around pixels in Photoshop I like to listen to podcasts (or music depending upon what I am in the mood for). So, I highly recommend not only these two Podcasts to all of you, but the rest of sites linked to the right as well. Check’em out, read their articles, jump into the communities. They are all wonderful and hopefully I’ll see you all there as well.

To add a little color to this post here is a detail of the Merfolk painting I am working on; the under-painting of which I presented last post. Target time of completion: middle of this week.

Merfolk Warrior WIP

2010-08-26T19:44:00.003-04:00

Greetings all,

As promised in my last post before I head off to Chicago for the weekend I leave you all with a work-in-progress capture of the illustration I am currently working on.

I just finished the under-painting (mostly in mid-tones atm)and am starting to work on rendering the background saving the figure for last. The painting is going fairly well thus far, though I am still not entirely happy with the colors nor the blue sky background. I want to do something more powerful with color in this one, so I plan to pull out more fish reference when I get back and see if I can give the color choices more punch. I think I may also add more costume onto him. I really like having more going on with my characters and while I don't want to throw a shirt on him I may add more jewelry/ornamentation. I would still want his skin pattern and biology to be take precedence.

If anyone has any suggestions to improve the piece as I develop the illustration I would love to hear from you. I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see you all next week.

Dwarf Warrior Retouched

2010-08-23T19:38:00.006-04:00

Greeting everyone,

At GenCon earlier this month I received a lot of input as to the direction I should take my work and portfolio to best find work in the gaming industry. As mentioned in my previous article my new dwarf painting by far turned out to be the right direction; while there I also received some great critiques on it and how I could improve the piece. Last week I took that advice and reworked the my warrior dwarf and the illustration looks so much better for it. Below is a side to side comparison with the new version on the left and the older version on the right.

Most of the changes where subtle things like brightening the high-lights on his armor to better turn the form, adding more color into the dark side of the gold costume pieces, further brightening the high-lights and light areas on the shield since it is in the foreground + it would cause more separation (something I need to work on developing in my illustrations). I softened the rim lighting on the dwarf especially on his helmet, both the metal and hair part of it. Before it was too linear and flattening the overall image. The two largest fixes that required more painting were the dwarf's face and the cloth on his lower armor. I repainted his face, after taking more reference: added in more expression, the proper facial wrinkles, proper eye shapes, made his skin look more like skin, which caused his forehead to not look so big and flat. For the cloth, after finding more reference, I toned back the lighting on it to push it more into the background, making more separation, and rendered it to look more like cloth paying more attention to real wrinkle shapes and the flow of the fabric.
detail of the dwarf's new face

I would like a take a moment to thank all the artists and art directors for the their feedback on this piece, thus enabling me to take it to the next level; in particular the in depth critiques by Steve Prescott and Jon Schindehette really helped.

A higher res version of the new dwarf will be up on my site later this week, so be sure to check that out. Currently I am working on painting the next installment in my bookmark series. This one being a Merfolk. I hope to have it mostly done by the end of the week and will post a WIP here before I leave for Chicago on Thur/Friday.

GenCon 2010 in Review:

2010-08-19T13:20:00.008-04:00

GenCon was awesome. I am definitely glad I went and very grateful to all the artists who recommended it to me. This was my first time going to a gaming convention, up to this point I had only been to comic conventions, and I was completely blown away by the amount of games (non-electronic) out there. The convention never stopped there were events going on 24-7 for all four days of the convention; quite impressive. Game demos of every kind and as for the art it was incredible. Most important to me was that with all these game companies exhibiting their wares there were many art directors on site who were willing to look at illustration work. I was able to sit down with many of the greatest companies in the gaming industry, meet with all the art directors I would like to work with,and present my work to them; the opportunities abounded.

I was able to meet many amazing artists in the Artist’s Alley, including many of the giants in the industry. A few of the artists I met were Steve Prescott, Jeff Himmelman, Anna and Peter Mohrbacher, Chris Rahn, Matthew Stewart, Tyler Walpole, Dan Scott, and my friend Alayna Lemmer. I am very grateful to these artists for most were willing to take a few minutes and actually go over my portfolio with me; I received some great feedback and by sharing their expertise with me I was able to see how I might improve as an artist and step up my game. While there I also scouted all the artists’ tables and took notes collecting ideas for how I want to handle my own con table sometime soon.

For the convention I created new post cards to serve as business cards that I would hand out to people I met. They are much larger then a business card (4”x6”) allowing more space to present artwork, but still small enough to fit into a pocket.
front
back
I am glad to say they went over really well and I plan to continue with this in the future vs. the small cards, though I will still keep a small supply of the normal cards on hand just in case. I also always carried around a small notebook with me that way I could write down the feedback I received during critiques and any relevant information.

As for specific feedback I received and observations I made as an illustrator during the convention: when making samples for a portfolio target a specific company, make sure it is in their style and of an applicable subject matter. This may mean making a new set of samples for each company, but you will receive much better results in finding work. If you do not have time to make a whole new set for each main company you are targeting focus on three companies and in your portfolio of 7-10 pieces have 2-3 pieces targeting each of those companies. Focus, focus, focus and target. Also keep in mind the products of the company(s) you will be sending the samples to because most of the smaller companies only print in B&W due to costs, where as the larger companies do color. So, make your samples accordingly. Most of the work I was showing was colored work, so while the smaller companies liked my work it would have been much better to have some B&W samples on hand. While there are many styles out there the one common factor for all the studios that I talked to was that they all wanted fully painted work; no line-art in the pieces, no outlines etc.

Video Games Live in Indianapolis
A highlight at GenCon for me, besides the art and artists, was the Video Games Live concert that was held at the Pacers’ stadium. It was an amazing concert where the Indianapolis Symphony and a full choir played music from the soundtracks of games going all the way back to pong and working their way forward to the present. Their renditions of ‘Lament of the Highborne’ from WoW and ‘One Wing Angel’ from FFVII were captivating. I highly recommend this concert to everyone. It travels around the US and for those in southeast Michigan area it will be in Detroit at the Fox this year on Nov 4. And of course there were some great games that I was able to try while there. 'Pathfinder' created by Paizo is a great pen and paper RPG. Fantasy Flight Games released two new games at GenCon: ‘City of Thieves’', which I picked up, and ‘Dungeon Quest’. ‘Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer’ is a brand new card game that was released at GenCon that was also a lot of fun, very fast paced.

After witnessing GenCon first hand I too now highly recommend that any artists interested in finding work in the table-top gaming industry attend. It is a must see. I will definitely be returning next year and will hopefully have my own table in Artist Alley. I hope to see you there.

Vampire Bookmark Illustration

2010-08-02T00:28:00.004-04:00

Greetings all.

I've just returned from a vacation with my family from the upper peninsula and Mackinaw Island. It was really nice to unplug and recharge the batteries, but more on that later. Above is the second completed painting for the six bookmarks I am creating. I happily completed it before I left on vacation, but have not had the time to post it till now.

For this painting I decided to take the acrylics back out and try some traditional painting; it has been so long. Overall I am happy with the way the illustration turned out, though I will need to get a better photograph of the image for my site. One thing I do like and dislike about working in paint versus in Photoshop is that with paint I am forced to not noodle an image and get lost in the details. I can't zoom in and paint her every pore, but that is good for me. One of the most common critiques I have received on my current body of work is that I use too much detail and throw it around everywhere. Working in actual paint forced me look at the over all image and not get caught up in the details. If anyone has any feedback on the piece and/or how to improve it I would love to hear from you. In my next post I will be breaking down the process I used in creating this piece step by step with photos showing the piece as it came together.

Now that I am back I am busily preparing for Gen Con. I will be leaving early this Wednesday and shall return late Sunday. This will be my first time attending the convention and I am both very excited and nervous about showing my work around.

Spotlight: Escape from Illustration Island

2010-07-21T13:23:00.004-04:00

Greetings everyone,

Today I want to bring to your attention a great online community for all illustrators: Escape from Illustration Island. This is a fantastic online community and resource for freelance illustrators. It is run by Thomas James a fellow freelance illustrator and as he puts it his goal for this community is “to provide useful content, encourage community participation, and help Illustrators escape their isolation”. Every week there is a new Podcast featuring interviews with active illustrators in the field. There are also tutorials (both digital & traditional), tons of great articles on operating a successful freelance business, a library of resource links, plus the community is composed of hundreds of illustrators making their way in the world just like us.
The community is open to all types of illustrators; it is very cool to see everyone’s different styles and techniques. As one working to build my freelance business the articles have proved invaluable during this time of learning and research. I try to read at least 3 every week and apply them to my business. Some of my favorites thus far are:

-Fine Tuning Your Portfolio: 5 part series

-Creating Your Promotional Strategy

-10 Rules of Effective Self-Promotion

-How to Work from Home: 3 part series

Mr. James also just released his new ebook “15 Steps to Freelance Illustration”. It is $20 and available for purchase and download. I just downloaded my copy the other day and am working my way through the book + workbook; expect a full detailed review mid-August.

As for myself I am currently in the process of painting the second in my bookmark series. As part of my explorations to figure out my process I am working traditionally for this illustration: good old illustration board and acrylics. This one should be done and posted by the middle of next week just before I leave on a vacation up north.

Take care everyone till then,

Lance

Dwarf Warrior Illustration

2010-07-13T16:47:00.005-04:00

Now that the rush of work from June is completed I am able to get back to work on my artwork hopefully for my convention table towards the end of this year. To that end here is the first completed illustration for the six bookmarks I will be making; the drawings for which I posted earlier. I am very happy with the way this one turned out; it may have went a little slower then I would have liked, but it went smoothly. If anyone has any advice on how to improve the illustration please leave a comment below.

Happy to See July

2010-07-05T15:38:00.002-04:00

Konichiwa minna-san,

Sorry about the delay in posting. The last half of June was extremely busy for me, but busy in a great way. I had two freelance jobs that needed to be done by the end of the June. Work, yay! The pics are of the first job which was to build and paint a sign for a local ice cream shop in Hadley, MI called ‘The Parlour’; a great place to stop in and cool off if you are ever in that area. The old sign was faded and out dated so I was hired to create a new sign. I took the business’s existing logo and made it work on a much larger format. It was also nice to do some woodworking, which I highly enjoy doing, but haven’t done recently. The other job was for the Detroit Science Center: was contracted to do a few concept paintings for a new planetarium show that will hopefully be in production soon. (I’ll share some of those later on, when I can.)

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. Beautiful weather all weekend long. Now that these two jobs are behind me I plan to get back to work on my personal illustrations for my con table later this year. So much to paint and draw ^_^. I’ll be sure to update you all as I create it.

Wishing you all the best.

Be Aware of the Big Picture, But Be Sure Not to Trip on Your Own Feet

2010-06-13T00:37:00.003-04:00

Last week I talked about how always keeping one’s vision in mind keeps one from being caught up in the unimportant tedium of day to day affairs instead of progressing towards one vision or dream. This discussion was prompted by a quote from “How Successful People Think” by John Maxwell. After talking about keeping the big picture in mind Maxwell then goes on to talk about the virtues of keeping one’s focus and priorities. It was while was reading this that my younger brother came into the room and remarked on how I always had too many different projects going on at once. It occurred to me then that while I do need to keep the big picture in mind I also need to work towards it one step at a time not ten.

The big picture gives one a target, an over arching vision to give context to your daily choices and activities, but it is also important that within that context one focuses on completing one task at a time in order to progress steadily towards the big picture. By splitting my focus between all these different projects and tasks I have been crippling my progression and graying-down my list of priorities. I end up tripping over my own feet and move forward slower than if I would just focus on the top-most priority, complete it, then move on to the next highest priority task. As Maxwell suggests in his book it is far better to set solid priorities and focus on completing the task that is of the utmost importance then proceeding to the next, rather than progressing slowly on many different fronts. Also, I have noticed then in areas where I have focused on completing one single task and then moving to the next there is a snowball effect that occurs. The subsequent tasks move faster, I am more productive, and I feel far more motivated because I can look back and see all that I have accomplished thus far.

So, keep the big picture in mind to define your dream and to help to establish your priorities. Then once you have that solidified focus on working your way through those priorities one step at a time. In light of this realization I am reestablishing my priorities for the things that need to be accomplished for building my business and getting ready for my own con table.

I hope you all had a great weekend and wish you all a wonderful week.

Lance

Always Being Aware of the Big Picture

2010-06-06T10:45:00.003-04:00

In an effort to educate myself on business and how to run my own I’ve been trying to read many books on business. In one of the current books that I am reading, 'How Successful People Think', by John C. Maxwell I came across an observation that the author makes that struck home with me, having been caught in this myself:

“Big-Picture thinking keeps you from being caught up in the mundane...the person who forgets the ultimate is a slave to the immediate.” (8)

I can attest to this. Towards the end of my time in college I lost sight of the big-picture, of my dreams. What I had planned on doing was interrupted by life, things changed, and in the midst of it I lost sight of my ‘big-picture’. Up till that point my personal dream had served as a focal point for all the decisions I had been making in regards to education and my career. Without that point to focus on for the next few years after college I floundered and became caught up in my day to day concerns; became a slave to the little things that come up every day that bleed away our time. It wasn’t till the end of last year that I really discovered that that was my problem and so I set out to find a vision again with much prayer and self reflection. Now that I have a new dream, building a successful freelance business and the freedom that comes with being self-employed, I have that focus back. I can juxtapose all my decisions on where and how to spend my time against that vision and see where my time is best spent.

Always keep the big-picture in mind or as the song says in the film ‘The Prince of Egypt’ “look at your life through Heaven’s eyes”. Once you find your vision test it with your friends and those who know you intimately; I am not saying you need their approval or their ‘okay’ to go ahead. However, the people close to us sometimes know us better then we know ourselves and can offer insight that will help us to better see ourselves and judge if our visions is big enough. You never want to aim to small. However, be sure to take it all with a grain of salt. Then once you have your vision, your dream, your goal -write it down. Keep it on a small card with you at all times. Write it on sheets that you hang on your walls; keep it before you, so that you can keep your eye on the prize. This way you can ensure that you are wisely investing your time into activities that move you closer to that vision.

May and the Motor City Comic Con

2010-05-28T12:45:00.008-04:00

Greetings everyone,

May indeed has been a busy month, so much so that I can hardly believe it is over already. Praise God my freelance business is moving forward. I finished one job already this month for Born Psycho apparel creating 7 T-shirt designs and am currently working on a few more jobs in different stages of production. So, June looks to be shaping up nicely already. Wow…that means 2010 is already almost half way over and still so much to do. X_X

This month in Michigan we had our annual Motor City Comic Con on the 14-16th. I attended just for Saturday. Originally I was debating on attending at all due to low funds, but I am most glad that I went. I was there for 7 hours, from open to a little after close, and spent all that time in the artist’s alley: meeting fellow artists, talking about their experiences, getting feedback on my portfolio, and seeing some amazing art. My first priority in going to the convention was to scout out artist’s tables, what they offered, pricing, etc so that I can better prepare for my first table later on this year (more on this coming soon, looks like Chicago will be a no go).

Fellow CCS Alumni, incredible artist, and master of all things cute, Katie Cook was in attendance (check out her art, you’ll see). I picked up her newest sketchbook, which has some great art from her various artist sketch cards series, and a small
watercolor original of one of my favorite Disney characters, Tinkerblle.

Katie has been a big help thus far in helping me to prepare for my own table and how to run a freelance business; answering all my questions most graciously. Thanks Katie! She also has a new web comic she just started publishing this month called ‘Gronk: A Monster’s Story’. It looks to be very cute and very entertaining. The quality of art is great for a web comic. I highly recommend you all check it out. You can find it here>>

I also had the honor of meeting the comic artist and illustrator Stuart Sayger. Mr. Sayger has done work for DC, Upper Deck Cards, and many other companies. His art is beautiful, moody, a nice cross between traditional and digital mediums. See for yourself at his site here>>> www.stuartsayger.com. He was kind enough to not only answer my questions about what it is like to work in the table-top gaming market, having done some game cards himself, but also my questions on being a freelance artist in general and having a successful table at a convention. Toward the end of the night he set aside some time to look through my portfolio and gave me some great advice to improve my work, which I will be busily working on as soon as these jobs are completed. I was able to pick up one of his current sketchbooks, which have nice hand-printed covers.

Another incredible artist I met at the Motor City Con was Rantz (aka Randy Kintz). He has a great style, very much in the vein of artists' styles that I prefer like MAD, Bachalo, and Ramos. He also has an angel card set coming out soon that he contributed too; more info on that in his Journal on his DevaintART page (link above). While there be sure to spend some time in his gallery enjoying his amazing sketches.

Others that I met while at the Con: Arvell Jones the magnificent, my comic professor from my CCS days and the other artists of the Detroit Tradecraft, a lot of my friends and fellow CCS alumni who are starting up their own studio called Alpha Omega, Scott Wygmans an artist from the Grand Rapids area who has superb line-work and is working to have his own comic published (I was able to acquire one of his originals, which happily graces the walls of my room). Aspen Comics was also present; with them they brought an entire table of portfolios full of the late Michael Turner’s penciled pages and covers. Oh how I wish I had an extra $2,000 to buy one of those covers. However, it was still amazing to be spend an hour just studying Michael Turner’s actual penciled pages and bask in their excellence.

My apologies to anyone else I may have left out. ~gomen~

For me this year was the best Motor City Con I have ever attended and I am greatly looking forward to next year and in getting lost in artist’s alley again. If you were unable to make it out this year definitely plan to go next year. I hope you all had a productive and enjoyable May. Be sure to get out and enjoy the sun over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend; go jump in a lake or pool, I know I will.

God Bless,

Lance

Elves: bookmark under-drawing

2010-05-10T17:09:00.002-04:00

Here is the final under-drawing for the six bookmarks I will be making for my con tables. This one features an Elven hunter and warrior. Next up is a freelance job that needs to be finished and the painting of these drawings. I will be sure to post the paintings as they progress. Have a great week everyone.

Tiefling Sorcerer: bookmark under-drawing

2010-05-08T20:37:00.003-04:00

I think this is my favorite one so far. I really like the composition, the flowing hair & fabrics, and that it includes a book. I wanted to include a pattern in the trimming of her coat in the drawing, but I decided that it would be better to wait and just add that in during that final painting vs. drawing it all in just to be painted over. I am still working out how much to include in my pencil drawings and how much to leave out for these painting under-drawings. One more to go now: the elven hunters.

Gnome Summoner: bookmark under-drawing

2010-05-03T17:55:00.002-04:00

Here is the next under-drawing for the six bookmarks I am creating. This one is based on an NPC character I wanted to create for the Pathfinder group I was DMing a bit ago, but never had the chance. I wanted to create this tiny gnome summoner with a quirky personality who had an obsession with bugs; whose purpose in the game would be to stir up my group of PCs every chance she could. Her eidolon would be this large centipede esc creature that she would be able ride around. I am fairly happy with the drawing, though I still need to go in and fix her eyes to really capture the expression I was going for. After erasing and redrawing the eyes a few times the board was beginning to give way so I decided to just move on and I'll redraw them in Photoshop during the painting process. Next up is the tiefling caster.

Vampire: bookmark under-drawing

2010-05-01T12:10:00.002-04:00

For the Vampire I wanted to really stretch her out, make her look long, thin, almost skeletal. I am looking forward to turning a lot of the pedaled edges of her costume into lace during the actual painting; should hopefully look really cool. Her skin will be very pale (very desaturated blues, purples, and pinks), the gown will be black, and I am leaning towards blond for the hair color, but am not certain about that yet. Next up is the gnome summoner.

Merfolk Warrior: bookmark under-drawing

2010-04-30T14:38:00.000-04:00

Another day another drawing. Here is the next under-drawing for the bookmarks I am making for Wizard Con. This one portrays a merfolk warrior. Next up is a vampire.

Dwarf Warrior: bookmark under-drawing

2010-04-29T11:58:00.005-04:00

Greetings everyone,

Here is the first of six drawings I am creating for bookmarks to sell at my Con table in August. Each bookmark illustration will focus on a single fantasy themed character. First up is the mighty dwarf warrior. This is the under drawing; once all six are done I will then paint over them in May. Next up is the merfolk.

Announcement: My Own Convention Table

2010-04-24T20:47:00.007-04:00

Greetings all,

I have a most exciting announcement to make. I will be officially having my first ever table at a convention this fall at the Wizard World Chicago Comic Con in August. I sent in my registration form and fee a few weeks ago and just received the confirmation back. ^_^

I am very excited about this; having my own convention table is one of my goals for this year. That being said I only have a little over two months to create about 10 (11”x17”) paintings to sell at the con X). I will have to work at a pace much faster than I have ever had to before, but if one does not shoot for the stars, what’s the point. I will have an entire 8ft table to myself to will with my work to display and sell. My plan as of now is to have about 10 different 11”x17” illustrations to sell as prints (with about 10 of each illustration), 6 different fantasy bookmarks on a stand I will be making myself, and a convention sketchbook to sell of my drawings and work. These sketchbooks will mostly be black and white except for the cover and maybe four interior pages in color; 20-24 pages long. I will be printing off and stapling these together myself. Their size will be roughly 5.5”x8.5” (a regular sheet of paper folded in half). I am still waiting for the people putting on the convention to release the exact guidelines for what I will be able to do and display at my table, but I would also like to have some sort of standing banner to draw in people while I am sitting at the table.

The Motor City Comic Con is coming up in May so I will be heading out there for a day to talk with those who have tables to hopefully acquire some helpful advice and to scout out their tables to gain some ideas on the possibilities of what looks good. I must say that while I am very excited I am also very nervous. I have never tried anything like this before, so it will be a new adventure. This is also in keeping with one of my personal themes for this year in building my illustration business:

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical…You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
~ Ray Bradbury

This is a major cliff dive for me. x). I’ll be sure to keep you all updated as things progress. This week I also started up my very own DeviantART page, stop on by and say hi. I’ll be working to get more involved in that community; it is one of the 5 sites I have chosen to have as part of my internet home base.

I hope you all are having a great weekend and I’ll be sure to get some new art up here next week. I’ll have the layouts for my bookmarks done by then, so I’ll have a little show and tell.

Take care all,

Lance

lancered@reddaydream.com
www.reddaydream.com

Tiefling Warlock vs. Beholder Illustration

2010-04-15T16:24:00.010-04:00

Greetings all.

Above is the finished illustration of the Tiefling warlock vs. a Beholder. This is an illustration of my first D&D character, which I started playing when 4th edition first came out. The warlock is definitely my favorite class (fey pact) due to all the teleportation. I am fairly happy with the way the illustration turned out. Though I feel that I could have used the line-art better in the final image, but I have spent enough time on this one and I need to move on to the next illustration. To see a larger image of the illustration I invite you to visit my gallery site at www.reddaydream.com. I hope you all enjoy this one and have a great weekend.

Creativity in art and in life

2010-04-10T12:52:00.000-04:00

Besides continuing to work on my illustrations and develop my craft, I have continued my research into having my own business, how to go about being self employed, and how to be successful at it. One of the key themes that I find encouraging in the books I have read thus far about being a self-bosser is that this sort of life requires a more creative approach to life; after all this is not the average path that most people take. As part of my research I have begun to read biographies about people I admire who have been successful entrepreneurs; for this I started with one of my personal heroes: Walt Disney. In his biography of Walt Disney Bob Thomas makes this observation about the creative tenacity of Walt Disney, “In the last decade of his life, Walt Disney pushed himself and co-workers to new plateaus of creativity. He seemed to consider his time limited, and his impatience to get things done sometimes made him hard to work for. He had little patience with those whose thinking was earthbound.” Two key parts of this quote stand out to me: the idea of considering one’s time limited and rejecting earthbound thinking. These stand out as two key concepts that I am working to apply to my life as I seek to build it. The idea of limited time is true, we are not here forever, though we as people often think and act like we will be, but embracing this concept really helps to get me motivated and to make sure that I am using my time productively. I don’t always succeed, but I am just starting out and at this point putting the effort in to make headway is more important than perfection. The second part of the quote, “He had little patience for those whose thinking was earthbound” expresses the need for a creative vision for one’s business and one’s life if it is truly going to be great. I am finding that I am having to rewrite a lot of the thinking I have been taught about what it means to be successful, an adult, and to have one’s own life as I learn more about living on one’s own means. This involves the exciting process of applying my creativity to my life and not just my art. This widening of my creativity is helping me to not only expand my view of what is possible in my life, but also helping me to expand my creative muscle in general, which in turn is helping to boost the quality of my art.

Continuing on with the subject of creativity in life and art, in the another book I am currently reading called ‘Awakening the Entrepreneur Within’ the author, Michael Gerber, says this about the need for creativity in building not only a successful business, but a better life as well, “Then hear this: to create a miracle company, or a miracle life, takes a magnificent sense of the surreal. You have to see things that fly away faster than a thought, and capture them in your lens without skipping a beat.” In this quote I see a great parallel to the mindset of Disney described by Mr. Thomas. The concept of needing to think and see beyond the normal; to be possessed by a vision that goes way beyond what others think as possible. Both men describe the need to have a vision of your life, your company, etc that goes beyond what is normal and what is average. As an artist the words of Mr. Gerber strike a true note in regards to my art as well. When he talks of seeing things that fly away fast and in capturing them with your [inner] lens; to me that very much describes what it is like to come up with ideas for new illustrations. I have these ideas that pop into my mind and then before they can morph into another idea or fade away I work to capture them in quick sketches and thumbnails in an effort to capture essence of the idea(s).

Creativity in art and in life. A new mantra to add to the my growing list of new mindsets and thinking paradigms that I am creating as I learn more and more about what it means to live ‘joyfully jobless’ as Mrs. Winter put it. I wish you all the best. I hope you have a great weekend and work to infuse every day with more creativity, push yourself, allow yourself to grow beyond where you are now.

Till next time,

Lance Red

lancred@reddaydream.com
www.reddaydream.com

P.S. Just a quick art update to keep myself accountable: I am still working on the Beholder painting. I was hoping to have it done by tonight; but I am now aiming for tomorrow night. I will definitely need to burn the midnight oil. I'll be sure to post it for you all as soon as I can.

Book Review: 'Making a Living without a Job' by Barbara Winter

2010-03-27T19:21:00.004-04:00

I sat down last night and studied my notes I had taken during my first read through of this wonderful book looking for the lessons and messages that had stood out to me. After reflecting back upon them and my reading I would say that the best part of Mrs. Winter’s book is this: this book is helping me to define my dreams; it is helping me to take the loose mesh of thoughts and ideas I have had for where I want to go with my life and give concrete form to them. Once she helps you to form a clearer vision of your dream, she then offers insightful advice about how to make it manifest; this great advice stemming from her many years of experience as a self-employed entrepreneur and in helping many other self-bossers.

Her teachings in this book on building and successfully operating a self-employed life appeal to me because she focuses on cultivating and using creativity rather than focusing on money as the solution to starting up a business and making it work. As an artist I am working to consciously weave higher levels of creativity into all aspects of my life and many of her lessons and talks focus on doing just that in regards to running one’s own business. Whether it be in coming up with creative ways to find free advertising, different ways to get by on a shoe string, or ways of thinking outside the box to acquire one’s dreams there is a clear message of creativity trumping capital. For one whom has little capital, but much creativity this is a great message of hope.

This book can be divided into two main portions: the first portion is all about defining the ‘why’ and the ‘what’. Why do I want to be self employed? Why do I want to do this? What form do I want this to take? What exactly do I want to do in my life? These two questions are essential because they get to the core of one’s motivation and one’s dreams. The answers to these help give focus to everything that is to follow. Here is where you define your North Star, set your compass point, and give form to your dreams. The second part is about the ‘how’: how do you go about reaching your goals? How do you successfully build your business? How does this process work? I learned a great deal from this second part. It was like a cornucopia of techniques, thought processes, and motivation helping to add gasoline to the fire of my vision that she helped me to give more life to in the first half of the book. [I would like to note that this book is first and foremost about being self-employed, about owning one’s own business(s). So, everything in this review should be viewed in that context.] For me personally the best thing the latter half of the book did was to help give structure to the process I am going to be going though in building my business. I’m no longer flying completely blind in this.

One of the lines from the book that really harmonized with myself, which comes from where Mrs. Winter is talking about what our work should really be compared to what it typically is in our society today, is this: our work should be about “making a life, not just a living”. I feel this line really captures the character of this book, and I have adopted this line as my personal slogan for building my business. Our work in this life should be more than just about getting by, more than just paying the bills. Ever since I took my place in the working world at 14 and have been punching clocks selling my time to other companies who really didn’t care about me I have felt this. Mrs. Winter’s book has helped me to take another step forward in finding my true work. It has helped me to identify and define the next steps I need to take to regain my freedom and take back my life.

For anyone out their starting their own business, running their own business, just thinking about starting your own business, or anyone whom is dissatisfied with their current job I highly recommend this wonderful tome to you. But know that reading it won’t simply be enough as with any great adventure it is going to require action on your part, great work is ahead of you. Embrace it, thrive in it, relish it for it will bring you closer and closer to your dreams.

Old Drawing, New Painting

2010-03-25T20:52:00.005-04:00

Greetings all.

I am happy to report I have a new-ish illustration to view in my gallery. I have had that inked drawing of the ‘Harpy Sisters’ in my gallery for quite some time; well, I finally went in and colored it! :D I continued on with the comic style and went with a traditional-digital comic style for the image as I had intended when I first drew it. I learned a lot from the Gnomon DVD tutorial on comic coloring by Steve Firchow and worked to incorporate many of the techniques he taught: such as using the lasso tool to make frisket cuts for shading vs. a more traditional painting method of using many strokes, using more channels combined with solid flatting and a single layer for painting vs. using many layers and not touching channels. I highly recommend the DVD.

I also finished my first read through of Barbara Winter’s book ‘Making a Living without a Job: Winning Ways for Creating Work that Your Love’ and my business plan is progressing nicely. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is starting their own business or who is even contemplating the idea (you can see it on my Shelfari shelf to the right). Every page is just bursting with advice, inspiration, and valuable information. I will be reading through this book many times; there was just so much useful information that I could not process it all in just one go round. I’ll be sure to publish a few posts here soon going into more detail on some of the best lessons and ideas I gleaned from the book.

Talk to you all again soon.
Best regards,

Lance

Illustrator Interview with Res. Aliens

2010-03-15T14:27:00.003-04:00

Greetings everyone. I am excited to announce that an interview I completed with the online zine ‘Residential Aliens’ is now up on their site. ‘Residential Aliens’ is an online magazine that publishes new fiction short stories by many new authors each month. My friend Walter Esselman had one of his short stories, ‘Sharp Stick’, published in this month’s issue. Congrats Walter! ‘Sharp Stick’ is a short story based in the world of ‘Dragonson’ Walter’s awesome fantasy novel he is working to get published. If you recall a few months back I did that promotional illustration of ‘Dragonson’ for Walter. To promote Walter’s short story he and Lyn Perry (the head of Residential Aliens) used my illustration; and after seeing my illustration Mr. Perry asked me to do an interview because besides publishing new authors ‘Residential Aliens’ also promotes new artists.

If you are interested in checking out the interview and ‘Sharp Stick’ here is a link to the main page of 'Residential Aliens'. To see the links for the interview and ‘Sharp Stick’ just scroll down a bit once you are on their main page.

New Drawing Completed

2010-03-08T14:16:00.003-05:00

A quick post for today. I am excited to announce that the Pathfinder monster inspired drawing is now completed. To view a larger version of the full drawing I encourage you to visit my site: www.reddaydream.com and look to the illustration gallery.

I am creating this illustration (the painting comes next) with the idea in mind that it could be used as a cover to a Monster Manual or Bestiary type of book. Plus, I have been wanting to do this over-the-shoulder shot of a character facing down a sheer wall of monsters for sometime. I am ecstatic that the concept is finally coming to light.

Monsters Illustration Preview

2010-02-08T13:55:00.005-05:00

Greetings all. I am ecstatic to report that my computer is back up and running; with Windows 7 now. In celebration of this above is a preview of one of the current illustrations I am working on. This particular illustration is inspired by the Pathfinder RPG created by the company Paizo. The full complete drawing should be up on my site by this weekend barring any major computer disasters again.

On a side note: I've finished the 100 mouths exercise for my sketchbook. Since I have already done eyes and noses this week I am putting it all together for 100 faces. So, the sketchbook continues to move along nicely.

Business Wisdom : Goal Setting

2010-01-31T16:40:00.004-05:00

Hello everyone, merry February to you.

[My personal computer is still down, sadly, so no scans yet of my new work, but I am happy to report that I now have the tools and software to fix it. I need to completely reformat it, upgrade to Win 7, and reload all my software. I should be back up and running by this week’s end, hopefully.]

Today, I am going to continue on from last week in talking about some business principles I’ve been learning from the reading I’ve been doing of ‘Breaking into Freelance Illustration’ by Holly DeWolf and more of what I learned from the business conference I went to earlier this month.

One of the topics that my reading and focus have been on this first month of 2010 is realistic goal setting. This month I’ve been reworking my concept of goal setting. Prior to learning more about business my idea of goal setting was very vague and only involved me simply writing down my dreams. However, as defined in one of the speeches at the conference:

a Dream + a Date = a Goal

Taking a dream you wish to achieve and then setting a realistic date to achieve that dream turns it into a goal. This is the step I was failing to take before to turn my dreams into goals. Once you have a dream or vision you wish to achieve you then need to plan to achieve it, prioritize it; organize your life to work towards it. As Mrs. DeWolf points out, ‘This step called “action” is the one we often forget’ (53), such was my case. Once you have a goal create a list of what steps you need to do to reach that goal and write down the time frame required for each step. This turns the goal from being just a concept to a set plan of action that you can work with. This is what I am finishing doing now. As I’ve set new goals for getting my freelance business up and running and am finishing up the list of actions I need to take to get there, while I start the first steps I set down.

Now if you are like me and starting something new you’ve never done before, such as starting a personal business, you may know your goal, but not the small steps you need to take to get there. To learn this I recommend not only reading and researching all you can on the subject matter, but also, as it was suggested to me, find people who are where you want to be, people who have already achieved similar goals to yours and ask them for advice. Learn their story and then you will have a better idea of how to proceed. For me in trying to break into Table Top Gaming art market, a new market I had not really contemplated before, this involved writing to prominent artists in the field that I admired and who are making a living doing what I am working to do. These awesome illustrators helped me by sharing some of their personal experiences with me and gave me their advice on how to proceed to get where I would like to be. An example of some of the practical advice given to me (that I am currently working on) is that I need to make my portfolio of work more painterly and tone down the anime influence in my art, which currently is more suitable for the comic book industry then the Table Top Gaming market.

Another suggestion from the speakers at the conference is to go over your goals and plans of action with a mentor or at least someone else who is in a similar field to you who can give you feedback on your plan and help you to fine tune it and make sure that your plan is feasible.

In connecting back to the seven keys to success I mentioned in my last article, “Focus is the main reason to have goals”(Holly 54). By setting goals we can give ourselves parameters in which to focus our work and effort. Focus helps us to be more productive and achieve our goals all the faster. Focus, tenacity, and being steady in working towards my goals are characteristics I am continuing to build within myself.

I hope you all have a great week, are productive, and work towards making your dreams a reality. I know I will be; one small step at a time.

Sincerely,

Lance Red

Sharing Some Business Wisdom

2010-01-23T15:45:00.003-05:00

Greetings all.

I’ve returned from the Amway business conference in Washington D.C. which was held last weekend. I would first, like to thank my best friend David Hall for inviting me to the conference and wish him and Kathy the best in building their business. The speakers at the conference were great and I picked up so much business wisdom while I was there; some of which I will try to impart in this article. Upon my return trip home I learned that the theme for the weekend was achieving one’s dreams and how to go about doing that; which explains why a lot of the speeches were very motivational. This conference was a nice jump start to the beginning of 2010 and just what I needed to help pour some gasoline on my inner fire to build my freelance illustration business.
While the focus of this conference was in building Amway businesses much of the wisdom shared by the speakers is universal. One of the pieces of wisdom shared at the conference that stood out to me is the seven keys to success. These are:

1. Focus: ‘gazelle’ intensity (to reference Mr. Ramsey) on one area till that area is complete, then move to the next; Be steady
2. Keep your PASSION for 1yr, then 2yr, then ….
3. Patience: be patient; as a leader you job is to be the wind beneath the sails of those who follow you
4. Stay personally involved with everyone and everything and don’t just let yourself go through the motions
5. Faith: to follow the plan, your dream; stay the course; faith cannot coexist with self doubt and fear
6. Be relatable to your people always
7. Book a meeting from a meeting > use the momentum of one event to set the stage for the next

These are seven mindsets and habits that will help build any personal endeavor and things I am going to work on in my own business. For me personally the ones that I really need to work on are: keeping my focus, keeping my passion alive (not only for art, but in making my business a success), and staying personally involved; too often I allow myself to get detached from the events of life and just go through the motions. It’s no wonder nothing has really happened over the last couple years. I’ve been a spectator on the side lines watching my life and my dreams go by. It’s time to get off the bench.
The next piece of advice that really struck me was this simple notion:

ACTION precedes motivation,
motivation takes ACTION,
ACTION cures fear.

I am a big ‘thinker’. Daydreaming is a personal hobby of mine; and really helps to open the creative window in my mind (hence reddaydream.com), but when combined with my perfectionist tendencies I often over think matters; when simply taking action would be better in being productive and maintaining motivation. Over thinking can kill one’s motivation. An example of this from my own life is my sketchbook; I often spend so much time debating what to draw and how to draw it that nothing ever gets drawn, in this case it is better to just draw and let it flow.

The final bit of wisdom I’ll share today was another tidbit that really hit home because I am often guilty of underestimating myself is this:

It’s not who you are that holds you back,
It’s what you think you are not.

I am currently rereading the book “Breaking into Freelance Illustration” by Holly DeWolf. Mrs. DeWolf shares so much knowledge in its pages that it will take a few times reading through it before a lot of it sinks in. In talking about good and bad habits that illustrators can build to help build or destroy their businesses she shares this observation that I have seen echoed in many of the career and achieving one’s dream(s) oriented books that I’ve read:
Don’t let life get in the way.

I am notoriously guilty of this; setting my business and illustration on the back burner because the dishes need to be done or I convince myself I need to clean something. There is always just one more chore to do or a temptation and distraction of like my Nintendo DS or PS3 if you let them take precedence on your priority list. In the past I’ve constantly lowered my business on my personal priority list. It just comes down to what is more important to you, to me.

My sketchbook is moving along, still working on getting those 100 mouths drawn in between work and working on my personal Pathfinder inspired illustration. As soon as my PC is up and running again I’ll b e sure to post scans of both. In keeping with the idea of applying those 7 principles to my own life as soon as I returned from the conference I reserved my hotel and ticket for Gen Con 2010 in August. A couple professional artists in the table-top gaming field whom I highly respect both recommended that I attend this convention. So, now it is set and the date gives me something to look forward to and be motivated by. I still need to chose which Con this year I want to have a table at (to sell prints) and make my arrangement for the Origins Con in June.

I hope you all have a great week and finish off January with a bang.

God bless.

Happy 2010

2010-01-13T16:51:00.002-05:00

Greetings all and welcome to 2010!! A new year and a new decade. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas season and an exciting New Year full of hope, optimism, and anticipation for the great things that are to come this year.
I ended 2009 and began 2010 with my yearly ritual of ‘end of the year’ cleaning. Instead of doing a massive ‘spring cleaning,’ at the end of every year I go through everything I own cleaning, reorganizing, and throwing away what I don’t need. This way I can begin each year with a fresh clean start and be less burdened by the unnecessary stuff that is just cluttering my living space. It is always very uplifting and makes me feel lighter when it is all finished and I am happy to say that I finished at the end of last week. It is nice to have a clean, uncluttered, ready-to-go work area and office space again. Just puts me in the mood to produce art all the more and any motivation one can get when working on one’s own at home is good.
However, there is a down note to this in that my computer, the central hub of all my work, went down at the beginning of last week; hence, the late New Year’s post. I was hoping to have it up and running by now, but alas I have been unable to fix it and so I am on another’s PC so I can post this update. It was having some sort of Vista corrupted file error; thought I fixed it then, but now it is not fully booting, so I am currently seeking the aid of professionals. If it is not up soon I am going to bust out the oils and acrylics so that I can get painting.
Have any of you made significant New Year’s resolutions? I failed to fully succeed at the ones I had set down for 2009 such as becoming fluent in Japanese and to move out, but did progress towards those goals and will continue to do so in 2010. I am still saving and building my move out fund. I do have three new goals for 2010 to help myself focus on the direction I wish to go this year. First, I wish to get my priorities back in order and as Jesus says in Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” Here Jesus is talking about our priorities and how we should seek God first and foremost and that all our worldly needs such as food and clothing, etc will be taken care of. He doesn’t say how they will be taken care of, but just that they will be. This is a promise of God and God never defaults on a promise, so I plan to be getting back into studying the Word of God more vigorously as I did during my days in college and re-sharpen my sword so that I am ready to give an account whenever I am asked to. Plus, studying God’s word daily just fills me up in a way that nothing else does and leaves me motivated, uplifted, and ready to take on what life brings.
Toward the end of last year I began doing a lot more reading on the business of being an artist and I plan to continue in that direction and build up my freelance business; so that I can begin to make a living doing what I love. So my second goal is to take my art from a serious hobby to a functioning business, a way of life. I will be sure to report all developments and plans here as they come together and things begin to happen. My next post will be pertaining to some of the neat and exciting things I am learning about freelance and in being an artist in the table-top gaming industry from professionals and artists I have talked to and written to.
Lastly, I again will be trying to do something that I have never really been able to do as an artist and that is to keep an active sketchbook. I am such a perfectionist and usually have to be working toward some end product that I have always had trouble just sketching in a book for the sake of sketching. When making art I am usually thumbnailing ideas for the next illustration, doing studies for any given project, or working on some sort of final drawing, but never drawing just to draw with no finished illustration in mind. Being that I am seriously pursuing illustration as a way of life I need to build my visual vocabulary and the best and fastest way to do this is with a sketchbook, plus this will have me creating art daily even if it is just something small. If I can keep with it hopefully it will help me to overcome some of my perfectionist tendencies that slow me down often when working on a project. And of course I will be sure to post any cool sketches I come up with here and on my site as well. I’ve been meaning to create a ‘sketch’ gallery for some time.

This coming weekend I will be attending an Amway business conference with my best friend David Hall whom is an Amway IBO. Hopefully I will be able to gain some wisdom in regards to business. I hope you all have a great week.

Process 3: Final Drawing

2009-12-06T02:54:00.003-05:00

The third part of my illustration process is my favorite part: creating the final drawing. Whether it is tight-line pencils for comics, quick figure gestures, rendered charcoal drawings, or random sketches in a sketch book drawing is my favorite type of visual art. Painting is nice, sculpture always astounds me, but something about the simplicity and life of drawing captivates me.

As of the last entry I had the finished layout for a fantasy illustration I am working on. I now take the printed out layout and, via a light-box, transfer it to the final board. For transferring I use either a non-photo blue pencil or lightly sketch with a 2H or 4H lead holder depending how I feel. The non-photo blue pencil comes from my love of traditional animation; growing up studying, reading, and watching artists create traditional animation specifically Disney animators. I was always fascinated by their drawing process. Disney traditional animation is what sparked my love for art as a young child. In transferring the layout I keep the line art very light. This is not going to be the final line and will be drawn over.

Once the transfer is done the final drawing begins. For this I use 4H and 2H leads in my lead holders. I’ve started using lead holders for drawing instead of traditional pencils over the last couple years because I can have a more fine point for drawing fine details and they are more weighted then regular pencils. I start the drawing with whatever part of the illustration interests me the most and then sporadically hop around the image. First, I usually finish the base line art, then work in the major shading, add texture, then go in and, if necessary, reinforce the line art with stronger outlines and varied line weights. If I am doing an illustration in a comic style I tend to have very clean line art, tight shadows for blacks, and place great emphasis on outlines; something I saw in Joe Mad’s comic work growing up. I really like how a nice outline makes something pop out from the rest of the image. If I am doing a drawing for a more traditional painting I allow myself to be loose with my line art and use gradation for the shading.

Above is the final drawing created from the layout presented in the previous post. This drawing will be serving as an under-drawing for a painted illustration I am creating. Because this drawing is for a painting I have more gradated shadows and less emphasis placed on line quality versus if this were for a comic-style illustration. I am still working on not being so tight when drawing; a habit I learned from a few years of studying drafting that I am still working to merge into my illustration process. To view a larger version of this drawing please visit my site at www.reddaydream.com.

Process 2: Laying it all Out

2009-11-21T14:49:00.003-05:00

When I have a solid concept crystallized into a thumbnail I scan it and bring it into Photoshop. Once it is in Photoshop I enlarge the thumbnail to the final size I will be creating the picture at. As of late most of my work has been 11”x17” in size mainly due to the fact that comic board I work on is this size, it allows ample space for me to really get in close with lots of detail, and we have a printer at home that can print off my layouts at this size. However, I think I may try working a bit smaller soon in the hopes of gaining speed in completing work. I keep the layout document (the blown up thumbnail) at a lower dpi; there is no need to work at 300dpi for the rough drawing that is to come. So, I usually keep it at around 150 dpi; plus it helps my computer to run faster as well.
Now that the document is the proper size I create a new layer above the thumbnail, drop the thumbnail layers opacity, and begin to draw over my thumbnail refining the image once again. For drawing in Photoshop I use a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet; I cannot imagine ever going back to working on a computer without one. Now that the image is the final size I can go in and refine the drawing with greater accuracy and detail then I could at the thumbnail size. Whereas composition was the main focus at the thumbnail stage the main focus in creating this layout is to first solidify all the foundation elements of the image such as anatomy, perspective, and gesture. Then once these are solved for I will go in and solve for as many design elements as possible such as costume details, background details: taking objects that may have just been rough shapes in the thumbnail and turning them into their intended forms. At this point I am not really concerned with value or color, just accurate shapes and design. I also do not really think too much about texture or minor details at this point in the process those will come into play when I do the final drawing; sure if I have an idea for a really cool texture or lighting design that would work well for the image currently in production I will make a note for myself, but I do not begin to work on those aspects just yet. As for the actual work it is a continuation of the same methods used in creating the thumbnail: just drawing except now at a higher resolution. Each step in my process is simply about refining the image one stage at a time bringing it ever closer to the final product.
Below is an example of a finished layout I created for an illustration I am currently working on. As you can see it still very rough when compared to a final drawing or illustration, but it contains all the information I needed to advance to the next step of my process: the final drawing. I have solved for the major costume details of the two main characters at the top of the picture plain, where as the other creatures in the lower half I merely solved for anatomy and gesture. In retrospective it probably would have made the final drawing go faster for me had I solved for their costumes too, but I was too excited to get to the final drawing so I just let them be. In this layout all the background elements are present: note that I have drawn in all the major stone forms, but have left out any texture instead just using large blocks because that is all that is needed in a layout. I used color in this layout to help all the different elements better stand out from each other for when I am lighting boxing the image; the colors chosen have no actual bearing on the final color scheme of the image.

A layout, for me, is a guide for creating the final drawing by serving as an underlay that I will light box over onto the final board. I love drawing; I always create my final drawings with actual pencil and paper versus working completely in the digital realm. I really like the tactile feel of working with actual physical mediums (drawing wise, as for painting I prefer digital). However, if I were aiming to go for a more painterly look for the final illustration in which the final line work would not even be visible I would probably omit the final drawing step from my process and keep everything digital. Instead of printing the layout and light boxing it I would just refine it a bit more in Photoshop and simply begin to paint right on top of it. I think this would help to save a lot of production time, but I am aiming to keep drawing and line work a central element in my art; figuring how to accomplish this visually is something I am currently working on.
Once the layout is finished all the major elements of the image should be solved for, that way when I start the final drawing I am only focusing on line quality and the details (my personal favorite part of any illustration). Lots of detail just seems to bring so much life to an image. Most of the artists whose work I look to as mentor text for myself all possess this fascination with high quantities of detail such as the work of Joe Mad, Chris Bachalo, Wayne Reynolds, and Stephen Platt. I should also note that between the thumbnail stage and creating the layout I take all the necessary photo reference I may need to better help me solve any anatomy and/or perspective issues that my exist in the thumbnail.
Thanks for stopping by I hope you were able to gain something from my self examination and if you have any questions or comments I would love to hear from you. Also I have posted the final Dragonson illustration I created for the author Walter Esselman on my site too. Be sure to check it out.
Next Step: the final drawing.

Process 1: Egg Laying

2009-11-06T22:01:00.002-05:00

How I work….my usual process for creating illustrations first begins with a central concept or theme. This is concept will be the problem that I will be seeking to solve with my illustration. An example of this can be anything from a small paragraph brief describing what I am to design to a short and simple concept like “an illustration featuring a character fighting a Beholder”. For commissioned work this brief is provided by the client; for personal work I am able to call the shots and find inspiration in anything from the books I read, the games I play, to everything I see around me. Once I have this initial direction I usually let it simmer in my mind for some time (an hour to a few days depending on the time I have available) then I create a thumbnail of how I envision the final illustration. Many artists whose processes I have read about tend to do many thumbnails before arriving at the final composition, but I find that my first gut instinct is usually the course I take in the end. That being said I still usually do a few thumbnails just to double check myself and make sure that I have create the best possible solution. One artist who has a similar process described it as “laying an egg”: where as other artists create many thumbnails trying to search for and build up to the final design, I will mull over the concept till the illustration just comes to me. Thinking…thinking…thinking…*pop*…and the final thumbnail is down.

As I mentioned above this thumbnail portion is all about solving for composition within the picture plain. It is about organizing all the needed elements into the image in the best possible layout. The two major factors I consider are the visual aesthetics (does it look good) and how does the composition affect the story I am trying to tell; does it clearly communicate the base idea to the viewer. Another factor that I need to work on is the emotional impact an image will have on the viewer. Through looking back at my current work I see that my work needs more emotional content. Having strong emotional content and not just a pretty picture will help convey the message/story of my illustrations so much more.

Once I do have my final thumbnail, which is usually just a scribble on a page that only I can understand I will refine that thumbnail and try to solve a lot of the anatomy and major design elements in this small tiny size before I blow it up. Below are a few examples of unrefined thumbnails I have created for personally directed projects.

Beginning to solve these issues early on helps to get the work portion of the illustration done early on, so that later on when I am doing the final drawing all the major issues, such as anatomy, perspective, and composition have already been solved for allowing me to focus solely on drawing the image and the fine details. If I don’t solve all those issues in the thumbnail portion I find it really slows down my process once I get to the final illustration because I am not only having to draw and think of the final designs of the major elements (i.e. character costumes, props, etc) and texture details, but having solve for the anatomy, perspective, etc. I should also note that all my thumbnailing is done in black & white or monochrome; color comes into play later on once I have a final composition. For me I try to only focus on solving one issue at a time: concept, composition, then perspective, anatomy, costume, color, etc.

I enjoy making thumbnails as part of my process as well because if I am in the middle of an illustration and have an idea for a new illustration I can scribble down a thumbnail of it quickly and archive it for later use. Thumbnails are like an artist’s shorthand. Even now on Hisa’s desktop (my computer) I have a folder of thumbnails that I have done just waiting for me to make into final illustrations; a little basket of eggs.

A New Beginning, A New Direction PART 2: a Business Revelation

2009-10-27T12:55:00.002-04:00

I am approaching the three year mark for being out of college and know that I am not where I want to be neither as an illustrator nor for my life in general. Not that where I am is necessarily bad, it’s just I expected more from myself and I need to do more. In a new book I recently picked up 'Breaking Into Freelance Illustration: the guide for artists, designers and illustrators' by Holly DeWolf, the author talks about how many new illustrators place almost no time into the business side of being a freelance illustrator and focus mostly on the art side because that is what they are comfortable with. However, it is the business side that needs the most attention. I find that is definitely the case with myself. I have completely neglected the business side of being an illustrator and justified it to myself over the year by using excuses that my art was not yet ready or that I just needed one more website update (all excuses just to procrastinate it). The author goes on to list a few points concerning one’s illustration career and how it will always be just a hobby if one keeps these certain bad habits. Here is the author’s list (14):

“Your illustration career will continue to be a hobby if:
1. You’re not proactive about getting work.
2. You’re not actively getting work out there.
3. You’re missing opportunities right in front of you.
4. You’re letting fear take over.
5. You’re not sure who your market is.
6. You don’t know whom you would like to work for.
7. You don’t see yourself as a business.
8. You aren’t actively seeking new markets for your work.”

This list really hit home when I read it. I have been calling myself a freelance illustrator for the last couple years, but in truth I never really fully grasped the concept beyond the basic idea because I’ve been ignoring the business side of things, which is essential in being a successful freelancer. This list hit so hard because I have been doing all these bad habits to some degree or another. I’ve been making art, doing mild company research etc, completing the occasional freelance job, but I have never really seen myself as a business owner or in business to make a living. For me working has always been associated with punching a clock and working for some company; never something I would be doing on my own time at home. And so I have allowed my part-time jobs, which were just supposed to be for gas money till my career took off after school, to take center stage in my working life and keeping illustration in the hobby corner. The idea of truly being self-employed was never something I embraced and took hold of; till now.
So, this revelation is helping me to reform my views of what it means to be an illustrator and more importantly how to live as one. I am a business owner, illustration is what I love, I highly enjoy it, and it along with my creativity are the products that I am selling in order to make a living. As I am learning more and more about the business of being an illustrator I am excited for the future because I now can see a path into the future, a path to move forward along, which is something I have not seen for some time.

A New Beginning, A New Direction PART 1: the Purpose of this Blog

2009-10-21T12:22:00.002-04:00

Earlier this year when I started this blog I had no real set plans for it. I just knew that I wanted to have one and that others had told me they are good for artists to have. As I have been working on my art this year and contemplating not only what I want to do with my art, but with my life and career as well I have reevaluated my plans and goals. As for this blog it has long needed more focus, a purpose beyond mere random rants that occurred to me at the time I sat down to write and more consistent activity from me as well. So, in light of me trying to refocus myself and get my life started as an open for business independent free-lance illustrator this blog is going to get retooled as well. The face lift for it has already started as you may have noticed. Here I plan to chronicle my journey as an illustrator. I intend to cover such topics as: analyzing my art creation process as well as those of other artists, critiquing my work, discussing the business of being a freelance illustrator, investigating the works of those artist who inspire me and seeing what makes their illustrations work, and my personal experiences as an illustrator both from the perspectives of being an artist and a self-employed business owner. I also plan to include entries on the industries I am interested in creating work for such as the game industry, book illustration, comics, and role-playing games to name a few. Also, if you are interested in art books or art related literature please check out my new bookshelf in the sidebar. There I will be reviewing many of the books I read and if you have any suggestions for books I would love to hear them. One can never have too many books.

*An in-progress scan of an illustration I am currently doing the final penciled drawing for. It will feature a bard and barbarian fighting a host of drake and kobold like creatures. The drawing is going fairly well; for this drawing I am trying out a new comic board I picked up at the Motor City Comic Con earlier this year. I usually use Blue Line Pro's nice Pro 3ply bright white boards, but this new one is their Strathmore Premium 3ply art boards so I thought it would be better. However, where as the Pro 3 ply boards are nice and smooth like hot-press Bristol board the Strathmore paper these new boards are printed on is more like cold-press Bristol board. It is far more fragile of a surface, so when I draw on it with my sharp 4H or 2H lead it tears up the surface of the board. This is slowing down the drawing process quite a bit because I have to be very careful while I draw.*

A refreshing lake breeze

2009-07-15T15:10:00.003-04:00

Hello everyone I just got back from a week long family vacation up north. It was fantastic. The Traverse City/Lenland area is my favorite area in all of Michigan; somewhere I would love to live for a time. Nice cool crisp air blowing in off the lake, lots of nice woods and forests around you, but also having a vibrant clean city nearby (Traverse) if one is in the mood for a more urban setting. Plus, it is an art mecha up there. Granted it is more of a fine art vibe, but it is still a very concentrated creative area with galleries everywhere. One neat place we came across up there (thanks to my mother’s internet hunting) is this renovated asylum called ‘The Village’, which is now being turned into not only apartments for people and artists, but the first floor of the entire complex is devoted to unique individually owned businesses (no corporate chains). So, there are a lot of shops owned by artists + crafters there and the walls are covered in paintings. It reminded me a lot of the CCS environment and just being there for a short time was really inspiring. It just made me want to come home and paint. I saw this awesome blow fish painting there. It was a reasonable $235 for its size, but I couldn’t justify it being that I don’t have a whole lot of extra money nor any walls to hang it on. So, instead I spent quite some time looking at it and am now painting my own blow fish painting for fun; and trying to capture the magic that caught me in the painting I saw up north.

[It’s just nice to sit in the middle of the woods or on a boat in the middle of a lake and just relax in nature. ]

In keeping my hands busy and in an attempt to maintain an active sketchbook I’ve taken up giving myself assignments to complete each week; starting with the ‘100’ assignment Arvell Jones gave out in his comic drawing class back at CCS. Two weeks ago I began it with 100 eyes; then last week 100 noses; this week 100 lips. The reason for these choices is that I am also working my way through The Human Figure by John Vanderpoel and that is the orders of his chapters. It is a great book that goes into extreme detail concerning the form and structure of the human body. His insight into the human form and the way he describes it have helped me so much in drawing these forms from my head with no reference.

Here is a small preview of the fantasy commission illustration I am working on. The rough line art is now complete. The next step is to go over the 4H lines with darker lead, thicken my lines, vary line weight, add shadows/blacks and prep the image for inking (I hope). Still not sure where the client will want to go for the final rendering: more of a comic style image vs. a full painting. I hope the first; I like line art too much.

I recently purchased David Finch’s Gnomon Workshop comic illustration DVD. It is a great 140 min video of nothing but him drawing and talking about how he draws. It is always neat to hear another artist talk about their mental workings concerning how they draw, their mindset, etc. When working he is all about drawing shadows not lines and using shadow to create form and bring out his image from the surface of the paper. This is a completely different approach then my own. I usually focus on line work, tight details, and using controlled line work to create my images. So, it was really eye opening to hear this new perspective from an artist whose work I admire. Mr.Finch is also into detail and a lot of it; something I can completely relate too.

What’s to come? Well, after I finish up this commission drawing this week and the blowfish painting I plan to create some illustrations based on games and series I love. I have never really allowed myself to create images of characters already designed thinking it was better to be original, but this is foolish especially if I want to go into illustration and comic illustration where I will have to illustrate other peoples’ characters. In which case, many of the characters being illustrated will have already established looks. First up I am planning a splash image based on the 90s cyberpunk anime series -Bubblegum Crisis. I have been itching to do a cyberpunk image and I recently re-watched the series. Then I have a group of four illustrations in mind based on the game I am current playing for my DS, Etrian Odyssey II. This will be a series of four connecting illustrations with each of the four panels featuring 2-3 characters from my guild inside the labyrinth (the environment of the game). While I plan to have the environment carry over from panel to panel the seasons will change from image to image: spring, summer, fall, winter. Then if I am still in the mood perhaps an illustration of the X-men or Alice in Wonderland…hmmmm so many possibilities. I am very excited to get to work on them. With that note I bid you all a great summer and am off to the drawing board to begin the final line art on the commission.

Reddaydream.com Version 2.0 is now up and running!!

2009-06-26T22:11:00.002-04:00

Konbanwa minna-san,

I hit my deadline! I had my new site launched with the beginning of June and have since added an improved links page, a new resume', and a revised about page. I am very happy with the way it turned out and the new gallery system. Plus, with some of the design changes I made and techniques I used in constructing the site it now only takes me a few minutes to update the site versus more than a few hours with my last site. Please check it you and let me know what you think.

June has been a fairly busy month between work, birthdays, and the many open houses (including my little brothers). There is something going on every weekend. I do have some great news: the local author who approached me in regards to doing a commission for him has decided to go ahead with the project; so, I have finished the four comps, and am set to present them tomorrow.

In trying to carry on the fire I had while creating my new site I am launching my personal project: Operation Step Forward. With a focus on finding freelance work and/or employment, but also continuing and devoting more time to learning Japanese, taking up some sort of physical activity to work my body more into shape, and become a more disciplined artist. I am working to make solid steps forward on all these fronts; not just baby steps, I am beyond those now, but solid progress demonstrating steps. In addition I am still saving money away into my move-out-fund and am half way to my goal.

I am afraid I cannot yet post the comps or sketches I have been working on for the commission, but will definitely post something up as soon as I can. I hope all of you out there are doing well.

Best wishes everyone,

Lance

Moving Along Nicely

2009-05-08T14:17:00.002-04:00

Greetings everyone, I can't believe it's May already; almost half way through the year. So much to do. Things are progressing nicely for my website update. I'm making the site a little sleeker and update friendly. I also found this neat pre-programmed gallery that I am hoping I will be able to incorporate into my new site; making it considerably easier to update every month as well as looking more professional. I was really excited when I found it online yesterday. I finally decided on a layout for it, which is the hardest part. Now it's just a matter of gathering the right materials to put into the layout.

As for art: most of my time has been spent in making new banners for my site and designing the site itself. However, I did finish the bench designs and orthographic drawings for the Type 3 game. Now I am working on designing trash receptacles for the city; those should be finished by tomorrow evening. Once my new site goes active next weekend I will be able to switch gears and focus on the commission illustration I mentioned last post (I am still working on the specifics of the deal with the client) and getting back into simple sketching: something I have always struggled with.

Back to work for now. Have a great weekend and be sure to keep an eye out for the new site next weekend. (Here is a small preview of the rough layout.)

I haven't fallen into the void I swear....

2009-04-23T12:49:00.003-04:00

Greetings all,

Sheesh, you postpone a post for a week and how quickly that week turns into four...
Things have been busy: both good busy and bad busy. On a great note one of my best friends since middle school came home from England over these last few weeks and got married. Gratz Jenna & Laurence! On a not so good note one of the companies I currently work for is not doing so hot due to the economy, bad planning, etc and the forecast is that they will not last to 2010. On a good note a good friend from high-school who has been away serving his time in the military since high-school has come home, for good, so it is great to hang out with and see him again. Works been busy and somewhat chaotic/depressing due to the company's bad fortune, not giving me much time in between to devote to my art, but don't fear I have made some decent progression.

If you have visited my site you may be familiar with the ‘harpy-sisters’ drawing that is currently on display there. That is a drawing I have been meaning to ink (like a traditional comic book) for about a year and a half. Well, being that I've been so busy with work I did not want to start anything completely new so I went and inked that drawing. This is the second major piece I have inked now (the first being the Night-Elf illustration) and I keep learning more each time. It turned out great; really making the line-art pop. In this post is a little cut out from the whole inked piece, which you will be able to see in my site update next month (middle of May, I swear I am going to do all in my power to see that I hit that deadline: give up sleep, food, fun, everything; even if I have to post it while it’s still under construction…something new will be up).

I finished the drawings for and inked the three new banners I mentioned I had started in my last post. They turned out well, just need to be painted now and will be up for viewing with the new site update in May. Also, someone who approached me a while ago in regards to doing a freelance illustration for them re-approached me this past week and it looks like I may have a freelance fantasy illustration commission in the works. Woot! We just need to meet up and finalize everything. So, currently in the works I have the site update, a second set o new banners, a fantasy illustration, many things to paint (keep putting them off, because making new drawings is so much more fun), and a few illustrations all in various stages of the production process. The concept work for Type3 is still progressing as well: currently I am working on some renderings and orthographic drawings of props for a scene in a promo video for them.

Thanks for stopping by and checking in on me. If you ever have any thoughts, questions, commissions, feedback, oh' anything at all please feel free to email me.

Best wishes to you all.
Lance

this darn middle place

2009-03-20T13:25:00.004-04:00

Greetings all,

This week has been pretty good. In a renewed effort to get out of this middle place I've allowed myself to remain stuck in (between college and career) this week I began working on new banners as part of my overall site update set for next month (which is well over due.) I've also begun the final painting for the Beholder image and planning 4-7 more illustrations with small thumbnails. With this new set of illustrations I'm going to try to cover the base of employers I could aim for: such as Wizards of the Coast, comic covers, book illustration, etc.

Here is a small preview of one of the banners I am making. It's much more in the anime style then I usually prefer to draw, but I have been wanting to do an image in homage to a manga I read last year: 'Stray Little Devil', for a while now. good stuff, highly recommend it, especially if you are a Disgaea fan + it's all contained in 5 fairly cheap nicely published volumes.

If you are at all curious. Here is where I currently work on my art: my drawing table lost beneath my reference images,pencils, pens, a light box, my favorite books of the moment, spare hard-drives, and what not; which is in turn surrounded by my books.

For the banner image I am looking at a lot of floral reference specifically daises, tulips, and the lotus. The floral motif was a strong design element used in the covers to "Stray Little Devil' so I want to incorporate this element into my image as well.

So, whats left to do for this week: need to finish this current drawing, get the first phase of the Beholder painting completely finished, and catch up on some career related reading I've been holding off on: 'Graphic Artists Guild Handbook'.

Well, I hope you all have a great weekend.
It is time to get back to work.

Yokata! WoW Night Elf illustration finished!

2009-03-07T21:50:00.004-05:00

I have finished the illustration I have been working on featuring Night-elf druids surrounded by the undead; inspired by World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

For this illustration I was aiming for a comic book style image; for reference I looked to the covers of one of my favorite comic book artists, Chris Bachalo. I kept the coloring very minimalistic using two-three tone rendering and focused on using the line art and the rim lighting to bring out the characters/forms. As for my process: after creating the final comp I did the final drawing, inked it, then brought it into Photoshop for coloring; very simple and straight forward.
final image size= 11"x17"

Next up: below are some full-figure sample alien concepts I created for Type 3. Cannot really say too much more in regards to specifics concerning how these concepts will be used; enjoy.

Almost there...

2009-02-22T23:40:00.005-05:00

Greetings everyone, here are the color comps for the two illustrations I have been working on:

I am happy with how they are both looking, though the one on the right still needs a little more 'pop' I feel; especially around the main character. He is going to be the focal point, so I need to bring him forward more. He is still being too drowned out by the Beholder (in terms of color + value). I think I can push the lighting even more, give the magic he is casting a chance to really shine because it too is being drowned out in the bright orange. Going to try dropping the Beholder in value to push it back and use the magic to create a more dynamic lighting situation. I am going to try to have both of these pieces done by the end of the week.
Besides these I am also working on more alien designs for the 'Type 3' indie game I am doing concept work for. Those are going well; currently working on three full figure color concepts. I'll post those at the end of this week. I am excited about all these (the aliens and the illustrations) and can't wait to see them finished. Plus, I have more projects on the back-burner that I can't wait to work on, too. Not to mention a site update, which is in the planning phase at the moment.
Hope you all have a great week.
Lance

Side Quest: Antique Trunk

2009-02-15T14:46:00.002-05:00

This week is a little something different then my usual 2D artwork. My mother inherited a century old trunk from my great-grandmother. I am a fan of old trunks and this family heirloom is in desperate need of refurbishment. However, while I do wood crafting as a side hobby, I have never refurbished furniture before. So first, to acquaint myself with working with old trunks I decided to build a very close replica to my great-grandmother's trunk. I have been working on this project for a few months between my jobs and other projects. I used all the authentic materials, even old nails created in a turn-of the century nail press; so that I could best understand the construction of the trunk. I have finished the replica trunk. Here it is.
The only thing that really differs from the original is that I opted to leave the wood grain showing versus covering it with fabric as they did back then and some of the fixtures on my trunk are a little more modern being that actual latches and corners from the time a) either are not available for a reasonable price now or b) they simply are not available any more.

front 3/4 view

front

back

open

This project was very rewarding and I am greatly happy with the way the trunk turned out. Now I need to get a place of my own so that I can actually use it.

As for my other projects. I am almost finished with the inking of the WoW illustration. ETA: tonight after work. Then I begin coloring both it and the Beholder image; which I am hoping to have done by the end of February. I am still progressing on the alien designs for the indie game 'Type 3' and will have a new post ready for this coming weekend. On the back burner for the moment are: updates for my website, a barbarian illustration, a book cover for a local artist I know, and a short fantasy comic I have scripted and thumb-nailed out. That is about it for now. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, as for me I am heading back to the drawing board.

Type3 (Indie Game): Alien Concept Sketches

2009-02-08T15:07:00.003-05:00

For this week I present a sample of some of the early concept sketches I have done for the indie game: Type 3. I'm currently working on a very vague base of 'design aliens', while the final concept is being fleshed out in more detail. I was given the one request of nothing to non-humanoid yet, so I have kept them within the realms of human proportions, except for a few wanderings. It looks to be a pretty exciting project and is picking up steam slowly-but-surely as the team moves closer and closer to a clearer vision of the game's story and world.

I've fallen a bit behind on my personal work (the WoW drawing + Beholder Illustration previously shown) due to getting into the production of Type 3. However, I should have a few open evenings this week in which I plan to finish the drawing for the World of Warcraft illustration and hopefully ink it.

Preview: Feral Druids & Undead

2009-01-30T15:04:00.008-05:00

A little change in plans from what I had originally intended to post today: instead of tiny alien 'thumbnails', here is a preview of the next illustration that will be the second in a series of five fantasy/sci-fi illustrations I will be putting together in an effort to build a sound illustration portfolio to find free-lance work.

This one is inspired by my time spent on the continent of Northrend from ‘Wrath of the Lick King’. If you are not familiar with the game ‘World of Warcraft’ and its world: it's an image of two Night Elf druids, one in Dire bear form and one normal form, facing down the hordes of undead serving Arthas the Lich King. I am currently working on finishing up the final drawing for this illustration. And unlike the last one (Beholder), which will just go straight to painting, I plan to ink this one and treat it more like a traditional comic book cover, in terms of rendering and finish. I haven't done any inking for quite some time so I am excited + this will be good practice for another illustration in the works that has needed inking for quite some time (i.e. my harpies: http://www.reddaydream.com/Harpy_Sisters.htm ).

As for other things I am working on at the moment: currently working on designing various alien races for an indie game, (was my planned original post), and planning out a large site update for the beginning of February, so keep an eye out for that. I’ll aim to have some alien paintings ready for next week’s post, promise; the thumbnails are just too small and numerous for the little column space I have here to post in.

Oh' the final drawing for this illustration is being done on 11'x 17' comic Bristol too (I just love drawing on the stuff). However, this underlay was drawn in Photoshop after having done a quick tiny thumbnail image on regular paper.

Dungeons & Dragons

2009-01-19T14:13:00.005-05:00

This is the final drawing to an illustration I am currently working on; inspired by a recent encounter my friends and I had with a nasty Beholder. Here is shown a tiefling warlock squaring off against one of these infamous beasts. The drawing is done on 11"x17" comic board in blue + HB pencil. The next step will be to bring it in to Photoshop to be painted.