Detail of Episode 01 Cover

Interesting to see the process of how this thing evolved from a shitty sketch to something with mood.

Sushi Cats

A Painting of Calabria

For my dad.

San Vito Lo Capo, Sicilia

A wip of a birthday painting for my mum, who grew up in Sicily.

Christmas Mini Paintings

This year I said to myself that I would do "hand-made" gifts for everyone. Well as it turns out, that takes a lot of time and planning , which I neglected to do around my work schedule. Therefore I was only able to hand- make 2 people's gifts. Next year I'm shooting for the whole group.

The olive branch was for my sister, we recently patched up our relationship after a very long rift. And the landscape was made for my cousin, who's favorite place is Orange County, California.

Pony Express

Here’s me in 1860 riding cross country to deliver mail for the Pony express, fighting outlaws and bandits by day and sleeping under the stars by night. I realize the bg is kind of a cop-out/hack (its actually a photo I took when we visited Arches national park in Utah) but it kinda fit the style i was going for.

Below is the actual recruitment poster for the Pony express. I like how honest they are: "must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred” Damn, dude that is no joke. You might die, but if you don’t die you will get 25 dollars a week. Was that even a lot of money back then? I have to believe that anyone that took this job was a stone cold badass. Also, these people had to make it from Misourri to San Fran in 10 days or less on a horse! That’s some serious haul-assery!!

Hair

My hair is like my security blanket and source of power. I'm trying to force myself to work in color and get used to the idea of creating lighting from my head. I think to do this really effectively you must have done enough still life and portrait studies that you are comfortable with color theory and can easily pull from your mind. Definitely out of my comfort zone...Well my new gouache set arrived today, I guess we'll see what I end up making with it! Fun times ahead!

Robin

I wanted to do Robin from Batman the Animated Series in a creepy jamie hewlett-ish style. I always had a thing for Robin when I was younger. Now that I'm older I see its because he’s the full package,

-smart

-athletic

-edgy

-obsessed with revenge personality disorder

..wait a minute.. Oh well …

A very modest start

Bear with me as I cautiously venture outside of my comfort zone. As part of my efforts to begin working in color, here is a quick still life I did using this cheapo watercolor set I bought at dick blick (pictured below). I like watercolor and gouache because the cleanup is a snap, and theres no toxins to inhale, but just doing this little guy made me realize I'm a bit short on resources. For one thing- I could use an actual palette (instead of just using the  back of the plastic case, lol), and of course, I could always use more brushes. Also, I think having an opaque water color set in a plastic dried out pan like this sort of defeats the purpose of opaque watercolor, because you have to moisten the color in order to get it to go on your brush. However, the water sort of cuts the saturation, so it can be a bit of an uphill battle to get really bright, saturated colors. It made we want to pick up a real set of gouache tubes in the future. All in all, I really like the end result of gouache. You can get really bright saturated images that are very quick and inexpensive to make. That and it reminds me of some of the classic disney animation backgrounds painted in the old days before computers and photoshop.

Malibu

A painting of a photo I took of my best friend watching the waves in Malibu. I was testing out what I've been learning in digital painting, and a software recommendation from a friend. Manga studio sure is great for drawing line work, thanks Josh!

Digital Painting Practice

A Sargent Master copy of Miss Dorothea Vickers.

Digital Painting Materials

This was the first assignment for digital painting. Its supposed to test how well we can paint photoreal textures and materials in photoshop. This was tough.

Light and Color with Bill Perkins