If Only Bane Could've Tasted Snowflakes

Poor Bane.  All he wanted was to enjoy a white Gotham christmas.

Crowd Surfer Game Illustration

Here is a new concept illustration for a mobile game app idea I developed for my graduate MFA in Illustration at Hartford Art School. In 'Crowd Surfer,' players bounce their phone or tablet to the rhythm of their own music library to keep the crowd riled up and avatar afloat, moving slowly toward the stage during the course of a song. Meanwhile, players tilt the phone left or right to keep their avatar level, lest they fall on their head or getting caught on fire by raised lighters in the crowd.

Anybody know a good developer?

(Traditional pen combined with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Corel Painter programs. Class by Zina Saunders and Nancy Stahl for Hartford Art School's low-residency Graduate Illustration MFA.)

Louis CK Celebrity Caricature Portrait

I'm a huge fan of the brilliant and multitalented Louis CK - stand-up comedian and writer/director/actor of the FX series Louie.  This portrait is an amalgam of my own cartoon style with inspiration from the painting method of master caricature artist and illustrator CF 'Chris' Payne (who I've just had the pleasure of studying with at Hartford Art School's low residency MFA in Illustration program).  

Using colored pencil, acrylic wash, oil paint wash, and watercolor to build layers of value over an caricature sketch, Payne's method allows you to work in both additive and reductive ways, by laying down base tones and shadow color with the flexibility of pulling out highlights with watercolor brushes and erasers.  

Here's a shot of the base sketch.  Who knows, I may find myself starting a series of comedian portraits in this style.

Here's a link to the official Louis site if you're curious.  Prints of the above portrait are available in my Etsy shop, and help to fund my art supplies.  Yay!

Triceratops Brush Pen Drawing & Time-Lapse Demo

Tried something new this morning and took a time-lapse video of the above Triceratops ink drawing in process.  I thought it might be fun to share the actual process of laying in different line weights and shading the form, set to some classic Ren & Stimpy music.  The color was later added digitally with a wacom intuos tablet.  Take a look below!