Ninjas and Knights

Just wanted to drop a quick post and let you know that I'm on Ninja Mountain this week. For those who are unfamiliar, Ninja Mountain Scrolls is a weekly podcast for artists by artists, especially those working in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

This week's podcast is nearly two hours long, covering IlluxCon. It's a great listen for any artist. Here it is.

http://mchughstudios.com/episode_41a.mp3

And because I don't like posting without putting some art up, here's some silhouette studies I did a while back.

These studies are based around an old school character from Games Workshop's Warhammer Chaos Army (really old school).

Takhisis and Paladine

It's done...for now.

This painting depicts two characters from the Dragonlance novels, Takhisis, the goddess of evil (she's the big 5 headed dragon) and her brother, Paladine, the god of justice, taking the guise of a wizard. I just love the contrasting approaches to godhood that these two beings take in the novels: Takhisis always appears in a mighty and overwhelming form, demanding all to worship her, while Paladine takes an almost Christlike approach, shedding his godly form for an Alzheimer's-inflicted wizard leading many to underestimate him.

By the way, I just got back from IlluxCon 3 days ago. I got swamped immediately with work, so sorry about the delay in posting. By the way, as far as conventions go, IlluxCon is probably one of the best for artists in our genre. It's small and focused exclusively on the art, and allows artists to learn a lot, be exposed to a lot of art, and not be overwhelmed at the same time. I highly recommend it.

Andrew

Last night at my portrait painting class, our model was a no-show. So while we waited for her replacement, our instructor, Andrew Lattimore stepped in to pose. Here's a 10-ish minute sketch I did with a Japanese brush pen.

I've been trying to explore inks a lot more after reading David Apatoff's article, 'Ink and Commitment'.