The Dragon Crate

Hello everyone! We wish you a (late) Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This post is coming a little late due to moving. Christina and I are officially Pennsylvanians. Still strange to me and honestly, in my heart, I'll always be a New Yorker. 4 years of college in Massachusetts and 3 years of art school in California never dampened my feelings about being from New York and I don't think this will either.

So big post today. A project I worked on with Albino Dragon has shipped and is now officially public. Those of you who know me personally have already had an inkling of it, but now I can show all the details.

Erik, the CEO and Overlord of Albino Dragon contacted me early in 2014 to help him out with a project that had just completed funding over Kickstarter called the Dragon Crate project. He asked if I could paint 14 dragons for his dragon themed Bicycle playing card set. How could I possibly turn that down?!

From March to August, I had the time of my life designing these cards. Erik was a good combination of knowing what he wanted and trusting my creativity to carry the process along.

I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to do this project. There was nothing about it that made me not enjoy every minute of it. Was it smooth sailing? Hell no. But I would redo the bad with the good in a hearbeat. As an added bonus, the pay for this project made it possible for me to buy Christina's engagement ring. :-)

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be going over each card in detail in terms of its creation. Until then, Happy 2015!

Little Red Panda

Hello everyone. Sorry about the absence! Lots of changes going on right now. I'll elaborate over the next couple of weeks. Real quick post today: I stumbled across animal artist extrodinaire Aaron Blaise's video and figured I'd try out some of his techniques.

Christina had drawing this cute little Red Panda a few years ago and I always wanted to paint it.

I figured this was the perfect opportunity to use Aaron's ideas. Here is the result!

There are still a lot of things I would like to improve on, but I have to say, watching Aaron's painting videos is amazingly inspirational. I recommend watching everything he posts on his YouTube channel; he is generous and has worked very hard to get to where he's at right now.

Zombie Dragon (with Extra Guts!)

Well to kick off the month of October, here's a Zombie Dragon!

This is actually one of a series of paintings I finished for a client recently. His product has been approved for printing, so very shortly, I can release all of the other paintings as well. Yay!

Meowww-RRWAAARR!!!

(Thanks to Chris Burdett for inspiring the blog title post)

Hey guys, so here's two new pieces done for an online game. The brief had a slew of monsters, so I had a really good time. It's not every day that what you love to paint and what the client needs manage to line up, so I jumped on this one pretty quickly.

Apologies to cat lovers, but here's a rabid radioactive housecat! I love the idea of all this energy, temper and thermonuclear danger packed into a cute and cuddy package.

And a classic firebat. Elemental creatures always lend themselves to being a ton of fun.

I'll have some more in the next couple of days. I've also got another project wrapping up, and once the art is delivered, I'll be free to share. I'm really excited about that one...hint..firebreathing!

Lord of the Rings Cards

Some cards I did for Fantasy Flight Games's Lord of the Rings decks have been released so here they are!

A Goblin Lurker for the Into the Pit Nightmare Expansion deck.

And a Prowling Wolf for the Voice of Isengard Expansion deck. Hope you like em!

I'm Back!

Well hello there! Wow it's been nearly 5 months since my last update. Lots to talk about! First off, a few months ago, I had the honor of being publishing in Lands and Legends Volume 1, a high quality, amazing coffee table tome full of art from the likes of James Gurney, Bill Sienkiewicz, Donato Giancola, Scott Murphy and so many others. It was exciting to see the book make its public debute at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live.

Here's the piece I contributed, the Wild Hunt of Odin. Odin is the Norse Allfather of the Gods, riding on the 8 legged horse Sleipnir and welding the spear, Gungnir. He is accompanied by his hunting hounds, Freki and Geri, and his ravens, Huginn and Muninn. Odin's hunting party consists of Valkyries, his favored warrior maidens and the Einherjar, the souls of Viking warriors slain in battle. 

Next, I just wanted to drop a quick update and express how pleased I am that my Jei Usagi drawing and print sold on eBay for $152 as part of the Help the Sakais project. This project is sponsored by the Comics Art Professional Society (CAPS) to continue to assist the Sakai family as they go through medical difficulties. Those who know me can speak of my long time admiration for Stan Sakai and his creativity, professionalism, example and humility as an independent creator.

Finally, on a personal note, my lovely lady and I have recently become engaged. :-)

Jei Usagi

I've finished Jei Usagi. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience. It's interesting what happens when you try speaking someone else's visual dialect...in this case, cartoon anthropomorphic animal samurai. Hope you like it!

Demonic Samurai Rabbit (and My Website)

I needed a break from another piece I was doing a while ago...actually I needed a break from my usual look and style. Somehow or other, I decided I wanted to do another piece for the Help the Sakais fundraiser.  I remembered a couple of years ago that Sakai released issue 101 with this startling cover:

I loved everything about this cover: it was unexpected to see Usagi possessed and even a casual reader would find  it startling (but hardcore readers knew exactly what was going on). It really uses Sakai's trademark skull of death icon, making it consummate Sakai. Finally, Tom Luth's colors are beautiful as always. I wanted to do my own homage to it.

I have yet to color the piece, but the ink drawing is on its way to North Hollywood as I type this. More exciting news on this front: Dark Horse has announced The Sakai Project, celebrating 30 years of Usagi Yojimbo. It's going to be a book of Usagi as interpreted by the greatest talents in comics. Although I'm not a comic book artist, it seems submissions are open to anyone, so I'm going to go for it. Deadline is February 20, so you'll see the finish soon!

And finally, I just wanted to announce that my website is updated. Check it out! It's my biggest website so far, containing much more art than I've ever put on my official site. That being said, the body of work is broken down into categories and easy to navigate. Hope you like it!

Month of Love: The #nofilter Valentine

Something a little different today:

I thought I'd jump on on the Month of Love challenge, run by the amazing Kristina Carroll.

The challenge is 'No Filter Love' ie: love after the feel good emotions and the high of young love has long disappeared. Indeed, the 'honeymoon' is so named due to the transient nature of a new couple's love, waxing and waning like the phases of the moon.

Now the cynical among us can use what I just said as a reason why marriages don't work and is a sham. Indeed I have known many with that mentality.

But in a way, I believe that the ephemeral nature of eros adds beauty and meaning to those couples who make love work. New love is great, but after it disappears, it leaves couples with nothing but their own free will and choice. Those couples who succeed in marriage simply refuse to give up on each other. Yes, warts and age spots and lines appear, but strong couples CHOOSE to make it work.

So for my drawing, I wanted to be able to show that even when a couple fight, they're still together. A wife may be mad at her husband, but she knows that the important word is that he is HER husband. A husband may find the wife irritating, but she's HIS wife. There is nothing on this earth that can change that. I force of will, tenacity, selflessness and consistent choice to love is a beauty to behold, and I pray with every fiber of my being that I will be able to live that life myself.

By the way, yes this is in ink. New for me. I'll explain why the change later.

A New Year (and Ringwraiths)!

Happy 2014 everyone! Sorry it's been quiet recently. I've been slowing chiseling away at this new drawing. As you can see, it's in a medium and surface that I haven't really used all that much: pencils, white charcoal on toned paper.
It's a new look and clearly, I have a lot of work to adapt to this new style, but I think it has a lot of potential.