Dragons of Dragon Crate 5

Finally, here are the Joker Dragons! I knew from the beginning I wanted two headed dragons to represent the Jokers. Where that reasoning comes from, I haven't a clue.

Two heads means double the firepower!

Well that's the entirety of the Dragon Crate project. Thanks for following along. I hope you've enjoyed this series of dragon goodness!

Dragons of Dragon Crate 4

And now to the fourth and final installment of the card suits of Dragon Crate. I came up with a theme of cold and...angels? Ah well, I think the thing these were meant to have in common was the color white. So there!

Dark Winter Dragon

This one looks awfully familiar...yes, this is an older painting that my client bought from me outright for his card.

Angel Dragon

 Thanks to Michael Rookard for helping me finish this bad boy.

 Frost Dragon

 

Secretly a draconic homage to Frozen. Hey, if inspiration strikes, run with it, don't argue!

So, that's my series of dragons for the Dragon Crate...NOT. Don't forget ladies and gentlemen, we have Jokers too! Coming soon!

Dragons of Dragon Crate 3

And we're back today with our third installment of the Dragon Crate project.

This time, we're focusing on the 'evil' dragons; all of these dragons are themed around the dark side of fantasy. Let's meet the dragons!

Devil Dragon

This painting drove me nuts....I burned through so many sketches to get this done.

 Oh boy this one's going to get me in trouble with my Church...yes I do go to Church. Honestly, this wasn't meant to be a Devil Dragon; this was inspired by Disney's Fantasia sequence, 'Night on Bald Mountain'. Somehow it evolved into a Devil.

Ghost Dragon

 Ghost Dragon; I was thinking of gestalt organisms such as jellyfish (a creature made up of many many small creatures).

Zombie Dragon

Finally, the classic Zombie Dragon. I was trying to distill what made a zombie dragon: wings, breath and rotting parts. Hopefully it worked!

Dragons of the Dragon Crate 2

Here's round two of Dragon Crate.

These dragons are more themed around 'wholesome' nature; woods, flowers and....lightning? Ah well, it sounded good on paper.

Fairy Dragons

The butterflies of the dragon world I guess. You can see in the sketch I originally had more gruesome ideas.

Forest Dragon

A draconic living tree. I know I know, it's been done, but it's cool!

Lightning Dragon

This one was redone about a hundred times. I'm proud of the horns of this dragon; they were inspired by a samurai kabuto maedate (helmet crest). I remember being a little irritated with my art director because of all the changes he was asking for. Looking back now, I'm really thankful he got on my case. It really helped me take this dragon from okay to probably my favorite of the bunch.

Dragons of the Dragon Crate 1

As promised here's a closer look at the creation of the artwork that went into Dragon Crate.

For these three, I had specific natural environments in mind: caves, swamps and volcanoes. These are all natural and potentially very dangerous places. These are not environments for the faint of heart.

Cave Dragon

I was inspired by blind cave salamanders for this dragon. I loved the idea of cave creatures so utterly shaped by their environment. Not only did the darkness of the cave render eyes useless, it rendered pigmentation unnecessary as well. The giant claws and feelers on the dragon's nose came from star nosed mole, a burrowing mole that is also blind.

Swamp Dragon

Erik gave me a ton of freedom with this project, but was also clear that he wanted a swamp dragon. He didn't exactly have to twist my arm on that; I figured it would make for a cool design. I was really trying to get a rugged, Crocodile Dundee, bayou feel to this guy. Thick scales, a crocodile's face and a tail that could break an elephant's back, this guy's a monster!

Volcano Dragon

I believe this was my first dragon for the project. It was probably the easiest to start simply because I had the concept for him bouncing around my head long before I even got on board with Dragon Crate. The idea for this guy is that he's a living force of nature; lava, magma and fire that just happened to coalesce into a dragon. Dragons can make cool animal designs, but sometimes I like to think of them as more a force of nature, more godlike than mere flesh and bone.

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!

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!

The Dragon Whisperer

Well folks, an exciting post today! A game I contributed to, the Dragon Whisperer, is on sale! This is a milestone for me; my first commissioned dragon paintings! Thanks to Erik and Shane of Albino Dragon for having me contribute to this game. The boxed set is looking sweet. Here's the paintings!

 Reef  Dragon

Sand Dragon

Blue Dragon

Quick painting to experiment further with this new style of painting.

Zombie Dragon, Twice the Awesome

Dragons are awesome and zombies are awesome,

so zombie dragons must be TWICE the awesome!

Hello there, long time no see! Lots of changes afoot in my career, so this blog was a little neglected.

Speaking of changes, I thought I'd throw my old style out the door and try for a looser, more expressive style. Now that I think of it, my drawing style has always been more expressive than my painting style (you can't help but draw loose when you're around animators), so I figured this is just bringing things a bit more together.

I always knew I wanted to cut loose a bit more, but wasn't sure how. But they do say when the student is ready, the master appears. Actually, reappears, in my case. I was lucky enough to learn a bit from Scott Fischer, but at the time, I didn't give his methods much credence. Not that I though he couldn't paint, but I just didn't think he was for me. Then I ran into this old blog post by him, and suddenly, it was like a door opened for me.

I've always had a huge pile of brushes sitting in my computer and no idea what to do with them. Now Scott's post teaches me: just 'one click' them! As in, select your brush, and click with a mouse! So simple and yet, produces such interesting results!

So anyway, you'll be seeing me use this style more, with probably more elegant subjects.

Spectrum Fantastic Art Live Recap!

Hey everyone sorry about the late post. Last weekend we made a grand road trip from New York to Kansas City for Spectrum Art Live!

We had the good fortune to see so many incredible talents in the fantasy art field: Donato Giancola, Justin Gerard, Greg Manchess, both Anthony and David Palumbo, Scott Murphy, Arkady Roytman, Michael Manomivibul, Brynn Metheney, Tiffany Turrill, Tara McPherson, Garrett Johnson...on and on and on. And let's not forget the art directors without whom we could not have this industry: Zoe Robinson, Andrew Navaro, Andrew Vallas, Irene Gallo and many more!

Since we had a 19 hour drive, this was the scene for me for a lot of it. Not that I'm arguing.

Here's a sweet high school couple I had the privilege of meeting.

A detail of the Cheshire Cat Sketch I did for them.

 

Of course, I couldn't leave SFAL without being inspired to try something new. So here's a new sketch using toned paper, lots of dark pencils and white charcoal.

Spectrum Live, Here We Come!

 I'm excited to announce that we will be at Spectrum Live this weekend! Look for us at Booth...either 616 or 618. Due to these plans being last minute, things will be a little...by the seat of our pants. But we're super excited and we look forward to seeing all of our friends there!

Oh and a teaser of what I'm working on. :-)

Smaug the Magnificent

Ah, yes, Smaug the Mighty. Smaug the Tremendous. Smaug the Golden. How did I take so long to finally depict you in your grandeur?

Dark Winter Dragon Part Final

Edit: On 3/8, the winners were announced. This piece won second place! Awesome!!!

The winter dragon art entries are up, so I'm posting my entry up. Here she is in all her dark glory!

By the way, if you're wondering why I called her the DARK winter dragon, that's because she's my second winter dragon. Here's my first one from 6 years ago!

Dark Winter Dragon Part 3

The challenge deadline has passed and I've submitted my entry, but I won't show it just yet. Here's a sketch of my dragon in the meantime!

Dark Winter Dragon Part 2

So as mentioned in the previous post, I had done a bunch of sketches in my sketchbook and felt I was getting somewhere, until I decided my idea was too sweet and not me. Back to the sketchbook! Now for my sketchbook, I tend to use no nonsense pencil, but I have found in the past that sticking to one medium for too long tends to dry me out and that was the case here. Suffice it to say, the drawings I did were uninspired and not worth showing here. It was time for a change. I decided that to start fresh, I would go digital for the sketch and use a brush I hadn't used very much before. The main brush I believe I acquired from Kekai Kotaki's collection which he donated to Imagine FX magazine. I grabbed a texture off my texture library and went at it. After about 40 minutes here's what came out.

I finally felt like I was getting somewhere.....I felt like there's still a mother/child connection. What could be more basic and at the core of parenting than providing food for one's child? I had to make sure the dragon was dark, scary and a little demonic too; I like this juxtapose of an evil looking creature being a caring mother. I've kept the colors desaturated so the blood stands out more as well.

Dark Winter Dragon Part 1

Hello! Sorry about the lack of posts. A few weeks ago this showed up at the Dracopedia Project Blog....

William, you're a good man! The rules are simple enough; interpret 'winter dragon', any media, style, etc. Just make it cool...pun sort of intended. Off to the sketchbook!

This is one page of several I drew trying in trying to come up with a painting. As an artist, my thing is story. Narrative. I've never been a money shot kind of guy (you know, the scene where the hero is standing there looking heroic, but not really doing anything). There has to be something...going on. I played with a few ideas. At one point, I was going to have Santa Claus riding on my winter dragon! Why, not, Christmas is only 10 months away!
Finally, I stopped to think about what the term 'winter' means to me. Some people think snowmen and snowball fights, school days cancelled and hot chocolate by the roaring fire, but I think of winter in terms of cold environments, such as the Arctic. Terms that come to mind are white, cold, beautiful, unforgiving, harsh, survivors. Winter is a time of deadly beauty. So how do I tell a story around a lovely but brutal background? Well, I stumbled upon the idea of a mother and child struggling to survive. And here's a color rough of such an idea.

This is a mother winter dragon watching over her sleeping young in a cold, harsh mountain morning. I felt this had a lot of opportunities, artistically speaking. Most obvious is the unusual horizontal composition. I could also play with color, lighting and extreme atmospheric perspective. It has story, a sense of the epic, it's original and....sweet. Not me. I realized I would probably hate doing this painting. There's no action, nothing. And this contest should be about a dragon, I felt this composition was more about a scene that just happened to have a dragon in it. Also, these characters didn't have to be dragons; I could've put goats in their place and it would've worked. I did like the original idea of a mother and her young, and  I wanted to carry that, but I had to lose the saccharine sweetness.

Check in again on Monday to see where this goes.

Zombie Princess

A new e-book cover!

Believe it or not, she's a zombie. She's probably the most alluring zombie I've ever painted. The zombie dragon was a lot of fun, but a word to the wise: give more time, and charge a bit more for skeleton armies!!! This took FOREVER!

Curing Ezra

A few months ago, my friend Jennifer came to me with a request for a special painting. Her nephew, 3 year old Ezra Jordan Fineman is undergoing treatment for a condition known as Hyper IgM Syndrome.
He's at Sloan Kettering recovering from an umbilical blood stem cell transplant which will hopefully cure him. In the meantime, this brave little toddler has a long recovery ahead of him.

 Ezra's a fan of the book Puff the Magic Dragon, based on the song by Peter, Paul and Mary and illustrated by Eric Puybaret. Jennifer asked me to create a painting for her nephew based on this book. Here's my painting, with Ezra standing in for Jackie Paper.

Ezra is a big fan of dragons, basketball, music (I heard he's really good with a guitar!), space shuttles and lighthouses! His progress can be tracked here. He will continue to need blood transfusions over the coming months. Information on how to donate can be found here.

Good luck Ezra, and may the God watch over you.

Fall of the Minotaur King

Here's a book cover I designed. The book is 'Fall of the Minotaur King'. It was written by a college buddy under the pen name Dave Devine. You can find it for download on Smashwords. 

It's a pretty fun read, full of magic, kings, castles, dragons, minotaurs (obviously), etc., with a rather stinging sense of humor. And it's only $.99 to download!