And on and on...

Here's another step in the process for this month's art contest over at MTG Salvation. I've rounded out the color and have added a lot of detailing. I'm not sure where in the process I am at this point. I've never been good at saying "Yep, I'm done." when it came to a painted piece like this. Most of the time I simply have to walk away. I could tweak endlessly but in the end would anyone notice other than me? But I digress. More to come!

MTG Salvation's Art Contest

MTG Salvation has monthly art contests that I occasionally participate in. This month the theme was to take an artifact, in my case Metalworker, and make it green. Both in terms of falling in line with the game's (Magic the Gathering) flavor as well as eco-friendly. So here are a few in-progress screen caps from that project as it unfolds. Normally I simply ink and color my work in similar fashion to some of the other pieces showcased here but I wanted to try something a little different with my final piece.


Step 1. Pencils - After roughing out some sketches for the main figure as well as some background elements I scanned them and assembled them in Photoshop.



Step 2. Grayscale Tonal Comp - With the sketches scanned and laid out I started by roughing out the overall tonal composition of the piece. This helps me decide before I introduce color what will 'pop' and what will fade off into the background.



Step 3. Color - Here I've started adding coloring slowly over the greyscale version. Again I'm trying to push certain features and downplay others.



Step 4. More Color - Here's the latest version of the piece. I've flushed out the color a bit more and am now able to go in and add some detail.

Busy Busy

Here's an update to the school kids illustration. I tweaked portions of the line work and started in on the color. I'm still fleshing things out but its coming along. More later!

Here are a few things I've been working on as of late.


I'm happy with how this one is coming along. I need to do a little more work on it before moving to color but I hope to have line art done today or tomorrow.



This one is something I've been dabbling here and there with for months. I've never found a "painterly" approach to coloring my artwork in Photoshop that I was satisfied with but this is coming close. Big thanks to Jack Cooke for his help in tweaking the colors in it. It's inspired in part by Dani Jones' illustration work which has a watercolors wash plus color pencils feel to it. The real challenge (for me anyway) is getting efficient enough with this approach that I can complete a piece in a realistic time frame.