Personal Piece Update 7

I probably could have written several updates about this piece in the last couple weeks, but it would have been almost completely pointless given that the changes were redundant from day to day and concentrated in a fairly small portion of the painting. Essentially I've been repainting the face over and over again and have reworked it somewhere around ten times. However, I think I'm finally pretty close to where it needs to be at this point, so I figured it was actually worth throwing together this update. At long last.

Admittedly this is not the best photo quality-wise, and I once again failed to eliminate my painting rag casually hung over the top of the canvas. Still, you get the idea. At least I hope you do. Point is, the clouds and environs outside the window are starting to come together, and as mentioned before, so is the face.

Buuuuuuuut that's about it.

Still, I'll give you another shot where the face is more prominent so as to highlight what I've spent so much time working on.

So, why was the face so challenging and why was it so important? Simple. I shot a model for this painting, and rather than using the model as an analogue of some generic fantasy woman, I wanted to achieve a decent likeness. Now, it's been a while since I've gone after a good likeness and I'd actually like it to be a decent one. With that in mind, while I may have had a serviceable face painted to this point, it was wrong enough for me to be bothered by it. But then, I know the model and have seen the reference. Long story short, she's a lot closer to what she needs to be for my happiness, so I feel like I can start to move on again. Unfortunately, I've got assignments and travel that will keep forward momentum to a minimum.

Anyway, that's about all I've got. I wish I had more to tell you, but alas I do not. Until next time....

Regarding the Funk

Unexpectedly I got quite a few emails, messages and questions about the last post and I thought it worth addressing some of the recurring questions asked and comments made.

First off, several folks pointed out that it sounded as though I were complaining about something that they themselves were aspiring to do and were quick to point out how lucky I am to be working on projects like Magic: the Gathering. So, how dare I complain about being unfulfilled.

I'm not going to argue my good fortune. It's true, after all. Magic is a great client that has treated me insanely well. While I do have complaints, they're minor ones that aren't the sort of thing that would cause me to walk away from anything. The issue of lack of fulfillment, as I see it, is not client or project specific. It's not even their fault. The shortcomings are my own. Of late, I've found my ability to turn many of my assignments into things that get me excited rather lacking. While I think I've kept my work to a certain level of quality, there's a spark that I feel is missing. If I'm not excited about something, it's impossible for me to make exciting work, and I feel like it's only a matter of time before that becomes apparent in the end result (if it hasn't already).

The actual cause for all of this is multifaceted and is something that has resulted in a lot of soul searching. Unfortunately, I don't have any clear answers apart from genre fatigue and a permeating sense of temporariness in much of my life. There are lots of things that add to the mix, but I'm working on it. The crux of the matter is that it's not really the fault of the clients, so please relax.

Second, I've been asked by a couple folks what I'd actually be excited to do. That's a hard question for me to answer. To be honest, I feel like I've suffered a degree of creativity drain. The increased prevalence of style guides in the industry has allowed parts of my brain to disengage to a certain extent. I'm not thinking about cool ideas as much as I once did and instead follow the art orders and style sheets as per the clients' needs. Designs I can call my own are increasingly rare and cool idea pieces seem even rarer. When I finally sit down to work on my own stuff, more often than not I find nothing but static and cobwebs occupying my brain.

On the rare occasion that an idea actually pops up, however, it almost never gets off the ground before I fall out of love with it. Indeed there are only three or four pieces floating around in my head that have lasted over the course of the last several years. Even among these ideas, I'm unsure if any of them are really worthy of the finite time I have to devote to them when not working on commissions or doing the various other tasks necessary to make life's machine run smoothly. I do not work quickly and so I need to feel confident in the value of the end result. Admittedly that's a pretty twisted way of looking at things for a guy who likes the process so much, but there has to be a payoff somehow for me not to feel like I've wasted my time on something when I could have either made a couple bucks more on a paid gig, or spent that time with my loved ones.

I guess the short version of this answer is that right now the ideas aren't flowing, but I know that I'm pretty excited by the few ideas I do have. Truth be told, I've only recently started asking myself what I want out of my work and pondering how to get it, and the lack of answers is certainly a huge factor in my current state of mind. I have faith that I'll figure it all out and come back around again. In fact, I can already feel it beginning to happen. So I guess I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Third, am I having issues with the industry? Well, there's an element of that, yeah. In fact, it's an issue that has been weighing on a lot of people's minds of late. The truth is that within fantasy gaming art, there are very few companies that pay well. Even those that do provide decent compensation cannot guarantee enough work to keep an illustrator above the poverty line. This issue was discussed quite honestly and at great length during a panel at IlluxCon this past year that can be listened to here.

While there continues to be a great demand for quality artwork, the glut of talent and limited amount of funds makes for a very difficult environment indeed. In the dozen or so years I've been illustrating professionally, rates have simply not increased — and in some cases they've even gotten lower. Since the cost of living has continued to go up, the only way to keep the lights on is to shoulder more and more work (which is what led to the limited time available for personal work mentioned above). So, it's getting harder and harder to make a living doing this job — especially for someone who works traditionally, like myself.

To me, if one finds that they're not really in love with their work and it's not paying particularly well, it's only natural for one to question the value of continuing down that path. Curiously, despite my funk, I've decided to keep illustrating for the time being. Were I to win the lottery, who knows? But right now, I'm going to keep at it.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who wrote in, messaged me, and called. Good to know I still rank in some peoples' monkeysphere. I should have the belated update on the personal piece tomorrow or on the weekend. I'm behind due to an incorrectly remembered schedule and the hurried preparation for last week's Magic Grand Prix in Atlantic City preempting any painting I might have gotten done.

Where I Stand After 2012

Had I not caught the flu a week ago, I might have written an update sooner. But alas, no. The flu, I did get, and so I'm forced to try and catch up with the rest of my life which kept moving while I was down for the count. Since to this point I was either coughing too hard or too drugged out on cold medicine to pull such a post together, I'll go ahead and get this obligatory look back at 2012 over with. Please bear with me.

If there is a word I spoke more than any other over the course of last year, it would be "funk." I mentioned my funk several times on this blog and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I've ever made clear the reasons for it (though I must admit to being a little unclear about the reasons, myself). Suffice it to say that I've been pretty dissatisfied with the work I've been doing, have been pretty unfulfilled by the assignments I've been getting, and overall I feel artistically underdeveloped. I feel like I should be further down the road than I am quality-wise, and I'm really questioning the financial value of the whole endeavor. In addition to these feelings, a variety of external reasons prevented me from completing as many paintings last year as is typical for me. On the other hand, the few paintings I did complete were quite a bit larger than my work tends to be, so it's probable that I came close to covering the same amount of surface area over the course of the year. All the while, I crept the closest I've ever gotten to throwing in the towel and calling it quits as an illustrator.

Yeah, you read that right. I almost walked away from it all. In fact, that idea still isn't off the table for me. Despite several attempts to kickstart some sort of positivity over the course of last year, I never quite managed to shake the cloud that I saw hanging over me. While I was getting increasingly frustrated, I didn't want to make any rash decisions, either. So, in the waning months, I committed to a different approach for the beginning of this year. Perhaps less work wasn't the answer. Perhaps I needed to try and power through the doldrums by taking on more work. I agreed to a few appearances at Magic tournaments, and began accepting assignments again at normal numbers. I figured taking this route would either succeed in rebooting my point of view or reconfirm all my feeling about the job and at least inform the next step — be it to walk away or veer off in a new direction. Either way, it would be a step forward.

Now, whether this plan works and 2013 shapes up to be a good one is, of course, a mystery. At the very least I'm optimistic about it all, as the number 13 has always been pretty lucky for me. 'Course I don't exactly buy into all that kind of stuff, but I'll take what I can get at this point. What I know for sure is that I'll be signing a whole lot of stuff in the near future, will be back to painting away at some paid gigs again, and will hopefully find my way back to being at least a little okay with myself and my work.

In the meantime, I'll go ahead and answer some questions that one or two of you may be pondering. First, what does this all mean for my personal work? Even if I were to walk away from illustration, I wouldn't walk away from painting. The personal work would get done. For the time being, it'll just have to return to the background. I know that I want to complete the first big piece, but I'm also not in a rush. As I've said before, I'd rather take my time and not flub it in then interest of getting it out of the way. While I already have plans for a second large piece, the idea isn't going anywhere and there's no reason for me to rush things. I may end up with plenty of time to commit to its completion in another couple months, so I'm not too worried. Besides, I should have another update by the end of this week.

Second, what about the blog? With all the writing and travel, will you continue to update it? The short answer is yes. Whether or not I've overextended myself for the coming two months remains to be seen, but I don't see why I can't post something up here once or twice a week during that time. Will it necessarily be updates of new work with pictures and such? Not likely, as I don't have a whole lot coming out anytime soon and the stuff I'll be working on can't be shown. But I do happen to have more than a few posts in various stages of abandonment that I should be able to bang into something more serviceable. Will they be valuable? Dunno. Will they be entertaining? Couldn't say. I'll try on both fronts.

Third, what was that big earth-shattering evento teased in the last post? I still can't say. I've already mentioned that it's not impending children or any kind of marital woes. It's also not major illness or a puppy (that last one being much to my wife's chagrin). I'll leave it at this: the rumblings are big, the impact would be substantial, and it'll be hanging in the air for another three to five months. Maybe I'll be able to talk more about it then, maybe not. Point is that I can't really shed more light on it so this'll be the last I speak of it until I can. In fact, I probably should just have not even brought it up again.

Anyway, I've got a a plan to start implementing. Sketches to do, laundry to wash, etc. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that 2013 will bring more upbeat and positive things both for me, and for all the folks reading this. Also, I sincerely hope yours is flu-free 2013, alas it is too late for me.

Personal Piece Update 6

So, it's been a while. Much longer than I'd intended, really. I knew I was going to be away for a bit while I was out of the country over the Thanksgiving holiday, but by no means  was I planning on being away from the blog for an additional couple of weeks. I have quite a list of reasons as to why I've been so distracted, but I'll give you the bullet points version of the biggest (if you happen to be interested).

• Rats. They're in our yard again, and I've spent an awful lot of time working on eradicating them. Poisoning, laying traps, and filling their holes is not how I like to spend my time, but it's necessary to keep them at bay and out of our house.

• Repairs. The good news is that I sold a couple pieces. The bad news is that they'd been packed away since our move from Massachusetts to New Jersey a little less than a year ago. When I pulled them out to pack them up, I realized that they'd both suffered some damage. It was worth it to me to repair the pieces and sell them, and I think I might have even improved the one. However, this took more time than I expected.

• Rumination. It's not really news that I've been in a bit of a funk of late. I'm not super happy about my where I'm at artistically. I'm not as good as I want to be. I'm not inspired. And I'm not exactly as happy as I know I should be being as illustration is basically a dream job. I feel like I'm going through the motions and that I've dropped the ball on a lot of my work lately. Weirdly, I've been assured by art directors that they're just not seeing the lapses that I do, so clearly there's a bit of a disconnect. Knowing that it's mostly in my head oddly has not helped much.

• Rumblings. Potentially a major contributor to the feeling above, there are events on the horizon that may come to pass or may not. If they do, the impact on my work life would be pretty huge. It could mean good things in the long run, but a great deal of upheaval in the short term. If you're thinking it's children or divorce, you're barking up the wrong tree and indeed are not even in the correct forest. Suffice it to say that just knowing that there are even potential tectonic shifts afoot is enough to keep me from feeling settled and truly relaxed. Some people thrive on that tension, but it's the kind of thing that makes me want to hide in the closet until it's all over. Of course, it could all blow over and end up being that thing that almost was, but until we've gotten to that point, I'll be driven to distraction by it.

Now, I started doing this personal piece for a variety of reasons. The first was that I wanted to own something again. The copyright for the vast majority of images I produce is completely bought out by my clients. Throughout my entire art education, I was constantly warned of the evils of this practice only to find that it was standard procedure in my chosen facet of the industry (fantasy and sci/fi gaming). If I wanted to do that kind of work, I'd have to suck up any objections. Indeed, the most I could hope for in the majority of cases is that a given client would let me keep the original painting and maybe sell some prints along the way.

In addition to the surrender of legal ownership, I've felt an increasing lack of creative ownership. Over the course of my 11 years in the industry, the protection of intellectual property and enforceable points of difference between companies' products has led to more styleguides, more unified aesthetics, and less personal influence over the end result. Sure, I often can chose the composition of image and its color palette, but very often the design of the elements I'm playing with are predetermined. Obviously this is not the case for every assignment, and I'm not even sure that I can say that it's true for the majority of them. And, it's also worth noting that certain clients provide a lot more freedom than others. Nevertheless, there's been a very real decrease in the amount of input I get within the body of work that I produce each year.

So, those are two of the major reasons why this piece exists. The third major reason is that I was hoping to shake myself free of the cloudy mental state mentioned above in bullet point three. Thus far, I'm not sure it's worked. If it had, I feel like I'd have finished it by now. As you can see below, I haven't.

Nope. Definitely not done. However, I think I've figured a few things out. Believe it or not, there's been a fair amount of work done on the piece since last I posted an update. Sure, there's the noticeable increase in ground covered with the background being blocked in and all, but there's a lot you might not see beyond that.

Originally, I was thinking the palette might be pretty broad. Despite appearances from the previous images, the skin tones were actually quite warm, as were were many of the darks and medium tones within the figure. For some reason, I decided that I'd rather it be a cooler piece and began reworking much of what was already "finished" to be consistent with the now revised plan. That meant repainting the face, hands, and much of the sweater, as well.

In addition to the revised palette, I decided on a plan of attack so as to perhaps complete this piece sometime soon. Looking at the image above, said plan is probably pretty self-explanatory, but I like typing so I'll just go ahead and spell it out. My goal will be to finish everything within the window frame and slowly work my way out from there. I say slowly because I will soon have assignments competing for my time, relegating this piece to the background to a certain extent. When it will be completed I can't quite say, but I know that I'd rather not rush things. I waited a long time to start bringing this piece into existence, and waiting some more to see it completed seems a small sacrifice if I end up being happy with the end result

Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch

At long last I present you with the third Badass book cover. This one is for the upcoming third book in the series, Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch, and went down without so much as a hint of drama. IT was sweet.

Now, as with the previous two Badass covers, I was asked to paint an image incorporating multiple figures. Whereas the first book had three figures and the second had five, this one required four figures... and an airplane. So I guess it's kinda like five... sorta. Anyway, the initial figures requested were: a samurai, a Roman centurion, a Gulf War era U.S. Marine, and the Mapuche warrior Galvarino. The airplane I'd be depicting was a British Spitfire from World War II.

Just as I'd done on the previous two cover projects, I did my sketch digitally using separate layers for each figure. This is how that first sketch came out:

Sure it's a little rough, but it gets the point across and is consistent with the vibe set up by the previous two pieces. As you can see, I added a second Spitfire in the background and tried my best to flesh out the values. I submitted it and waited.

You may be wondering why I kept the various figures on separate layers. The answer is simple: people are prone to changing their minds. It happened on the previous two books, and this case was no exception. While they liked the overall feel of the sketch, they wanted me to replace Galvarino with Queen Boudica, and replace the Roman with a Greek hoplite. Old layers were turned off. New layers were created and doodled upon.

The resulting changes yielded this revised sketch:

Obviously I stole heavily from the Roman in order to create the Greek, but Boudica needed to be drawn from scratch.

A quick aside about Boudica. I was asked to make her sexy and have her showing some skin — but not too much skin. This is a common request in the industry and it's one I have a difficult time with. I know that kind of thing sells, but I'm personally just not into eye candy. It's not that I can't do it, it's that I don't like to. Reconciling what I want to paint with what I know is code for heaving bosoms can be a treacherous path to negotiate, and my primary focus was making Boudica look and feel more warrior-like than anything else. I did my best to cover all the bases and I'm happy to say that in this case I managed to paint what I wanted to and still please the client. I wish more of my experiences in such matters had gone so smoothly.

Anyway, after the revisions, this sketch is what was eventually approved.

Now, as had happened in the previous books, I was given images of the cover's design. Obviously, it was my job to work out just how the figures would live within the confines of that design. I knew from the start that my image would need to fit in the bottom half of the cover under a very large title. Also, title would be neon green.

Wuh?

Yeah. In some respects this is a blessing. I know what I'm up against visually. I can figure out a color scheme that works with the green and hopefully helps tie things together. On the other hand, it was a really bright shade of green — one that was bound to dominate my painting. Fortunately, a suggestion was made early on that the image perhaps be heavy on the pinks and purples. While this sounds like an insanely bad idea, it actually did seem to work well with the typography. So, with plan in hand, I went to paint.

Here's how it came out.

I was happier with the piece than I expected to be, honestly, and I was especially satisfied with everything that was actually going to be seen on the cover. (For reference that includes pretty much everything from the Greek guy's chest on up.) Still, there were some things that nagged at me that I wanted to fiddle with, so after a while I finally got the chance to go back into the painting and tweak some stuff.

Here's how it came out:

Most of the differences are subtle, but the major ones include a third Spitfire, some brighter highlights here and there, a larger sword in the Greek warrior's hand and a repaint of his legs. I also went ahead and signed it, which I'd forgotten to do on the first go around. The changes are really minor ones, but I felt like they made for a better painting. 'Course that's just my opinion.


The long and the short of it is that the Badass books have treated me well. I've enjoyed working on them, and I'm pretty amazed at just how well the paintings work next to one another. There's a pretty clear through-line and I'm pretty proud of that.

Incidentally, this piece will be making its debut at IlluxCon tomorrow. And while I'm plugging things, if it peaks your interest, you should check out the previous posts on all the various Badass projects (link), and maybe check out the site that's the source of it all, Badass of the Week, where you can read a bunch of cool stuff, find some info on the previous books, and maybe pick up a t-shirt or two.

Personal Piece Update 5

Painting today is going to start later than expected for two reasons. First, I had to do a little trimming of a tree damaged in last week's storm in order to hopefully mitigate any potential damage from the storm that's going to come barreling at us tomorrow. Why is this so important? Well, the tree is the tallest thing on the block and looms precariously over the driveway. Fortunately, given the direction of the upcoming nor'easter's prevailing winds, any branches (or heaven forbid the whole tree) which might fall will fall out into the street. Today's efforts were to minimize this possibility. However, should the tree fall, getting to IlluxCon will be interesting as the tree would block me into my cul-de-sac. Hopefully there won't be any stories about my harrowing escape from River Edge, New Jersey.

The second reason for the delay is due to my sudden realization that I wanted to scan a piece that I'd framed and packed for the trip. So, I had to carefully unpack the thing, pull it apart, grab the scans, carefully put it all back together, then plop it back into its box. As far as I can tell, I've successfully avoided hurting anything and now have a decent scan of the painting (whereas I only had a mediocre scan of it before).

Now that that's all completed, I'm ready to sit down and get a bit of painting done. As you can see from the image below, I have my work cut out for me. Progress has been glacial, to be sure. Each painting session has found me distracted by the face and head. I keep sitting down to get work done only to get pulled into trying to correct one thing or another that just doesn't feel right about it. So I fix it, only to see something new the following day. I feel like that bit is finally getting close to what I want it to be now, so I'm starting to make other decisions like what the molding looks like.

The interior itself is inspired by a series of photos of an old abandoned insane asylum I stumbled upon a while back. These pieces of reference are reinforced by a ton of photos I've taken of decrepit structures found over the course of my travels. Not sure why, but I'm really intrigued the idea of the evolution of an interior space into an exterior one as a building deteriorates. The bits of the painting that explore this to some extent are a little ways down the road, but I'm at least starting to figure out how I want to pain the mold and lichen.

Anyway, next week, I'll be making some of the larger decisions about the foreground values vs. the background values, and with that under my belt I suspect that daily progress should become more obvious. At least I hope it will.

Lost In the Storm

Well, I survived the hurricane. Sandy came and went and has put me very far behind where I'd hoped to be at this point. The weekend before the storm found me doing a fair bit of storm prep around the house. Two rain gutters needed repair, all the rain gutters needed cleaning, leaves needed to be raked and bagged to keep from clogging the storm drains, cars needed to be filled with gas, the garage needed to be rearranged to accommodate an actual car, and supplies needed to be procured. You'll note that working on a painting isn't anywhere on that list.

Considering how easy we got off compared to the rest of New Jersey and New York, I'll spare you the details of our week as they're pretty insignificant by comparison. Suffice it to say that trees came down and electricity was knocked out. We don't own a generator and the thick clouds kept my studio pretty dark. While waiting for the power to return, I did a lot of storm clean up and Amy and I walked around a fair bit. She worked from home as much as she could, I finally got around to finishing Chuck Wendig's book, Blackbirds, and we tried to keep huddled together for warmth.

When the juice finally came back on, my IlluxCon prep began in earnest and it's what I've concentrated on ever since. Happily, I should be finished with the vast majority of it by lunch tomorrow. And after finishing my IlluxCon prep, I'll pull my paints out and begin chipping away once again. The day after IlluxCon will also find me hard at work on the piece. And once home from my Thanksgiving break, I'll be putting this lady to rest.

Truth be told, Sandy's biggest impact on my life is that it pretty much killed any chance of getting that big old piece of mine done before IlluxCon. It's frustrating to be sure, as I've been trying to get the piece off the ground for over a year and a half, and now that it's actually progressing I'm faced with additional delays. However, that that is my biggest concern is something I am most grateful for. It's pretty silly compared to the worries of those who lost loved ones or don't have homes to live in anymore.

Before the storm, I was beating myself up about being behind and grumpily grumbling as I did the necessary house work. But in subsequent days I got to see the storm's impact elsewhere, and I gotta confess that I let my frustrations go. Sure, I wish I had that piece done for the show and yeah I think it would have made for a better wall, but I can't bring myself to get too upset about not pulling it off.

I will have the opportunity to make up for the lapse. I should count myself pretty lucky that that is the case. Besides, when this piece is done it'll be followed by another. One personal piece in a year and a half just isn't enough for me, so I suspect the IlluxCon wall next year will be eaten by the things... you know... if I make the cut, that is.

Anyway, I hope all my East-Coast readers were equally as fortunate and are at least on their way back to some degree of normalcy. I should be back tomorrow or the next day with an update on something or other. Until then...