One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises…
This is a page from a children's book I'm working on, based on a memory tongue-twister I learned as a Boy Scout. It starts out simple, but quickly gets complex
Witch: The Final Chapter
This is the final cover of The Witch Series by L.S. Gagnon, (I'm unsure of its title as of this posting) probably the most difficult of the four for me to pull off because I had to squeeze all the main characters onto it, and have some semblance of a background. I tend to be a bit obsessive about details, so each one of these characters is a fully rendered figure on their own layer. That way, if the author needed a character moved around a bit, I could easily do that. And, I just had to, all right? I couldn't not, because of my brain.
Witch: The Secret of the Leaves
This is the first cover I did for L.S. Gagnon, the third book in The Witch Series. This was a huge step for me. I ran into so many problems with my work flow and color correction when this cover went to print. It was quite a learning experience, sort of trial by fire, as my first crack at a finished, published piece of digital art. But, it was fun, and my skills grew.
Witch: The Spell Within
This is book 2 in L.S. Gagnon's Witch Series. This was yet another leap forward for me in digital art making. I think this is probably my favorite cover of the four, I had fun learning and trying out new techniques and work flows.
Witch: A New Beginning
This is the cover for book one of L.S. Gagnon's Witch Series, but it was actually the second cover I did for her, and my second commissioned illustration overall. Each of the covers posed interesting challenges and forced me to learn new digital skills and grow as an artist.
Ohrim vs the Cave Squid
This is a concept piece from an unfinished graphic novel project, currently affectionately referred to as Wilhelm, that came into my brain in the early 2000s. I had started drawing it out with pen and ink, but I couldn't quite get it to look the way I wanted at the time, my vision of it wasn't as clear. I always intended to return to it, and I finally did. This was another adventure in improving my work flow and learning more skills. I made quite a few custom brushes to add textures (the wrinkly skin texture on the tentacles is actually created with some brushes I made from photos of my knees...guess I need to moisturize occasionally), which I would use more or less like a stamp. I'd then transform the "stamp" and warp it to fit the given shape. After I had built many layers up across an object, I'd paint on top of the texture, using it as a road map of sorts to inform my brush strokes. It's a tedious process, but a powerful one when used well. I tend to go overboard on details at times, overusing the zoom function of Photoshop. I plan on posting some close ups of this image in particular, because there's so much in there that can't be seen.
Please let me know what you think, it makes my brain happy.