Breaking in nibs

Woah, I'm tired. Been working long hours doing art for a catalog. Strange though, how that makes me want to draw. Broke in some nibs the other day. This is the result. Was done on hot press watercolor paper. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. If nothing else, it's a challenge to exist without the undo button.

Rawr, Giant robot

Some of the best giant robots out there are the Battletech ‘mechs. There are quicker robots, sleeker ones to be sure. Few, with bigger guns. They were some of the first giant robots to really take my imagination (or sketchbook, as the case may be) by storm. I was an addict from an early age too. Not the computer games, I’m talking the pen and paper stuff. One of the first things I regularly drew was Battlemechs. Well, them and a lot of Transformers. But the Transformers never had a board game. Robotech did, but I didn’t discover that until much later. Here I am, many years later returning to my early roots here. It's a giant robot homecoming of sorts.
Anyway, enjoy the lasers.

The "other" marker tool

So, don't get me wrong. I love digital drawing and all the little tools and tricks. But by far, my favorite "marker tool" is made by Prismacolor. Specifically in this case, Scarlet Lake.
The idea here is a giant robot pilot. Helmet ring, cooling vest, and goggles that tie directly into the fire control sensors.

Guess this means that I’ll have to draw the robot she pilots.

Pro Sketchbook

So, I'm fiddling around my hard drive, and i find this sketchbook program. It's the sketchbook program, apparently, the Pro Sketchbook, with capitol letters. It was a demo, of the non sequential variety. Meaning that you have 15 "24 hour" periods to use the program. I've got 5 days left. 5 days of Wacom Bliss. It was an Alias product, when I got the demo the first time. Now it's Autodesk.
I don't know what improvements Autodesk Sketchbook Pro have over Alias Sketchbook Pro. I know that one of the aforementioned is getting my money. I suppose that's not the important part, in this purist search for Digital Art Nirvana (yeah, Capitol letters.... © even.)
So, the important part. I threw this dapper gentleman together while listening to music after coming down from a particularly challenging day at work. Channeling because I had a head cold. Nothing like drawing kids when you’re the one with the runny nose.

Oops, I mean... Great!

Fate handed me a spectacular opportunity the other day,
my website went down. Don't worry, it's only temporary. When it comes back, it will be better, stronger, and faster than before. Well, maybe not faster. Nor will it cost six billion dollars, I'm hoping. Truthfully, I've been very unsatisfied with my website. It is a student website, after all. I did it for a class. Now that I've been working for three years, it's time for a website that reflects more of who I am now as an artist, and not who I was three years ago.

An art post is coming soon, I just have to code some Flash first.

Always feel a bit horrible if I post without artwork. It's a bad habit, but it can be an interesting hurdle as well. Not that I don't have anything to post up, but the choosing of the artwork that I put up is always a challenge. I don't want to show anything "too" unfinished, but then I don't want to post'pwn (it's a real word... lol ) posting up projects that I'm working on either.
Right now I'm painting over a gouache (how's that for an imaginary word) painting in Painter. I'm finding it a challenge to retain all the texture and fun that the paper allowed me. I mean, if I wanted to I could polish this thing until it nothing of the physical painting remains. I'm sure that there's artistic damnation in that direction. For me, that is. It's a personal choice, but I get more of my milage out of physical paint. Digital paints great, Photoshop is a thing of beauty don't get me wrong. But I'm still married to molecules. Gratefully, my minor infidelity with digital media hasn't gotten me in trouble yet.

So, just a little poster I've been doing for a client.