Molly and Kato having a mystical walk experience.

I painted this for my parents for Chistmas. 

Grinch Tree!

I got one of those little potted trees and made it into a grinch tree! :) 

Got the idea from morning television.

Christmas Cards

I made these cards out of bits from magazines for my friends. Stay tuned for more!

Weedy Sea Dragon

I made this painting for art for water. It also makes a pretty snazzy desktop wallpaper.

ISCA convention 2011

I just returned from the 2011 International Society of Caricature Artists convention in St Pete's Beach Florida. This was my 4th year attending the convention and I had the time of my life. Above is the little piece of wall that I got to display the caricatures I made during the convention of other attending artists. 

The art of caricature makes for a very interesting convention, as it is as much about observing and getting to know the people you are drawing as it is about humour and creating the caricature itself. It is social, entertaining and productive at the same time. Plus, you get to get to know other like minded artists, nerd out, and see their processes, and become friends for life. 

This is my painting of Marlo Meekins as a fox.

This is Jert. This year much of his art had gore and blood. He also gets paint everywhere.

 Alberto Gonzalez (above) and Dylan Glynn (below) both look like children and both have beards.

 This is Christy, she is just like Link.

This is Sean Evans.  

 Sean Gardner is an angry bird.

Happy Haloween

Puppy!

Bird in tall grass 2

Magnolias

More flower paintings for clients.

Little Houses with Red Roofs

Flowers

Some quick little flower paintings for a client 7" x 9"

Thanksgiving Leaf

This weekend was Canadian thanksgiving so I painted a leaf from life. It is painted in acrylic roughly the same size as the actual leaf and as accurately as possible. Painting anything from life is a challenge: the leaf  was noticeably curling up as I painted it, and the lighting was always changing. I think these challenges force you to observe and understand and paint your perception rather then simply copy an image.

Cello/Tree?

This was not my idea.

puppy doodles

Bird in tall grass

I'm working on this set of 4, here is the first one I finished. They are in acrylic 16" x 27.5". 

Patrick - map test

I have been working on a video game with my brother in my spare time for a few years now. The game is called Patrick I have mentioned it before, but generally I avoid posting about it due to the slow progress of making it. As I am making all the art by my self, and the tedious nature of most of the work involved. So far the majority of what I've made is map junk, and honestly I'm still not done making map junk. It's a top down 2d game, but I tried really hard to make it look and feel natural.

My brother is making all the software for the game. He has made a map editor that is still missing a bunch of stuff, and still has some issues that need to be sorted out. But it works enough to make some test maps and for me to actually see how a bunch the stuff I made so far works and looks in game.

I made a test map and took some screen shots of the progress so you can get a sense of all the little pieces that come together to get what you see.

Here's the finished product (ignore the numbers in the top left and those lines with the glowey ball at the right and bottom those are just some of the map editor controls) If you click on the image to look at the full size image it is zoomed out to 33% (to give you an idea of the scale).

First I make some parts water and some parts land. you can really see the tiles here and the water looks jaggedy.

Next I smooth out the contour of the water with some part land / part water tiles.

After that I make the ground more varied. My tiles were created in gradients and the map editor automatically enforces the gradients. It makes it much more difficult to see the tiles

Then I added map objects. The map objects are independent of the ground tile system. They don't adhere to the edges of the tiles at all, I just place things where I think they look good.

The last step is to add ground cover. A bunch of these objects are animated in game. including the water. We don't have sprites in the editor yet, or their dialogue. But I could make a series of linked maps and import them into the game and run around.

Molly

breakfast doodles of my dog Molly. 

sleepy potato

My dog Kato was neutered today. Unfortunately he also has a rash... so he's on antihistamines and painkillers and he has to wear a t-shirt to keep from scratching. We took off the cone over his head cause it was depressing, poor guy is zonked.

I have decided to start sketching again more regularly. Often when I'm painting a lot I neglect to sketch as much as I should.

Tuscany

Some quick Tuscany paintings for a client 12"x12". I have never been to Tuscany... these are from my imagination.

More Comics from Fan Expo

Some more of the comics Noam Sussman and I made while sitting at our booth during Fan Expo.

Fan Expo 2011

Last weekend I had a table at Fan Expo with my friend Noam Sussman. 

We made some joint comics while we sat at our booth. 

Here are some of them:

(click on the image to see larger version)

(click on the image to see larger version)

Draco Malfoy - Harry Potter