I didn’t record my painting process, but I did save some process images. This painting was painted in Photoshop CS5 on my Asus EP121. I don’t remember exactly how long it took, but I think I spent a couple of hours on it. I don’t have much free time anymore, so a 3 hour painting can take me several days to finish simply because I’m always working on freelance.

When I first started this painting I didn’t plan on painting the whole thing. I only planned on doing a quick black and white study of the face. I actually didn’t even plan on painting a likeness because I just wanted to use the angle as reference in case I ever made a painting like this in the future.

After the initial block-in, I decided to go ahead and paint a likeness, but I still wasn’t going to go past painting the face in black and white. As you can see I started out by painting shapes instead of doing a line drawing. I also didn’t measure anything because I wasn’t really planning on making a likeness and I tend to draw by just eyeballing things. This of course can cause me to spend a lot of time later on moving things around. I did another study from a photo the other day where I used the grid method to map things out, so I probably should have done that on this one too. Again, it was probably mainly because I never planned on painting the whole figure.

So of course after I did the black and white painting I decided to go ahead and add color. In order to get the base colors down I created a new layer and set it to “color.” Using the color mode is a good way to add color without changing your values. If you add color with an overlay or multiply layer you will end up changing your values quite a bit. This is just a starting point for color. Once I have the base colors down, I create a new layer on top and just paint opaquely with color. I also tried to get some color variation started in this stage. I will also use adjustment layers to change around the colors to get some color variation. Color balance is a great way to get some color variation and come up with things you hadn’t really planned on. Even at this point I hadn’t planned on painting the rest of the figure.

Ok ok, I changed my mind again. After I got the color down I figured what the hell, I might as well paint the rest of the figure. Since she is wearing a transparent top, I wanted to make sure to keep it on a separate layer. It also made it easier to paint her skin underneath the clothing so that I wouldn’t have to worry about painting over and fixing the clothing. I always paint with opacity jitter set to pen pressure. Since the top was on a different layer and I wasn’t pressing down all the way on my tablet, when I paint the skin underneath you can see a little bit of the skin showing through. At this point since I already have the face painted in color, I am just painting the rest of the body with straight color.

With the base color of her torso already established, I can go in and start to refine the shapes. Even though I’m working on the arms and torso, I still go back and forth fixing things in the face. Changing some shapes, resizing things, changing angles, refining some edges, etc. One great tool to make changes without having to repaint large areas is the liquify tool. I utilize that tool a lot when I’m painting, especially if I need to push the likeness of a character. Plus painting this angle is fairly tough since I never paint this angle, so I ended up having to make a lot of changes. It is also good to put your painting down for a day or two and then come back. Many times you will notice something that you need to fix or change.

This step is just a little further along in the painting process. Again, I am still refining shapes and changing the angles of her face. I think I also increased the size of her arms a little bit and started to push her pose more. At first I was just going to leave the bottom of the painting as it is, but then I thought it might be cool to make it look like the paint was dripping down the canvas, as if maybe it was in oils and you added too much turp to your paint. I also hadn’t planned on adding the necklace, but again I changed my mind and went ahead and added it in the final version. The shadows cast by the necklace were really cool and really informed the viewer what the planes were doing. Shadows are a great way to create form, which seems a little obvious since there is no form without light.

I added a few detail shots so that you can see some of the brushstrokes a little more easily. These detail shots still aren’t at 100%. I think these are actually only 50% of the actual painting size. For the skin texture I used this really cool custom brush that I found online. It is great for simulating pores.

Here is a shot of the face. Again, this isn’t the actual size of my painting. I think it is more like around 50%. I always paint in 300 dpi just in case I ever want to go to print. I won’t be printing this painting since it is just for personal practice and I don’t own the copyright to the original photograph, but I’m so used to painting in 300 dpi that I always do it automatically.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my painting process. Maybe next time I’ll try to record my painting process for my Enliighten site. Just remember, always make time to practice your craft! Thanks for taking a look!

What I didn’t realize was how much of a toll it would take on my fingers and wrists. The workshop was 3 hours long and I was drawing in a fairly small sketchbook, which is pretty customary if you ever attended any of the AAU workshops with me. I like being able to stand while I draw so that I can easily move around the model to find the best angle possible. It was funny because so many people kept offering me a seat. I guess holding a sketchbook with one hand for 3 hours is harder than I remember. During the last set of 5 minute poses I had to sit down and take it easy because I was experiencing some pretty bad nerve pain in my wrists. I’m going to try and attend the workshop every Sunday, hopefully my fingers and wrists will be able to hold up.

I brought my tablet PC with me too in case I wanted to try and work digitally, but 3-10 minute poses might be a little too short to work digitally. I dunno, maybe if they threw in a 20 minute pose I might consider it. I think there is also something nice about being able to work with pencil again and have something physical to show people…even though I don’t really show anyone my sketchbook, hah! Maybe I should even consider getting some charcoal again…yeah I never thought I would catch myself saying that. I pretty much hated charcoal in school but now, I dunno.

These sketches range from 3-10 minutes long. I’m sure you can probably pick out which ones are which. On shorter poses I usually don’t block in the head very much, I’m much more interested in the pose. Even in the longer poses I don’t spend too long on the face simply because I am much more interested in the anatomy. Doing portraits of people is easy because you can find anyone to sit for you. Finding nude models is much harder, so I wanted to take advantage of the situation and focus on anatomy over portraits. I should probably work in a larger sketchbook too so that I can fit the whole figure in there. In some of the other drawings I did last night I made sure to include the feet.

I must say, getting back to some figure drawing was awesome. I think the thing I liked the most about school was going to the weekly figure drawing workshops. I dunno, there is something that I really enjoy about drawing the figure. Like I said before, hopefully I will be able to attend the workshop every week. If you are in the area, you should definitely think about dropping by. The school is fairly small, but it feels like it has a great community that is very close. I don’t attend the school so I felt really awkward going to a workshop where everyone else knows each other except me. Everyone was very nice and friendly and made me feel at home. See you next week CDA!

When Big Huge Games first approached me to design a Shepard inspired armor for Kingdoms of Amalur, to say I was excited is a gross understatement. Mass Effect has always been one of my favorite games, so I was honored to design a Mass Effect armor for the hero in KoA. I also designed the female version of the armor and I am happy to say that I was allowed to keep the covered up style from Mass Effect’s female armor designs. So for all the fans out there that want functional female armor, you should be happy.  It was really fun trying to translate some of the ME design cues into a fantasy based world while not going too far into the sci-fi realm. Hopefully the Mass Effect fans won’t be disappointed.

Several months later Big Huge Games e-mailed me again about creating a marketing illustration featuring both of my armor designs for the Mass Effect 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur crossover. Shepard’s armor is actually an armor I designed previously for Kingdoms of Amalur, with the exception of the helmet. I believe Todd McFarlane may have designed the helmet. I think he did a great job on the helmet and I think it really fits in with the Mass Effect world while still staying true to my armor design. That is the other crazy thing about working with Big Huge Games. Not only do I get to work on awesome promos with games like Mass Effect 3, but I get to work with Todd McFarlane who has been one of my art heroes since I was a kid. My picture with him when I was 12 still cracks me up.

As it is with most illustrations, this one was not without its trials and tribulations. Since this was a very high profile illustration from two different games and three different companies, a lot of people had their hands in it. Not only did I need approvals from Big Huge Games, but I also had to get approvals from EA and BioWare.

The first final I turned in had a completely different background. Since I was illustrating two different characters from different games and different genres, I tried to keep the background fairly generic. I wanted one that looked like it could possibly belong to both worlds. I really wanted to avoid any architecture since that would be very hard to fit in both worlds.

The image to the left is the mockup I received of the changes they wanted. What I didn’t expect was to completely redo the entire background. I hadn’t kept my characters on separate layers either, so I needed to go back and mask them out before repainting the background. I also need to make the changes by the next day. It was decided that Shepard needed the iconic background from Mass Effect 3 and the hero from Kingdoms of Amalur needed one as well. Trying to make two different backgrounds, one of which was from space looking down on a planet while the other one was on the surface of a planet, mesh together was a little challenging. I didn’t really want two separate backgrounds with a harsh transition down the middle, so I tried to blend them a little more by using that large rock shard element as the transition point.

As soon as I started blocking in the dark space behind Shepard I realized that my lighting scheme on Shepard was now completely off. I had to rethink my lighting scheme in order to make Shepard fit a little more with his surroundings. I also needed to repaint the Omniblade daggers and make a few other little changes. Ten hours later I turned in my revisions and got approval from all three companies! A few weeks later my painting was released and the crossover was announced. Now hopefully I’ll see it in stores!

In any case, this was for the Gravehammer album by the death metal band Vore. They were a great group to work with and it was really fun to create this fiery demon for their cover. Be sure to drop by their page and pick up the album when it comes out!

I am pretty happy with the way this illustration came out. It is always funny how people tend to like the paintings I didn’t spend as much time on more than paintings that take forever to paint. Maybe longer paintings end up losing the initial vitality and dynamism or maybe I lose a part of myself by refining the brush stokes too much. I think I only ended up spending a day and a half painting this cover. Maybe another reason is that it was more of a personal piece with more freedom. I didn’t have to answer to clients wanting more cleavage or making it look more like movie/game x. I was really able to take a very brief description and run with it. Luckily the guys trusted me enough to give me free reign.

One tough thing with this illustration was that I had to incorporate the band’s logo into his armor design. The logo is a very circular logo, so I wasn’t sure exactly how to tie it into the armor design. The brief mentioned that maybe it was a part of his chest armor, so I had to figure out how to place it without it looking silly or pasted on. I figured maybe since this is a fiery demon, maybe the logo is cut into his armor and you can see the fiery core of the demon shining through.

The hammer design was another thing I wasn’t too sure about. Since the name of the album was Gravehammer, I knew I had to create something unique. Since much of his armor design seemed to be fashioned from plates hammered together, I thought it could be a good look for the hammer too. A little fire never hurts either!

I hope you enjoyed this little look into my process of creating the Gravehammer illustration. Thanks for looking!

One might expect that the majority of my time was spent concepting Black creatures, but I actually created concepts for all colors, including land for each color. One of my concepts of a White priest was released on the WotC site. I was never able to finish this concept, but you get the general idea. Hopefully one day I can post some of my other concepts.

Ashmouth Hound

Infernal Plunge

Curse of the Nightly Hunt

Blasphemous Act

Voiceless Spirit

1. Paint a guy looking into a mirror, but yet you have to be able to see his face and the face of his reflection. I heard that the theater term is “cheat out.” Basically that means that the main character should not have his back to the audience. This is always tough to do because you really do have to cheat a little bit. Battle scenes always have these problems because the client will always want to see the faces of the heroes and the faces of the villains. Creating a dynamic composition that shows everyone’s face without everything being in profile view is always tricky.

2. Make the mirror look like a mirror. Sounds simple right? Nooope. Maybe if it was actually reflecting the same person, but it isn’t. The reflection has changed to a Daemonette. Some of the ways I tried to hint at the fact that it is a mirror is by adding dust and scratches to the surface, adding a frame, and trying to make it obvious that the “picture” cuts off at the edges of the frame. The frame itself can be tricky because it might end up looking like a doorway to another room.

3. The room inside the mirror should look like a Slaanesh decorated room instead of an Empire decorated room, but yet everything should still be in the same place. Again it sounds easy, but when you have a small mirror with a figure in it and then you have to jam recognizable furniture in it that mirrors the furniture in the room is a pain. I mainly focused on changing the banners, adding some chains, and a very phallic fixture on the ceiling. I also changed the color of the candles to a more Slaanesh friendly hue.

4. Interior with stuff. Nuff said. Painting interiors with figures in them is always hard, but then adding a bunch of props compounds the difficulty. I dunno, maybe it is because I don’t paint enough interiors, but I always find it challenging.

5. Tell a story using minimal, reserved emotions on a person that is in profile. Telling a story is a large part of being an illustrator, but sometimes you have to tell a story using reserved emotions. Painting someone that is angry is easy, or painting people that are in a battle and screaming…but try painting someone that is cautious or slightly interested in another element in the painting. If you saw a scary Daemonette staring back at you from a mirror, you would probably freak out. This guy is obviously not freaking out, but rather he is curious or intrigued by the reflection. He glances over his shoulder at the reflection, considering the lure of power as he pours over his secret documents. Not only does his face inform you of his reaction, but his posture does as well. With one hand on his hilt and the other resting on the table, you know that he is comfortable. Maybe he is a little weary of the lure of power, so he rests his hand on his hilt just in case he needs to draw his sword, but at the same time he wants to be nonchalant. Will he give in to the dark side or resist it?

Now that you know some of the major obstacles I had to deal with, let’s go through my painting process. I always dread showing my sketches to people because honestly, they are pretty bad. THIS is the reason I always become frustrated when starting a new piece. I am a pretty impatient person, so when my painting doesn’t look good immediately, I begin to lose steam and I feel like quitting. Staying confident is always the biggest hurdle. I just have to tell myself that it will look better in the end and to keep going. My sketches are always super loose and many times others can’t really tell what is going on. Many times I get to this stage and I stop and wonder “how do I take this mess to a finished illustration?” It is almost as if sometimes I forget how to paint and I can’t even imagine how I would continue.

As you can see my first sketch was very different from the final. In the original brief it said there was a Captain and his aide looking into the mirror and the Captain’s reflection had changed to a Daemonette while the aide stayed the same. Again I suffered from both of the Empire characters showing their back to the audience, so that was a big no no. Plus the composition is pretty lame and boring. Too many repeating elements, the picture plane is cut directly in half, the props don’t really add to the illustration, etc. I have to agree that seeing the Empire guys from behind is pretty boring. Is it me or does that aide sort of look like Gerard Butler? Madness! Remember when I said never get too attached to your painting? Well now is the time to take your painting and throw it in the virtual trashcan of rejected paintings. *delete*

Soooo, after finding out I had to start over and that I needed to “cheat out” the Captain, I came up with this new rough. Ok, I guess I didn’t have to completely start over, but I had to change a significant portion of the painting. Now you can see the Captain’s face and the aide is gone. The Captain probably sent him out for coffee and donuts. I thought maybe I was headed in the right direction, but I was wrong, sort of. I was informed that I now needed to zoom out of the picture by at least two times and change the pose of the Daemonette to mimic the Captain. Gah. That means I have to paint more of the room! You know what that means…add more banners, a larger window, and shadows! Done.

Back to the drawing board one more time. Constantly making huge changes to an illustration is always frustrating and time consuming, but for the most part they are always worth it and make for a better illustration in the end. I always have to keep that in mind whenever I get a huge change from a client. Okie dokie. I zoomed out, changed the position of the Daemonette, added more of the room, and now there is much more room up top to allow for the title/box design. Most of the elements are in place and all that is left is to refine the illustration. The illustration was used for the Lure of Power supplement for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. You can find out more about it from Fantasy Flight Game’s site.

I am definitely glad I made all of the changes, even though at the time I was groaning because of how much time it would take to start over and how much time was lost. If you want to improve as an artist, don’t let major changes deter you from striving to make a better illustration. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and slog on. So how do I feel about the final product? I think for the time allotted and the challenges I had to face, it ended up being a successful illustration. Successful doesn’t mean I like it, haha. I dunno, I tend to be more excited about my illustrations when I see them in print. I guess it is the “cool factor” of seeing your work sitting on a shelf at a store.

For the Empire! Or Slaanesh…or donuts?

A few of my new Magic cards just came out recently. In M12 I have Call to the Grave and a reprint of Harbor Serpent. I also have Crescendo of War in the new Commander decks. I love painting hands, but I must say, it was a pain painting all of those hands. After awhile it was hard coming up with different poses since they are all reaching out for the guy and essentially performing the same action.

Another illustration that I just finished not too long ago is something that I am very excited about. The new illustration is for a CD cover entitled “Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children.” As soon as I heard what the album was going to be called, I knew this was going to be my kind of assignment.  If you don’t know about the artist Voltaire, you should. He is a musician, animator, comic artist, toy creator, and just an all around modern day renaissance man. I believe the release date is in September, so be sure to check it out!

Also a bunch of my WoW cards came out. I have a tough time keeping up with which ones came out and in which set. There isn’t much press when a set is released, and there isn’t a very good “gatherer” type system in place that you can search for your cards. There is the WoWTCGdb, but it is pretty incomplete and they don’t always list who the artist is. Plus I never know when I am going to get my proofs either, so I usually have to wait to get them in the mail before I can figure out which set they are from. I should have some cards in Twilight of the Dragons, which is set to release on July 26th.

This card gave me a bit of trouble. I was told to paint two fire elementals, easy right? I was a big WoW player, so I knew exactly what fire elementals looked like. I did my sketch and then went a little overboard and took the card to almost finish before submitting it for approval. I then heard back that I had to start over because they were changing the model of the fire elemental in Cataclysm. Doh!

Update – I just found this card on a Russian database site. I never knew it came out and I never got proofs of it. I actually painted this back in 2009, haha. I always wondered what happened to that card…

As always, there are things I notice now that I wish I could go back and change. The dragon heads on the throne are over too far to the right, and the right armrest is a little too small. Some of the armor looks a little plasticky, but you work with what you have in terms of time. In the original version I submitted he had a black beard but I had to change it to grey. I am not sure if I like the grey beard very much.

Ugh, Camtasia was being a pain in the butt again. Whenever I tried adding audio filters, it would crash. Then I tried to duplicate the project and it crashed. It would crash when I opened the file, crash when I tried to save the file, crash when I tried to play the file, etc. I tried breaking it into two parts and more crashing ensued. I finally got past the crashing issues and tried to export 25 minutes of the tutorial. Again the stupid export bug reared its ugly head. You know, then one where it goes through the entire export process (which can take a couple of hours) and when it finishes, a dialog box opens up saying it is finished and that you can reveal the file in the finder. Of course when you do that there is no file and it isn’t anywhere to be found on your computer. I tried changing more settings, no luck. I tried to break the file into 4 parts instead of 2…more crashing. Finally I was able to break it into 4 parts and so far it seems to actually be working. Once I export all 4 files I then have to open them back up in Camtasia and stick them all together so that I can upload one file to YouTube. Camtasia is such a pain. Some people recommended ScreenFlow, so I am going to kick Camtasia out the door and give ScreenFlow a try. See ya Camtasia, thanks for wasting my time.

Update

Fixed her chin a bit based on some feedback I received on my YouTube site. Thanks!

Hmmm, maybe I should give a bit of background on my family history before I continue. Both my parents and both my sisters are very artistic. My mom used to create amazing architectural drawings and drawings of animals. She also used to paint scenes on my wall when I was a kid. One time she painted this Drew Struzanesque movie poster composition of a race car, a spaceship, and a bunch of other very “boyish” things on my bedroom wall. She also makes her own quilts and clothing. My father, who is a doctor, is also very skilled at drawing and painting in watercolors. One of my sisters is a fashion designer and she also used to draw and paint a lot in school and in college. My other sister is also very good at drawing and photography and creates her own jewelry. Was I born to be an artist? I dunno, maybe. There is a big debate over whether or not people have a natural talent for things or if people can simply learn to be good at something. I think there is a bit of both. I definitely think natural talent can be passed down from family members, but that doesn’t mean you will be good at something without working hard and without many, many years of work and dedication. I think everyone has a natural gift for something, but you will never know what that is unless you try it and work hard at it. I know some people think “oh not me, I’m not naturally talented at anything.” Who knows, maybe that person would be a world-class oboist, but they would never know unless they tried it.

1984 (3 years old)

For some reason in my early works I had an apparent fascination with belly buttons. Nothing like a squiggly armed person with a belly button. Hmm, not much else to say about this one other than I am highly amused by this drawing.

1985-86 (4-5 years old)

I almost left these behind in Anaheim because they were on a shelf and you couldn’t see them unless you jumped or stood on a ladder. Luckily I checked the top shelf. Ahhh yes, the humble beginnings of Daarken. Apparently I really liked using highlighters. I was 4 and 5 when I created these drawings. Thanks Mom for thinking to date them! According to these drawings my Dad drove a medical rescue robot and my Mom flew a spaceship. I’m not really sure what is going on with the pyramid-tractor-bunny-dead potted plant man drawing. Actually I think that might be a rattlesnake…oh, and there is a chinese man next to the pyramid which I can only guess is my Dad. Slanty eyes ftw. Just to put these in perspective, my niece’s drawings from when she was 2 were 10 times better than the drawings I did at the age of 5. It will be interesting to see if she turns out to be an artist.

1987 (6 years old)

I guess I found the watercolors in 1987. As I look back at the things I drew and painted as a kid I can’t help but notice that everything is nice and happy. I painted flowers, smiling people, snowmen…all things that clearly go against my “Daarken” persona. Sorry to disappoint my fans!

According to the first piece my Dad’s hobbies include Chess, eating peas, and eating pie? Or is that pizza? It has to be pie.

My Dad sent me a bunch of these while I was away for my Singapore-Japan-Kansas City trip, so I figured it would be fun to add these to the post. Several of the painting he sent consisted of helicopters, so I am  just posting one of them. I guess I was really into helicopters, tanks, and spaceships as a kid. Go figure!

I must say, the farmer with a space car for a body is pretty ingenious.

1992 (11 years old)

Let’s fast-forward to the year 1992. You remember 1992 right? When Mike Tyson was convicted of rape, Windows 3.1 was released, and a pound of bacon was $1.92? I don’t either, but apparently those things happened. What also happened was that I started doing master copies of comic book drawings, complete with a signature on a scroll. I was 11 years old at the time. I remember the comic store I used to go to ended up hanging these on the wall, kind of a big deal I guess for an 11 year old boy. I’m sure the customers probably thought “what the hell are these things?”

1995 (14 years old)

<insert fast-forward noise here> The year is 1995 (O.J. found innocent, Toy Story is the top grossing film) and I stepped up the game a bit by making master copies of comic book covers and interiors using Sharpies and Microns. I know the first image is from 1995 because that is the cover to Spawn #32, but I’m not quite sure what the year was for the second image. I am guessing around the same time. If anyone knows, please let me know.

This was the time when Image comics came out and I was flooded with awesome artists like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, J. Scott Campbell, Marc Silvestri, and many others. Many of them were around before Image, but this was the time that I really started to take notice. At this point I wasn’t drawing anything from life because I thought that was boring. I only drew things from comic books. I remember doing some of these drawings in class during high school. Well, the only class I was able to do them in was Astronomy class, but that was only because our teacher was busy playing Spades with the other students. Yeah…we didn’t do anything in that class. Unlike an article, which shall not be mentioned, no I did not barely pass my classes because I was too busy drawing. I was in the top 3% of my freshman class and by the time I graduated I was still in the top 10% of my school. Guh, I hate journalists that don’t do their research and only base their articles off of stereotypes…but anyway, we won’t go down that road.

1998 (17 years old)

In 1998 I won my first art competition, winning a nice crispy $100 bill. My winning piece was a scratchboard piece I did of a comic. I was pretty surprised that I won because I never win anything.

Hmm, is it just me or do I look really tiny in that pic? I am the one on the first row on the right. I am half the size of those other two guys. Oh, and they spelled my name wrong in the caption but got it right in the article. Good job Mr. Editor.

1999 (18 years old)

These master copies were created back in 1999, right after I graduated from high school. The pencil drawings were done back in 1998 I think, but inked and colored in 1999. I was 18 at the time when I colored these. Both were created in Photoshop 5. I scanned my pencil drawing and then I inked and colored it with Photoshop. I actually didn’t really do any “painting” in Photoshop, but rather I inked it using the pen tool since I only had a mouse. I would then flood-fill sections with the paint bucket. This was before I went to art school, so I taught myself digital. I was actually going to school for computer science at the time.

2001 (20 years old)

In 2001 (1 pound of bacon increased to $3.22. Curse you inflation!) I moved to San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art University after realizing that computer science wasn’t my cup-o-tea. As you can see, my figure drawings were horrible compared to the master copies I used to make. I always grew up using the direct drawing technique, but when I went to art school they told me never to direct draw, but rather to use construction lines and bubbles and whatnot. I really struggled with that since it went against everything I knew. At the same time I was really into Anime, so most of my own personal work was Anime. I remember in my first figure drawing class my teacher told me that Anime isn’t art. She had a real big beef with Anime and Manga. Oh, I should also mention that in 2001 I was completely emo, so most of my personal stuff was about death and dismembered people and sad people that sat in corners contemplating how horrible their life was.

Oh god, the horror. Still fumbling with life drawing and the stupid construction lines. I can’t remember when, but I think around 2002 I started to hit up the free figure drawing workshops regularly. I know the first year I didn’t really go to any of the workshops, and it showed. After becoming a workshop regular, I really started to see improvement in my work. If anyone is going to art school, please, please take advantage of figure drawing workshops. You will be amazed at how much improvement you will see. Oh, the other awesome thing about the figure drawing workshops was that the fashion students were always required to attend, so the workshops would always be full of hot girls. I must admit, that was a big part of the reason why I attended the workshops, hah. Hey, I was 20 years old at the time, give me a break! That aside, I really did enjoy figure drawing.

2002 (21 years old)

As you can see, in less than a year there was a huge improvement in my figure drawings. I was still drawing Anime regularly on the side. I always tried to keep it a secret because everyone in art school, especially the teachers, hated Anime and thought of it as “lesser” art…if they thought it was art at all. I blame America. America tends to take things and exploit them until they are destroyed. Basically the story of King Kong right? We take something, make it ours, and exploit it to death. Or the radio. They take songs, play the same ones over and over until they become mainstream and you hate them.

This painting was from my first figure painting class, also in 2002. I think I was taking this class at the same time as my still life painting class, so this was the first time I was using oils. Sorry for the tiny picture, but it is the only one that I have. During the first few weeks of my figure painting class we focused on painting individual body parts. I think this was the only painting I took a picture of and I don’t think I even have that painting anymore. I tend to throw my drawings and painting out a lot.

I think these master copies were also from 2002. The first is a Boris Vallejo master copy done in graphite on bristol paper. The second is a pen and ink master copy of Frazetta. I didn’t use Sharpies for this one, instead I used crow quill pens with actual ink (getting fancy!).

2003 (22 years old)

Another year and more studying. Around this time I started trying to just draw and paint how I wanted to draw and paint instead of trying to force myself to draw and paint how my teachers wanted me to. At the figure drawing workshops I started doing more direct drawing instead of the stupid circles and cylinders. The crazy self portrait was for my Heads and Hands II class. We had to make “crazy expressions” of either ourself or a friend. I didn’t really have anyone to take a picture of, so I used myself. This was also around the time that I was doing a lot of self portraits because of Andrew Jone’s self portraits on conceptart.org. This self portrait was actually the first oil painting I ever sold.

2004 (23 years old)

2004 was my last year of art school. I only went to art school for 3 years before getting my BFA in traditional illustration because I had transfer credits from UT and CSUS. 2003-2004 I really started going to figure drawing workshops regularly. I think I went to probably 3-4 per week. I affectionately became known as the guy that liked to draw deltoids, and soon after, they coined the phrase “daarktoids.” I dunno why, but I liked drawing deltoids. Yeah I know, I’m weird.

About three months after I graduated I was contacted on the phone by Fantasy Flight Games and Wizards of the Coast. They wanted me to do some freelance work for them, so I immediately agreed before even hearing what the project was, pay, and deadlines. My first commissions were so horrible that I don’t even have the files anymore, I had to google them. I swore these would never see the light of day again, but I must submit to the horrors that once were.

I have no idea why people hired me back then. Looking back at my old art I realize how lazy I was as an artist. It is funny because back then I thought my art was really detailed and refined, but now it looks so loose and unfinished. Again, it is crazy how your perception of things changes over time. The first painting was for Fantasy Flight Games for A Game of Thrones, and the second was for Wizards of the Coast for the D&D book, Heroes of Horror. Horror indeed.

At the same time I also got a full-time position as a concept artist at a small gaming company called Mind Control Software. The games I worked on there were not the type of games I liked or played, so I don’t have any samples of my work. Probably for the better. Even though I felt my work was very subpar, I still got regular freelance work from several different companies, and soon I was able to completely support myself on freelance work alone. The reason I was able to get work without having to go out and find it for myself was because I had a very strong online presence. I posted on many different art forums, I had a website, a blog, and I made a lot of friends and contacts in the industry. Since I started working in 2004, I still have not had to go out and look for freelance work, clients always contact me.

2005 (24 years old)

In 2005 I think I had my first “breakthrough” in terms of creating a painting that propelled my work significantly forward. I was studying Craig Mullins and trying to figure out why his paintings look so realistic, but at the same time they are incredibly loose. I realized that he achieves this because his shapes and lighting is spot on. In “The Park” painting I tried to use those same techniques. After that I started doing cityscape studies from photos I took around my apartment. Most of these were really quick, maybe 2-3 hours each. I was also still doing studies from photos of people, places, architecture, you name it. Before this I hadn’t really painted any buildings before, so I took it upon myself to improve upon an area that I had little experience. Going out of your comfort zone is another necessity if you want to be an artist, especially a concept artist. As a concept artist you need to be able to paint anything. If someone asks you to paint a wolf, you need to be prepared to do it and not say “well, I don’t really paint animals, sorry.”

The third painting is a master copy I did of a photo I found on the internet of Aya Ueto. I had made a little animated gif of the process of the painting, but I don’t think I have it anymore.

2006 (25 years old)

Even though I had been out of school for 2 years, I was still going to workshops fairly regularly. I got a part-time position at the Academy teaching digital painting workshops. This allowed me to attend figure drawing workshops since I had an ID. I also went to several of the conceptart.org workshops. These first two drawings were done at the San Francisco Conceptart workshop. If you want to succeed as an artist, never stop learning. Always push yourself to be a better artist and make time to practice. Even professionals need to practice their craft in order to stay on top. Yup, the Daarktoids are still there! Actually, after everyone started calling them Daarktoids, I ended up drawing more of them just because it became my signature style. In reality, the reason I usually only rendered out the deltoids was because most of the poses were 2-10 minutes long, so I only had time to focus on one or two things and deltoids were always the easiest thing to render in that amount of time.

After working on D&D for almost two years, I decided to ask my art director if I could work on Magic: The Gathering. They put me in contact with Jeremy Jarvis and I got my first Magic: The Gathering gig. Even though Future Sight didn’t come out until 2007, the illustrations I created for it were done in 2006. That is the bad thing about doing art for movies and games, it can take anywhere from 6 months to several years before you are allowed to show your work. Your “new” work quickly becomes your old work.

2007 (26 years old)

In 2007 I received an e-mail from BioWare Mythic (Mythic Entertainment at the time) asking me if I would like to be an in-house concept artist for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I flew out for an interview and I was hired shortly after. Warhammer was something that I had always wanted to work on, so it was a great opportunity and one that I couldn’t pass up. Being a concept artist on a AAA title really opens your eyes to the industry. I had to quickly learn to paint anything and everything. I ended up concepting a lot of environments and interiors/exteriors, something I had little experience with. Unfortunately most of my work can’t be shown and probably will never be seen, which sucks because I don’t have a lot of environment samples in my portfolio even though I created a lot for Warhammer Online. The other thing that being a concept artist taught me was to pay attention to the details. My work became much more detailed after working for Mythic. The reason being is because modelers have to build models of your concepts, so I couldn’t leave anything to the viewer’s imagination. I know some people criticized our concepts because they were “too detailed,” but it was a requirement of the job, not personal preference.

In addition to starting at Mythic, I also started freelancing for Blizzard, working on their World of Warcraft TCG. I was already a WoW player, so it was really cool to be able to create illustrations for Blizzard.

2009 (28 years old)

While I was still at Mythic, I landed a job creating Warhammer illustrations for Fantasy Flight Games. They were coming out with a new Living Card Game called Warhammer Invasion. At the time I didn’t realize that I was about to embark on a Warhammer cover journey that would last 2 years, and is still going. I think so far I have already done 16 covers for them. Almost all of the covers are large battle scenes with many figures, something that was always a challenge for me. Not to mention I still had a full-time job, so I had to work on these illustrations after I got home from work. The first cover I did for them I only had a two week deadline from start to finish. Working on these covers has really helped my painting speed. A lot of people ask me about the white background on some of my Warhammer illustrations, and those are there at the request of the client due to the packaging design.

This was also the first time I recorded my painting process with Camtasia. I had originally recorded the process for an in-house EA demo, but that ended up falling through, so instead I released it as a free tutorial on my YouTube site. This tutorial ended up paving the way for many more tutorials to come. I have four full length tutorials available for purchase from my store and many more free tutorials on my YouTube site. I also did a bunch for 3dTotal which are slowly being published on their site. I will probably upload them to my YouTube site in a few months.

2010 (29 years old)

In May of 2010 I left BioWare Mythic to pursue a full-time freelance career. I started working for more video game companies as a freelance concept artist and continued to work on Magic: The Gathering, World of Warcraft, and Warhammer.

The first painting was done for Wizards of the Coast for their Dark Sun D&D line. I grew up reading Troy Denning’s books, so having the chance to work on Dark Sun was like a childhood dream come true. Especially since Brom was the original artist for the Dark Sun books and D&D game. It was also a good opportunity for me to work on a brighter painting since it takes place in a scorching hot desert.

The second painting was for Fantasy Flight Games for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I actually did this painting while my wife was in the hospital after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fantasy Flight Games ended up calling the expansion “Signs of Faith,” sort of fitting isn’t it? Before you say “Hey! You should have been in the hospital with your wife,” I wasn’t allowed in the hospital at the time, so I worked on this painting when I wasn’t at the hospital.

2010 Was also the time when I started trying to make time to create personal pieces. For the longest time I didn’t spend any time painting for myself because I was so busy with work. When I did have a spare moment, the last thing I wanted to do was paint more. Plus having carpal tunnel in both wrists and cubital tunnel in my left arm didn’t help any.

2011 (30 years old)

Whew finally, 2011. This ended up being an epic post. I only intended to post a couple drawings I did back in school, but it kind of grew into an unstoppable monster. It is really interesting to see how far you have come and how you have changed over the years. I have been working professionally for 7 years and I still feel like I have so much farther to go. I wonder where I will be in 10 years, or in 20?

The first painting was a magazine cover for Big Huge Games for the game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. This piece was challenging because I had to keep each element on a separate layer, which is not the way I am used to working. The turnaround time on this painting was pretty fast too.

The second painting was a personal fan art piece that I did of Nicodemus from The Secret of Nimh, one of my favorite animated movies when I was growing up. I noticed that I work much faster when I am working on something I like, or painting for myself. I ended up painting Nicodemus, Justin, and Mrs. Brisby in two days.

I hope you enjoyed taking this trip through memory lane with me. The best advice I can give to anyone who feels that they aren’t good enough to work professionally is to never give up. You won’t get anywhere without a lot of hard work and dedication. If being an artist is something you truly want to do, be prepared to put everything else aside in order to achieve that dream.