blue vs. brown

Here's one for anyone with an opinion.

The issue I'm facing with this is that while the blue was my original impulse, the brown seems to resolve some things that bothered me about the blue but I still like the blue.

If you like, please leave a comment with your vote and reason for liking either. Or neither.

third (and final) dragon piece (for a little while)

Here's a value approximate and detail of the drawing of the head for this final dragon piece.

The drawing of the dragon is complete as well as St. George. I'm going to start laying in the background this afternoon and hope to be done with the drawing tonight.

Monsters and Metroid.

That's my Saturday, mostly. Except for all the cleaning we've had to get done today -- Erin's folks are coming into town.

I've come very close to having my first two (of three) dragon paintings done. Here they are, both about 95% done. I'll do a little more detail work on the one on the left and the one on the right, the little figure needs some tightening up but I feel that's about it. Once I lit the "water beast" from the top (instead of the side) it seemed to pull together.


All in all I'm very pleased with them both. They were about a week and half's worth of evening each.

In other news, since I'm close to having these done, I took a break and have been playing Metroid on my Nintendo DS.


Erin got it for me for my birthday couple days back. I'm a little late to the party (it was released something like 2 years ago) never-the-less it is a great game. I tried playing the Metroid Prime on the Gamecube and while it was pretty fun, there was mostly just no time to sit and play. A big, sprawling FPS is just no longer compatible with me any more. I burned out on GoldenEye on my N64 long ago. Prime Hunters on the DS is fun though, the DS being the portable little devil it is.

I was going to post a low-quality detail of my third dragon piece, the one I hope to be the best of three, but my Photobooth on the iMac here kept crashing. I'll see what I can make of it.

birthday cards.

My mother is a second grade teacher. Yesterday, being my birthday and all, her students made me birthday cards. She told them I like to draw dragons and monsters.

I have selected the most outstanding of the bunch to share with you here and awarded them awards based on their aesthetic merits and serious artistic criterion based on objective judgments.

What the heck?

Here are some awesome cards. Drum roll, please.

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Most "After-My-Own-Heart" Award.

I like the cover a lot, for real. It has great color and I like the horns on the dragons. Egg? Very funny. I would hope I would design a card like this.

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The "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Theory of Colours" Award.

Red, blue, and purple. Now that is color theory in practice. I think the title of this award really says more than I possibly could, try as I might.

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Best Use of Phonics and Compliments Award.

No, you rock on.

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Jolly Green Giant Award.

I really like this monster. I like face, I his color, and I like his body shape.

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Grand Prize : The "Made Me Laugh Really, Really Hard" Award.

This card stood out for two main reasons:

1.) The artist turned the card on its side and made a big picture. She was the only one who did that.

2.) It was the only card to feature a million people eaten.

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Thanks again to everyone in Classroom A-6!

Illustration Friday: "Memories"

If you like, you can pull something out of this, something to do with the photograph and the rose and the audience of one. I like to think the monster is remembering a better time and music helps him to remember.

This is one I've wanted to do for a long time. I like the idea so much I'm sure I'll revisit it again.

Cody 2 !

Here we go folks, the second installment in the Cody Webster saga! Click below to view the short.

water beast, nearly.

Here's the "water beast" nearly there. I'm closing in on it but there's still a little detail work left to do.

I'm at that bizarre point where every other step doesn't feel quite right yet I know this isn't done.

Vote for my brother.

I have a brother?

No, not really. A brother-in-law? Yes. Is he a real brother though? Most definitely.

I have known Chris for a long time. I met him my last year of high school and his first year of college; we worked together at the BJU Press in the art department as student illustrators.

After school we married sisters and now we're legal brothers.

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Chris has entered a serious contest. It's a $10,000 contest. And he needs votes to win.

He's designed an incredible t-shirt for Design By Humans. And he stands the best chance out of all the entries to win $10,000 out of it.


Please take a moment to vote for Chris.

I know it would mean a ton to Chris, Annie, and my little nephew Marshall.

If you're still not convinced, check out his new blog here and take a peek at all the "making of" business for this design. There's even a time-lapse video of the drawing for the shirt.

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You can sign up quick and easy here.
Vote!

study.

A simple one. I've been doing a few little things here and there in between my larger pieces.

Here is one of them. I drew him, painted him in watercolor, and played with the colors some in post-production. I think I end up doing these little ones so I feel more prolific than I actually am.

Helps me not to despair. I start to go nuts if I've got nothing finished to show for nights on end of working. Fortunately I've begun to see some results with these St. George pieces. It was a week and a half's worth of evenings to get the three pieces drawn and another three nights of painting. Finally I'm nearing some conclusion.

This little miner is just a morale booster. Get a quick victory in before the final push on the main work. Probably not the best approach, having so fragmented a focus. What can I say. I was raised on video games. My attention span is shot. Would you believe I don't even have the patience for most video games anymore? Most all my friends are Call of Duty nerds. It's fine but I can't play more than a couple rounds. It's fun to play multiplayer with other people but there's no chance I'd ever grind my way through the 1 player mode. Goodness there's just so much else to do. It is not fun to me.

water-beast

I don't usually like to show the raw watercolor (the term I came up with to describe the watercolor with the drawing placed back on top) but I'm excited for the direction of this one.

I don't know if the idea of the water-beast coming out from behind the waterfall, kind of splitting the stream reads well just yet, but that's the idea.

Also the little figure doesn't feel as solid as he ought. He'll take a little more work.

Mostly I'm just really looking forward to this one. The feel has, initially, hit what I was looking for.

more painting monsters

Here's a little work in progress of one I've been working on tonight. It's coming together well. At this juncture I don't have anything all that intelligent to say about it. It's a little late.

But I want to pass something of value along tonight. Here's a little treasure I stumbled across a while ago. Sigur Rós must be a really kind group of musicians judging by the sheer volume of free music on their site. You can find all of it here.

The song that has had the most repeat play for me is this one, hrafnagaldur óðins [odin's raven magic] - chapter 3

I can not fathom how beautiful this music is. I really hope you take a moment to listen to this song.

blog : 3 years old.

I just realized that my blog turned three years old over the weekend. How awesome is it to not have a piece of art to commemorate this event?

Doot doot! Three.

New paintings of mosnters.

I'm working nights on a set of sort of unrelated dragon paintings.

I've mentioned before about these three pieces being a monument to my indecisiveness in that I started with one idea I wanted to do, missed it three times, but ended up finding enjoyment in the three new directions.

Here's a sample of the painting for the first two. I'm holding on to the third for now. I think it's the best of the bunch. They all started with ambitions to be a rendering of St. George and the Dragon.


This second one here is a mess in the watercolor. Points to you if you can figure out what the heck is going on. It'll make sense once it's done. I promise.


I've got to be done with these by the end of the month because I'm on a tight schedule to start the month of September working on a piece for Flight. I was recently invited to contribute to the anthology. I'm tremendously honored for even just being invited so there is no way I'm not going to pour everything I've got into it. I'll be posting progress of work as I am able in the coming weeks and months.

But, until then I've got to keep on these beasts till they are out the door.

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In other news, my t-shirt design voting is going well! It remains to be seen if it will lead to a win but I'm pleased none-the-less.

While there is a tidal wave of awesome shirts to be found on that site, I've discovered an undeniable amount of bad work. From ugly art to flat-out poor ideas, just a few moments browsing will show the truly fantastic standing in sharp contrast to the bad.

There's more than a few people who slap on bright 80s colors, toss in a skull, and call it a day. It's as if some just perceive a formula, hop on the party line and phone it in rather than really making something.

I guess it's not all that important and I don't mean to knock anybody, but still, wouldn't you rather make something genuine than try and tailor your work? It's the old idea that if you cram your portfolio with what you think a client would want to see you'll be stuck doing that forever, but if you fill your portfolio with work you love you will get more work you can love.

I've received one extremely kind comment in particular about my design by a guy called "eternyl" that I wanted to post here:

"now this is just cool….not obnoxious or trendy…but classic and well executed."

That about sums up what I hope this shirt to be. Thanks again to everyone that has voted!

Voting will still be open for another month or so (as I understand it) and my shirt could potentially win any one of those days. Thank you! Vote!

t-shirt voting update & give away

Hey, thanks to all of you who have voted so far, my shirt is currently third most popular with 71 votes.

If I win, I'll give away a shirt on here.

Leave a comment if you like and let me know if you've voted and you'll be entered into the Cory's blog semi-annual invitational "one random person will get a t-shirt if Cory wins" contest.

Thanks again and vote!

beast

I've got a lot of projects going on.

Currently I'm working on three separate "man fighting beast" pieces right now. If that's not a testament to indecisiveness I'm not sure what is. I ended up with three ideas I liked for the same piece so I just went with all of them. That amounts to a week and a half's worth of evenings spent on these three.

Originally the idea was to focus on this fox hunt piece this week but I put that on the back burner for a while because I was invited to contribute to a "Dragons" anthology and needed to get work in order for that.

I completed the drawing for the third piece last night and plan on painting two of them tonight. I like to work in tandem, while one is drying work on the other. Keeps things interesting for sure.

Here's a detail from the second piece:


I hope to be getting more of this sort of stuff up this evening and over the weekend. Check back!

Illustration Friday: "Routine"

Routine. Yup. This is an old one. Probably about 4 years ago almost. I still like it really just because it was part of a collection of drawings I did, actually, I think is the first drawing I did post-surgery. I we getting back into the ...wait for it... routine of drawing. I had surgery on my shoulder a while back to keep it from dislocating so easily. The surgery worked about 9 months.

My right arm is what I use to draw, so it facilitates what I'm best at. It is also my biggest liability. It's like Spider-Man, a blessing and a curse. Something like that.

Something clicked after that surgery. No, it was not clicking pins in my shoulder either. Drawing was starting to make sense and I was starting to see how to draw.

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Also if you like what you see, check out my t-shirt design at Design By Humans and vote for it!
Propel our people to a blazing victory!

Exercise your RIGHT TO VOTE for my t-shirt design!

Vote for my design!

Hey everyone, you may have heard of an online t-shirt store called Design by Humans.

Apparently they accept a bazillion shirt designs a day, only a handful win. Those shirts are printed (and then you can them buy them and wear them) and who ever made the design wins a little cash.

So! I had this drawing lying around my desk and I thought, "I'd wear that." So here we go.

What I would need to win would be votes.

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If you like, you can sign up quick and easy on their site, and vote!

I've cast my ballot before and helped to propel a few friends to screaming victories. It is easy to help.

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Still not convinced to take a second and help? Hm. If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true.

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I think I've riddled this post with enough links. Odds are someone is bound to trip over one and vote, right? Maybe not even on purpose but every vote helps.

a single new Portland Studios t-shirt.

There is only one in the whole world.

I made a stencil and used some fabric paint with a sponge the night before we left for Comic-Con.

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We're number one. ...or number 2? How many fingers is it!

Ticket : evaporating numbers

Here's a quick Public Service Announcement for Ticket I discovered over on the Portland Blog:


I believe we're down to a box or two -- that makes a couple dozen copies left.

Get your orders in soon, or heck, make your voice heard for a second edition!

"Ticket" at the Portland Studios Store.

Letter to the editor. I mean Queen.

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A little while ago it occurred to me that there was nothing in the world to prevent me from sending a copy of Ticket to Her Majesty the Queen of England.

Today I received my reply. Addressed to a "Miss" Cory Godbey.

Well! I am honoured to have been wrote back at all.

Long Live the Queen.

Blue Goblet font used in Coraline "making of" featurettes.

I was recently informed of my "Blue Goblet" handing writing font being used in the "making of" featurettes for the upcoming Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) stop-motion animated film, Coraline.

Below you'll find some examples:





Here's a link that'll take you to the featurettes. Not bad for a little font!

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If you're interested, you can purchase the font (and ornaments set) from our store!
Blue Goblet / Blue Goblet Ornaments

Book By It's Cover

Scored a hot mention on Book By It's Cover recently and thought I'd pass that along to you.

Thanks Julia!

dwarves fight a dragon : storyboards

I've gotten myself a little lead time on a few projects at work so I turned my attention yesterday for a few hours to making storyboards of a dwarf king trying to kill a dragon that has attacked his Hall.

Unfortunately I could not license the rights to Howard Shore's music in time. You'll just have to pretend. Enjoy. Any of you seeing this on Facebook will have to click the "view original post" button since external embedded videos don't show on imported notes.




Any of you seeing this on Facebook will have to click the "view original post" button since external embedded videos don't show on imported notes.

a fox hunt

I've been working on a painting of a fox hunt but I got side-tracked doing studies of a guy in a red coat.

Tomorrow night ought to be more profitable as far as the finished piece goes.

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I'm wanting to do this almost as a portrait. Below is the watercolor thumbnails. The little orange blob underneath the horse is a sleeping fox. Or will be.

I saw a painting of a guy on a horse in an antique shop in NC a few months back and was struck by the color, the composition, and the mostly serene look of the guy on the horse.


I also spent some time this evening going over two of my stories, Alexander and Rex and Peter, Peter. Addressing the good and the bad. Assessing what might still be useful.

Theodore.

Of all the 31 presidents to serve our nation in the 150 years before 1941, only 4 made it into stone on the side of a mountain.

And there's a reason why in 1927 when work was begun on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota Teddy Roosevelt's face was included with the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln:

He was awesome.

An excerpt from Zach's post on the Portland blog:

"He assumed the presidency at just 42-years-old, after William McKinley died from an anarchist’s bullet. This makes him the youngest to fill the office. He was a busy and distinguished man. He served as the Governor of New York, and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was the founder of the nation’s first Volunteer Calvary Regiment, a professional historian, naturalist, explorer, author, conservationist, and cowboy. It is said that he had a photographic memory and was the most widely read politician along with Thomas Jefferson. Additionally, he wrestled while in the Governor’s mansion, hunted big game in Africa, boxed in the White House’s State Rooms, and supervised the building of the West Wing. He also put Lincoln on the Penny, and survived an assassination attempt. After his presidency, he explored the forests of South America and found the headwaters of the River of Doubt, later called the Rio Roosevelt. Predictably, he was an active and enthusiastic supporter of the Boy Scouts of America, and they in turn bestowed upon him the singular title “Chief Scout Citizen.” During his life he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the part he played in the reconciliation between Russia and Japan. He was also recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Theodore Roosevelt remains the only American to receive both the medal for peace and the highest recognition for valor."

So, throughout this week we're posting once a day about the man named Teddy.

Below you'll find my contribution for today, an excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt's auto-biography and childhood.

I hope you enjoy.

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Pipe organ, painted.

I put the finishing touches on this one over the weekend.

I've got a method in place to revamp my portfolio. Mostly by knuckling down over the next few weeks and working through a list of pieces I've been wanting to do for a long time. I've got a about 5 more pieces to work through at this point.

It's bizarre, I feel like I'm working all the time and yet there's only one or two pieces (not including Ticket) I can point to and say, "This is a mostly accurate representation of me, where I am, and what I am able to accomplish with a little time."

So, in an effort to combat frustration and the fact that everyone I know seems so effortlessly prolific, I've got a method in place which allow me to not only be a few more paces down the road towards a new portfolio and work through a collection of paintings I want to do, but also provide a lot of blog material.