Breath of Embers

My humble dragons are in some mighty company at the new Gallery Nucleus (@gallerynucleus) group show, Breath of Embers: Art of Dragons.

How I wish I could get out there are see this show! Nucleus always puts together the best shows and I'm so pleased to have been able to join in again. (Huge thanks to Wade!)

Here are my three pieces in the show.

 

I regret that due to projects and scheduling I wasn't able to complete the new pieces I had planned for the show. At some point I'll bring them to life but there's just too much on plate at the moment.

Spectrum 16 entries.

The deadline for Spectrum 16 is tomorrow. As I understand it my entries will land sometime today.

For fun, here are my three entries. I have yet to score a spot in a Spectrum book (though I was honored to have been accepted twice in the Society of Illustrators annual, and a couple other books) so we'll see.

I entered three of my dragon paintings from a couple months ago.

st. george

Here's a quick doodle I wanted to toss in before Thanksgiving. It's been sitting on my desk here for a while staring at me asking to be posted.

Have a good Thanksgiving!

dragon : reprise.

Remember when I was hung up on dragons for a while? Me too.

Here's one I never got around to finishing. It's got a dead baby dragon in it and somewhere along the way I lost steam. I was on my 6 or 7th piece and had been at dragons for over a month.

Probably an OK time to lay off.

boo! -- 4/5

Fire. Pumpkin fire. Pumpkin spice? I hear people like that.


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I can trace my fascination with pumpkins to an almost specific time, about this time of year, nearly 21 years ago.

My pre-K teacher had made pumpkin pie. She brought it to school, uncovered it, and showed us. I remember having this fascination mixed with intense dread at the site of that pie. I got myself so worked up over it that I actually threw-up.

And that is a true story.

Illustration Friday : "Sugary"

This is a re-post from a week ago. Follow this link to see photographs of the painting process, if you like.

I mean wouldn't apples become caramelized or something like that? That would be pretty sugary I imagine. Or maybe they'd just burn. I'm not sure.

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I liked this idea from a few days ago and wanted to paint it.

It's also been a while since I've had the time to do just an honest to goodness watercolor.

The painting is on a stray sheet of Fabriano I found in the corner.

Happy Fall.

cooked apple. redux.

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I liked this idea from a few days ago and wanted to paint it.

It's also been a while since I've had the time to do just an honest to goodness watercolor.

The painting is on a stray sheet of Fabriano I found in the corner.

Happy Fall.

"La Nuit Observateur" or, The Night Watcher.

I've stumbled upon a few new painting techniques that I feel will be very valuable in the coming months.

I'm pleased with this one for a few reasons:

One, it came together over two nights work. Two, the drawing and the painting I feel gain a nice level. Three, it reminded a friend of Mononoke-hime, or Princess Mononoke and he thought it wouldn't look too out of place in that universe.

I'll take that and interpret it as a compliment.

But to tell you the truth, I spent all my energies on the top and middle and sort of neglected the trees. Oh well. It's foggy. You can engineer an answer to any failure in action, right? Yikes.

5 monsters, X, and moving on.

Just pulled all these together last night. Thought I'd share. The one in the top most left is as far as that one is getting. It wasn't so great an idea as much as I drew a head I liked and couldn't get the rest of it on par. But, here it is all the same.

These have been painted over last month. I started sometime in August and got all these together in about a month, month and a half.

It's fun for me to see the progression. I've learned a ton doing these last few ones. But now it's time to move on to my next personal project.

The idea for this next personal project was directly inspired by this song, "Walters."

Just a note, there's a little language at the beginning of the video but the song is what is amazing. In the coming weeks I'll begin posting progress. I hope you enjoy.

sea dragon

Sea Dragon.

(detail)

Early versions.

another beast.

I don't know if I'll paint this one. I don't know if it's worth the time investment to paint.

I've got this sea dragon to get done by Monday and I almost feel like I got all the enjoyment of the thing out in this drawing.

I kind of feel like the painting would just be tedious. I don't know. We'll see.

Either way, one this is for dead certain : my fourteen year old self would be very, very proud of this drawing.

Illustration Friday: "Island"

Yet another monster piece. This time a sea dragon on a little island. The goal for this piece is to be done Monday, taking the weekend to paint.

I've been learning a ton with these past few pieces. You can see the others below :

Silence in Silene

St.George and the Dragon
The Waterbeast

Silence in Silene.

Silence in Silene.

From our friend, Wikipedia :

St. George and the Dragon.

In the fully-developed Western version, a dragon makes its nest at the spring that provides water for the city of Silene.

Consequently, the citizens must dislodge the dragon from its nest for a time, in order to collect water. To do so, each day they offer the dragon at first a sheep, and if no sheep can be found, then a maiden must go instead of the sheep. The victim is chosen by drawing lots. One day, this happens to be the princess. The monarch begs for her life with no result. She is offered to the dragon, but there appears the saint on his travels. He faces the dragon, protects himself with the sign of the cross, slays it and rescues the princess.

The grateful citizens abandon their ancestral paganism and convert to Christianity.

Thanks to KWartist99 for the winning title!

Illustration Friday: "Clutter"

I'm right at the end of painting my third monster piece.

Hopefully this is less of a cheap re-cap of this week's worth of posts and more of a ... well, no, I think it's a cheap re-cap, with an even worse line to tie it into today's I.F. topic.

Here goes : Monsters cluttering up your. Area? Landscape? Waterfalls, maybe? I'll clean them up for you.

I was invited to contribute to a "Dragons" anthology and have been getting work in order for that. More on that as information becomes available.

I've mentioned before about these three pieces are (tragically) 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.

With out further ado, here's my dragons.

St. George and the Dragon.

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The Waterbeast.

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The yet untitled one. You're welcome to help name it.

This final one I got painted last night. I've got a furious weekend ahead of me. I've got to have this done by Monday morning. You may expect updates over the weekend and an unveiling of the completed piece sometime Monday.

And yeah, think up a good title? Comment it!

Cheers.

Cory

third and final

Since I missed posting yesterday I wanted to post something nice. Here's a big picture of a detail of what I'm working on tonight (and have been working on the past few nights)

I completed the drawing last night and I'll be painting it tonight.

Final.

St. George and the Dragon.

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(detail)

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The Waterbeast.

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(detail)

(detail)

Monday meeting notes.

It's been a while since I've posted my notes from our company meetings.

Without delay, here they are:

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.

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.

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!