After drawing the character, Jason, I felt I could have pushed it more. So I chose a different angle to give him more presence. When I get some time, I need to do a nice clean up drawing and some color.

These are some sketches I did: Jason in a front view, a warrior in his mid 40's, a redrawing of Diana, this time looking for better silohuette and variation of shapes and a new character, Petey; a young unseasoned adolescent.

Jason (cleaner rough)

Slammed this out this morning-35mins. A slighter exaggeration in the legs, needs color next. Character portfolio due this Weds. so I have to get as much done as humanely possible. Inbetween, doing loads of laundry, dishes, have to write a small speech for this Tuesday's Buddhist meeting, got Jury duty come Monday and if my daughter says "Mama, look!" one more time I'ma gonna scream...

Jason (rough)

Diana

Still a little clumsy, but better. Her face was somewhat based on the Statue of Liberty..

Greg and Sienna will be returning tomorrow..I have enjoyed this time for peace and reflection. Here is the next sketch for the next illustration on masonite. I will ad some peoples in the foreground; flying dragons in the background. I am doing a cleaner drawing of the dragon and rider right now. I'm almost finished with the archer on masonite so I will post that one as soon as I finish it.

Placerita Canyon

Better shadow shapes. Tree trunk has a repeating pattern (bad). Sharon suggested I block shadow shapes in with purple, so I did. Next time I will try magenta.

Check out fellow painter, Sharon Weaver's blog! (See links to the right)

Quickie out at Stoney Point. I've always wanted to paint here. Good values, but no focal point.

Gotta dang cold!

Sergio Lobato, my old art director and fellow painter in crime, suggested that I start painting on masonite for fantasy pieces. As soon as I got off the phone, I rummaged thru the garage and found masonite-you people of the animation background might recognize the substrate-these are the dividers which separate the drawings in a scene stacker! I have several, and now I know what to do with them!

After painting on canvas paper for several months now, it is a little tricky to adjust to the hard surface of masonite. Whereas I was getting used to trying to get the values on with just one sweep of the brush; masonite, because of this smooth surface allows me to get more detail in; several brushstrokes. Colors tend to be much brighter.

This new direction is a big leap for me.

Moritorium!

With regret, I am sad to announce that computer game company, Stormfront Studios has closed it doors after 20 years in the gaming industry. It was at this studio, I entered my first professional art job and my first project was a PC game called Stronghold for EA. I did several fantasy portraits; this is one, and the others are in the garage somewhere-when I find them again I will post them.

It was a blast for the first two years when the company was still young; the fun things that went on and the personalities! Uday from India who was an amazing artist with such a bad, rude disposition that I never spoke to him again; Ken Berry, who would talk about the babes he had once dated (all day), Tracy Grellinger who was so tough, she jumped off her motorcycle to punch a guy thru his car window in SF; and a lot of stories and gossip I can't write about publicly! In those days, I would wear cute clothes, go to work, rattle the fence and get the dogs barking! Sarah did one better; she came to work in a tiny skirt on moving day (moving day!) and Ken and I sat back and laughed in our chairs as we watched the moving guys' eyes pop out of their sockets whenever she bent over to unplug something or other. Then there was the time when I came in to work on a Saturday and caught the maintenance guys rummaging thru Don's beautiful office. "Say," I said casually, "What are you guys looking for?" "Uh...we dropped a joint in Don's office and we just gotta find it before Monday!" Don held some of this meetings privately in his office with some bigwigs on Mondays. We were very close in those days, I don't think I had more fun or laughed as much in one job as I did at Stormfront. It was the people and talent that made it a terrific experience.

Goodluck to the few oldtimers that were left: Jim Larson, Bill Boyer, and John Kiester, and those who were before and came after I left for Disney. Also, so sorry, for you, Don Daglow, who was so proud of your company and who was always kind and so afraid of bad publicity and lawsuits. Don was one of those rare bosses who you could actually go and talk to if there was a concern. He was always welcoming, approachable and a good listener. You truly deserve so much more than this ending to your baby.

Speed painting 101: I did a real quickie portrait of Beth in period costume; then had to race home to help little Sienna with her homework. I'd say maybe about no more than 15 mins.

I would have liked to take my time on this one. All in all it was a fantastic two days of throwing the paints around.

I usually do a quick pencil sketch to solidify structures before jumping off into paint.

Okay-I really bit off more than I could chew on this one! So much going on here-many lights and shadows and midtones. I was looking for a scene that had: perspective, objects in the foreground and background and objects relating to each other; foreground shadow and sunlight. Object: to simplify the shapes.

I got up to go pee; came back, and someone had put the white lawn chairs infront of the pond. Awesome! I could not have planned it better! Then I had lunch, finished early, and someone was in one of the lawn chairs! Even more better!

In hindsight, I went a little el nutso on the color palette-shoulda really limited myself on just greens for awhile. Should just painted the shadows and lights in greens, (value study) then loaded in a selected palette.