Forest Demon

UPDATE: Seems Blogger has messed up my image again during upload, but the GIF below seems intact.

Here's my latest character portrait. Actually it started out as a self-portrait, but it was more fun to splash on a fictional story and make it something else entirely.

Here's the step-by-step:

Book Cover Illustration

I recently did this cover illustration for TURBINE for a horror novel called “Den Druknede” (meaning “The Drowned”) by Danish author Kristoffer Jacob Andersen. Can’t wait to receive the book!

UPDATE:
Just received my copies of the book today in time for halloween! (Sorry for the rather poor photo quality.)

Study

'Nother screen cap study. This time from the movie Red Cliff.

Study

Did another screen cap study a little while back. This one's from Kung Fu Hustle!

Pirate Portrait: Samurai Lord

So here's the second portrait in my pirate series.

His background story goes like this:
After dedicating most of his life serving as an honoruable Samurai, he was forced to take a stance against the Emperor’s obscene wish and thus was thrown into the life of an outcast. As a last resort he set to the Seas, using his last hidden reserves to hire a ship and a crew, fixated on playing a memorable trick on his fellow Samurai, the Lords and the Emperor as payment for their injustice and greed.

And here's the initial head study I based it on:

Study

Here's a study I did of a scene from The Green Mile. Spent approx. 6 hours on it using a small array of custom brushes.

Ananse

Here's a bit of creature design within the mythical theme.

"Ananse the trickster is a West African god, He often takes the shape of a spider and is considered to be the god of all knowledge and stories. He is a spider, but often acts and appears as a man."
Read more about Ananse here: Click

Ananse seems to be pictured mostly as a spider with a human head so I thought it might be interesting to reverse that and put him together kind of like an Egyptian god.

Pirate Portrait: Maori Princess

Keep your goal in sight, and know that if you keep working at it, you’ll get there, period.

Her background story:

Abducted from her family and tribe at a very young age and forced to slavery by the corporate West, the young Maori girl soon fled, and was picked up by a group of pirates in search of a new youngster to boss around the ship.

With no possible way of returning to her home, she stayed with the pirates, slowly working her way up the hierarchy in the hope that one day she would have the opportunity to take her revenge on the greedy West and return to her family.

Friend and mentor, Jim Moore, suggested that I took some of my recent head studies and worked them into a finished character portrait so that I could use it as a portfolio piece. So that's just what I did. This is the first one and there are several more on their way.

Here’s the initial head study this portrait was based on:

iPad sketch

This is a spare time wip/sketch made a while back initially with traditional pencils, then enhanced with a bunch of magical Procreate strokes on an iPad glass surface.

Studies

More head study workouts.
Feels good to kick momentary laziness in the butt and build a stronger toolkit for better and bigger rewards.

I Am Transformation

I apologize for the silence these past two months. I spent my free time finishing up all sorts of unfinished projects, but now I’m back and intend to update my blog more regularly again.

This is a personal piece that suddenly popped into my mind as I was riding my bicycle towards the sunset last autumn. It’s inspired by a series of losses in and around my family over the past few years.

With this piece my aim was to illustrate how the death of something releases something stronger and more beautiful. This isn’t just about life as we know it coming to an end. We face this principle every day to some small degree. To change or get to the next level, we’ll have to leave our old version behind. This is transformation.