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.

Slumbering Prince

"Slumbering Prince
In his early days he was a spoilt prince sick with power, charmingly misleading the women of the kingdom and bringing slavery to the peasants.
A sorceress then cursed him with eternal sleep, but hundreds of years later, the spell accidentally broke and a man madder than ever returned to the kingdom to restore his former power."

Latest bit of shareable character design.

Happy Halloween

In the spirit of spooky times to come, here's something a little different from my usual style.
Happy Halloween! :)

Character Design

Here are a bit of early-stage visuals on some of the latest characters I've been working on. This time we're in an imaginary era in the Greek or Roman Empire where both the sun and the moon are worshipped and have each their own order with these two priestesses belonging to the top of each chain.

One of Many Winters: Morphawn

So! Here is finally a whole page along with the end result of Morphawn, the main antagonist in 'One of Many Winters', a story from the Nightmare Theater collection. Guidance and feedback generously provided by Jim Moore. :)
Now back to work!

One of Many Winters: Morphawn

Here are some more quick silhouettes exploring the visual properties of Morphawn. He's slowly starting to take shape as the twisted, terrorising night demon he's supposed to be.