Conspirator

After way too much silence from my tiny corner of the Internet, I can finally show a bit of what I’ve been working on in my own time. Here’s a new character for my portfolio.

Figrah the Conspirator is officially the King’s Advisor, but his actual power stretches far beyond that position. With his dangerously high amount of people skills and cunning no one can help but to love and admire him. He’s a classic two-headed snake who likes to puppeteer the court and the King from the shadows where he can whisper sweet promises, spread poisonous slanter and play everyone like pieces on a chess board.

Here’s a GIF showing my process going from crude initial sketch to finished illustration:

Cursed Ice Cream

Based on Dave Rapoza’s first gumroad video, I had fun with yet another style and approach. It was a nice change to work out all the problems in the beginning with line sketches and then meditatively paint in the colour afterwards.

Here’s a little background story to go with the illustration:
Oleg was a great hunter. The very best in the tribe. But right now he was far away from his family to track down the Cursed Ice Cream in the hope that he could break the spell; the biggest thorn in the Poknaq tribe's eye for as long as they could remember. The winters had gotten worse for each year and the tribe was starting to run out of food. Everybody knew the reason for this. It was the Cursed Ice Cream. The Cursed Ice Cream was an old legend, and it was a shot in the dark to try and find it, but the Bubilaq tribe had no other option left. They were desperate. Legend had it that centuries ago the lands were lush and green and full of life, but then a mermaid witch planted the ice cream somewhere high above the water as a bittersweet revenge for the ice cold betrayal of her lover when he took another wife. To break the curse, a brave young man would have to willingly place his heart instead of the ice cream and hope that the witch's restless soul would accept his offer and finally go to rest. Oleg was soon going to find out whether he made the cut or not.

Below are some WIPs.

Children's Book Illustration

Here’s a children’s book illustration I finished recently in a new experimental style.

Story:
The sibling couple often come to visit this strange world at night in their dreams. At first they were frightened by the big hovering fish, but they’ve come to realise that they’re quite harmless. Sometimes the fish even let them ride on their backs through the most wonderful scenarios. And when they wake up in the morning, the children spend all day imagining the new peculiar places they’re going to explore with their newfound floating friends the coming night.

Below you can see a few early colour comps that helped me decide what best suited the atmosphere I wanted to convey.

New Avatar

A new avatar for a new year. Wish you all an outstanding 2015!

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.