Boba Fett Step by Step

Hello Everyone,

So what I have for you today is the step by step process I used for my most recent commissioned painting.  A friend of mine wanted a big action shot of Boba Fett looking awesome, so I did my best to achieve that... This painting is big, one of the biggest watercolor paintings I've ever done to be honest.  I usually keep my paintings small and in odd sizes, just to make it fun for me come framing time... Anyways, its a 20 x 24 inches watercolor on Arches Rives BFK 140lb printmaking paper.  I remembered (at least I think I remembered) that paper always held up well to heavy water saturation from my printmaking days and I felt like experimenting.  I will let you all decide if you like it or not but I feel it actually turned out pretty nice. So here we go-

Initial quick sketch of the pose.  I found an awesome reference photo on a stock site of a woman jumping back shooting guns.  So I just adjusted the anatomy to a mans and made it Boba.  Easy peasy.  I wanted a shot of Boba hovering in the sky shooting out at the viewer.

I taped up the paper to my masonite drawing board and finished the drawing on the easel so I could actually see what I was doing.

Close up.  This was drawn in 2h and hb lead pencils.

I decided to make this a gun fight happening on Tatooine, with lasers all over and the Millenium Falcon and a Star Destroyer far above in the sky.  So this image is the 1st application of paint.  I soaked the paper and just steadily kept dabbing in the yellow/ brown colors the give an effect of a hot, dusty desert scene.  

So I skipped ahead a bit but I started to add in the colors for his armor and gauntlets.  Obviously in some areas I even added in some of my shadows and details.  

More detail!  Lasers and muzzle flashes added.  The MF and Star Destroyer painted in using some atmospheric perspective to try and show that high above in the distance.

The feet and the fire and smoke from Boba's rockets are added in.  More detail!  And it's finished...

Vista Production Group!

Hello Everyone,

This past Saturday we had the unveiling of the super secret comic project that I'm a part of, The Vista Production Group.  It is a group of terrific artists based here in Arizona and it will be a one stop access to all things creative and collectible.   The group was created by Brian Augustyn, formerly of DC comics the Flash and Jesse Criscione of the comics super store Jesse James Comics. Our first event had the release of our 1st book, which has all the creators information and great images of our various styles of art.  Here is a group shot of all of us as drawn by Mr. John Derrick West (Dadicus!).

I had a big write up on all of us but my Safari decided to crash and I lost all my blogging motivation to re type it all... So here we all are!  Keep a look out as we release more info about the group and our new creations.

Here is one NOW!

 This is a limited edition sketch cover that we have for our book.  This is a W.I.P. of Spacegirl Molly and I'll have the final version of it posted and on sale soon so let me know if you want it!  I also have a few blank covers left if you had an idea for me to draw just for you.   Shoot me an email if you do!

And here are some other paintings I've done in the past few weeks, one of which is featured in the Vista Inspirational Visions book- 

Space girl Molly- A New World

Space girl Molly- Landing

Afro Samurai... random I know but he is awesome

Some more ART and News

Hello all!

Here are last weeks newest drawings for all to enjoy.  I'll have more new stuff soon as well as a another start to finish process painting.

In other news, my family and I recently had a photo session with Stacey Woodward of Dream Photography Studio.  During the course of the session I thought I recognized here from some where and when we were leaving it dawned on me, I knew her from Phoenix Comicon!  She works with the wonderful site Lightning Octopus and did an Amazing job on our photos so I highly recommend checking out her sites and the write up she did for our Etsy studio.

http://www.dreamphotographystudio.blogspot.com/2012/11/feature-matt-goodall-at-long-dog-art.html

Have a Happy Turkey Day everyone!

ART DUMP

Hello everybody!  Not much new here, just a bunch of random paintings and commissions for some terrific people.  Enjoy!

Painting Like a Child

So here is the story on these paintings.  My daughter Amelia has always loved coloring with crayons and occasionally color pencils but she never really wanted to help me with my own work.  I've noticed recently that she has taken a great interest in watching me paint.  At first she just watched and would make comments on the color I was using.  She then started to become a little more hands on so we gave her one of my old watercolor palettes and some brushes and let her go to town.  I got to admit, I love her paintings.  So I decided to rummage through some drawings that I never finished or just had laying around on scratch paper and I decided to create some art with her.  We took some of these warm up sketches and painted over them. She was allowed free reign to color them as she saw fit. I occasionally would take the paper away and allow some of the excess water bleed around the paper... which made her very angry... I guess she didn't like my creative imput.  I then inked them with brush and crow quill and then used her favorite medium, crayon, to add some other touches.  I enjoyed the collaboration, it took boring sketches and made them interesting.  More than anything, I found the process interesting.  I've trained myself to use a certain creative process when painting and when you allow a 2 year old to do whatever she wants to do with the composition it just completely throws that process out the window.  Here is our results so far...

Amelia, adding some happy little blue tones.

Ultimate Spider Woman Painted

Just playing around with some new brushes I downloaded on Photoshop-

Dog Painting & Ultimate Spider Woman Drawings...

Hello everyone!  Here are some of the latest things I've drawn and painted-  sorry for the horrible scan of the pencils, they never seem to come through good for me.

Mason-
watercolor, india ink

original pencil version

Inked with Pitt Pens

New Etsy Shop Shameless Plug

Hello everyone, my wife an I recently started up our own little business. Please "like" my new Facebook page "Millie & Mason" if you have a moment or just visit our shop if you would like to order a painting. We are a small business that offers custom hand painted portraits (children, pets etc...). Please check out our online shop at www.millieandmason.etsy.com, and feel free to share with friends!  Also the link is on the left hand side of the home page of the blog.   

Art Dump- Batman, New Ideas, and Random stuff

Hello all, been busy for the past few weeks so sorry for the lack of posts.  I've managed to work on a few projects here and there as well as coming up with a brand new one.  Jesse James Comics was also nice enough to invite me to contribute some art for a fundraiser to benefit the victims of the Aurora CO shooting (https://www.facebook.com/events/207889002673724/).  So here is some of my basic test drawings for my new children's book that I will create soon- Amelia Blairhart, a Katniss painting for some contest that I was too late on entering, some random practice/ reference drawings and The Batman for Aurora.  

New Stuff and SDCC

So, just as I predicted, I did not post anything new for quite some time.  I spent most of my time the past few weeks drawing test pages to turn in for portfolio reviews at San Diego Comicon and finishing up a few other drawings and paintings.  I also managed to log about 35 hours of Star Ocean on the PS2 as well some how.... But anyways,  here are 2 of the paintings I spent some time on recently.  I don't know if they are actually "done" yet but for now I'm not going to do anything else to them without some deep thought. (besides fixing the eye on the one to the right here... holy uneven Batman)   


So on to the big show, my 1st experience at SDCC as a "professional."  I unfortunately did not have an artist alley table or a small press table but since I've been lucky enough to have a couple of little books published by Spazdog I had the opportunity to go to the show for free.  SDCC is overwhelming to say the least.  I didn't have enough time off of work to go all 4 days but I wish I could have because the one full day I did go was not nearly enough to see everything I wanted to see or spend the time I wanted to spend talking to artists, friends and of course editors for jobs.  I spent most of my time in artist alley talking to some of the greats standing there or just eavesdropping on there conversations with other fans about their work.  It was nice to get spend some time with David Petersen there as well.  I've known him forever and his work is amazing so I was happy to see his booth in artist alley.  I bought a super awesome Mouse Guard shirt and caught up for a bit with him... He chided me for doing the portfolio review which was funny but I told him I wanted to see what the editors thought of my stuff.  
   I will say the portfolio review was an interesting experience but I don't know if I will spend the time doing that again in the future.  I got some nice critiques where they focused on telling me what I need to work on and where my strengths lie so I look forward to trying to implement what they were saying.  But overall I think Dave was right, i was the about the 30th person for each of the guys I saw and I think they were a little burnt out and wanting to be somewhere else by the time they got to me.  So next time around I will just focus on having fun and try and get into some panels!  Which have insane lines by the way.  There is no way I would wait 10 hours to see a Superman or Iron Man 3 panel... 
   So thats about it for now.   I will now (finally) start on the next issue of Buddha Monkey and then hopefully work on finishing up Sonic Youth with Shawn one of these days.  (and maybe I'll even create a new character in the mean time...)

Whats New

So I don't have too many new pieces to show this week.   I pretty much decided since I just did 11 paintings in 3 days that I would take it a little easy this past week.  I did get a new watercolor done though and I'll post a little teaser of it since I have yet to scan it.  I probably won't post too many new things in the next few weeks either because I'm going to be working on some pieces for my portfolio to show at SDCC... I think it's time to finally get some feedback from the big boys....

Anyways, in other news I was invited by TRIBE Studios to appear at Hero Comics for this fundraiser here-

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=484473944902153&set=a.105344579481760.11403.100000186544921&type=1&theater 

so come on done and join us for a good cause!

So until next time

sketch cards

Here are the 11 new sketch cards that I was recently commissioned to do.   It was a fun mini set to do, I have never really worked on any of these characters besides Batman, The Joker and Superman so it was interesting to try and capture their likenesses.  Thank you to my comic collection and Google for helping in those areas.  All of these paintings are watercolor paint and india ink on sketch cards (thin bristol board).  This was not wet into wet painting though, I tried to keep my brush as dry as possible to cut down on warp and paper failure since it's not really built for watercolor.  Overall the paper held up well and the customer likes them so thats all that is important in my book!