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Couldn’t quit.

June 4-6 I’ll be at the Heroes Comic Convention here in Charlotte.  I’m not sure what space I’ll be in as the great folks at Heroes haven’t quite got all that worked out yet.  I’ll be sure and update my fan as soon as the information become available.  It’s a great convention and I love going every year.  Stop by my table and say Hi, you’ll be glad you did.

Frank Frazetta – February 9, 1928  May 10, 2010

I used to have a copy of this great Frazetta painting above my bedroom door as a teenager.  What’s to say?  This guy was a legend and his passing is felt throughout the art community.  He defined fantasy art more than any other artist.  I’ve linked to a trailer for his DVD “Fire and Ice” about his life and work.

I’m doing the “Discover a Muse” contest over at Artorder.com that I mentioned a few posts back. I finally got around to starting on this and thought I’d share as I went.  Gotta post something to keep my mom happy.   Here are my first few steps. I’m still designing and changing as I go along. I need to add some more narrative elements too. Maybe some eyeballs and dragon wings in the pot.

I start as usual doing some quick sketches which I didn’t show because basically I think I may be the only person on the planet who can interpret the things.  They just look like a mass of lines.  I then get my reference but in this case since the contest supplies the reference I already had it.  I did look over the reference before I started sketching because I needed to use some of the supplied reference.  I usually look at reference until I’ve got my sketch going because I don’t the reference to become overbearing in my image.

I then get a tighter sketch going, throw some tones on it in Photoshop and start playing around with a color palette.  I ended up going with a gold and purple basic color scheme.  Lotta cremes.  I think it gives off a mystical quality like the scene in Gladiator where the women is walking through the wheat fields.

I also may need to add some monkeys. Everybody loves monkeys.

The beautiful model supplied by Artorder is the talented Veronika Kotlajic.

Details on the contest can be found HERE.

Here is the (hopefully) final painting for the Incredible Hulk piece I’ve been working on. A number of things just were not working for me in the previous one, mostly the composition. I take a new approach and tried to add a lot more design elements as well as insets of other characters to make a montage of Hulk coolness.  I think it feels a lot more like a cover now.

The post below is from the Discover a Muse challenge of which I’m entering.  I encourage everyone to go check out all the amazing art that’s sure to be flowing over there.  If you’re an artist, don’t be shy.  Join in and discover your art muse.