Saturday Morning Sketch #5 - DEATH VALLEY

I know, I know...my original plan was to paint one of these a week. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans......

Anyway, way back when I was co-supervising the Background Painting Dept. on The Prince of Egypt with Ron Lukas, we brought the entire department on a sketching trip to Death Valley. Three days of painting in the desert. For some reason I can't seem to find any of my paintings from that trip. Hmm...

We also shot lots of photo reference. This sketch is based on one of my photos.

Drilling Vehicle

I know...I know...it's been a while since my last post. I've been busy. It comes with having a job...and a family. Also, I haven't been able to post my latest stuff because it's all for films that haven't come out yet. But in the meantime...

...here's a design I just finished for a Victorian-style Drilling Vehicle (a la Journey to the Center of the Earth) for my friend who is going to build this, full size, in his front yard this Halloween. Check out his website www.socalhalloween.com. He's a director and Visual Effects Supervisor, and he builds these rather elaborate set pieces at his house for Halloween ...usually involving some kind of vehicle that's been hijacked by an animatronic skeleton and a crow. Last year he built a train that looked like it smashed through his house!

Saturday Morning Sketch #4

Flowers are really fun to paint. If you've got a good underlying structure, and you make good colors choices, you can be incredibly loose and they'll still read as flowers.

Saturday Morning Sketch #3

My family and I spent a few weeks in Italy last summer. There's so much art there - it's impossible not to be inspired. Of course I shot tons of pictures! Here's a painting based on one of them.

Once again, I painted this using Corel Painter. Though I do most of my work in Photoshop, for getting the look of oil paint, Painter still can't be beat.

(No, I didn't paint the entire thing this morning. Most of it, I painted the other night...but I finished it today.)



Here's my lay in...after about an hour of work. One of the nice things about digital painting, is you can keep the early versions of paintings. Often, the under painting is just as interesting as the final product.

Saturday Morning Sketch #2

Here's another quick Saturday morning painting sketch. This one's based on a photo I took from a helicopter somewhere over New Zealand. Most of you know that I worked as an Art Director on the Lord of the Rings. But I also had the great fortune of being in charge of the Scenic Photography Unit. We did most of our work from a helicopter. Actually, two helicopters (but who's counting?) By far the coolest gig I've ever had! Needless to say, I shot a lot of pictures (sadly, before I got a digital camera.)

Saturday Morning Sketch

Here's a quick sketch I did in Painter yesterday morning while I was waiting for my family to wake up. Painter's insanely overcomplicated, but there's a few things about it that I love - like their "Oil" brushes. Not the new ones from version 10, which are clunky...but the original ones. My favorites are the brushes called "Smeary Round" and "Smeary Flat". What's cool about them is that they can apply color and smear color in the same stroke. No changing tools. Something Photoshop can't do...as far as I know.