Sunday, July 28, 2013

In Progress drawing

The final for this image was posted some time ago, but I never posted the in-progress images to it. I get a lot of emails from people asking to see how things progressed, and quite a few more thanking me for doing so.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Reaching New Heights Magazine

For those of you in the Tricities area of Virginia, just below Richmond, Reaching New Heights Magazine will be hitting your mailboxes The first week of August. As the Advertising Art Director for the magazine, I thought I'd pass their info along. This is their Facebook page, and below is the cover to the first edition.

https://www.facebook.com/SouthOfTheJamesPublishing?ref=br_tf

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Many things that affect you the most are orchestrated by people you never meet.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Doors of Durin

Because I am a Lord of the Rings junkie, I decided to paint the Doors of Durin. Many may recognize this door from the moment in the film where they enter the mines of Moria and Gandalf can't remember the password to get inside. Anyway, the painting is 14x18 inches, oil, and is for sale. Please email me for a price.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Plein Air Study

This is a Plein Air study of the parking lot of John Tyler's Midlothian campus. It was done over the course of a few hours and is a quick 9x12 study. I love these quick, study paintings. They look so cute on the wall.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Book Cover - Completed

This is the completed book cover. Once I finished painting it, the canvas was scanned and downloaded into Photoshop. There, I cleaned up all the lines, enhanced the colors, and adjusted anything that might be out of place. The canvas was done in acrylic, and of course, the main cover on the book was digital. I do not own any rights to the cover of the book. That belongs to the Kingdom Publishing Group, Inc. They're an awesome publishing company based out of Richmond, VA. Their website is www.kingdompublishing.org. You can also google the author's name, Carrolyn Pichet, and pick the cover up at Amazon.com, ebay, Barnes & Noble, or some of the many other book retailers online.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Book Cover

This is a painting I completed for the cover of a book by Carrolyn Pichet. Rarely are book covers completed in a traditional sense like this. Of the 80 book covers I've done, maybe 3 have been hand painted. The rest are completed in Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. I personally do not like doing traditional covers because of the amount of changes the authors usually want. The difference in a painted cover and a digital cover is that a digital cover can be changed with the click of a button. You don't like a red shirt? Fine, blue it is - 'click.' This has to be the only time that I prefer digital over traditional.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Bing Bing - In Progress

Here's my newest in-progress commissioned portrait. An oil painting of Bing Bing, a bird that was rescued from an abusive home. The painting is 18x24