A sneak peek at part of the preliminary sketch for a new piece I’m working on.

I’ve been getting a lot of commissions for tattoo designs lately, and I really enjoy them. Tattoo design is not something I ever set out to do, but I think my style works for it, and I really love the ideas my clients come to me with!

The latest design that I finished was for a chest piece. The client requested a pair of branches with cherry blossoms. On one of the branches would be a birdcage with an open door, and on the other branch would would be a bluebird that was partly mechanical, with a clock key in its back.

These are the three sets of concept sketches that I drew for the design.

 I always like to try to guess which sketch my clients will pick. (They say your client will always pick the one you hate…so my solution is to NEVER hand over a sketch I hate) and in this case it wasn’t the one I expected – it was the one where I thought I was deviating a little from the brief and going a little wild in designing the branches. I’ll do that sometimes – I always turn in an adequate number of concepts that stick to the requested design. But if I get an inspiration for something that veers off in a slightly different direction but looks really awesome, it doesn’t hurt to sketch it out. If the client or art director doesn’t like it, oh well. But they might love it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The next step was to a do a cleaned up sketch with clearer details.

There weren’t many revisions in this job. I offered a few choices of color palatte, a couple of different styles for the bars of the birdcage, and a couple of revisions were done on the mechanical parts that were added to be bird (which you don’t get to see progress of, since they weren’t done in neat stages, they were haphazardly laid on top of the sketch using tracing paper and Photoshop)

After the sketches were finished and apparoved, I scanned them, printed them in blue, and inked them. I do most of my inking traditionally with Microns because it’s faster than I can do digitally, but some of the bird’s mechanical parts and part of the birdcage was inked in Photoshop.

And finally, the full color piece, which you can check out a larger version of in my new tattoo art gallery:

This species of octopus is still under investigation. More information to follow…

I recently visited the aquarium and exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. They hold a weekly ‘happy hour’ event in the evening that is adults only, and you can buy drinks and cocktails to take around the museum with you.

I took my sketchbook around instead. It was awkward to draw because there were very few places to sit and still have a view of any exhibits, so I only ended up with a single page of sketches.

I liked the albino alligator a lot. Unlike the fish, he was sleepy and still. Even that starfish I doodled moved around more than he did. And the gazelle thing didn’t count, because it was taxidermied.

I recently sent my portfolio to WotC, and the AD that got back to me had a link to his very very useful art blog, ArtOrder in the sig line. Well, I’m bound and determined to keep a visible presence ’round WotC ’til I land me some work. They have an ongoing weekly concept challenge, and the current one just happens to have a prize of a commission for one of their magazines. The challenge ends on Sunday – it started about two weeks ago and I’m late to the game. So I’ve only got a pencilled line drawing, whereas some of the other entries are full blown beautiful paintings.

But I’m happy with my gruesome little creation. Isn’t that larva peeking up over the rocks just precious?

Media: Photoshop 7

Sometimes when I conceive of a drawing , the entire picture forms as a visual in my mind. I often take this visual and then look for photo references, so that I can get the anatomy correct. In many cases, I can’t find refs for exactly what I’m thinking of, and I end up modifying my original idea to fit.

This was almost one of those cases. I couldn’t find an exact reference, but I also wasn’t happy with any of the sketches I developed from the photos I did find. I ended up scrapping all the refs and just drawing what was in my head, and I think I’m much happier with the results.

And just for fun, here’s the original pencil sketch:

For Kirby Crow, who misguidedly suggested I should draw kittens, and because Kittens Inspired by Kittens is one of the strongest arguments as to why we can’t live without internets.

I burned the crap out of my thumb tonight. I was taking a nearly 4lb steak (to feed two mans with leftovers) out of the broiler (around 500 degrees) and there happened to be a thin spot on the thumb of the pot holder. It went from too hot to cooking in a few seconds. But I didn’t drop the pan and steak, I carefully put it back in the oven while my thumb continued to sear. It didn’t really cross my mind at the time, but dropping the very large broiler pan that was very full of very hot oil and fat from the steak probably would have been worse than just a singed thumb.
I spent the rest of the night just using my left hand while keeping my thumb in a cup of ice water. It still hurts a bit now, several hours later, so I have it wrapped in honey and gauze.

I think I iced it soon and long enough that it won’t blister or anything, it just still feels like it’s burning. And I have to deal with this mass of gauze around my thumb.

I can still draw.

This is my new favorite work safe porn: http://www.littlediggs.com/