Attack Dogs for Call of Cthulhu

I saw this was recently released. It was a lot of fun to put my dogs to work for the reference shoot. While the name of the card is Attack Dogs, the description was more about a hunter and his dogs finding a mysterious footprint. The card pack is based in Greece so my hunter ...

Demo of David’s Eye

One of the fantastic projects I work on is the online workshops with Awesome Horse Studios. Most of our content revolves around live streaming digital techniques. As a painter I had been craving a solution to streaming content of me painting traditionally. At the moment a video camera is not in my budget. I did ...

Stormtrooper Studies

In December I was able to get a Stormtrooper into my Figurative Illustration Workshop. We had a “blast”! I had some need for the reference for a current job and thought it was the perfect opportunity to really wrap the workshop around a current job. It seemed to be a real hit with the group.

Podcast Episode 35 – WordPress

Episode 35; we discuss our love for WordPress. We talk about some great templates that are best for an illustration portfolio that keeps the Art Directors happy. We tell you our favorite host to run that site as well too. Joining in on the conversation was Aaron Miller, Marc Scheff, Madeline Matz, and special guest Tim Piotrowski. ...

The Toy Hunter – January Schedule

The theme this month is Kisma, Toy Hunter. Those cute, cuddly, soft, and fuzzy creatures are dangerous and need to hunted down. Figurative Illustration Workshop Friday January 20 hosted @ Platform Studios 6:00 pm – 9:30 pm 1821 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 304 Chicago, IL 60622 $20 cash or credit. If you have any questions ...

Plein air on Christmas Day

While the family was preparing Christmas dinner I went out in the back yard and painted for a bit. I had just gotten an umbrella that attaches to my easel set up to help block the sun so I could paint from any angle.  

Mound of Corpses

Thomas Hart Benton Maquette

  I went to the Milwaukee Art Museum for my birthday. What a great museum! One of the things that I did not expect to find was a bit of process in the collection. They have a maquette that Thomas Hart benton used for his painting Cotton Weighing. What a find! I am very intrigued ...

God Jul!

Every Christmas as a kid we had one of these funny looking straw goats around the tree. It was something I always loved but never actually knew what it meant. While on a shopping trip to Ikea i spotted the Yule Ram and had that feeling of reminiscence flood over me. I just had to ...

ImagineFX Sketch Jam Feature

My Figurative Illustration Workshop highlighted in the January 2012 issue of the amazing ImagineFX magazine. I just really wanted to thanks all the folks who come out to the workshop and to Platform Studios whom hosts us and of course all the models too!   Clicking the image should link to the hi-res one for ...

The Ballad of Santa Claus

  A project that I’ve been working on finally has been released. A fun spin on Santa Claus and filled with little illustrations along the way. And it’s only 99¢! So..get one!

Arcane Balance

Figurative Illustration Workshop: December schedule – Stormtrooper

Figurative Illustration Workshop: December schedule – Stormtrooper. A stormtroper will be invading Platform Studios for this months FIW. I’ve also added a non-spammy newsletter signup. Follow the link for more info!    

10 Networking Ideas

  On Jon Schindehette’s ArtOrder blog post about networking he asks for 10 ten suggestions to an aspiring artist who asked about networking. I’ve put together 10 ideas from my own experience. I think these would help anyone starting out with their career in this field. If you have some other ideas I’d love to ...

Swan Song

Painted for a charity event; Pottery Barn presents Picture a Cure for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. If you live in the area the event takes place Dec. 8 @ 7pm at the Lincoln Park Pottery Barn. It will be available for sale that night only! here’s a link to the flyer: This gave me ...

Japanese Camellia

The Plein Air Painters of Chicago met at the Garfield park Conservatory one Saturday morning and I was glad to have made it out. Painting in the conservatory made it a little easier to spend more time on the subject with the light staying a little more constant since it was filtered through the glass. ...

FIW 6 – Spearwoman

At the last Figurative Illustration Workshop we drew and painted the Spearwoman. I was totally inspired by my friend, Felipe Echevarria. He has a book of Spearwomen paintings that I just love. Thankfully our model was just as excited about the project as I was. It wasn’t nearly as involved as the zombie makeup but ...

Figure Study No. 214

Oil on panel. 12×9 inches. So, I finally made it back to the Palette & Chisel to one of their 3 hours open sessions. It was great. I haven’t had the opportunity to paint a model from life for 3 hours in a very long time. I’m really looking forward to going back.

Critique over Livestream with Awesome Horse Studios

Tonight we crit this piece by a young lady who goes by V-LKRY on conceptart.org, a Blind Deaf Acid Spitter. I wanted to keep as much of her idea as possible and just focus on a better image overall concentrating on value and color. The download should be available soon on the Awesome Horse Studios ...

Merlin’s Blessing