Happy New Year!

Season's Greetings, one and all. I hope your winter was restful, relaxing, and full of family and friends. Here's to the new year, time to kick some ass.

December Doodle Dump

Well, another semester has passed. Time to reflect on what was learned and move forward. But that is for another post. For now, sketchbook pages, and sleep.

Adventure is out there!

-V

Mortimer Falstaff, the Overgrown

Super excited to finally share my Paladin character for Light Gray Art Lab's "Role Models" show. Obviously had a blast with this one, you can check out some of my early sketches from this summer here

I think the D&D alter egos were supposed to be in our likeness but I kind of made Mortimer the physical opposite of me. Big, slow, burly, bearded...hey, a guy can dream. 

Make sure to check out the other entries, some truly breathtaking pieces (some straight up put me to shame...here's looking at you Adam Tan, Allison Strom, Christina Ellis, Gillian Grossman, Henry Christian-Slane, Stacey Lee, Ashley MacKenzie, Dan Matutina, Louise Bagnall, Rachel Suggs, Andrew Olson and so many more...)

buy a print HERE

Revised Heroes' Tale Art

the Explorer

the Corrupted Forest

© Merlino Entertainment

I re-illustrated two of my first cards for Heroes' Tale. It's been almost half a year since I started working with Chris, and in that time I outgrew what are now some pretty embarrassing paintings. 

There are many more cards I would have loved more time on, since I was essentially cranking them out in one day every week over the summer, but I just wanted to take another crack at the biggest offenders before they get mass-distributed with my name on them o__o 

These were both pretty quick and fun :)

Big thanks to Andrew Theo for some clutch help on the Explorer. I've included some gifs for your enjoyment as well.

Top 10: Art of Theros

I can't believe I haven't done this before, but from now on I will share my favorite pieces at the release of every new Magic: the Gathering set. I tried to limit it to one per artist, though most artists on this list had multiple pieces worthy of note. That being said, a top 10 is a very narrow affair, and you should check out the work of Peter Mohrbacher, Jaime Jones, Jason Chan, Karl Kopinski, and many others who worked on this set. Any omissions are for the sake of brevity.

These are the artists and the quality of work I aspire to, and this list serves as a marker of how far I have to go. It is also a reminder of why I love what I do, and will never stop striving to get better.

Welcome to Theros:

10. Defend the Hearth by Raymond Swanland

 

9. Phalanx Leader & Ordeal of Nylea by Dave Palumbo

8. Erebos, God of the Dead by Peter Mohrbacher

7. Abhorrent Overlord & Fleecemane Lion by Slawomir Maniak

6. Hopeful Eidolon by Min Yum

5. Voyaging Satyr & Elspeth by Tyler Jacobson

4. Prognotic Sphinx by Steve Prescott

3. Destructive Revelry by Kev Walker

2. Hythonia the Cruel & Nylea, God of the Hunt by Chris Rahn

1. Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver by Karla Ortiz

Erasing Amyloo

an illustration based on Russell Edson’s poem, “Erasing Amyloo”

(and inspired by my recent purchase of the Art of Brom)

“A father with a huge eraser erases his daughter. 

When he finishes there’s only a red smudge on the wall.

His wife says, where is Amyloo?

She’s a mistake, I erased her.

What about all her lovely things? asks his wife.

I’ll erase them too.

All her pretty clothes? 

…I’ll erase her closet, her dresser—shut up about Amyloo! Bring your head over here and I’ll erase Amyloo out of it.

The husband rubs his eraser on his wife’s forehead, 

and as she begins to forget she says, hummm, I wonder whatever happened to Amyloo? 

…Never heard of her, says her husband.

And you, she says, who are you? You’re not Amyloo, are you? I don’t remember your being Amyloo.

Are you my Amyloo, whom I don’t remember anymore? 

…Of course not, Amyloo was a girl. Do I look like a girl?

… I don’t know, I don’t know what anything looks like anymore…”

As my first fully oil illustration, I would like to further discuss my process and thoughts on this piece in a future post. Stay tuned!

-V

Selfie

This is gonna sound kind of dumb, but before doing this I had kind of forgotten what I look like. It was weird looking at myself for more than 2 minutes, yet strangely therapeutic.

-V

Getting Started

Ringling
Illest of Ill
DPSC ("dipsy")
FEWS (figure sessions)

Animation
Cartoon Brew
11 Second Club
Living Lines Library (model sheets, pencil tests, etc from every animated film you can think of)

Digital Painting (go to DPSC!)
Ctrl+Paint
Feng Zhu Video Tutorials

Fantasy Art
Muddy Colors
Art Order

Figure (go to FEWS!)
Proko
Force
Ron Lemen Videos

E'rybody
Facial Expressions
One1More2Time3
Color Scheme Designer
Living Lines Library yes I included it twice it's that good
Light
Sterling Hundley Illustration technique

Books
Color & Light by James Gurney
that one Andrew Loomis book
all the books

I will update this if I think of any more...

Disclaimer: These are the tools that helped me and this is by no means an exhaustive list. There are hundreds of other free, online resources out there, many that I might never have heard of. In fact, if you find an awesome website, you should let me know :)

<3 Vic

Valley of the Titans

playing with scale, my favorite thing :-P

will post process soon for anyone interested...

-V

Rage

new card art spoiled today: Rage

© Merlino Entertainment

Valley of Titans roughs

roughs for mah finals, about 2 hrs each :P