This was a commission I got to show the final scene in a D&D Campaign, this is the most grand scale painting I’ve ever worked on and every new picture brings new challenges, this one brought a horde of challenges. I haven’t worked so seriously on clouds, mountains, war, and especially … lava. I looked through quite a lot of pictures to see how it cools as it gets further from the source and reveals its brightness in the cracks where it can continue to push out. There’s no easy way to portray armies so tiny in scale, I suppose people never draw them that way for a reason. In the end I strived to make a colourful and mood setting picture, rich in texture.

I recently did an illustration commission to be used as a book cover for “I’ve Become a Mother-in-Law Just Shoot Me Now!” by Holly Enslen (still in the making). The objective was a caricature rendering of Holly herself in front of a target, fearful for the relentless onslaught of mother-in-law stereotypes coming her way. I like the style it was done in as I didn’t use the dark outlines I normally would. It’s done with vectors since I was unsure of the potential applications and this will be easily editable for anything!

I have recently worked with Sean Potts to design and build the new website for Village of Empress. The vintage and rustic collage elements really bring out the feel of the village, situated on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. I utilized as many elements as I could think of to make it like a functioning shadowbox, the client provided excellent pictures for me to work with and I love how the collage elements and photos work together.

I did this as a birthday present for my grandmother, she likes this old western actor – a lot. It was a four hour session shrunk into 5 minutes, it kind of shows my process but I wouldn’t say it was done properly. For example, I like to set all the semi-dark tones then build up the lighter layers but I was kind of all over the place here. While you’re here you might as well subscribe to my Youtube channel!

So I’m pretty excited for Godzilla 2014 and also inspired because I really wanted to make a picture featuring a monster of epic size. This gives me an opportunity to use atmosphere perspective and surrounding elements to emphasise the size. I started with a small thumbnail to work out composition and lighting and developed it as I ran into problems. There’s a big difference between the 1998 Godzilla who’s more like a leaning forward dinosaur and the 2014 Godzilla who, as far as my research goes, is reflective of the old school Godzilla design where he’s walking more upright. Originally I wanted his hands on the floor so his tail would be flung up but then he looked really small. Some of the changes I did was putting his tail down going behind a building (on the right side, I will probably lower it because it conflicts with the teeth) and I turned his head to show the silhouette of the teeth. The major focus I want is on the teeth where there’s strong contrast and the spikes on his back with the tail being a subtle thing to emphasise his size once the viewer notices it.

This is kind of a new process for me, normally I do linework where I fill in colours and shade on their locked layer or I do a sketch and merge it with background colours and blend it. This developmental process is kind of a mess but I like how it’s going, it’s important to start the picture really small and work your way in so you don’t lose track of the overall thing. Only recently have I tried to use composition, lighting, balance and contrast to make a picture more interesting and I’ve been much happier with my work since I started doing that. I don’t have much real experience in epically sized monsters, scaled or pointy creatures, or cityscapes – especially destroyed ones, so this will be challenging as always. It seems like I’m getting totally new experiences for almost every picture I do.

This will probably have very slow progress, the thing about keeping a blog of your work is that I want to spend more time doing work than talking about it but I did want to get around to tutorials and demonstrating different processes.

Logo design I did for Trent Klimosko for his consulting business, a bulldog holding a pipe wrench and a sledge hammer with a rig in the back. The rig would have been the trickiest part since there is no compositionally good way to fit in such a shape. The negative shapes created by a rig are very recognizable, at least to people where around where I live, and giving it some perspective creates a nice filler background for the dog to sit on while doing the job.

I started this picture more than a year ago and decided I didn’t want a bunch of unfinished pictures so I started here. Difficulty level: lots. I learned so much going through this, if I can incorporate those lessons into newer pictures I’ll save myself so much time!

This was added to my illustration section and the full wallpaper is available for download on my Deviantart.

Some time ago I did a commission for some graphics to be used in printing on apparel, the left is a front pocket and the right is a full back. I had thought painting it digitally would make it look nice but for the application being so large I decided vector would be best and have a nice effect. Vectoring a motorcycle motor was pretty challenging but I used some simple tricks of overlapping and radial gradients to create an illusion.

This is a commissioned logo I did a while back, the idea is a weathered warrior going from realm to realm, travelling on through different experiences. I loved the opportunity to do something that conveys such a feeling, something bold and illustrative.

A friend of mine, Chelsea, has a daughter who liked the Ariel sketches I did (from this blog post) and is a fan of the Little Mermaid so I created a digital painting of her as her own mermaid with the dressings of Ariel. I finished this in less than two days (Hearthstone games included) and I’m really happy with how it all turned out and each part posed their own challenges and I love it! See the full thing on my illustration page.