Not long ago, I finished making a zine of collected art for my latest conventions. The Good Dog Sketchbook and the Black Cat Sketchbook are a collection of various dog and cat related ink drawings I’ve made in the past and the present.
Continue readingThis is a short process article about how I draw my Dragon Knight Copic Marker illustration in five hours at Sablecon back in October 2023!
This a throwback to an older Copic Marker style that I rarely use but I can give you insight into the five hour process I spend drawing between sales and conversations with guests
Continue readingMy workload keeps slipping as I’m flopping between making new art, promoting old art, learning about art, and making posts about art. With the time crunch, I can’t let it bring me down.
Continue readingOne month left in 2022! Time has flown fast for me! I’ve been trying to stuff as many of my art projects into the month as I can while keeping my sanity!
The first big thing I can say in November is that there’s now a new website for Blackmask and news of its development! This is a large task that’s been taking up my time. Even if I’m getting things down on this website, there’s still much to learn about self-promotion.
I will say to join the Blackmask Mailing List! It’s a direct way to get news of our progress without missing any of my posts due to algorithms. Now that the website is set up, it’ll be less confusing for anyone who’s been following my website and getting unrelated news.
Continue readingSir Peer Keely is a royal knight of the Kingdom of Seraplume. Together with the mighty Blade Wing Knights, the plucky bungling budgie hero dedicates his life to protecting the Kingdoms of Sopranado from the rising menace of Sky Piracy!
This is a blog post about my process of drawing my bird knight illustration. It was a struggle, but I pushed myself to complete my art piece. After several months of self-doubt, I finished this Bird Knight Illustration. I juggled this drawing between the Procreate App and Clip Studio Paint to complete this artwork.
Continue readingI’m announcing the launch of the new website for Blackmask and news of its development! There, you can follow my new of Blackmask specifically without needing to wait for me to even mention if I’m actually working on the game or not.
Articles on development, story tidbits, and other related info will begin on this website, then span out to the other social sites. Mailing List features will also be available as soon as I can arrange it, so you can keep up with updates!
I couldn’t finish one of my commissions by the time Anime Central ended. So I needed to finish this two-character piece at a later date and mail it to my client! With this, it gives me a short opportunity to tell you about my Copic Marker technique for this piece.
This commission is for ToastyGhostey’s OCs and Az and Miko. I dig the art style, and it was a nice challenge to figure things out with my markers. ToastyGhostey told me that I didn’t have to draw AZ’s helmet, but I took that as a challenge. Do I regret it? No, this was still great.
I start with a Mignola-inspired ink drawing using a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, Pentel Tradio Stylo Pen, and drying Copic 0.3 Multiliner. I was hoping it would be fast enough, but I got sloppy on my Bristol Board.
After letting the ink dry for the rest of the night, I began the color layering with my Copic Markers. Starting with E35S Chamois, BV00S Mauve Shadow, B12S Ice Blue, YR21S Cream.
Next, I fill in Miko’s first jacket with YR18S Sanguine. I should’ve used a lighter red marker since the color is too orange compared to the refs. I pressed forward to avoid my perfectionism. Likewise, I also took the time to add Y18S Lightning Yellow trim to Az’s jacket.
Then I needed to layer more colors to darken Miko’s fists. I tried using E15S Dark Suntan and Mauve Shadow. Then added V06S Lavender, but it wasn’t enough. Using an N2S Neutral Grey 2, I dulled the stone color down.
I realized that messed up a detail for Miko’s Jacket. Failing to notice the small patch on her Jacket from her refs until after I colored it. With a Colorless Blender, I attempted to clear away the color to the best of my ability. Time to add in the YG03S Yellow Green in the eyes and a 0.3 Pentel Arts Hybrid Tech Pen for smaller details.
Continuing on, I layer more color with V09S Violet and B39S Prussian Blue to darken Az’s coat and pants.
Finally, use the E27S Milk Chocolate to darken the wood of Az’s rifle and antlers.
After all this, I add a smidge of Ice Blue for shadows and complete Miko’s jacket with Lighting Yellow trim! All that’s left is to message my client to get their approval, and mail the sucker off in an envelope!
This is a sloppy explanation of my process. This gives me a good idea to make a formal article about Copic Markers. Heck, I’ll try to make a video about it!
I’m still open for commissions and so if you want a commission for yourself, check out my Commission page to get some cool unique art from me!
This month has been my most successful month of the year saleswise for my art! Anime Central was this month, and it’s a huge one! It’s a good sign that can sunset my time at my day job to take a big plunge into full time art. But I’m sure this is wishful thinking.
The month of March has been mild. The most I can say is that I celebrated my birthday and trudged forward on small art projects.
As of the 3rd of March, I turned 30 years old, and I’m trying not to get crushed by the anxiety of aging. I covered it up by having dinner with my family and buying myself an iPad and Procreate! Now, I can draw on the go! I’m writing an article about my time with Procreate at a later date.
On April 8th, I’ll be at the College of DuPage Convention answering questions and selling art! There, I’ll be selling the finally printed Pizza Man book! So if you’re in the Northern Illinois area, stop by and grab a copy with my stickers as well!
The week after, I’ll be at the Schaumburg Library Convention on April 16th.
I have a big thing planned in the summer later this year! I’m preparing some of my art for something I’ve never done, before. So, I’ll keep you in the know once everything is arranged!
Most of my art time has been occupied with writing Blackmask as a story. My focus is split between re-editing existing ideas for the demo story and the big narrative of the entire game.
My personal hope for Blackmask’s main quest is that players can choose a level toplayin any order they want, Mega Man style. A connected Metroidvania-style world or an Open World is tougher to design without ballooning the scope even more.
My programmers and I check in on each other in our messages. We’re both doing our best to keep going during our bigger commitments. Adam’s tackling enemy AI next, as there’s not much left to do with Cole’s abilities for now.
I’ve been doing tiny website tasks to streamline my websites stuff. The Art Page now has all my art on it instead of having separate pages for each category of art I make. If it ends up making loading issues a pain, I change it back, but right now I want my archive front and center
There’s more blog articles in my back burner that I want to finish up, such as my tutorial series on making Incident at the Game Store. There are other articles that I want to write when I make the time.
I’m struggling to keep my focus on one specific art task. I keep dipping so much into different shit that I can’t choose an art direction for myself. My schedule is a loose cloud of “what is currently unfinished that I could finish now?” on my project list.
It doesn’t help that I keep falling into that trap of posting on my socials to say I’m alive on them. My game stuff is in my programmer’s hands. I’m messing about, sketching, and procrastinating on writing a game story. Am I busy or making up meaningless tasks for myself? I need to improve my personal project management skills.
The status of Blackmask is the same as it’s been so far. There are tiny updates working on specific mechanics, like projectiles and stealth.
Continue reading