I guess December is done, so this is not really topical anymore, but I participated in Ten Paces Mix Tape, where a few artists make an illustration inspired by a song. The song I got was PJ Harvey’s Down by the Water. This is what I made:

(Done in Painter)

So, these are late, but a month or two ago, I did a bunch of patterns for Paper Bicycle’s Daily Pattern Project. Here they all are collected for your enjoyment:

Topic: Storm

Topic: Luxury

Topic: Myth

Topic: Wild West

Topic: Paisley

Topic: Ring

Topic: Owls

So, I am a little behind on posting.  See, I moved to Minneapolis, and all my computer stuff has been a bit tied up…  Good times I guess.

Anyway, I did another round of Ten Paces for the theme of Monsters, or in my case Ghosts. I made two, here they are:

and the other one

Check out all the work here.

Another week, another Ten Paces adventure.  This weeks topic: Musicians.

I got a sketch  from Rachel Dougherty of Mick Jagger for which I made this:

”

And my sketch was of the Residents, check it out Here. Nick Iluzada did a sweet job finishing it.

And coincidentally, the Residents have covered a couple Rollingstones songs, so the whole trade made a weird sense. http://youtu.be/E_nwzeN-cdQ

I participated in my second Ten-Paces swap, and this one was a doosie: Old Folks.  I was given a sketch to complete that made me laugh, and I had no choice but to do it justice and take it that extra mile.  Here is the result in all it’s glory:

This is a digital painting done with Painter.

Here is the original sketch I was given. This was done by the venerable Niki Maro, and a find job she did.

And of course, I also made a sketch which was completed by the talented Alyssa Nassner. Click it to go see both images in their full glory.

*As a side note, I normally consider yellow my least favorite color, but I sure seem to be using it a lot these days… Hmm.

I attempted to make a tree-based pattern for Paper Bicycle’s daily pattern, but it did not work out. However I made these two trees, and thought I’d share. Maybe not inline with my normal stuff, but I like them as doodles.

Fall and summer. There was a winter version too, but it did not work out.

I decided to give one of the oil brush options in painter a try. It is sort of similar to the acrylic one I like. It’s A’Ok.

And a close-up:

I made another thing in Painter. I enjoyed the smeary sponge enough I wanted to use it again. This guy is from a drawing I did when I was working on my John Candies painting, I think it was originally supposed to be uncle buck or something, now it looks like Freddy Krugger’s less-burned slightly fatter brother.

Good times.

You are free to imagine whatever word(s) you want in the word balloon.

Oh, and some detail because maybe you want to see that too.

I decided I should branch out and try to use some of the different brushes offered in Painter.  I really like my wet Acrylic 10 & 30 brushes, but those are two on hundred (not even getting into the custom options).  So, I set out to try some of the other varieties.  These are what I made:

First up: Oil Pastels!

These are weird. The color seems to have some dynamic nature to it, but it made nice texture and was fairly easy to blend.

Here is a detail:

Secondly: Smeary Sponge!

I kind of like these. I started out big and rough and just sort of kept dialing it in a little bit. It allowed for some subtlety and super easy blending. Might be too soft for my tastes, but I only worked on this guy for about 40 minutes, so who knows….

Here is a detail:

Maybe I will do more with more brushes. Like some of the oil brushes, or I might try and create my own…

Here are a couple more digital paintings I did recently for the super awesome art challenge blog. Good times.

This was for the topic of ‘Hairy Situation’

And this is for the topic of Hula Ghoula… So a zombie-ish thing holding a tiki cup. Made sense to me.