Tiny Story #1

The Peacemaker

Salo stepped off the train shortly after dawn. Black-bellied clouds pushed the sun’s wan light toward a boggy green. He was alone in the station except for the three men he believed had been left two days down the tracks. Salo took up all of his six and a half feet as he weighed the disheveled mongrels huddling under their dusters. Apparently “fair and square” meant nothing to them.

“Give us our money, mister,” said the sloucher on the right.

“Royal flush. It’s my money,” replied Salo in a voice as dusty as the streets waiting for the clouds to open above them.

“Think three forty-fives to your one says it ain’t, son,” snarled the middle man as he hunkered farther into his coat.

“Dangerous thoughts, boys.”

The trio spread out slightly. Their fingers teased the air around pearl pommels. The breeze tugging at dusters was the only other movement. Then the steam whistle screamed. Blue-finish barrels cleared their leather and four shots boomed for dominance. The echoes faded off and the breeze died down before Salo limped away to the general store for some 80 proof and gauze.

Fin.

Cheers,
~D

(I would love to have some "voiced" thoughts. Any seasoned authors out there?)

Tiny Stories Intro

Hello everyone. As some of you may or may not know, I have a strong fascination/mild obsession with storytelling in the form of the written word. So I have been sitting at home, staring out the window, drinking coffee, homemade smoothies, pacing and internalizing, wracking my brain for how I might acquire more facility with the medium. And then the obvious answer leaped out from under my desk. Something I’ve always known, but often forget when it is convenient, and now I will share it with you and you will have access to the “do it” button! The method behind all my years of training as an artist summed up and passed on to you. All those tenebrious, incorporeal, vexatious mysteries will finally be parted and the skies shall clear:

The more you “do it”, the better you will be.

If you “draw” for 4 hours a day, but you want to get better quicker, then “draw” for 6 hours a day, or 8 hours, or more (you can inject your own subject of course).

That is the ultimate shortcut to success and masterful skill. What does this mean? What is the stock that it all boils down to? I need to write more. I love the short story as a vehicle for storytelling because every word needs to be quite deliberate, and it is a medium with limited exposure these days except to those that already love shorts, usually other writers and lit-interested folks. But, for our purposes, let us refer to these as tiny stories rather than short stories, just to keep everything on the up the up. This particular endeavor is more about the journey than the destination. I really haven’t a clue where we will end up. My attempt is going to unfold thusly: A tiny story every other day. It might be one sentence, it might be a paragraph, it might be a page, but I will start small, as it is harder to tell a full story in a shorter amount of time. This will also force me to be concise with my concepts and how they unfold and the words that I choose to relay them. This is parallel to sketching. It is the writing equivalent to doing gesture drawings. Hopefully I will not bore anybody too much. And don’t worry, this does not mean the end of the actual sketches, paintings, drawings and illustrations. They will make appearances too. For now, stay tuned for the first Tiny Story.

Cheers,
~D

"Sneak Peak"

Here is a sneak peak at a couple illustrations for "Dakota Rawhide, Book 1"! I hope you enjoy ;)

Cheers,
~d

"Dakota Rawhide, Book 1" Preview!!

Hello everybody!
I have posted a preview of Dakota Rawhide Book 1: "Genus: Panthera" part 1 0f 2 over at the D/L home:

ArtDL.com

So please feel free to click on over and check it out. There is some mature content in the preview in the form of adult language, so don't say I didn't warn you! I'll hear no belly-aching over it since you will have read it of your own volition. So! I hope you enjoy it. The full book will be available first at the San Diego Comic Con in July, so come on by the Tangled Dreams booth and pick yourself up a copy. If you can't make it, I will keep you all posted on how you might be able to get your fingers on a copy of your very own.

Cheers,
~d

"Dakota Rawhide, book 1" Cover update... minor change.

Okay, one more change to the cover... just added a nice texture in the background to tie it to the design of the interior... which I will have a preview of soon! I promise! Just a little more work on it and I'll post something for all to enjoy :D

Cheers,
~d

"Dakota Rawhide, book 1" Cover & WC's!

At long last, though unbeknownst to my viewers/readers... the cover to "Dakota Rawhide, book 1"!! It is a short story that I have been working on for some time; the first in a series of short stories actually. They will revolve around Dakota aka Miss "Rawhide", as she does her best to avoid the Law and Hunters that are after the hefty reward if they can aprehend her and turn her in. Confrontations and quick thinking see fit to lead Dakota on adventures spanning the twelve moons of Andromeda IX, rough and tumble towns that harken back to the American Old West and, perhaps, even the central planet itself!! Stay tuned for a preview of "book 1", coming soon. The book itself will be available first at San Diego Comic Con in July, so come down to the beautiful Gaslamp District and get your copy in just 3 months!!



And these are some watercolors I did for my friend James Willis. They are for his album cover, so keep an eye out! ;)

Cheers,
~d

More Alla Prima

Here is an alla prima painting I did a couple days ago. I'm pretty happy with it. If you saw the one from last week, which you will not, you would understand. It was painful, but this one made me pretty happy.

Cheers,
~d

"Rawhide" Fashion Fin.

Aaaaand we're done!

Cheers,

~d

"Rawhide" Fashion

It's not done by any means, but I like it at this stage, so I figured I'd post it, just because I can. It was done in Painter X, is pretty heavily referenced from fashion photography, and has been mostly about getting comfortable drawing on the computer, as it is ultimately more commercially viable.

Cheers,
~d

SmudeGuard

Well, this isn't so much about art, as it is about a great product... and no, it's not that beautiful new Cintiq you see me working on either. Its the SmudgeGuard! An awesome little invention by Miss Jeannie Lit. Originally meant as a guard against smudging graphite and such, in these days of computer painting, it translates perfectly to the computer tablet or tablet PC.


So, I would urge anyone with a Cintiq, and anyone that draws with pencil incessantly to head on over to www.SmudgeGuard.com/ and order one today! Trust me, it's worth it.

Cheers,
~d

Natives and Reference

Here are some Natives of the Lifeless Forest. Creepy-ish Natives at that...



And some referenced drawings. Just brushing up on... whatever might need brushing up on anatomically, as well as working on coming up with new shorthands for whatever it is that I do...

Cheers,
~d

Cintac Book UX Pro

So, I have been seriously considering getting a Cintiq UX 20"... I was getting all amped up to purchase it when...
All of a sudden Apple announced the new Mac Book/Pro!!

Well, I thought to myself, they probably didn't include upgrades that would warrant my buying one... however! I checked it out and those brilliant folks over at Apple included a smoking-fast video card, a new and improved design, and they doubled the RAM capabilities!

So I thought it through again. I don't NEED a new laptop, since mine works rather nicely. The decision was eluding me, but luckily, further research showed that the Cintiq requires a DVI/VGA port, and my current Mac Book does not have one... of course I need to double check and make sure there is no kind of adapter before I go and spend $2k+ on a new computer. If there is no adapter, my desicion is made for me. Mac Book Pro first, Cintiq second. We will see how it all turns out...

Cheers,
~d

BttB pt. 3

Well, it's comin' along okay now. I'm not quite so discouraged by my Alla Prima work. Now the main struggle is getting to know my pallet. I took a few colors off of it, and replaced some of them with others. So now it's a matter of seeing what's in front of me and getting used to mixing it with a different combination, effectively seeing colors in a different way. It's a fun struggle. So right now there are parts that feel too muted, and some parts that feel a little muddy, but that already started to change by the end of the day, so I'm not worried.

This guy was awesome! He would sit so still for so long! It was crazy. Great model.

Cheers,
~d

Revelations a la Daniel

Sorry, no pretty pictures on this post, only a revelation... or realization:

With regards to painting, I realized on Wednesday that I am not very good at Alla Prima painting. This, of course, bummed me out for a minute because here I was fancying myself a somewhat competent painter. I suppose I am when it comes to being able to layer and glaze and scumble and finesse, but painting on the spot, it turns out, is a very different skill set. I suppose I could just be happy with what I've got in my arsenal of "talents" but no... I get frustrated when something is more difficult than I thought it would be and then all I want to do is focus on that one thing and master it at least somewhat. This often drives me on tangents that end up coming back around at some point and adding to my repertoire. But that's not the point of this post. As I went through my various colleges, the respective teachers introduced different skill sets in their due time. At that pace I didn't realize how many skill sets had very little to do with one another:

Alla Prima Painting
Plein Air Painting
Refined Painting
Figure Drawing
Figure Invention
Life Drawing
Ad Illustration
Editorial Illustration
Narrative Illustration (sometimes used in Editorial)
Entertainment Illustration
Entertainment Design

... And others that I can't think of right now. At any rate I gotta get to work... I may post more on this a bit later.

Fast forward a day or so...

So, some of the above areas feed into each other, but you can also be really good at a couple of them and be terrible at others. My realization for today, which hit me about an hour ago, is that it makes sense for Alla Prima to be a bit more of a struggle for me as it is a much more direct way of painting. I don't draw very direct either. For some reason the way I tend to see and build an image is to work the entire thing and start to pull out forms and push others back. Not in a random or meandering sort of way though. I usually have a very clear image in my head before I ever begin, and the journey is finding that exact image, or something better. So Alla Prima will be a slightly longer term battle. I would love to focus a lot more on it, but it doesn't pay my bills, so it'll have to sit on a burner towards the back of the bus, while work, a pitch, and refined painting will be filling up the front. C'est la vie.

Cheers,
~d

BttB pt. 2

Okay, so this one was a bit of a challenge because she was so damn gorgeous that it was hard to focus on just getting a nice painting. There are aspects that I like, and aspects that could use some work, but overall I like it for what it is. Next!

Cheers,
~d

Back To The Brush!

So, Maz talked me into sitting in on one of the Portraiture classes at Art Center yesterday, and I am very glad that he did, as I have been wanting to get back to oils for a while now. It was painful at first, as this initial painting will show, though really this one is a complex of my not having painted for 9 months, and a crap model that thought it was okay to text while sitting for a portrait... even after the instructor said there was no texting allowed in his class room... needless to say homeboy isn't comin' back.



Once I warmed up and sat through the second Portraiture class, 10 hours of painting, I loved it! It became much easier. Of course having a good model helps a great deal. I also began getting into some little aspects of lost and found that I have been wanting to play with a bit. So all in all, I'm happy with the results.

And here's a detail so's you can see some brush strokes:

Cheers,
~d

Dakota Sunrise

Back to Rawhide!
So I'm still working on nailing this pose. I like all the sketches so far, but they're not quite as perfect as I want them to be. I figure I'll hold off on finessing them until I'm finished writing the story I'm trying to illustrate, then I'll tackle them full-tilt. I think I'm liking the pose in the first, just as a sketch; the second is just sort of blah and neither here nor there; the third got too focussed on the sexiness and thus got too posed... whoops; but for what I'm seeking, it's really all about the bottom one. The worn-out, sleepy, tired from an all night shoot-out sort of look as she watches the sunrise... yeah. It just feels more natural.

Cheers,
~d

"Nox Custos" details

And here are some higher resolution details for those that enjoy them :D

Cheers,
~d

"Nox Custos" reprise

It's been a busy week between work and my decision to update an old piece. Something I almost never do. I usually prefer to just start something new and learn from old mistakes, but this was a concept that still intrigues me, and I never got to spend the time with that I would have liked. This is the original image:


Then I thought to myself, "Daniel, you grew up at least a little in the forest. Spent a lot of time there looking up at the towering trees, so you know there's a bit more going on than what you depicted. And now that a couple years have passed, why not see what you can do to rectify your past laziness." So I set out to do just that and came up with this line drawing:


And here are the colors so far. It's not finished yet... maybe 80% there, but still needs some tweaks and some little additions. So we'll call this a WIP:

[EDIT] After a little tweaking tonight, I'm calling it done. I guess it was further along than I thought. :)

Cheers,
~d

More DDSC!!

Let's hear it for Drink & Draw!... Even if it did take me a bit to warm up after a full few days of drawing beasts and beast slayers...

Mmmm... That's much better...

Cheers,
~d

DDSC Coasters...

Almost forgot. A couple little beer coasters from the Drink & Draw Social Club session last night. Stylistic indecision on my part last night after spending the day in front of Photoshop.

Cheers,
~d

Dakota Rawhide Apparel

I'm stickin' with the Red/Black motíf, but reversing it this year. 2008's shirts will be black ink printed on red, American Apparel jersey T's. Depending on how they do at Comic Con, I may get more printed up, and I may do girls' shirts as well, but for now, this is it. I'll model the actual shirt when they arrive ;) Of course the design should conjure up images of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West", and you should perhaps have the droning, minor tones of a harmonica ghosting through your mind...

Cheers,
~d

"Rawhide" Tayler (revised ed.)

I kept the same motif as the previous one, just updated the figure and whatnot. I feel like this one gives just a little more sense of her, or at least fains a connection with her ;) Now, it's on to the next image.

And here is the stand-alone figure... just for the hell of it:

Cheers,
~d

Dakota's Lines

I've been doing a little fine-tuning on Dakota Tayler, so this is the new character poster. She will still have her sunglasses, just not in this image. Anyway, I will paint it up tomorrow. Figured I'd post the line drawing for those that like that sort of thing.

Cheers,
~d

Dakota Sunset

You won't normally catch me rendering like this in pencil, but I wanted the graphite to do most of the work as far as values are concerned, and the Photoshop will do the coloring... well, I will do the coloring IN Photoshop. This is a promo-poster concept I'm fleshing out for Rawhide Tayler aka Dakota. The first is the thumbnail sketch, 'bout 4" tall (big thumbs), the second is the main drawing, 'bout 12" tall. I'll keep posting the progress as it happens...


She looked a bit on the tall side in the thumbnail, so I had to shorten her, as she's not supposed to be tall in the stories: 5'4"-5'5"...

Cheers,
~d

The Medley Continues...

I spent most of the day wrapping my head around this concept of "Rawhide Tayler" and wondering if, outside the episodic, singular short stories, there should be a larger vein connecting it all... well I didn't come to any conclusion down that road, but I managed to get a few more sketches done... ideas and visions are beginning to coalesce in my head. Hopefully I can reveal them before too long ;)

Cheers,
~d

Rawhide medleys

So I haven't gotten to that painting of Sharon yet, but I did manage to sketch a couple of things yesterday. After not having touched a pencil in about 3 weeks, it was somewhat rough warming up again, but not quite so rough as I might have thought... and that's positive. So here are some more Rawhide medleys. I've also been working on short stories based around her... so I might, MIGHT, post something of that here... we'll see.

Cheers,
~d

Sharon (process 1)

And! As promised, a new piece. This is the drawing for my latest portrait, sitting beautifully on its wood panel. Pray I don't f#@k it up. 24"x36" charcoal pencil.

Cheers,
~d

Sketched Panoply (continued)

Oh I'm so neglectful!! Blog Protective Services should come and take my baby away! Though I would draw my Heron Mark sword and fend them off! (Who's a dork?) Anyway, here are some more sketches... unfortunately, they are not new. Just more that I haven't posted yet. Outside of sketching for work, which I cannot show here, I haven't been doing any visual art. I've mostly been reading and writing a bit. But I decided that today is a great day to pick up my pencil once more and scratch away at my clipboard... But for now, enjoy some more oldies ;)

Cheers,
~d

Sketched Panoply

As I was looking at my poor neglected blog, I thought of my vast panoply of sketches I could post, but haven't. So, I figured I might as well. This is by no means the bulk of, or even a quarter of, what I have done in the last few months, but it's some of them. I don't think I've double posted any, and if I have... well we are all adultish here, I'm sure we can cope.

Cheers,
~d