None of my clients, thankfully, have ever done this to me, but there is at least one PDF publisher I know and whose blog I used to read who openly and repeatedly ADVOCATES doing this to artists (which is why I don't read his blog any longer).

The final batch of illos from the noir contract. So that is it for art-sharing from this contract! I don't think I missed posting any of them. Also, I received word earlier today that my cover is slated to grace Fight On! issue #9. I can't wait, and I'll finally be able to share it with you guys! Bonus.

As usual, click below to jump right to the images, or jump directly to my deviantArt gallery.

The Syndicate

The Legion (or the alternate)

The Limelight

I don't like the Legion as much as the other two: it just turned out too rough. I don't know if I was having a bad week or what, but things just didn't seem to click with it. The Syndicate and the Limelight, though? Definitely grooving on both.

Another batch of stuff finished quite some time back: three more illos from the noir contract. As usual, click below to jump right to the images, or jump directly to my deviantArt gallery.

The Fed

The University

The Inquisition

I'm fairly impressed with all three of these. Favorite from this batch is the Inquisition piece, but not by much. Really grooving on all of them.

Even though I have an RPG and a supplement in the works, and others of both on the back-burner, I find I am slowly transitioning myself away from the tabletop gaming scene.

It honestly just isn't giving me what I want (recognition, community, help; ie: like-minded compatriots), and hasn't for quite some time. I knew it wasn't, and I've tried to change things so it did, but no luck, it just hasn't and isn't happening.

Much like going professional in my illustration career, I just can't seem to break in to it. So I'd rather quit now and avoid the whole "burning out on it for five years" which is what happened to me with illustration. Get some distance, find my footing and decide if I'm into it any longer and in what way.

I do plan on finishing the two pieces I have, but then I am most likely done with it for a while. Instead, I'll be switching over to concentrate on fiction writing. I've already started making some inroads there, meeting people, signing up for forums, joining critique groups.

I'm hoping that given one doesn't need people locally to engage in its practice or build a solid community, unlike gaming or game design, I can avoid the problems and issues that come with trying to be a gamer and designer in the middle of nowhere.

We'll see if it goes any better than anything else I've done (or rather tried to do) in my life.

But let's face it, some of us are "Motley Crue", and some of us are "Anvil", and after three spectacular failures that "should not" have happened over the last decade-and-a-half (if things actually worked the way our culture believes they work), and a mental breakdown earlier this year, I just don't have the energy any longer to be the latter.

(If you don't get the reference, look it up.)

These were finished quite some time back and I'm putting them up now. Here's three more of the illos from the contract. As usual, click below to jump right to the images, or jump directly to my deviantArt gallery.

The Institute

The Forge

The Press

I'm OK with these. I really like the Institute piece. I think the shadows on the Forge piece are screwed up, and the posing on the Press still looks funky to me (I've fixed it twice), but I'm not messing with either any longer.

I thought I'd managed to finally kick the depression I'd been feeling since the start of the month, but it's starting to come back. I'm thinking possibly due to the weather: it's been raining for the last three days. Very little sunshine.

I think the other part is that the money just didn't stretch this month. Our utility bill was so much I couldn't afford the whole thing, and I'm hoping that isn't going to be the case over the rest of the summer. If it is, I'm going to have to think about canceling some amenities -- satellite, phone, cell phone, internet...er, ok, that's ALL the amenities -- just to keep up with it.

I've been taking time out to try and just sit and relax and be in the moment, just de-stress and put a crimp on the moods and anxiety. It's sort-of working. Mainly, I go sit on the front porch in the most comfortable chair in the house and just watch the trees and the wind:



The papasan! We've had the frame for around five years and not had a cushion for it. Finally picked one up a while back and, oh man, so comfy. I napped in it one afternoon when it was warm and the kids were quiet for once.

Also been trying to keep busy. Finished or put finishing touches on two more of the noir pieces, and started another that I'm pretty happy with. Took me forever to decide on the layout for the piece, though. Two left after this.

I've updated The Adventurers image over on my dA gallery. I didn't like the way the legs and the shadows looked, so I fixed them, and added some thicker mist. An alternate mist-less version is also there, just to show off detail.

Two more pieces from the contract as well, and six more on the way as soon as I get them uploaded. And three pieces left to finish.

The Corporations

The Vigilantes

Clicky for bigger at dA.
Comments welcome.

Must be Art Night!

Here's another of the completed pieces for the noir RPG. Just one, even though I have a backlog of illos to show off (there are six other final pieces you haven't seen yet), but I'm waiting on a couple of those as I'm not sure they're finished or I'm not quite happy with them and I there are tiny tweaks I want to make to fix them.

As usual, click on the image to jump right to a bigger version of the image, or go to my deviantArt gallery.


The Adventurers

Today I was able to combine my two favorite pastimes: making art and ranting! This is an LJ icon I made for Jen, in honor of her battle against fandom wank and the deep end of nonsense.

We are amused. And apparently I have amused quite a few people with it. Awesome.



Love you, honey! Use it well. ( ...shield your eyes! over the top inside joke (no pun intended)!.. )

Check out the news over at the Studio on the illustration contest I entered!

Also, why I do I keep having disturbing dreams about eating meat? The night before last, I ate a juicy, succulent steak at the behest of a bad influence, then felt horrid about it. Last night, I choked on a shrimp/lobster while sucking the meat off its tiny bones (yes, I know they don't have bones), and then felt awful.

When I wake up, I feel sick about it, too.

What in Hel?

Gah. Yuck. Blech. I have a spring cold (Oh noes! The SWINE FLU! I smells like bacon!).

I'm kidding about the bacon. Er, and the swine flu.

Haven't felt like watching tv, playing games, or working on anything. Just too weak/tired. Throat is all sore and my face hurts/puffy. Stupid spring colds. Jen's very much under the weather, too, and it's Mother's Day (so send her some love, folks!).

Ordered myself a new keyboard and mouse the other day on the credit card I just paid off (which I will now have to pay off again...poo). Decided to pick up one with backlighting on the keys, so I can see the keyboard better at night. And a spiffy mouse with a cool neon-blue glow strip.

Also, it is weird not being able to scroll on webpages (I disabled the scroll button on my current mouse because it was making computer use exceptionally frustrating).

The art piece I mentioned...I keep swinging between liking it and hating it. It don't think it is my best piece--and it really isn't, very much a historical-me piece, style-wise (and very much late 90's)--but I really like the concept.

Hey! I tied for third place in the S7S remix contest! Woo! Thanks Fred and Chad!

(You can check out all the entries here. Lots of great and creative work.)

Here's my entry for the S7S Logo Remix contest for the Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies RPG. Honestly, this was oodles of fun to do.

I've also popped it up on my dA account, where it looks slightly crisper for some reason. Click the pic to jump there:



The first time I looked at the logo silhouette, I thought TENTACLES! And went the obvious place from there. Tried to give it some of the same elements as the CoC 6th Ed. cover, though I deliberately "mixed it up" a little bit.

Sadly, I couldn't find the cover fonts Chaosium utilizes and so made due with what I have in my personal collection. I think it turned out well.

I also used some names pulled from the S7S wiki for the names on the cover (I hope no one minds), scrounged around LJ a bit looking for Chad's middle initial, and took some liberties with a couple minor details.

Today started with me not being able to stand for longer than five minutes without my legs shaking uncontrollably. But it turned into a much better day. I'm still run-down, but feeling much more like myself than any day prior. Which means: I can do 15-minutes of activity without feeling like I need to lie down for an hour.

I even finished up one of the illustrations today! Yay! Work on them had languished given the hospital stay and the post-hospital "feeling like crap", but Duncan was thankfully very understanding about the situation.

On that note, here's an update: three more of the illos from the contract. As usual, click below to jump right to the images, or jump directly to my deviantArt gallery.

The Kingdom

The Business

The Order

Not sure how much I like the window frames in the Business piece. I'm thinking now I should have tried to do something more 30's-style and old New York architecture.

From lxndr! Comment on this post asking me to do so and I will give you five subjects or things I associate you with. Then post this in your journal and elaborate on the subjects given.

Lx gave me the following topics: art, being offended, orcs (and orx), raven daegmorgan, sorceror

( ...da tings... )
Qwerstions? Arsk!

This very thing is why cultural appropriation is awesome! But I'm sure someone somewhere has a stick up their butt about it.

Those who care about this subject might also be interested in my initial thoughts on the same. Those views haven't changed much, except to add the observation that foes of appropriation, in my experience, have also tended to be champions of restrictive copyrights, cultural segregation ("stick to your own kind" attitudes), and similar tribal-identity and control mechanisms.

A while back, I promised I would put some of these up when I had the chance, so I took some time off from the onerous task of re-doing the work on the illustrations I'd lost to do just that.

The illustrations are up on my dA account for public consumption, and you can either click here to jump to my gallery or use the thumbnails below to jump to each image directly.

The Beats

The Underground

The House of Decadence

Note about critiques for these: as these are the for-print finals, and as I'm pretty aware of the issues with them, you can if you'd like, but I'd prefer not in this case. Of these, I'm the happiest with the Beats, and the least happy with the Underground. I have some mixed feelings on the House of Decadence.

Last night, my machine spontaneously rebooted itself and ate all the illustration work I had done since the weekend. I have backups, thankfully, but I've lost everything since the weekend, and now I find I am having trouble picking myself back up and working on the illustrations again. I look at them and think "DAMNIT. I already DID this." I hate redoing work I've already done.

(...Read More...)

NOTE: I am really unhappy with the way the latest version of Live+Press works. I still haven't figure out how to keep it from posting my drafts to LJ, nor why it keeps posting the whole damn post instead of just the link-y excerpt.