Digital Illustration Master Class 14 & 15 April

Hi all - just wanted to give those if you in the Wellington area a heads up regarding the White Cloud Worlds 2 day Digital Illustration workshop coming up this weekend, at Massey College of Creative Arts. Paul Tobin and myself will be teaching the fundamentals of creating illustrations using Photoshop, and giving away a few of the secrets we've both learned from many years in the business.

It's a fun, informal way to get some one-on-one tuition from a couple of seasoned industry professionals, and there are still a couple of spots left. You can enroll here!

Also this weekend, Ben Wootten is taking a 2 day Traditional Sculpting for Creature Design workshop, also at Massey. There are a couple of spots available in this class, too, and it should be a blast for those of you who'd like get to grips with the entire process of creating a design maquette.

Might see you there!

Engineer redux

Hey there, and happy new year!

I couldn't help myself – I've always disliked the way I rendered the face in this painting of my engineer character, and lately it just got too much to ignore. To me it always made her look a bit severe, or undernourished, which wasn't the look I intended with the original line drawing.

So – as if I didn't already have enough to do – I went and changed it, didn't I:

I padded out her cheekbone, softened the jaw-line slightly, gave her a little more colour, and did another pass over the whole face with a brush to smooth things off a bit. I think the new version is definitely an improvement. She now looks more like the character I've had in my head for so long.

For interest, here's a comparison of the original pencil drawing, the original painting (centre), and the new version:

Thanks for stopping by!

Spectrum Exhibition

Hey there - I was a bit chuffed to be told on the weekend that one of the pieces (above) I painted up for Christian Gossett's The Red Star: Sword of Lies has been included in the Spectrum Exhibition, currently on at the Museum of American Illustration in New York City.

Pencils by the inimitable Chris Gossett, digital paintin' by me.

Image copyright Christian Gossett.

Some dude

Hi there - this is a piece that I've never really finished, and at this point I'm not really sure that I ever will. It started life as a pretty awful pencil drawing, progressed into quite an average digital painting, and then enjoyed a new lease of life when some time later I worked back into it, adjusting proportions, repainting surfaces etc.

I now quite like it as an image, but I'm still not really sure what it is... I guess just one of those paintings I did along the way...

The Red Star: Sword of Lies wins IPPY gold medal

That's the 13th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards! Me and some of my former Weta colleagues handled the digital painting on this book, and had a blast doing it. Nice to have taken part in such a high quality publishing venture... Congratulations, Christian and The Red Star!

Hello Internet - it's me, Stephen.

Hi there. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome myself to the ancient art of the blog.

Welcome, Stephen.

Better late then never, right?... or maybe not? Why waste what little time I have on posting my stuff up here where people may or may not take time out of their own busy lives to glance at it?

I don't have an answer for that yet... mayhap I never will. So, I'm just going to go ahead and do it anyway, and see what happens. Suck it and see, as they say.

Here's a picture I made quite a while ago now... The first illustration I did based on a character from my graphic novel concept:

Those that know me will be going "Jeez - he's STILL thrashing that painting?"

Well... yeah.