Shadowhunter's Codex

I was privileged to join a number of extremely talented artists who created work for the newly-released Shadowhunter's Codex, an illustrated guide to the world of author Cassandra Clare's series, The Mortal Instruments. I illustrated a number of demons,  monstrous beings, magical objects, etc. for the book and I had a blast working with the book's co-author, Joshua Lewis. Over the next few days, I'll share some of my work from the book here. Since it's Halloween today, it seems appropriate to kick things off with a couple of demonic entities, Abaddon and a creature I whipped up from one of the darker corners of my own imagination. I'm not yet sure what it's called in the book but as I worked on it, I just thought of it as a "mouth demon", a voracious entity that will eat any living thing (but naturally prefers people).

I've included the preliminary sketches as well. Happy Halloween!

The book is available online and at bookstores nationwide. Please check it out!

Mars Attacks!

This summer, I had the pleasure of working on the new set of cards for Mars Attacks! I'm a big fan of the wild, lurid art on the original Mars Attacks trading cards released in the 1950s so this was an exciting project for me. The work in the set is all painted using traditional materials so these illustrations are painted in acrylics. However, the deadline was a bit tight so to save time, I did a bit of digital re-touching and modification in the images above just to pull the final art together.

Stylistically, I tried to paint like myself while also capturing some of the style of the original Mars Attacks art so hopefully, that comes through. The great Earl Norem, who also did some work on the set and who has done some excellent Mars Attacks paintings over the years, was an inspiration as well.

The new set is called Mars Attacks: Invasion and it should be available this month!

Inktober Day #3

I drew this little dragon for the 3rd day of "Inktober". I need to switch bristols. I tried a new one but it bleeds too much and it's holding back my line. Nevertheless, I hope you'll like this drawing. The character was fun to create.

Inktober

Artist Jake Parker and some of his friends have started a tradition known as "Inktober" in which artists are encouraged to celebrate the wonderful medium of ink by doing an ink drawing every day. I like the idea and I love ink so I'm participating. Here are my first two Inktober drawings.

Both drawings were done with a crowquill pen and india ink on bristol board. The originals are for sale. Please contact me if you're interested.