For this one, I was thinking to myself "You know, there aren't enough movies where animals are zombies instead of just people", so I drew a zombie pig. I had so much fun drawing that, that I figured I'd give him a mutant chicken zombie lord to command him. After that, it was just a domino effect of ludicrous ideas and before long I had a spider-pig and a Chickulu (Chicken + Cthulu!).

With the Emerald City Comic Con coming up and it being my first time doing that whole thing...I just needed something like this to remind me that art doesn't have to be serious all the time.

100% true, one of my best friends told me about this.
He just recently moved to North Dakota and he's currently staying with his cousin until he gets on his feet. His first night there, he had to go with his cousin and some of her friends to the hospital in support of their friend who had a bit of a rough night.

Apparently, she had a little bit too much fun at a party. Naturally, she was completely wasted just like everyone else, but she was also caught having sex with a guy in the bathroom and then caught again with a completely different guy an hour later. After she decided she had enough fun, she decided to wander outside and pass out. The problem is it was during a blizzard...and she was naked. 3 hours later they find her frostbitten to hell and she was taken to the emergency room. She had to have both of her hands, both of her feet and (I'm not kidding) a large portion of her ass removed. Yes, you read that right, they had to amputate her ASS. Brutal!

Obviously, this is a terrible story. But seeing as I'm a jerk and an artist, I couldn't resist the temptation to accept inspiration when it is delivered to me.

Enjoy the doodle!

I'll be sharing the table with my good friend Freedom Drudge, who will also have a wide variety of his own work for sale.

So if you are in the Seattle area, definitely drop by our table and say "Hi!". This will be my first convention ever, so I am excited to show off my art and maybe sell 1 or 2 prints if they happen to strike anyone's fancy. After the show, any leftover prints will be made available for online ordering...but unfortunately I will not have any kind of "cart" system as I am just not set up for that sort of thing. But if you want the prints, they will be obtainable if you aren't able to go to the show.

It's exactly one month away! I hope to see you there.

....and I'm done.

---The Lord of Abominations is HUMWAWA of the South Winds, whose face is a mass of the entrails of the animals and men. His breath is the stench of dung, and has been. HUMWAWA is the Dark Angel of all that is excreted, and of all that sours. And as all things come to the time when they will decay, so also HUMWAWA is the Lord of the Future of all that goes upon the earth, and any man's future years may be seen by gazing into the very face of this Angel, taking care not to breathe the horrid perfume that is the odour of death.---

I didn't really talk about it on my blog, but now that I have had a lot of time to reflect, I should mention that I no longer work at Monolith Productions. Unfortunately, it was one of those things where the project ended, the budgets were made, and they realized they had a few too many people working at the company and I was laid off a little bit before Thanksgiving of last year. It was, as you can imagine, pretty hard at first to deal with. I enjoyed working there and I enjoyed the projects I made with them.

That said, when you make high profile games there is an expectation to work a certain amount. The game industry has been known to have "crunch" and it's inevitable if you decide to work in this industry, but it's even more so if you end up working at a developer with acclaim such as Monolith. As much as I loved working there, know that there is some serious blood, sweat, and tears put into Fear 2 from each and every person on the team, myself included.

Because of that, I don't feel that I was as prolific with my other artistic goals as I wanted to be last year. Happily, the game is good, so it wasn't a waste of time, but when it boils down to it, I only painted 2 paintings last year and I feel that is under what I want to be doing. So, it is for that reason...that I want to personally thank the folks at Monolith for allowing me to be a part of 3 great projects over the course of 5.75 years and most importantly I want to thank them for letting me go. I wouldn't have quit on my own because I liked the people too much, but now that I am gone I feel that I can really focus on my artwork and nothing makes me happier than that.

Anyways, if you liked the first Fear game, you'll like this one too. As unbiased as I can be, I gave it an 8.5 when I played it all the way through.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

The Lord of Abominations is almost here....

Here we are with the start of the body. I'm going for sort of a rhino-ish type of skin type for the whole thing. Basically, I want him to have a humanoid body, but I don't want him to be a softy so it seemed to fit the best considering I didn't want him to have scales all over his body. He's not a dragon, after all.

I also started to pull the colors for the whole piece together a little more. As its turning out, it's very close to my original color palette in my 2nd update. I think it draws your eye to the middle perfectly, which is obviously what I want considering the effort I have put into the entrails.

Anyways, the goal is to be completely finished by the 15th...so updates should be rapid from here until then.

Other than some of the entrails in the lower left portion of the beard, the head is now complete. After adding the dangly, puss-filled tendrils, I went ahead and changed the eye-color back to yellow. When I had originally changed it, I didn't think I would be using all that much yellow so I went with the foggier, undead look. But now I think it all meshes together quite well. I also added lobster-like "plates" around his neck and forehead area just to help tie the crab legs into the head better.

Overall, I feel like it's finally starting to look like a painting. The rest of the body and background shouldn't take me too long at all!

Check back soon!

Today's goal was mostly about getting the saturations and palettes fully under control. Moving forward, I need to be focused on the rest of the details so it was really important to me to get the colors in check once and for all. I think I finally got it the way I like it, and the "noxious gas" looks a little more dreadful instead of something out of the Toxic Avenger. I also finished up the claw mane (finally!) for the most part. I will probably add a few more here and there, but mostly that part is finished.

Except for some of the junk underneath the head is almost done and that is something I am very happy about. I knew going into this that it would be the most detail oriented painting I've ever done and I knew it would take forever. Now that the nastiest part is almost finished, I feel like the rest of the painting will be a breeze to complete in the next couple weeks.

It's a three day weekend....so check back Monday for another update!

The reason for this is simple; It just didn't have any mood. The painting was coming along nicely, but I felt there was zero atmosphere and the entire idea of the "rotten breath" wasn't be conveyed at all unless you read the description. I knew that eventually I would want some kind of mist, so I had the idea to have his breath billowing out of his mouth, covering the land so any who would come near would realize the mistake they had made before they even see the creature. It's actually a lot closer in tone to my original colors from 2nd update, but pushing the saturation just enough in spots to hopefully make certain areas stand out. The little "tendrils" under his head are just a detail I thought looked creepy.

Next update shouldn't be long...I have to get this done in time for the Emerald City Comic Con, so I play on finishing completely by February.

Until next time....