Throwback Thursday: The Flash!!!

Heres a painting I did a while ago, last august I think. If I had to rank my favorite DC Comics superheros the top three would have to be Superman, Batman and the Flash! I was so stoked when The WB announced that they would be developing a new series based on the Scarlet Speedster! Overall I really liked the show. The first season was a little 90210 for me but man the second season did not not disappoint! I'm really looking forward where they go with season three. This was painted in Photoshop using a Wacom Cintiq

Captain America: Civil War

I saw Captain America: Civil War last night!!! All I have to say is WOW!!! Such a great film. Fun and light hearted while being emotional, dramatic and compelling at the same time. Well done Marvel... Well done! Oh and Spidey was awesome! I think that Marvel finally got him right. 

Painted this Cap vs Ironman MMA piece to celebrate the new film! Can't wait to see it again!!!

King of the Field

Recently I attended a lecture at BYU by the amazing Cory Loftis. He was the Lead character designer on the hit Disney animated film Zootopia! If you haven't seen this film yet you need to drop whatever you'er doing and go see it right now! Everything about this movie is amazing! The design, the color pallet is a pure visual buffet! The story is cute, super funny and teaches a great moral. I loved this movie!

Cory's  lecture was incredible. He was able to show never before seen art and talked a lot about the process of developing compelling stories with believable characters and environments. It really helped me to recharge my batteries and reset me motivation. 

Also, I'm coaching my son's soccer team this season and Thought it would be fun to do a quick Zootopia inspired soccer painting to bring on the season! 

TBT: Rocket Raccoon!

Seeing as it's Throwback Thursday I thought that I'd share a painting that I never posted on here before. I've posted it other places such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram. Those outlets are fine and all but the images are small and you can't really see some of the fun details that go into one of these paintings. 

I painted this last year to use as a print for the Salt Lake Comic Con. The sketch below was created using 11x17inch bristle board, prismacolor pencils and Copic markers. The Painting above was made in photo shop using a Wacom Cintiq 24 HD. The sketch served as a really good foundation for the final painting. Not much of the sketch really changed, all I did was enhance it with some extra pixels. If you'd like to pick up a copy you can visit my store.

Batman V Superman!!!

Here's a little something I painted for the new Batman V Superman movie that came out this weekend. I know a lot of people are mad that these two heroes are duking it out. The fact is that they've gone toe to toe numerous times in the comics over their differences of opinions and it all worked out for the best. 

I saw it twice and being a comic book fanboy I picked up a lot of the subtle correlations between the comics and the motion picture that the average movie goer might not. Also, I feel like it was written more for the comic fan in stead of the general public and there's going to be a lot of confusion from those not in the know. 

It's definitely a very dark film and goes to places that most people aren't going to like. Overall I liked it and I'm excited to see where they take the franchise!

The second picture is of my brother and I in the early 80's rock'n our superhero gear!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's day! 

Force Friday Star Wars Art Jam: Kylo Ren

 Awesome Art Jam poster Created by RickWilliamson

Mel Milton and Myself

Over the shoulder view of a work in progress

Last week I was invited by the awesome Mel Milton to a Star Wars Art jam celebrating Force Friday and the release of all the new merchandise for the up coming movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens! Rick Williamson, who was putting on the Art Jam, wanted to showcase digital painting so myself and a bunch of other amazing artists packed up our computers, tablets and Cintiq monitors and set up shop at the Reclaim Events Center.

There were a ton of people that stopped by to watch us all work. It's always fun to engage with the public because most of my days are spent working at my studio isolated. Using digital painting tools every day I forget that most people haven't seen digital art being produced. A lot of the spectators didn't know that Photoshop could be used for painting and a most of them had never seen a cintiq monitor before. So it was a real treat and a lot of fun to answer questions and show them how I digitally paint.

For my painting I wanted to paint a character that I had never painted before and with the upcoming Salt Lake Comic Con coming up I thought it would be good to try and get a new print finished to sale at my booth.  I chose the mysterious Kylo Ren  for my subject. Here's a step by step of my start to finish of the Illustration.

In conclusion, I had so much fun at the art jam and made a bunch of new friends can't wait to do the next one!

Rough Sketch

Line Art

Value Painting

Color Glazes

Lightsaber Effects

Background

Snow and motion blurring

Textures and overlays

Final adjustments

Remembering Robin Williams

Remembering Robin

When it comes to celebrities I’m the last one to care about all the gossip and mess that surrounds Hollywood. However, every now and again there comes a time when a truly gifted actors life is ended and the world is at a loss.

Last year on August 11, 2014 we lost an amazing actor… Robin Williams. Williams had a long fruitful career. He was respected, admired and loved by millions of people through out the world. He was so diverse in all that he did. He could make you laugh. He could make you cry. Head could take you to places you never imagined and inspire you to be more than just mediocre.

Despite his tragic death his legacy lives on. I love to experience his movies with my kids. It’s fun to watch them develop the same love and admiration for his films that I have. One of our personal favorites is Steven Spielberg’s Hook. In that movie at the end Peter says to the notorious Captain Hook, “To live… to live would be an awfully big adventure!” 

It’s sad to think of the sever depression that he was experiencing behind closed doors. And evermore heartbreaking that he felt that taking his own life was the answer to escape his metal battles. I wish that he could have taken Peter Pans words to heart. Last year we truly lost a great artist. I hope that he has found the peace that he so desperately sought.

Robin Williams July 21^st 1951- August 11^th 2014

Sir Lancelot!

Today's post is kind of inspired by two different sketch/ illustration challenges. The Illustration Friday topic for this week is "Treasure" and one of the Sketch Dailies topics earlier this week was "Lancelot". So I thought it'd be fun to combine the two subjects in to one Illustration.

Here we have Sir Lancelot posing with his fresh kill, admiring his trusty sword and contemplating the  riches and treasures awaiting him for his gallantry in defeating the dragon.

*note I still need to add some color to this painting. I'll update the blog once its finished.

*If you want to be kept up on an almost daily basis come follow me on Instagram or Tumblr.

Sleeping Beauty Coloring Book Fun!

A few years ago when I was studying Illustration at UVU we were given a really fun in class assignment by one of my favorite professors Ryan Wood. The assignment was to take a coloring page from a coloring book or online somewhere and create a digital painting from it. 

I needed a little break from client work to recharge my batteries so I thought it would be fun to revisit Ryan's old assignment. My subject for this exercise is none other than Sleeping beauty. I found the image on a generic Disney coloring page google search. 

The great part about this process is that I can skip right to the painting because the line work and composition are essentially done. As with most of my digital work I start off with a value underpainting and "glaze" color over the top. All in all this painting took just a few hours. It's great practice when you are looking for something to paint or draw. Alright now back to work! 

-Adam

Marc Davis Tribute

Rough sketch

Background block-in 

Background Color

Main Character Painting

Final Painting 

How's it going everyone?! I'm doing great as usual! For this weeks painting I'm once again pulling inspiration from Illustration Friday's Weekly topic. This week's IF theme was "Novelty". While trying to figure out what to paint I did a lot of research and watched a bunch of old Ed Sullivan Show episodes. They all had these great acts with some kind of gimmick. This got me thinking... One of my all time favorite novelty acts was the Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland. The characters were designed by Disney veteran animator Marc Davis. So I decided to paint a tribute piece to Mr. Davis and create my own Country Bear novelty act. So here we have Lynyrd "Rascal" Bearenthall the 4th and his amazing unicycle cat juggling routine!

Who needs a Radio!?

How's going everyone? I've been really good! I just finished another Salt Lake Comic Con  and have been super busy working with amazing clients and creating a ton of artwork! 

The new school year has started and I am finally in my last semester! For this final semester I needed one upper division art class so that I finally graduate. The opportunity arose to take an independent study digital painting class with Jim Madsen. If you don't know Jim's work follow the link and prepare to have your mind blown! He is an amazing artist and in the two short weeks I have been in his class I have learned a ton! 

For Jim's class, using the Illustration Friday topic, we are going to be producing one painting per week. This weeks topic was radio. I know some of you are thinking how does this painting relate to the topic. Well, I didn't want to simply illustrate a radio in the truest sense so I thought hey why not paint a singing mariachi riding a donkey on a road trip to San Diego. You know, using his "old school" radio.

As with most of my work it starts with the exploratory phase of drawing and sketching.  This is my favorite part of the process because it allows me to try out a bunch of ideas quickly with out any real consequences. Some ideas work and others don't. This was the ruff thumbnail sketch that I settled on.

Now that I have my Idea I tighten up my character sketch. I should note that I'm working 100% digital on this painting sketch and all. I use Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom Cintiq 24HD. I try to use the stock photoshop brushes as much as possible but, I love these pencil brushes from Frenden for sketching. They have a great texture and natural feel to them.

Next I quickly block in the background. I'm working in black and white first so I can get the values correct. I'll add color later. 

Now that the background is roughed in I turn that layer off and block in my two main characters. For this phase I take the value painting almost to a finished state. I want this value painting be pretty tight so I spend quite a bit of time working on the values and textures. This helps late on with the color glazing part of the painting. 

So the main characters and the backgrounds are ruffed in now comes the color part. If you spend your time getting the values right you can almost use any color pallet and it will work fine. I usually never work this saturated with my colors but, seeing as this is a desert scene I thought it would be a excellent opportunity to pay tribute to one of my favorite cartoons The Roadrunner and  Wile E.. Coyote! I decided that some intensive research is in order. So I watched a few episodes and looked up some reference and decided to go with a pastel color pallet for the background. Using new layer I set it to color and glaze over my value painting. I'm working pretty loose on the background leaving the edges soft. I also let the colors overlap to allow some blending. Once I'm happy with the colors I move on to painting the main characters. 

Using a method similar to the background, I use color, multiply and normal layers to glaze in the color and refine the illustration. This part takes a little longer but this is where the painting really comes together. Most artists will tell you that the most fun part of painting is the little details. I'm am no different. A lot of time has been wasted zoomed in painting stuff that no one but me will ever see, but hey thats the fun part. Right?

After the color is all done I add some subtle texture overlays and do a little color correction to help harmonize the painting. Overall I was happy with the illustration but, I thought something was missing from the painting so I decided to add a little desert bird to the scene to fill up some of the negative space and add a little more humor to the scene. As you can see the donkey is really happy to be on the long trip with his companions. 

Thanks for making through my last painting with me. Have a great weekend!

Master Splinter Digital Sketch/ Painting Process...

For this week's blog post I thought I'd share another process demo/ tutorial. Instead of using traditional mediums I am going to focus on digital painting/ sketching. For those of you that know me personally know that I love digital painting! Like all mediums it has unique qualities and attributes that are specific to it's self. It can do things that other mediums can't. There is a huge down side to digital painting, unless you draw it out on paper first, you don't have an original art piece when you are all finished. Sure you can make prints but it's not the same thing, trust me. 

The subject for this demo is none other than everyone's favorite ninja rat... Master Splinter! I've been wanting to do a painting of this guy for some time now and Sketch Dailies topic yesterday happened to be Splinter so I decided it was finally  time.

As far as tools go I am using a Wacom Cintiq 24 HD and Photoshop CS6.  

A while back a friend of mine recommended some awesome digital pencil brushes from FRENDEN.  They have a natural pencil feel and add a nice texture to the digital drawing. As with most of my artwork I start out with a few rough thumbnail sketches to get a feel for the character. Once I get one that has the right look I start to refine it. 

Now that the rough sketch is done I lower the opacity of that layer pull up a new layer and tighten up the line work. This process is similar to how a comic book artist would use a light table to refine their pencils or inks. 

 I start the color process by first putting to getter my color pallet. Then I block in the ruff flat colors. after the flats are done I establish a light source and block in my values. I want to note that I am zoomed out and I am using a large brush for this step. Also, I am painting loosely often going outside the lines of my initial sketch. 

 I take my time and build up the layers of pixel paint. I should note that I am only working on one or to layers in Photoshop. I have some really talented friends that can paint on dozens and dozens of layers and manage them, but I have found that for me, personally, it is easier to keep the layers to a minimum. At his stage I start to zoom in for the tighter details like the hair and whiskers.

After I am happy with Splinter I rough in  a loose background. I check a few things and add a slight texture to his robe, add the old signature, and BAM this one done! 

If you have any questions or comments please sound off below. Have a great week everyone!