Three Cowboys

Here's a sketch I did today because I was feeling bad about not painting for the last few days. My allergies have been giving me hell, but I think I know how to get it under control.

Hooray for spaceships in the desert!

Also, Happy New Year! I'm gonna make some goals and post them so's y'all ken keep me in line next year...

Tiger PGA Tour 09

All images property of Electronic Arts.

Here is another lighting target I did for the Wentworth course in Tiger 09. I made the time of day to morning. Personally I think the sky could use some work, now that I'm looking at it again.

Please let me know if these types of posts bore you!

Yet another BW Sketch

This is a really quick one. Absolutely no thought process, and I don't like the square canvas... but, it is what it is! Let me know what you think.

Family Time

It's been nice being at home for the holidays. It's also been nice not to be traveling anywhere, though it is always fun being around more family and friends. We are glad for the nice weather we've been experiencing while watching the rest of the country suffer. I need to do some more painting, but here are some of the things we've been able to accomplish so far. Santa gave the girls roller skates for Christmas, and Miles commandeered the sweet pink scooter. Lucas is practicing standing on his own! Most of these were taken at the local library park/roller hockey rink.

Have a safe New Year!

A Recent Sketch

I was doodling around with a few custom brushes and started liking the results. I was inspired by Hans Bacher's focus on composition and basic texture and color. Maybe someday I'll add color...

Tiger 09 Clouds

My claim to fame for this one is that I painted the sky with custom brushes I made by hand. The bottom one is my paintover, with lighting adjustments.

Madden NFL 09 Stadiums

I like the UFO stadiums. The Saints stadium was one of my favorites to do, even though there are things I see now that aren't so good. Did I mention these were one of the first projects I did after joining the Concept team?

Lil' Chitlins

1. I think Anna is playing with a cookie. She is getting more and more beautiful!

2. Lucas managed to eat some of the softened sticks of chalk. He just LOVES getting into things.

3. I just LOVE the devilish look Miles is giving. He kinda looks like Gollum, too...lol! Wife said he was pouring cups of water on the chalk, watching it wash the drawings away.

PS. I think my monitor is too bright, even though I calibrated it. Let me know if these photos look too dark to you!

Figure Drawing

18" x 24" Nupastel on Canson sketch paper. 10 min figure study at a session at work. I'm a bit rusty, so it was good practice.

NCAA Football Weather Target - Overcast Snow

All images property of Electronic Arts.



The top image is the "plate" for this painting. It's a screenshot off of the Xbox 360 game. The art director wanted a target for what overcast snowing weather conditions would look like, so this is my concept. This one took a few days in Photoshop.

The Christmas 'Stache

My manager at work started an initiative to get all the guys on our team to sport moustaches at this year's company holiday party. I was hesitant at first, but decided to see how mine turned out. I started letting it grow the weekend before Thanksgiving, and shaved it off this last Sunday. I don't have a pic of the goatee (if you could call it that) before I started shaving, but here are some photos taken as The 'Stache emerged!

Tiger PGA Tour 09 Lighting Target - Sun City

All images property of Electronic Arts.

This is one of the first projects I worked on when I transitioned over to the Concept team. I was given an idea of the overall color they wanted for this course,. I was also given the top image as a starting point.

I used adjustment layers to adjust color and repainted some of the light shadows. The time of day is late afternoon/early evening.

The purpose of this piece is to give the lighters a target for color and atmosphere as they light the course they get from the environment artists, as well as set the sky. I am not sure what the course looks like in the actual game, I guess I could go fire it up.

It was awhile ago, but I think these took me a few days to do.

Madden NFL 09 Stadiums

All images property of Electronic Arts.



These stadiums were painted for Madden NFL 09 intro screens. We did a day and a night version for each stadium. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do the night one for the Cardinals, which is one of my favorites because it looks like a UFO. These images are more like matte paintings in that elements of photos were used, but there was also a good deal of painting into them. We started with a 3D render of the stadium as a guide. The parking lot and street had to be in the same location.

If you fire up the game and watch the intro, there is actually a camera move, which was done by projecting our paintings onto geometry to get realistic parallaxing. I think they turned out pretty nice, considering we only intended for them to be static 2D images to begin with...

These took 3 days each. The Colts stadium was particularly interesting because it was not completed when I had to do the painting. I used whatever reference of the building plans I could find on the internet, so it may not be 100% accurate.

I got a lot better at painting windows by the end of the 32-stadium project (64 paintings), even though I only did 13 of them.

Oil sketch

This little 3" x 5" sketch in oils took a hefty 2 hours to do. I haven't painted in quite a while, and want to develop more control in the medium. I am far from it, as you can see by the muddy colors and heavy purples in the sketch. I worked from a photo of Otter Creek PA my wife took last time we were up there.

I was having a hard time painting wet on wet and with only one brush (I dislike having to clean tons of brushes!). My friend Steven Geer told me I should be using multiple brushes and paint shadows thinly at first, building up to thicker opaque lighter values, so that's what I'll be working on next time. Wish me luck!

Tiger Woods 09 lighting target - Sheshan

All images property of Electronic Arts.

This is one of the first projects I worked on when I transitioned over to the Concept team. I was given an idea of the overall color they wanted for this course, Sheshan. I was also given the top image as a starting point. The lighter strip you see on the bottom of it is actually the finished artwork in Photoshop. I added the strip to shift the horizon line higher and make the composition more appealing.

I used adjustment layers to adjust color and repainted the sand traps to have a nice cool shadows. I was told to paint it as a certain time of day, can you tell what it is? I am not sure if I hit it as accurately as I should have...

The purpose of this piece is to give the lighters a target for color and atmosphere as they light the course they get from the environment artists, as well as set the sky. I am not sure what the course looks like in the actual game, but I do have a copy of the Wii game. I wonder if that one looks as good as the 360 or PS3 one... doubtful!

It was awhile ago, but I think these took me a few days to do.

Keep checking back, I will be posting more of these and then some Madden NFL 09 work.

Concept art

All images property of Electronic Arts.

These are some pieces I did within the past year. The Sand flea/squid was a one day exercise, the subject was simply "Industrial Design". I did a page of silhouette sketches to warm up and explore different shapes, then took the rest of the day to paint it. Props to my co-worker Steven Geer for his paper texture that I now use for everything!

The PS3 background was for an internal PS3 load screen. It was fun, even though it's pretty Matrix-ey....it's what they wanted...

I can't get enough ART!

Ok, I'm sorry for not posting more regularly. This blog has kind of taken some twists and turns, and mostly been a place for me to post random stuff. Eventually, I may split this blog into two streams of consciousness, one for art and one for everything else....

I am taking a break from furious mouse-clicking to type this blog entry. I am compelled to save artwork to look at and study and draw inspiration from, so I've been going to a bunch of art blogs and saving the images in reference folders for myself to peruse at my leisure. My wife snidely comments on my "stealing" work, but sometimes people's blogs or webpages disappear, or they take work off of it. I love studying other artists' work, and learning from them. I have a LOT of artists blogs in my Google Reader, but I'm not sure how to get a list and link them easily. If anyone has an easy method for this, please let me know!

Here are just a few of my favorites (legendary status) lately:

John Nevarez
Hans Bacher
Nathan Fowkes
Robh Ruppel

Sorry, no pix! I'm feeling WAY too lazy and I'm also grumpy at Blogspot's lack of layout tools for the non-HTML nerds.