Hey everybody! Got the confirmation a minute ago that my Artist Sketchbooks iphone App just got released! I'm super pumped, so if you got an iphone please check it out and support a David in need!
So yea! I'm really happy with the way my illustrations look small :)! Nice and crisp! Hopefully enough of you guys actually have an iphone and can pick it up. I'd really appreciate it! Maybe sometime in the future if this sells well he'll ask me again.
I'll have a lot more stuff up soon, try and post some of the revamped unfinished images I worked up for the App. Basically went through my old posts and grabbed a bunch of sketches and polished em. Was cool to go back and fix the stuff that was bugging me.
The team over there at Imaginism are sending me some promo codes for free downloads. I'll try and find some way to give them out in the future! But yea, waiting on that email and in the meantime gonna spread this around like wiiilldd fire :O!
Again, thanks to everyone who picks it up! Really appreciate the support!
Hey everybody! Droppin in again after some crazy deadline action :O. Life has been very very hectic for me the past few weeks. I know I say something like this almost everytime I update... But this was especially hectic. Got 10 illustrations to finish! Gotta push harder than ever! Still keeping up with the studies though. Also, jumped on a new diet without any carbs from bread and generally limiting carbs to 125 grams a day. I have to say... I feel about 200% better now that I'm on this diet. Never did I realize that carbs just totally make me feel like crap. Feeling really awake, aware and excited again.
Other than that I got some good stuff comin(I hope its good :O)! Bobby Chiu asked me to do an iPhone app with him and soon it'll be released for purchase on the iphone app store. I'll be part of his Artist Sketchbook series! It was really to go back and collect personal works(a lot of which I finished specifically for the app) and create new illustrations exclusive to it. Below are a couple preview images! I'll update again when it becomes available :D. Then you can help support this David in need.
So heres the cover and a couple pages! -
I'll be posting regularly again soon! Finally getting through the rough patch!
Hey everybody! Spent some time at my parent's house this christmas. Took a few days off and proceeded to do absolutely nothing for a few days. Felt pretty good to just sit and relax for awhile. Things are going good now, I'm pretty excited the rest of the winter will be pretty decent work wise. No real money problems or anything so its just a matter of producing cool work :D! I'm pumped to possibly get in some time for personal work(which I haven't done in months :(). Bought myself an Intuos 4 Large tablet, I'll let you know if its worth the money or not D:. Waiting for Chelsea to get back from her christmas break so we can have our own christmas here :D.
So yea, expect some more activity on here in the coming months! I'll try my best to make time for myself. Got a bit of catching up to do though with a couple commissions. At least theres no more giant looming deadline...
If you don't already know, Bobby Chiu of Imaginism Studios hosts a weekly Live Streaming series called the Chiu Stream! He just finished up his interview with Comic Legend Mike Mignola creator of Hellboy :D(which you can rewatch on the stream)! Every week(or I think its still weekly) he hosts a contest with a subject from the artist hes interviewing and everybody has to draw their interpretation to get voted on... The winner of this gets a free sketch from whoever hes interviewing! Its a really great thing to be apart of and really fun. So if youre an artist you should give it a shot when he announces his next interview :).
So, this week my Frankenstein image was chosen as the winner by Mike Mignola! I'm super pumped to get my original sketchhh, gonna get a nice frame mmmm. So yea, its totally worth it to participate! Although I do think I'll be bowing out of the whole thing for awhile do to a massive workload looming on the horizon D:.
But yea, thanks again to Bobby Chiu and everyone at Imaginism for this awesome opportunity! And again, if you can you gotta participate! Just follow his twitter and he'll probably announce the next one soon.
I should have a lot of stuff to post up soon! Good stuff I hope D:.
I'll also be hosting my live stream on Mondays from now on(unless Bobby's Streams are monday, in which case I'll change it because I wanna watch em hahah)!
Hey everybody! Just wanted to let you all know that I'll be doing a LiveStream tonight 9pm EDT! I still have a 50 person limit because they denied my verification... So if you want me to get verified I guess you could write them an angry email :D haha. Nah I don't know what to do really, just gonna do a couple more LiveStreams and resubmit my application.
Hello everybody! Just wanted to post this video up today. Its a really easy way to apply textures in photoshop while maintaining your values. Hopefully it can help some of you out! I'll try and make some more video tutorials soon, got a good idea of what to do next.
But as always if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to leave a comment below! I'll try and address them next time :).
Hello! I've been having a hard time lately with work and bills D:! Its a crazy thing when you spend the time to do all your work then miss a payment and have to work on top of work... and basically search for hidden hours in the day to finish it all haha. Sometimes freelance can be rough like that especially when you work strictly for publishers. Its really important to mix it up and take private commissions along the way or just take work that pays upfront to make sure you can get by.
The past 3 months have been just that for me haha. Moved into my new place with new more expensive bills and whatnot and have just been hit by constant problems since. But as I'm starting to see now... Its not so bad! Nothing is a better motivator than fear. To feel that pressure sure isn't good for a long period of time as it can be a real health killer... But when you're under the gun and workin your ass off you start to find new ways to get ahead. In the desperation your brain starts to move in directions maybe you thought you should've been goin in before... Just that you'd never been really screwed til then and maybe you were feeling pretty comfortable with how lifes goin.
Hitting that wall is rough! Afterwards though, after you start using your head and making better decisions... Everything seems to workout! I reached out to a few dudes I really admire and both of them really went out of their way to help me out. They've been there the whole time, I could've done this before but never had I been pushed to do so. And under this new pressure I've moved forward, closer to my goals. I don't know exactly how things will pan out as I'm still waiting on some stuff... but I can say that you must always follow your instincts. You have to make sure you're constantly reaching out and trying your best to improve. Most of the guys who already do what you're working towards will understand what you're going through and will help somehow.
Most of all though you have to realize that the crap will pass. Its all too easy to sit there and procrastinate, talk about bills and whine about your life... Problem is that if thats all you do then nothing will change, complaining about how terrible things are will get you nowhere. The only thing you can do is push through it, never let the world shit all over you. Just let everybody know you're working your hardest and be out there sending your work around, studying and contacting everyone who inspires you. Otherwise you'll never move forward and you'll always point a finger at the problems... You just gotta act, and constantly work towards a better life for yourself and those around you.
Also, on a side note... I keep talking about working hard, and trying to get through problems without talking about the love of art. I do love working on illustrations, its not all about money and getting better for the sake of better jobs. My goal isn't to be a super rich artist, would be nice, but I really just want to paint the way I like! Just didn't want to give the wrong idea here... Just because I'm stressed and working through jobs to pay the bills doesn't mean I don't try and have fun on each job :). Heres a qoute that sums up what I'm trying to say:
"There are two goddesses in your heart, the Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you." - Joe Vigil
Basically just work hard at what you love and everything comes to you. I'm swamped with work... But its work I do love doing :).
anyways, just wanted to get that outta my head D:, heres a commission I did! Not my usual stuff but was fun to work on!
Just wanted to keep you dudes updated... Been having to do a lot of last minute work so my free time has been really limited! Trying to make sure I can bring in a good amount of money to cover what I gotta pay and whatnot. Sometimes its not so wise to only take on contract work haha. An issue arises when you got a contract on top of a contract where you've completed the said work and you feel like you've been really pushin it... But if somebody doesn't pay on time you gotta step up and take more work on top of your pressing deadlines :(. Its really only a pain because if you got contract work for a great client you want to be able to do great work and not get distracted. Oh well, thats how freelance goes I suppose! You just gotta keep on pressing through until eventually the work isn't an issue! Then all you gotta do is pick the cream of the crop from the offers and take your time :). Or at least I hope thats what happens haha.
I'll try and get somethin out as soon as my time frees up!
God I hate bears. They keep comin to my place looking for food because I happened to leave the garbage locked up so I could take it out the next day. I woke up to find the lock broken, paw prints on the door, and trash all over the place leading to the woods.
Other than that though, being up here in the woods is great :). Getting a lot done!
I spent a day on my Team Character of the Week submission, figured I'd post that up on here :D! Was cool to take a step back from the freelance and just do somethin for myself. Well, something thats more than a speed paint anyways. I'm really looking forward to joinin up for the next Team C hoW as well :)!
I have a lot more to say, but I'm really pressed for time today! So heres the chow and some metal!
Just wanted to update and let you dudes know I've gone through the list and have a pretty good idea what I want to cover next. I'm gonna try and make the next one fit the frame better haha and have some more focus on what layers and whatnot I'm using. Should be good!
So yea, look for that pretty soon! I'm almost not extremely busy so things should be moving smoothly :).
Other than that I did a pretty quick goblin dude for filler. Didn't wanna post without any art D:.
I know this isn't metal but I was listenin to it while I did the above image :)
Hey everyone! I get a lot of questions about how I color my images annndd today I can hopefully address some of those. The video below is just somethin quick I made to show a basic process of adjusting the color on a grayscale image. This technique isn't for everybody... Mostly because you gotta be used to drawing straight grayscale and getting your values to a certain point. If you don't have much value range this approach doesn't work so well. But take from it what you can! I'm gonna get some sleep :D!
I've been looking at microphones online and found a few that seemed alright... As well as some decent editing program haha. I'd like to get more into making tutorials but just don't want to release a ton of crap quality ones. Hope you get somethin outta it at least :)!
I'm all alone this week! Gah, my girlfriend just left with her family to travel across europe for 10 days(2 days per country! haha, doesnt sound too relaxing). I can't wait to take some time off and travel :), only I'd rather sit in one spot and take in the culture and whatnot.
So anyways, since I'm alone this week I plan on really digging into my work. I got a lot of client deadlines looming! But I'm not stressed... I'm focusing on the steps I need to take to finish each piece rather than looking at the whole deal as one mass. I find that this helps me keep calm in the wake of a ton of deadlines haha. Stress doesn't help, thats for sure!
When I'm going through the steps I'm constantly asking myself what I know about composition and how to make things pop. How light falls and how to bring focus to one central part of my image. If I get caught up thinking about what other art it needs to resemble(previous work for the same company), or what I think theyre looking for, it ends up terrible. The main thing I'm trying to do is apply the basics of what makes a good image and what my strengths are.
Thats not to say I can't break away and do something different to learn... But when I do client work I have to realize that they hired me based on my personal work... Not on the fact that they think I can mimic another artist. I used to always try to be what I thought they wanted rather than what I was. Which I believe is true for most people starting out. It seems like when you do things like fantasy illustration it is exactly what you love... But its not exactly you.
In my work I always try to make my characters have a attitude about them. I often make them screaming and freakin out with drool flyin haha. Thats because I love metal and I love speed/intensity. Tense muscles and fast moving pissed off creatures. So when I approach a character thinking about exactly what it is I enjoy most it often comes out super quick. I never try and force myself to draw something I dont have any attention towards.
This of course changes when I do studies and all that. And from time to time I'm forced to draw something I have no appreciation for in my client work. Even though I don't really like certain aspects of it I do try to apply an attitude or body language thats along the lines of my own art. Anything and everything I can do to make the process as enjoyable as possible will lend itself to the piece. Its always best to just really pin point what it is about life that you truly enjoy most... Because it'll really come through in your art and seperate you from the crowd.
Whoa, huge tangent! But I figured I'd get that off my chest.
heres more work done for the team chow! Just a really quick sketch of the previous bird character.
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