There and Back Again

As some of you know, I was away for a week for a brief sojourn to my alma mater.

Was nice to see some of my class mates again and to meet some new members of the club I had helped start up my junior year.

The trip to campus was pleasantly uneventful.

The trip back is another story.

Good news is that I was parked in a rest stop when my SUV decided to not start, and once I was towed to a garage (thank you AAA) I was back on the road in about two hours. Bad news, needed a bunch of new parts and I don't think I'm going to be able to head down the coastline again for a while.

Will have a new pic of some kind up tomorrow, perhaps of the scarf I'm working on.

Everyone Hail to the Pumpkin King!

Shadow Throne

Judgement

SquidBot

WIP concept art of a tentacled bot that (I now realize) wouldn't be out of place in The Matrix 'verse. ~ 2 hours in it so far. Originally it had insect legs but they weren't working out so I gave it tentacles instead because let's be honest, tentacles are cool.

Art Suplies

I swung by Jerry's Artist Outlet in West Orange, just to check out what they had in stock. Ended up picking up a bunch of supplies for almost dirt cheep.

Canvas panels: 12 6x8 for $0.72 each, 12 8x10 for $0.88 per, 12 9x12 for $1.01 each. All told I paid $31.32, which at list price it would have cost me $69.00. How could I not buy em?

Oil Paint: 38mL tube of Alizarin crimson for $2.99, list price $6.25

I am definately going to keep an eye on this place and keep and the other open for sales and discounts.

"Stein" - Colors

Color variants sheet for a project I'm working on. Reminded me how much fun I have mucking around with colors. Plan to see more related to this project in the coming months.

DragonCon Aftermath vol. 2

Finally got a chance to sift through the cards and fliers I got at the Convention. Today we have a list of various artists and related people/studios. Most of the people here got a copy of my portfolio teaser and a business card.

If you are one of the people amongst the list, welcome to my little slice of the bloggosphere.

Legendary Leatherworks
Southeastern Browncoats
Frogpants Studios
Demon Kitty Designs
Meg Lyman Illustration and crashoctopus.com
Chandra Free
Gina Biggs
Filthy Figments (NSFW)
Jennie Breeden
StickerLOL.com
Richard A. Kirk
Tom Taggart Art Studio
Derek
Mark Dos Santos
Erin Belle
Dave Cook
Chris Hamer
Luna 7
Fleecs Design
Eric Morin
Miss Mindy
Amanda Louise
Stephanie Gladden
Spyda
Tiny Kitten Teeth
Ted Naifeh
Tyson McAdoo
Lauren Pery's Blank-ees
Errant Story by Michael Poe
John Tyler Christopher
Denise Vaquez
The Horrific Adventures of Franky
David Mack Guide
Imaginism Studios
R.L. Alexander

DragonCon Aftermath vol. 1

Dragon*Con is over and I am exhausted. I had a fantastic time, but it took a lot out of me. Handed out most of the portfolio teasers in person, left a couple of stacks around various places around the con.

If you are visiting from a business card or a booklet that you got while at the Convention, welcome. I'm going to be making a list of all the people I got cards or fliers once I get home and sort through it all. Pictures will be up on Flickr about the same time.

In other news, car's in the shop. Transmission was rattling, next the battery's acting up and power steering is gone. Then the engine starts over heating.

Turns out that the problem was a worn belt and busted tensioner. Should be fixed up sometime today or early tomorrow. I ought to be on the way back to NJ in the next day or two.

DragonCon Preperations, vol. 2

Ok, teasers are done, getting clothing pulled together and packed.

Excited to be heading off to Dragon*Con, first big convention since 2006 when I went to Otakon and MomoCon in Atlanta '08 (good thing about MomoCon was that it was free. Bad news, it was free).

Got a Flickr stream going, going to be uploading pictures from Dragon*Con there.

Will see what I can do about keeping you guys up-to date while I'm at the con. At the very least I'll have a post after the con. that's all for now.

DragonCon Preperations

Huzah! Got my business cards in the mail yesterday. They turned out really nice and defiantly going to use the company again. GotPrint.net printed them with a 2 day turnaround and 3 day delivery for about $30.

Now just need to get the portfolio booklets printed up and I'll be ready for DragonCon next week.

Wow... I'm starting to feel like a professional.

Concept Vehicles Speedpaint

Spartan 2800cc v6 motorcycle

Spartan - sample colors
SphereCycle, built on the same propulsion concepts as the SecDroid

Sketch Dump 2

Trying my hand at some concept art, pleased with how they turned out.


Playing around with some ideas for an environment that will likely appear in the D&D game that I will be running soon. Lost track of how long I spent on this, maybe 3 hours or so?


Hour speed paint that was inspired by this video.


And preparations for DragonCon are starting to come together. My business cards have shipped today. I should be getting them by Wednesday or so.

The portfolio teasers are almost ready for printing, just need to work out the cover. Plan is to have some friends over to help put them together next Monday. Gotta love what promises of beer and pizza can do for acquiring some extra manpower.

Bloody Blue Screens and Bad-Ass Blogs

Well, crap.

When trying to scan the pics from Dr Sketchy's on Thursday, my work rig blue-screen'd on me. I've had it happen every once in a while so this doesn't bode particularly well.

Good news is that a friend of a friend is brilliant with building computers. Plan on talking to him when upgrading my systems so that I can customize it to what I'm going to need; High processor speed, lots of ram, high end graphics card are what I'm thinking. Going to talk to some people to get suggestions.

So, since there's no dawing from Dr Sketchy's for the moment, here's cool stuff from the wilds of the Internet.

• Gurney Journey, the blog of Dinotopia creator James Gurney. Fantastic for picking through the mind of a fantastic "Imaginative Realist".
• Newman's Art Blog, "naughty art, filthy fairytales and other perverted nonsense" by Ben Newman. NSFW at times, so be warned.
  
• Indistinguishable From Magic, by Aaron Diaz; the artist and author of Dresden Codak, which is an amazing comic which if you haven't heard of, for shame. If you haven't read it you should go do so, now. No seriously, go read it.

Dr. Sketchy's

Went to the North Jersey Dr Sketchy's last night. Small but had a good vibe to it. Definitely will be going back and will post some of the sketches up here when I can.

Bast Sketch Color

As the title says, colored the lineart from the last post, that is all.

[insert witty title here]

Well it's been interesting this past week.

Had fun at the Tuxedo Renfaire last weekend with friends, pretty ladies and baudy performers, then yesterday I got hit with my third kindey-stone in the past two years, second in the past six months. Not fun, not fun at all.

Couldn't sleep last night so I got some sketching done, enjoy the fruits of my pains and insomnia.


The Egyptian goddess Bast, in her aspect as a goddess of perfumes. Rather pleased with the lineart, planing to color this up at some point later.

Took a look through some of my old sketchbooks, and yea gods I've gotten better in the past decade. Even just four years ago, I'm impressed at the progress that I've made. Here's to the improvement so far, and to the improvement I'll be making in the future.

Sketch Dump

Hey all, getting some more art up here since this is supposed to be an art blog.

Managed to get some very nice sketches and watercolors done while I was at the beach last month. Very happy with how some of the later pieces turned out.

Muse enjoying the island beverages and decor.

The house were renting had a poster with a hula girl and I thought muse would look good in the lei.

Rayne relaxing on the beach.
Luckily the arm's brass or the salt water would be a nightmare. As it is she's gonna be spending hours cleaning the sand out.


Random blonde girl looking coy, used a photo reference for the pose. Scanner did horrible things to the delicate tonal variations on the violet around her. >_<

Demoness. By far my favorite lineart of the lot, colored this one digitally because I didn't want to mess up the pencils and most of the colors in the ones above were pretty much off the cuff. Plan to do a full digipaint of this at some point to practice colors.


Alternate colors of the Demoness lineart. I like this color set better than the other, but need to play around with it a bit more I think.

Dream Worlds

Ok, the scanner's on the fritz, so no watercolors yet. Will get that fixed as soon as I can.

Tomorrow's going to be a cleaning day, organizing all the stuff that got moved into my studio while I was cleaning my room after moving back home from college. With any luck I'll have space to actually work and more incentive to actually do so.

In other news, I saw Inception last night. Was a mind-trip. The dream-within-dream element alone was enough to mess with me; then add in the issues of what happens when you loose track of what is a dream and whether or not the world we live in is a dream and we just don't realize it (overlapping with concepts of Objective/Subjective/Consensus Reality, similar ideas that are presented in "eastern"/"Hindu" religion and in the Matrix).

Long story short, I thoroughly enjoyed it and summarily spent an hour after the movie discussing it with the friend I saw it with.

And speaking of crafting dreams, I'm working on building a D&D campaign that I plan to run, as soon as I can find players. Basically it's sort of a Wild West meets 1001 Arabian Nights. With dinosaurs, because dinosaurs are awesome. Will post the synopsis once things solidify more.

Where the Land meets the Sea and the Sky

Was down at the shore last weekend, was nice to get away for a bit. Finally had opportunity to make use of the watercolor kit that I put together and got some nice drawings/paintings done. Will get those scanned up tonight to show you guys.

In other news, been reading "Kushiel's Dart". Great book and need to go borrow the next one in the series from the library once I finish this one. Nice to find a new series to read.

Got some plans to head out to the Tuxedo Renfaire weekend after next. Going to bring a sketchbook or camera and keep an eye out for inspiration for illustrations.

Zine Sketches

Working on the thumbnails for the Zine I mentioned last time. Need a few more but pleased with how these are turning out so far. First time in too long I've really had fun drawing things because I wanted to as opposed to being assigned them for a class or the like.

"The theme is creepy or eerie things. It can be subtle horror, it can be fantastical, it can be comically disturbing. Take your pick!"

Hope you all enjoy the sneak peak into my head.

The Virus of Life

Unseelie Fairy

The Summoning

Lair of the Spider Queen

The Serpent and the Maiden

Lilith

Jenny Greenteeth

Chimera Cub

Peanuts, Cahews, Macadamias, Pecans

It's been a mixed bag of nuts this week folks;

-My grandfather had a small fall that wasn't considered a big problem, which of course developed into a serious issue. He's doing better, but he's got a ways to go before he's back to where he was.

-Still no word yet on the freelance job, should hear something one way or another in the next day or so. I'll have to wait and see.

-The tattoo design commission I was working on is going well, the client is rather pleased with how it's turned out. Just need to do some tweaking and cleaning up and that'll be done. It's still weird to me that there are people who want my art and designs inked into their skin.

-I wasn't able to grab any pictures at the Renfaire last Sunday. I did however push myself outside of my comfort zone and met/chatted with some new people; a few of which ever so happened to be attractive young ladies in tight-fitted bodices and corsetry. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it ;)

-There's a juried competition that Canson is running that I'm going to submit a piece to at the end of the month. Will have to get to work on that. Will post pictures as I go.

-A friend of mine is putting together a copy-store zine that I'm gonna get some illustrations into, might submit two pieces to it if I can, will depend on how many people are actually participating. Going to have to get a jump on that, thumbnails are due by the tenth.


That's all for now, I shall now go scamper off to forage for sustenance.

Medial Illustrations and Rennasance Faires

Well sent in the sample for the freelance job, after a series of difficulties (files were too big for email and the file share system I was directed to next wasn't letting me upload them), so will have to wait and see what happens next.

Going to be heading to a renfaire with some friends on Sunday, looks like it ought to be fun. Will try to grab some pictures to share.

Freelance and The Dirty Truth

Well I've got a possibility for freelance illustration work, just need to do a test piece to show what I can do, see if the company wants what I can do and to see if it's really the kind of work that I want to pursue. That's all I'll say for now because the boss of the company knows about this blog and I only want to say nice things about them.

Big thing to do now is networking, both through various communities/forums and (e)mailings. Will have to order up business cards and postcards to start sending out.

Watched the Dirty Jobs:The Dirty Truth (25 years of Discovery episode) and Mike Rowe has a series of "motivational posters" that are variations of standard ones and wisdom culled from over two hundred dirty jobs. A lot of them seem to be very applicable to the modern job market, especially for someone like me (The fact that the people on the show are people who have jobs in this economy is certainly something to take note of).

Last Migration North

Well the trip back to Jersey was interesting.

Wound up with a nasty sunburn on my drawing arm (the car had no AC so we had the windows open) and had a tire blow out while going 75 mph on 95 north in the left lane. Everything turned out fine though. Only seems to be cosmetic damage to the car and the garage that picked us up was 20 miles north and was the only place in a 100 miles that could put a new tire on the wheel.

Been working on unpacking everything and settling back in.

Next step, find a day job and work on new portfolio pieces.

Don't have to go home...

... But ya can't stay here.

Well I finished classes on Thursday, had graduation practice today and the ceremony is tomorrow. Still need to pack and clean.

All in all it's been a crazy four years. Love, loss, inspiration and insomnia.

We'll see what the future holds.

One thing for sure though, it'll certainly be interesting.

Graduation

Holy Crumb Cake! Where did the last four years go?

I'm going to be graduating in a week. I don't think it's really going to hit me until next fall because I won't be coming back down to Savannah.

However I do plan on heading to Atlanta for DragonCon (finally).

Other than that things are going well for finals and I'm already planning how to get my studio set up once I get back home.

seanbritcher.com Launched

My portfolio website is up and running.

Head on over and take a look.

Site Progress Deux

The website is almost done, will be done this weekend and up by Monday.

In other news:

I'm sure that most people who have seen the material for Halo: Reach will agree that it looks AMAZING. The concept art looks awesome, the videos are sweet and the music is fantastic. Hopefully the beta will help them iron out all the kinks before final release sometime this fall.

It seems appropriate that the game that I bought an original Xbox to play was Halo: C.E. and that the game that I'm probably going to buy a Xbox360 for is Halo: Reach.

Of course we still have yet to see what happened to the Master Chief, but whatever Bungee delivers down the road, I'm sure Halo 4 will be sweet.

Site Progress

Website development has been going well. Should have it finished in a week or so.

In other News:

-I'm attending an Animal Farm stage adaption tonight. It'll be interesting to see how the story works on stage. [edit] The theater was sold out, so no Animal Farm for me. A shame, because I could use more culture in my diet. [/edit]

-I've been invited to a belly-dancing event after the play. Will see if I can grab any photos of the festivities.

Adorable Menagerie

Some sketches for your enjoyment.

Played with making cute little creatures that live around us.

The Hug Mite

This shy little guy lives in your eyelashes and hugs the hairs to hang on.

The Flumper Number

This guy lives in your couch under the cushions, eating loose change and crumbs. He likes to hide the TV remote for fun.

Going to some more of these guys when I can, probably take some inspiration from my World Mythology class.

Launch

Welcome to the start. I'm getting this blog up and running in preparation for having my portfolio site launched. I'll keep you all up to date as that progresses.