Skål!

Mein Skol,
Dein Skol,
Alle Vakkera Flikka Skol!

Salud!

Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos! >;]

Withdrawn in Forest

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew away
~Robert Frost


Quick landscape study.

Battlescars

A little sick of the color blue, I started painting this guy on the side.

Sketchbook - Riley

RMFC was a blast this year! :] Lots of good company and friendly folks!

I took a couple sketchbook commissions at the convention and this one was one of 'em. :]

Sketchbook - Kite

I took a couple sketchbook commissions at RMFC this weekend and this was one! :]

Sketchbook - Rudy

Here's another of the sketchbook commissions I did at RMFC last weekend. :]

This is a "fake" panel I did a couple weeks ago to test a few things before starting in on the actual pages from the Nordguard comic. (www.NORDGUARD.com)
Pi is unimpressed.

CowCat for RMFC

Nothing too fancy here--The folks at Rocky Mountain Fur Con asked me to do this fella on short notice for their conbook as an advert for next year's con.

Their theme for next year is (if you couldn't guess!) the Old West.


This year's RMFC is coming up next weekend and I'll be there! Really, I can't help but be there, since it's my hometown. ;]

I might be taking a couple sketchbooks this year in the Dealer's Room, though, that will be directly related to the amount of alcohol I've consumed before, after and during the Dealer's Room hours. I'll also have typical things, like prints and so on and so forth, and some of the original art and pages of the Nordguard comic if anyone's curious to see.

Hope to see you there!

Challenge

Evergreen

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business.
~ The Thought-Fox, by Ted Hughes

The Coyote Who Couldn't Sing

From across the canyon,
A guitar plays,
Through an amplifier, along the lake,
It was an old melody, I recognized the song,
I had an amplifier too, so I played along.

I'm making some noise!
I'm still a working boy
At the top of my voice saying
Look at me mama, I'm making some noise!
~ Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers, Makin' Some Noise

This is a promo piece for the new comic I am working on, Across Thin Ice.
It will be the first book in the Nordguard Trilogy and will be a fully painted, color graphic novel with each volume coming in around 90 pages. Want to know more? Want to see a whole lot of art for it? Sure you do! Go see it at:

www.NORDGUARD.com


A lot of the development artwork is up, with more coming soon, and that's where finished pages will be.

Also, go the the "Comment" or the "More Info" links to read up on getting a free 18x24 poster of this piece!

Spring Cleaning Print Sale!

Hhuhhhm, it’s that time of year again--though this year, there’s an added bonus! You can help me out with spring cleaning and get a free random sketch if you pick up a print or some such--check out that more info button for well, more information!

Insatiable

A little more spring cleaning--I painted this back in March as a double-spread illustration for the upcoming HEAT Vol. 6 from Sofawolf Press. It's intended to accompany the poem, "Sated" by Frost wolf, hence lots of empty space. :]

For those unfamiliar, HEAT is an annual publication focusing on erotic comics, illustrations and short stories. Vol. 6 will be debuting at AnthroCon later this year and will be available online from the Sofawolf Press website.

Oh and, I put a detail shot of the wolf's head in my scraps folder, if anyone's interested in a closer look. :]

Ill Omens

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
~ W.B. Yeats (excerpt from the Second Coming)

More spring cleaning! I found this tucked away in a pile of stuff. I guess I started it... yeesh, around last September. I couldn't remember why I abandoned it mid-painting, so I figured I'd put a couple more hours into it this afternoon and finish it up. The world could use some more baboons, anyway. ;]

Desert Rose

Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.
~ Kipling

Another product of some spring cleaning--I actually started painting this back in December, I think, and have been slowly adding bits of paint to it when I have the time. Some parts I like, a few things I wish I could have done differently...but in the end its nice not to half have finished paintings cluttering up my workspace. :]


Casanova, the study gypsy vanner, belongs to Gypsymoon o' course. :]

I've been working on a large comic project that's kept me more-than-busy the last few months, though I have managed to do a couple of paintings on the side. During some spring hard-drive cleaning, I found a few and figured I'd post some.


I painted this as a gift for my brother's birthday a week ago. He happens to enjoy music as well as a good sci-fi reference or two, so it worked out well. ;]

Cognac

Another picture I did this afternoon to take a break from painting...It's kind of a mish-mosh of colored pencil, markers and paint, with a dash of goat.

Thanks For Staying

I was feeling burned out from painting, so I figured I'd break out the colored pencils for a day or two and play around with some old sketches.

Dust Dogs

This is my last card contribution to the Endangered Ark card deck. www.endangeredark.com

The African Wild Dog is known by many names, including Cape Dogs, Hunting Dogs, Painted Wolves and Spotted Dogs. They are an extremely social pack hunting canine native to Africa.
At once point, there were 500,000 Wild Dogs in the wild, some ranging in packs of 100 animals. Now, there are only 3,000-2,500 left. They are endangered due mainly to hunting from ranchers and habitat loss, which forces them in direct competition with lions and hyenas. They are also very susceptible to introduced diseases such as distemper, parvovirus and rabies. Due to their extremely social nature, these diseases spread through their numbers like wildfire.

Amur

This is the Amur Tiger card for the Endangered Ark.
http://www.endangeredark.com/

Siberian (aka Amur/Manchurian/Ussuri) tigers are a rare, critically endangered subspecies of tigers, found only in the Amur region of the far east.

Today, there are an estimated 400 to 500 Siberian tigers in the wild, and their population seems stable. While there is a very successful captive breeding program, there is little to zero chance of reintroducing captive bred tigers back into the wild. This makes it imperative to protect their natural habitat if Siberian tigers are to continue to exist outside of zoos and private collections.

The Stowaway

This is the second Joker card for the Endangered Ark card deck, featuring the brown rat.

It is a very adaptable and intelligent animal, and as a species, thrives in proximity to man. While they likely originated in the plains of Asia, China and Mongolia, the brown rat rapidly spread throughout the rest of the world in the Middle Ages by stowing away on boats and following human migration trails. The brown rat first appeared as early as 1553 in England, and today, it is speculated there is 81 million brown rats in the UK, making it 1.3 rats per person.

Human Error

Here is one of the Joker cards for the Endangered Ark. He's in your outback, eating your numbats.

Taking second place to feral house cats, the red fox is one of Australia's most problematic invasive predator. They were originally brought over in 1855 from Europe for the purpose of recreational hunting. Since then, their numbers have exploded, estimated around 7 million animals. They are responsible for the decline of many small marsupials, including the numbat. The fox is a very adaptable, elusive and prolific animal, and as such, is nearly impossible to contain or control. It continues to decimate populations of native species and there is no foreseeable solution.

Number Nine

I feel really lucky to have had the chance to paint the California condor for the Endangered Ark card deck.

I feel even more lucky to have had the chance to see them in the wild. But most of all, I feel luckiest that I was born in world where thanks to the dedicated efforts of a few determined individuals, I can still drive down the 1 in California and catch a fleeting glimpse of one of the coolest birds to ever grace the skies.

In 1987, there were only 22 Californian condors left in the world. The folks at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles zoo caught all of the remaining birds in an effort to conserve the species. Through their selective breeding and release program, they have risen the population to 327 birds, over half of which are in the wild today.

Cheetah

This is a piece for the Endangered Ark card deck (http://endangeredark.com), being organized by Foxfeather (http://foxloft.com)


The deck features a bunch of different artists and a variety of endangered species, and a portion of the deck's proceeds will be donated to charities dedicated to helping endangered wildlife.

You Fell For My Coffee Trap

True Blue

Justa cattle dog fella.

Top of the Morning

Bayshore Snapshot

A quick scribble that turned into a bit more when I realized I'd never painted Bayshore before.