Off topic. Back to our reguarly scheduled furriness next time.
More pen and ink, and the other half of my new Werewolf: the Apocalypse character, Litany Santiago. Homid form. The look was based on a real life photo I found. Need reference photos for just plain people? try online dating services, you can search by age, ethnicity, all kinds of things. Just don't expect them to be the best photos.

Pen and ink on cheap copy paper. A mechanical mouse building anest amidst trash. The can and contents (paper shreds, a dog choke chain, a pencil sharpener barrel, and a screwdriver) drawn from life. The mouse of the mouse is based on an illustration of a spotted mouse from the World Encyclopedia of Animals, illustrations by Sergio and Lorenzo Orlandi. Of course it wasn't mechanical in teh book, but same pose. added little nesting materials.
Done for Ursala vernon's irregular art challenge http://www.livejournal.com/community/art_challenge/ This weeks challenge, machinery and robotics.

Medusa's adopts a pet

Everybody wants a pet unicorn. There just aren't enough to go around. So most people would go home with a jackalope, or a hellhound, or even the occasional werewolf. But nobody at the shelter ever suggested they even LOOK at the catoblepas. It was just too dangerous and ugly. Clearly he'd live out his days at the mythical pet shelter, alone and unloved...

But it turns out there's a perfect pet for every one and a perfect owner for every pet...

acrylic and colored pencil on bristol. 7X10"

For the February 2003 compo. I did a bookcover version of this painting earlier, but this is the whole whizbang one with a back cover and spine and things, not just the front piece.
The pose of the dog is based on a black and white photo on the cover of "Beggars and Thieves: the Lives or Urban Street Criminals". The original painting was done in acrylics on bristol.
The ISBN code is lifted off the back of "The Dragon on the Border" by Gordan R. Dickson (good book, guy transforms into dragon, read it). Iona, so far as I know, is not a real publisher. The Iona symbol is a "d" in the Wingdings font. Most of the rest of the text is either Times New Roman or Matisse.

If Our Brother's Keepers interests you, send me e-mail to prod me into getting on with writing it. I started, then got distracted by trying to computerize the inventory of my bookstore. (thus I had LOTS of references to do this piece with)

Pose is based off a photograph on the cover of "Beggars and Thieves: the Lives of Urban Street Criminals".
This is just like the other version of Our Brother Keepers, but cropped to the size of a paperback bookcover and with lettering. That was the entire purpose of the painting really, to focus my thoughts on a story I have kicking around in my head. The mood of the tale was giving me problems, and this came to my mind, this vision of what made the whoel thing come together thematically.
So I made a bookcover for the jacket. I hope to start actually writing the story soon, now that I've sorted it out mentally.
E-mail me if you'd like more details on the story.

Promo poster for upcoming Rage set, Periphery. Set features artwork by many artists on VCL, Yerf, and Deviantart. Available Feb. 15th, 2004. http://www.rainydaypaperback.com/rage.html

Poster is sized so you can print it out on your home printer, no need to resize it.

Artwork and layout by H.C. O'Neill.

Rage is copyright White Wolf Game Studios.

I am Pika, see me cute!

What's a pika? They're abominably adorable animals related to rabbits. They typical dwell in burrows in mountainous areas. They're frequently seen scampering over the rocks with a mouthful of grass to line their burrows with. They typically weigh less than a pound.

This little guy is seen munching on some alpine flowers, one of their favorite snacks. This is an American pika which can be found in the Rocky Mountains and western coastal ranges of the US. Other species of pikas are found in Asia and Eastern Europe.

ACEO in charcoal on bristol. This has been sprayed with krylon fixative to prevent smudging from handling. 2.5 X 3.5 inches.

Pil Bug ACEO

A pill bug. Also known as a woodlouse, roly-poly, doodle bug, potato bug, slater, or sow bug.

They're not really bugs, they're actually land dwelling crustaceans that breath through tiny gills. There's more than 3,000 species of pill bugs worldwide.

Horse Head - charcoal ACEO

A horse fixes it's gaze on something in the distance.


ACEO 2.5X3.5 inches. 6.5X9 CM. charcoal drawing on bristol paper.

Raccoon skull

A simple life drawing (death drawing?) of a raccoon skull I own. I'm not sure how the break in the left cheek bone occurred since it was like that when I found it.

ACEO original charcoal on bristol paper. Playing card size, though it appears larger on screen here.

I ran a contest for artists to make a window design for the front door of my bookshop. This is actually the "runner up" of sorts, but I liked it so much, I found a different home for it on a side window! However the original design was for a slightly different shaped window, one that was a lot narrower. So fill out the space, I mirrored part of the background to either side to widen it. The original design's width was from the edge of the book to the fox's tail (the tip was actually missing!). Shade (http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Shade/) did this design, but I did the actual back painting on glass. I took the original pic she designed and in Photoshop, converted it to greyscale, than twiddled with the levels and such until I got a black and white version that I could cut out and use as a stencil. The whole project to tranfer it from the original design to actually being on the glass took about 15 hours of work. It's a little hard to see the shadeing in the picture because of the reflections off the glass from the outside (note the refelcted Citgo logo). I'm considering adding another layer of paint on the inside to even out the texture inside. It's a little streaky looking from the inside, but looks a bit like stained glass. Very, very cool. Grunt work of painting by H.C. O'Neill (Fenris Lorsrai) original design copyright Kristin Rakochy (Shade).

Another photo of the lovely design Shade did for me. I really love the way back painted glas looks as its so luminescent. It's a paint to photograph though with the reflections. (see the van reflected.) The shading is a little more visible from this angle. I bought about four times the amount of paint I actually needed for this project since I thought I'd need a lot more to get the colors sufficiently well saturated. I could have done a bit better job with the lettering, but otherwise, I'm incredably pleased with it! grunt work of painting by H.C. O'Neill (Fenris Lorsrai) original design copyright Kristin Rakochy (Shade. http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Shade/)

Poster to be used at a Rage CCG demo at ConnCon in Stamford CT, March 3rds 1-5PM in Stamford, CT. Get more info: http://www.conncon.com/ConnCon.htm

The design is based on the old propoganda poster of Rosie the Riveter designed by J. Howard Miller in 1943. The painting was done is only five colors of acrylic paint, with lots of water and drybrushing. The poster and text were put together in Macromedia Fireworks.

The image is presented here at full size so that if you're interested in running a Rage demo, you can print it out yourself. You are free to print the image for that use, but please do not alter it.

For more info on Rage, visit: http://www.rainydaypaperback.com/files/ragestuff/

Smiling Seal ACEO- charcoal

Seals have two expressions. Happy smiley seal and brainmeltingly sad and soulful.

The heart shaped nose, the curly whiskers, the shine in the eyes, all this says this is a Happy Seal!

Original ACEO. 2.5 X 3.5 inches (6.5 X 9 CM) Charcoal on bristol paper.

Here's the whole front of the store with the door Shakira's design is on, on the left. This is really just to give some clue as to the scale of the image. It's only 5-6 inches high on your screen, but its taller than I am in real life! This really is almost the entire front of the store, so getting the PERFECT sign was really important. I'm unbelievably happy with it.

Go see Shakira's gallery on VCL: http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Shakira-Searle/

Image copyright Shakira Searle. actual painting done by H.C. O'Neill and J.E. Hanses.

Its my off topic picture! This was done in maybe 10-15 minutes with some crayons. Its a bit rough and scribbly looking, but I like how it came out. Nice happy impressionionistic picture of sun shining through trees. I think this was based on an magazine ad for allergy medication.

One of two. Acrylic point on tin foil. Chris Goodwin was nice enough to let me use an old sketch of his for this piece. It was an inked piece of his called "Grief" from back in 1997. To reproduce it here, I reversed the image in photoshop, then printed it out, and taped it to the piece of foil. They I redrew over the lines with a very hard pencil with the foil ona surface that had some give in it to get the linework to show up as raised lines.

Then I painted in the colors with the acrylics. What's showing up black here is actually the foil underneath. The second photo shows it with the shine. The body was done in two flat colors, an ivory white and a pale slate blue. I considered doing a more standard orange color, but the somber image seemed to call for cold colors.
The background was done by using the foil itself as the painting pallette and mixing the colors right on the background with a very stiff brush. I used a bright blue and a burgandy paint as base, and then ran the brush through it and mixed it in spots all over the background, not actually trying to coat the surface, so that's why you have the very uneven swirls.

Original line art copyright Chris Goodwin, used with permission.

Two of two. Acrylic paint on tin foil. This is based on an old inked piece of Chri's Goodwin's called "Grief" that he allowed me to use.
It's the same piece as appears in silvertigernagled.jpg, but shot straight on so the flash from the camera will show off that it in fact painted on a reflective surface. Everything showing up as that paintfully bright white is actually the foil shwoing through the surface. Its not quite this shiny in real life. The flash from the camera just accentuated the contrast. It also made the paint colors appear much darker than they really are.
I really like the fact that even with the paint on it, it is still reflective on the line work, and that some light shines through on the background as well. Exactly where the light shines off it changes with every little bit you move your head. I love the effect. It's now framed and going down to be hung up at my store.
Would I do another painting on foil? Maybe, maybe not. It gave me such a headache, literally. The eye strain from painting a reflective surface literally gave me a headache.

Original line work used is copyright Chris Goodwin, used here with permission.

Sleeping Sato ACEO

She looks so sweet sleeping but as soon as there's a noise in the kitchen, she's off like a shot to see if you'll share some of your sandwich!

What's a sato? It's a slang term for "street dog" used to described the feral dogs on the various Caribbean islands. The one that posed for this drawing (right up til the sounds of fridge opening woke her) was rescued from Puerto Rico through Save A Sato. I could not have asked for a nicer dog.

Original charcoal ACEO. 2.5X 3.5 inches (6.5X 9CM) on bristol.

A dhole hunter picks up the pace and readies his javelin, as he spies his prey ahead.

Done entirely in Painter Classic as an experiment to try and teach myself how the program works. Some things came out well, like the feet. Some things came out not so good... like the chest. I'm happy considering this is the second thing I've ever done in Painter.

Pose based on a stock photo from The Stock Market's 1998 catalog. Photo attributed to DiMaggio/Kalish. The hand with the javelin was traced, as was the general silhouette of the body.

Tiger & rat ACEO

Is that rat a pet or a snack?

an ACEO in charcoal on bristol. 2.5X3.5 inches (playing card sized)

Treefrog

Fear the frog of cuteness!

A little tree frog blends in with a leaf til he's ready to pounce!

ACEO 2.5X3.5 inches. 6.5X9 CM. (it appears bigger on screen than it actually is) Original charcoal drawing on bristol paper.

When Vegetables Attack! Next on Fox!

A silly loose little picture for vegestenum day. remember back in the day when Fox used to show all those "when X attack!" shows? Yeah, you do, and you probably watched the first five minutes of it just to see how bad it was. I almost did when legumes attack, but its hard to make peas look threatoning.

More twiddling with armadillo design, making the tail a bit longer and making it work as a counterweight for bipedal movement. I'm not entirely happy with the leg positioning compared to the plating over the hips, but short of sticking some hapless live armadillo in that position, I have to guess as to what looks right. I am happy with the arms and hands, which look properly heavy, but functional. I really like the head and ears. The ears look properly expressive, and the head looks properly ugly, like an anvil. I didn't want this to look like charismatic megafauna, armadillos are pretty ugly, and something human sized would just make that worse.
and he's carrying... a box. I failed to think of anything better to put in his hands, and just wanted to do a study of him walking.

A werewolf cub gets marked in a ceremony.

Crayon resist with acrylic washes, and acrylic overlay on cardboard. The ridged appearance comes from the cardboard. This was an offshoot of some experiments with hot wax.

To flatten out some of the ridges in the cardboard, I initially soaked it in water, than rolled it flat with a rolling pin. I stuck it unde r board and left it to dry. Then I went and did the texturing with several passes of different colored crayon. Then I did a couple washes in watered acrylic to give the base color. Wax didn't resist quit as much as I expected it would, so I went back over it with some more crayon. Then added the 'mark' on the head in undiluted acylic, straight from the tube.

Fun experiment, may come came back to this technique later.

Groundhog cavalry

CHARGE!

Onward mighty woodchuck! A rat warrior rides his mighty groundhog into battle.

ACEO 2.5X3.5 inches. 6.5X9 CM. Mixed media: acrylic, colored pencil, and charcoal on bristol

This was supposed to be just a quick little sketch to solidify in my mind a character design for Xanty, a n anthro-armadillo. Well, I've since changed the design, but the sketch got a little out of hand. I decide to put a little texture on, and then it just snowballed into this texture mad version. The original is slightly bigger.
Note my inability to draw objects. That's a staple gun he's got. I had a reason for a staple gun, really I did.

Same out of control 'sketch' of Xanty, but sepia tinted. I think I like this one even better, even if its smaller and a little bit blurrier than the untinted version.

More computer overpainting. This one ended up significantly different than the photo I started with.
For one, the wolf had normal paws, and I made hands. I also made it a lot broader across the shoulders by sectioning off the picture at mid spine and moving it over, and then filling in the middle to give the impression of a crouched were instead of a trotting wolf. And there were no blood spatters or footprints originally.

The picture used for overpainting appears on page 67 of "Wolves" by Candace Savage put out by the Sierra Club. Photo taken by Wayne Lankinen of Valan Photos.