Hellhippo Rising

I know I haven't posted here in awhile but I have been involved with various projects and haven't been able to write much of any worth.

I have been figuring out the direction I want to take with my art. I am moving away from primarily focusing on caricatures and portraits and toward doing darker material. To that end I am launching a new brand 'Hellhippo' which takes it's name from the art-book I am working on: 'Hellhippo and Other Denizens of the Dark Dimensions' More info on that is forthcoming.

As you may have noticed my cliffcature website no longer exists and you are redirected here to my blog. The reason for this is that I never gave the site the attention it deserves and as such it wasn't that interesting to visit. I think this was my subconscious telling me I was heading down the wrong path. I am endeavoring to correct that and have a new site int he works. In the meantime you can keep up with my doings on FB orTwitter......or here.

Thank you for stopping by.

Been a bit.....

Well folks a lot has happened over the last month or two. My PC caught a nasty virus and I had to put her down. I made the transition to Mac and I am glad I did. I like the interface and the over all simplicity. Rather than morn the loss of data, I am taking it as an opportunity to start fresh. You can see on my facebook page some of the new work I have been doing.

I have begun work on illustrating a children's book. I am excited about this project and will share more details as I am able.

I have also signed up on Sketchoholic and look forward to participating there. I have more stuff to share but right now I am holding my baby and she doesn't want me typing any more. Can't blame her. Stay tuned!

Happy New Year

Sorry I haven't been updating as often as I would like. The holiday season has been very busy.


I finally got my feet wet doing live caricature work (check out my Facebook page for pics). Unlike many in field, I don't use markers. Instead I use black colored pencil and white charcoal on toned paper. I like the look of it but have to increase my speed.


In other news:
My computer has been rather slow lately due to a burned out graphics card. Mental note- cooling fans don't work so well clogged with dust. I temporarily replaced it with a cheaper model I picked up at a local store. I will be getting a superior card in the near future. I look forward to being able to put my Cintiq back to use. I have tons of new ideas I want to try.

My wife got me an Ipod Touch and I have been playing around with AutoDesk's Sketchbook Mobile. I don't have a stylus for it so it isn't quite as precise as I want, but it is great for toying around. I have been using it's symmetry feature to design aliens which I plan to finish in Photoshop. Below is one of them:

Illustration

I have started work on a practice illustration. I am fairly confident in my ability to get a solid likeness and render it to my satisfaction, however, The piece of the illustration puzzle I need to work on is to place a caricature into context, to that end I am doing a depiction of Sarah Palin as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. I am also going to start taking news stories and thinking about how I would illustrated them.

I want to move into doing illustration work for publication and this seems like good practice. Any ideas you folks have would be greatly appreciated.

Speedpainting.

Here are some recent digital speed paintings that I have done:

Putin

Finally finished this one of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Originally this was an assignment for Seiler's class but alas didn't finish in time being that other stuff came up. Anyway hope you like it. My monitor calibrating equipment should come in this week and I will recheck all my colored works to make sure they are what I want them to be.

Miranda Kerr Sketch.

Here is a sketch I did for the monthly jam over at the Drawing Board of Model Miranda Kerr. There are several changes that I can already see I will make when I go to paint this but anyway here it is:

I am also working on sketches of Lady Gaga, Alan Rickman (Professor Snape) and a better Jon Stewart. All of these will eventually be painted. I have also been working on a painting of Putin and Trump.