The Nelson and Garrett Super STOOPID Sketchshow.

It's that time again peoples. Yeah that's right another sketchshow. This time will be different as my partner in awesome Garrett Zientara will be co-hosting. He's no artist, but he makes everything awesome.

Now there are a couple of things different this time.
1) Garrett, but you already know about that.
2) I have switched to Ustream.tv
3) There will be some latency issues so you gotta be a little bit more patient for me to respond.
4) FREE PRINTS!!! Well, kinda, I haven't worked this out fully yet, but I will explain how that will be during the livestream.
5) There is a baby!!!!! Yeah it's really awkward when no one knows you have fathered a child and they hear blabbering in the background. So I warn you now she is very talkative and you will hear her "talking" in the background. Also I may have to step away and change a butt or two, make a bottle or something else so whatevs...
6) New computer!!! This means better quality drawings! Less compression and faster painting!
7) I'm working on doing some guest artist shit, but you'll have to see what comes of that.


The new channel is USTREAM.TV/CHANNEL/NELSONTIPSWORD

All you have to do is go there and watch, you can also watch any previous videos I have done as well.
I think this covers it all, but I'm not sure so I may update this later peace.

The various tasks that keep me busy.

I love owning a business (sarcasm). Sure it has it's upsides, but it also makes me want to pluck out my remaining eye and  become a blind monk. I have been trying to finish the last book of A Song of Fire and Ice as well, at least that is going well. I can't seem to put it down.

I digress, there is a large snow storm in my area so I could not get out to the studio to get on my comp there and upload some stuff, but I still have something to share with you guys:

This is a clips video... sorry for the dub wubs.. I was listening to a youtube channel called Going Quantum and my forgot to turn off the audio recorder on my screen capture software. For the best viewing experience watch it in 1080HD and you might also want to turn down the volume on your headphones or speakers.

BATMAN B-DAY!!!

Yesterday was my birthday, I have turned 25.

Damn, I'm getting old.

I had a very enjoyable day and too some time to do a little personal

painting.

I love batman. i'm not a hardcore fanboy, I'm hardly a fanboy about anything, to me it just kills the enjoyment of that something. I sketched up a drawing as I watched the Christopher Nolan trilogy, originally it was just Batman in a goofy pose, leaping or skipping

I had thought about putting him in a field of flowers or holding up a cute puppy or kitty, but then I thought, what if he was saving me? 

Yeah!!!

EXPLOSIONS!!!!!

'cause explosions are awesome. everybody like explosions right?

To be honest I this is not the best piece of art, it was quick and I experimented with a lot of brushes in photoshop that I am not familiar with. It could be better. I don't really care, it was for me and it makes me smile. I decided at the proposal from my wife to post it to Reddit.com
Good Idea. I am a redditor, I have posted other things there, and I frequent r/redditgetsdrawn.
I also subscribe to r/batman. So I decided to post it there, seemed like a good idea.
http://www.reddit.com/r/batman/comments/15x21m/today_i_turned_25_and_my_wish_is_to_be_save_by/
at the time of this writing It has 3 upvotes and 4 downvotes. Some people have seemed to like this, others not so much.
I'm not trying to a butthurt about this.
I'm simply trying to understand why people feel the necessity to downvote, maybe they thought I was karma-whoring, it was a fake or something, don't know.

I want this to be an example to others about this kind of logistic to posting online. If you are an artist new to the game or even professional be careful when post your artwork. you never know how people will react. Take every action and reaction with a grain of salt.
If there is appropriate criticism do not blow it off gain as much knowledge form it as you can, and if people are just being asshats ignore them.Like a fellow redditor told me "If they don't like it, hey, it's their loss - that's how I see it, anyways. They don't really matter anyways"

You can let something like this stop you in your tracks or you can go whatevs and keep on working, the sole thing that destroys the will of an artist is negative feedback. Remember why you create. In my case this picture makes me smile, it was incredibly fun to create and for that's how it is for every painting. Proceed, evolve, get better, be better, let nothing stop. Have the will to let no one undermine your prosperity. I wish you all the best for 2013. 

Coloring Book???

Hello all, I was browsing deviant art the other day and came across this illustration by Babsdraws:

I really loved this image and wondered what it would look like in color so I decided to give a go at coloring it. Make sure you check out the original artist at: http://babsdraws.deviantart.com/.

Now here is my rendition of the piece:

Let me be clear I do not think that my image is better than the original artist, or that I am a better artist. I just wanted to recreate this in color. 

N-Kay

Ok, guys I have been under a lot of stress and emotional burden dealing with a recent tragedy in the family so I have not been able to work let alone paint for the blog. I do not think this should keep me from providing well established content, so I have come to a compromise that will hopefully balance things out.
Some of you may know of Nicholas Kay, if not let me give you a lil' reference.

Nicholas started using Photoshop around 2001 and professionally as an artist in 2007. Last year he obtained a MA in Game Design.

His original style consisted of heavy line art, but he has experimented with different styles.

He has worked for

• 40K Radio


• Alderac Entertainment Group


• Bell of Lost Souls


• BySwarm


• Dark Art Miniatures


• Disney


• Electronic Gaming Monthly


• Fantasy Flight Games


• Game Night Productions


• Lone Shark Games Inc.


• Miniwargaming.com


• Neverstop


• Paizo Publishing


• Pixar


• Qubop Inc.


• Say Design


• Sephora

• The Creative Group

Most importantly though Nicholas is bringing his knowledge and experience to any one who is interested by sharing tips and demonstrations through livestream sessions, which he then posts to youtube. 

I have not been able to attend one of his livestreams yet, but I will soon. Allow me to share a few with you now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sTWGnM43ss&feature=plcp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5_nwYW_s3k&feature=plcp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjAIW6fAlYk&feature=plcp

 Also be sure to look at his other work you can visit  his website: Nicholaskay.com

Thank you for viewing and hopefully I don't lose too many viewers to Nick, peace out, word to your mother and other outdated ways of saying goodbye.

Psuedo-Study

So I have tried to upload this pic about 15 times now and every time there has been parts that are corrupted, which is frustrating me. Nonetheless I decided just to post this anyway, since the problem areas are not overwhelming.
        I have the idea that painting images is a great way to figure out how people structure their painting. This method can also teach the person doing the study a great deal about how they themselves paint. This is my attempt I found this really gorgeous painting on conceptart.org while browsing through a sketchbook, unfortunately firefox crashed on me and I lost to whom the painting belonged to, but after a little searching I found out who the original belongs to.
       Viktor Fetsch is his name and Oh Lawdy! is he amazing. 

Here is his version (above), I think I got it pretty good and close to his likeness. Though I wanted to see about leaning towards warmer colors. I don't know how well I did that, I was really pushing my colors towards the hue of Viktor's at some times so I screwed up, but hopefully I worked those areas out so that you can't tell.
Check out more of Viktor Fetsch's work, this is not a request, do it.
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?179065-Fetschbook
http://fetschart.blogspot.com/
http://fetsch.deviantart.com/
and if you want to follow him on twitter he's @ViktorFetsch
Thank you for viewing!!!

A Nice Little Preview

when i started this piece I was just doing some facial studies from one of my friends. I did about 20 or 30 small thumbnail sketches with a 2H, an HB, and a 2B Pencil in one of my sketchbooks. Then i got the Idea of trying some techniques I learned about from watching an Erik Ryan Demonstration on painting the head. Needless to say It progressed even farther. To be honest I'm not sure where I want to take this. I know where I could, but I'm strained between keeping the sensuality of the piece and not distorting it with the things that pop into my mind.
I might do some more color sketches and see what you all think, but I want the end image to have that feeling of sensuality that makes you go:

Well I guess we will just see how that goes.
Some things to look forward to are my Test based tutorial which will be very in-depth and a couple of speed paintings with some painting tips.
Thanks for visiting!!! Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Blood.

I decided to finish this piece with some blood. The imagery felt sufficiently creepy enough with out it, but I have never painted dark and glossy blood like this before. It wasn't too challenging (I covered my face with fake blood blood made form corn syrup/water/red dye for reference) but I think I will benefit from this little study.

Repainting

This right here is the culmination of dedication, perseverance, and imagination.

This is a piece that I am currently working on. It is a piece that i am recreating from a mural I did about a year ago up at The Factory Arts Studios. It's one of my favorites so far and rightly so. It measures at about 45 by 58 inches.
Admittedly this is just a teaser, because I have gotten further in the process than what is shown above, but I wanted to show a simple start of the painting first. I plan on uploading a comprehensive walk-through on how this painting came to be later this month, keep checking in and I'll provide you with more content until then!
On another note this will also be a print available in my shop. There will be two version one will be a regular version with the usual options (standard, archive, canvas); the second option will be a highly archival museum quality print on dense weight paper or canvas but limited to 25 or so prints. Each will be numbered and hand autographed by me.

If I may take a moment I would like to thank all those who have looked at my blog (even in passing), have hired me for a commission, or have bought a print from my shop. It really means a lot to me. Seriously.
I have work, then I have this. While my work is constructed around art, it can be tedious and mind numbing, but when I get to make art for myself it is kind of like when you walk hoe from school and when you get home you take off that ridiculously heavy back pack and park your ass on the couch and chill out to some after school Tom & Jerry.
For every person that gives me money or supports my blog by sharing on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc; you give me a lil' more enjoyment in life and that is never a thing to be granted.
Make sure you come back real soon I'll be posting a High res painting you can download (or just right click> save as) and print off at home then hang on your wall.
Word to your mother.

Gremlins and wierd boobies...

 Let me just say that I have been busy with client work and with other freelance work so I have sorrowfully been neglecting my wonderful blog. But I am here to shower you with doodly goodness. The first pic is a lil' gremlin dude I just stepped away from so that I can come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. Been working on that for the last couple of hours. The second one is a color render I am doing. I was browsing deviant art and saw it and was like dang I gotta render that shit. I cannot for the life of me remember the deviant who did it, but I will find out later and with the finished piece give credit to the original artist cause credit is due.
The 3rd, 4th, and 5th ones are just a piece I'm doing for practice and what my screen looks like while I work most of the time. The last one is a small piece I did in photoshop just for practice. i recorded the process and threw it up all over youtube (link below) The way I worked on this one is by just opening a canvas and jumping right in. I had no plans about subject matter or lighting. I didn't think I just jumped right in. Which is why if you watch the video you'll see me fucking around for a lil bit before realizing that I'm retarded. I'm not too familiar with working in photoshop so I don't know how to go about things that I would normally paint traditionally or in Corel.
Check out the vid here:

Surealism

I was sitting sketching a spine suffering from severe scoliosis. I do this a lot, and it occurred to me that I don't draw or paint enough of the body twisting on it's axis. So I entered Corel Painter 12 and started sketching out some bodies twisting. Unfortunately my limited skills prevented me from doing something dramatic (correctly). So for the actual painting I settled on a much simpler form (as you can see above). As you may have noticed as I say this a lot, "and one thing led to another". I began to add different elements; first starting with the horns (I have no idea why, but I love to draw horns on people, it adds this totally cliche other-worldly essence), then I dissected the piece that is floating off to the left (in hindsight it probably would look better if a had finished the body then moved the section, but you paint and learn), next I played with a bunch of different stripping, some using white or black lines with angles then some scrubby grungy type textures. then I had the idea of doing the colored lines you see above. I liked the colors initially, but something was off. I decided they looked too clean. So I had the idea of making them look like I had taped over the painting and painted in the lines that way, but as if I did a shitty job with it. I messed around with painter for awhile and found that I didn't like any effect I was getting with the brushes on there so I hid every layer except for what the lines were on saved it as a .png and opened it up in photoshop (every time I save something and open it in photoshop it bums me the fuck out just because my computer is not powerful enough to run both programs adequately, so I have to save and close Corel then open photoshop and I'm impatient) I basically use a textured eraser with an opacity set to 45% changing the brush textures every once in a while so that there weren't any obvious visual redundancies. I saved that opened it in Corel, pasted it and added the text. There you have it, A very simplified explanation of how I went about doing this piece. I hope you like it. I notice that it is incomplete, but I needed to get some sort of finished example done so that I wasn't worrying to much about the lady and forgot where I was going with the entire peice, I plan on going back to it later this week and rendering it completely fixing mistakes and making it a well polished piece. In an effort to get more interaction with my blog and it's viewers I will be offering a free 11"x14" framed print of this piece of art for free to a random person. The thing is for me to select someone you gotta comment and leave your name and e-mail or subscribe. Awesome right! You bet your sweet cinnamon rolls it is! this will also be a limited edition print which the winner will receive the first print out of 150.
In other news:
I have been wanting to make another video for awhile now. I have the technology I can make them better faster, with more resolution than before, only thing is. WHAT AM I GONNA DOOO!
Leave a comment and suggest something that you would like to see. Anything that your wonderful brain could imagine I will try my hardest to do!
As always thank you for viewing my blog I hope you found it entertaining and for all you artists out there teaching yourselves I hope you keep at it and evolve with me.    

Lil' Demonstration

 The paintings you are about to see are about 6 years old. I believe I only had Corel Painter Essentials. they have pretty crappy resolution and I used the just add water and real oil blender way too much, nut eh whatevs.