What's up?

Upcoming Show: Gen Con Indy Aug 15-18 See me there!

I apologize for being lax about updating my blog in the last year. With moving to a new state and then several times in a year I got a lot less art done. Then my book proposal was approved last spring and I had to work overtime, suddenly painting and draw more than I had in a couple years while juggling the shows I had already paid for.

"Fantasy Fashion Art Studio" will be an watercolor fantasy instructional book following my paintings step by step and giving tips for finding inspiration and creating different costume styles and eras for your characters.

The book is finished and due out in this month. This is one of the first paintings in "Fantasy Fashion Art Studio" by Meredith Dillman

When I was looking for an idea for a flower based fairy, these purple bellflowers were coming up all over my garden. They are really quite weedy, which was an advantage since they were one of the only things surviving without rain.



Creeping Bellflower - Ink and Watercolor 2012 - Prints of Creeping Bellflower

Book paintings now for sale

11 original paintings published in my book from Walter Foster - Watercolor Made Easy: Fairies and Fantasy have been released for sale in my eBay Store.

All painting are around 8x10 inches in ink and watercolor.

Castles in the Sky
Fairy Royalty
Among the Mushrooms
Throne of Ravens
Dryad
Follow Me
Wisteria
Umi Mermaid
Fairy Friends
Poppies
Snow Maiden

Also, new mug designs available at zazzle are buy 2 or more mugs or tshirts and get 22% off with the code TWOTWENTYTWO until 3/1/10.

Watercolor Made Easy: Fairies & Fantasy

Finally I am ready to take pre-orders of the book I spent half of 2008 illustrating. It features walkthroughs for 12 paintings as well as pages on techniques and ideas for painting fairies and backgrounds.

I'm taking pre-orders for signed copies on my website. I will also include a mini of the cover art. The release date is March 1, but I may be able to get them from the publisher earlier.

Pre-order link

Looking for Art Books

I've been a little unhappy with some bad habits in my work and need to simply start sketching more for practice. I am jealous of people who went to animation school. So tonight I thought that I would try to find a nice animation book that would help me with movement. The only problem is that 90% of the animation/fantasy/comic drawing books at B&N are now Christopher Hart books. This is unfortunately since most of them are the same book with slightly different art (yes it irks me that they continue to publish them). I only found one actual animation book, which I think I will pick up later. I don't have any intention of animating but I think it would help with drawing.

There's really no reason I should be doing more illustration since I'm seeing children's books with the quality of art I am capable of. I just need get myself to believe I can.

So what I did find with what I was looking for was book 4 and 5 from the How to Draw Manga series Ultimate Manga Lessons. Most of the older books don't have a lot of useful information on how to apply techniques to your art rather than just copying poses in the books. There's some later books that go into detail about inking and specific techniques that are better though.



I also saw a new John Howe Book on dragons and and a Licensing book that I thought looked pretty helpful. Other than the author's idea that self publishing prints is more difficult than using a publisher (Fantasy and comic genre art is different than the market for, say Terry Redlin and Thomas Kinkaide), there's lot of information that no one tells new artists such as actual %s for different products (believe me, I was sure this was somehow secret information for a long time).



And some sketches:

These were preliminary sketches for my Christmas card design this year:


Sketches for a future painting and some critters:


Also,

- Saw Bolt (in 3d) this weekend. It was awesome. That got me interested in checking out future Disney movies The Princess and the Frog, Rupunzel (I love the concept art but how are they going to do this with the main character stuck in a tower the entire time?), and King of the Elves
- I discovered Emma - A Victorian Romance season 2 is out and Netflix has it. Yay! :)

Books and updates

Today I was surprised to receive a copy of Linda Ravenscroft's new book "How to Draw and Paint Fairyland: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the World of Fairies" in the mail from the UK. I had almost forgotten about it. My painting Daydreamer was published in the back gallery section.


Link to Amazon

I have also looked over some of the page mock-ups from the publisher for my how to book this weekend and they are great. Now it's looking like a real book!

Some site updates,

New prints:
• Prepared
• Natural Magic


• Spirit of the Ginkgo

I added the printed version of my webcomic for sale also.

Recommended books

John Howe Fantasy Art Workshop



This is a wonderful book. I am a big fan of Mr. Howe's work and much of the advice in this book is familiar from John's forum but it's a good chance to see how he works step by step, as well as how he organizes his studio and prepares for illustration jobs. There are lots of tips even I who has been painting for many years didn't think of before. John Howe makes a point to encourage readers to find their own unique style and way of painting, unlike many how to books which only show one way of doing things. I particularly love that his sense of humor shows. He honest about illustration and admits that he isn't perfect and procrastinates as much as possible before every job (just like me^^)

Scott Pilgrim 1-4 by Mal (Bryan O Malley but he'll always be Mal to me!)



Way back when I was a senior in high school I discovered the internet and the anime fanart community. Mal was one of the artists who was always around the forum and irc channel, and I did fanart for his online comic Winged Misa. Mal grew up and published the incredibly awesome and funny Scott Pilgrim. Read it!

(I still haven't read them all, but it took a month for the comic store to get them all for me)