I love art books episode 001: Overwatch Visual Sourcebook
Let’s get this out-of-the-way right off the bat. I love seeing others artwork. It inspires me… which makes me a sucker for art books. Every time there’s a sale on Amazon or I find one secondhand I need to buy it. So as opposed to leaving them on my shelf to get dusty I decided […]
Creating a Square Up Online Art Store
I’ve been sending out invoices to clients using Square for years now. It’s easy to use and they only take 2.75% for online transactions. It’s not great to lose additional revenue, but it’s really efficient. My clients can pay via credit card and I get my payment within 1 to 2 business days. When most […]
Schoolism Live San Francisco 2015 – Day 2
After an amazingly full day one at the Schoolism Live in San Francisco, day two began with me running behind. The BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit, doesn’t run on its normal schedule on Sundays so I was late arriving at the conference. Instead of being 10 rows from the front I ended up being three rows from […]
Schoolism Live San Francisco 2015 – Day 1
Today, July 18th, I was able to head to downtown San Francisco to go to a live Schoolism event. This workshop featuring some pretty amazing artists. I got a two day pass for this conference so I was able to learn from some icons of the entertainment industry. The weekend agenda went as follows; Day 1 STORY […]
My thoughts on Creativity Inc
Before reading Creativity Inc by Pixar President Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace I wasn’t entirely sure what I could learn from a book written for creative leadership. I love Pixar and all they create but learning how their company runs didn’t really seem appealing to me at first. Well it turns out I was wrong. […]
More Life with Subsurface Scattering
Subsurface scattering (SSS) is the phenomenon when light enters a translucent material and upon entering it the light scatters inside the material before either being absorbed or leaving the material at a different location. I know this sounds like a hard idea to grasp but it’s a good concept to keep in the back of […]
Which Free Online Portfolio Websites is right for you?
Having an online portfolio is a necessity these days to be an artist. An online presence is as important as the artwork you display on it. Artists must promote their work in as many places as possible to gain exposure and attract as many clients as possible. If you don’t have a portfolio up on […]
Organize Inspiration with Pinterest
When I was in college taking illustration classes my instructor, John, had us sifting through old magazines looking for examples of illustrations. Once we found those images he would have us tear them out and put them into a three ring binder alphabetically by the subject that the illustration pertained to. At the end of […]
What is #sketch_dailies
For those artists on Twitter you may have started seeing the hashtag #sketch_dailies popping up in your feed along side a doodle. Sketch Dailies is a community of artists that do daily sketches based on a common theme. Sketch Dailies began as a warm up for Isaac Orloff and his fellow coworkers at the game company Storm8. […]
Process for creating a book cover: Legend of Halloween
In this post I’m going to walk you through my process for creating a book cover. A self-publishing author, Thea Berg, approached me to do a cover in her book series The Magical World of Sebella. The first book cover was illustrated by Wilson Williams, Jr. who sadly passed away last year. So I thought […]
What I wish I knew before starting out as an artist?
When I first began as an artist I wish I had known the benefits of sharing. Sharing your art and knowledge is one of the most important things an artist can do to build a following for themselves. Putting your artwork up where others can see it and getting feedback is the best way to […]
Review – Schoolism’s Character Design 2 online class with Stephen Silver
Last year I took the second character design class offered by Schoolism.com entitled Character Design 2 with Stephen Silver. This course was taught by Stephen Silver, a professional character designer working in the field of animation. He has worked on shows like Disney Channel‘s Kim Possible and Nickelodeon‘s Danny Phantom. Like I mentioned this is […]
Spec Work, No Thanks
A little while ago a client asked me to work on a project with them. I quoted the job and waited to hear back, but the response I got took me by surprise. The response said: “Please move forward with the project, but we will only pay for the work if we use it. If […]
My Top 10 of 2013 – Entertainment
Every year I tried to write down my favorite things from the past year. It’s just a little reminder to me but I like to share it with everyone. Here is my list from 2013. Pacific Rim (Warner Bros.) Gravity falls (Disney) The last of us (Naughty Dog) Cintiq Companion (Wacom) Hyrule Historia (Nintendo) The Art of Journey […]
Creating a vector graphic from a bitmap image in Adobe Illustrator
In this edition of the Once Upon a Sketch screen cast we show you how to use the live trace tool in Adobe Illustrator. In Adobe Illustrator CS two Adobe added a handy tool called the live trace tool which allows you to convert bitmap images into a vector based image very easily. Check out […]
Starting a Artist’s Texture Library with CGtextures.com
CGtextures.com is a great resource to find photo textures for your images. None of these photos will win any photography competitions. The images are, for the most part, flat and evenly lit and have straight on camera angles. And that’s the point. You add the interest when adding them to your illustrations, 3D models, logos […]
Preparing pencil sketches using Channels in PhotoShop
First off I’d like to start off with a quote from one of my instructors in college about working in Adobe PhotoShop. He said “There are a thousand ways to solve the same problem in PhotoShop”. This statement is 100% true. I know there are so many other ways to accomplish a nice clean line […]
Improving Your Facebook FanPage
Once you’ve set up your Facebook fan page you might think you’re done but there’s still a lot more work to do. You may get a few Likes at first but the goal here is to continue gaining momentum and continuing to spread the word. Spreading the word Now that your fan page is set […]
Inking and coloring artwork in Adobe Illustrator
When I first started doing the Once Upon a Sketch Screen Casts I created a series of two videos about how I ink and color my drawings in Adobe Illustrator. Well, it’s been over a year since I created this set of videos so I thought I would share them again for those who haven’t […]
Online Backup Solutions for Artists
Last week a friend of mine had a scare with his computer. As computers will do, his PC hard drive decided to just die on him. As you can imagine he had the normal response for someone put in this situation “Oh no what have I lost!”. It turns out that he had almost all […]
Warming up Digital Figure Drawing with PoseManiacs.com
It’s always nice to start my work day off with some gesture sketching. Unfortunately, I don’t have a live model on call or have a lot of time to go through photo reference sites looking for a pose to sketch. Maybe I could just find a magazine, but my computer is right here and I […]
Questions to Consider Before Working With a Illustrator on Your Children’s Book
Is this your first Children’s Book? If it is then the illustrator might not only have to be the Illustrator but the teacher and possibly the designer of the book as well. In most instances very few have taken the proper steps to educate themselves about the process and kind of work that goes into […]
Schoolism’s Gesture Drawing class and My thoughts
Last weekend I finished up my Gesture drawing class at Schoolism.com with Alex Woo. This is the second class I’ve taken at this site and so far I’ve found both classes to be very helpful. The first class I took at Schoolism was character design (Read my review of that class here). When I took my […]
Book Report – The Art of How to Train Your Dragon
One of the most amazing movies I’ve seen in the 3D era of animated movies has got to be How to Train Your Dragon. A big part of that for me has to be the way the animators gave life to the dragons. This is why I love these types of art books. I love […]
Keyboard Shortcuts for Photoshop Digital Painters
Here are a few handy key board short cuts I like to use when painting in PhotoShop. Some are very basic but still good to know. To download a PDF of this quick guide click here. Type B for the Brush tool, Pencil tool, Color Replacement tool depending on which tool you used last. Increase […]