Conceptual speculations

Something Different

2010-06-22T17:25:00.006-04:00

Hey all. Sorry I bounced for an entire month again. I've been trying to get a few things back on track. Haven't really been drawing too much unfortunately. I've only been working on 2 things; but in my defense, I've been working diligently on them.

I've gone back a little in terms of style. When I first started to get into art, I was big on abstract and surrealism. Then in college I got more into character design mainly because of my writing. But now I'm just drawing more of what comes naturally to me. So now I think I'm going to be doing a lot more of that.

This random assortment of ideas is a bit of a monster collage. The point of origin was a dog head in the center just above what looks like... well, it looks like a lot of things. (And it is.) There's demon snakes, octopus monsters, Avalerion, Black Horn, Hellcrow, smoke eyes, Planet beings, steps, abyss eyes, lights that illuminate more than darkness, smoke, wind, tusks, Hexahedrons, former zombies, and whatever else you think is in there. I had a lot of fun with this. Have fun looking through this. And let me know if you find something in there I didn't mention.

Navy Tattoos

2010-05-26T18:38:00.003-04:00

A few weeks back my brother asked me to design him a tattoo. He's just joined the navy about a year or so ago and he's getting ready to be put on a ship and sent to Guam. (Doesn't sound like too bad of a deal actually.)
He's been getting into the whole sailor persona as of late (Which I think is pretty cool.) and one thing that sailors have is to have a fighting rooster or pig tattooed on either foot to keep them from drowning. (The lore behind this is that neither of these animals can swim and having these animals on their feet would keep their feet from sinking into the depths and get them to land faster.)

I think that's kind of cool.

He told me to go easy on the detail. So I tried my best to not get carried away.

Janet And Her Giant Squid Monster

2010-05-04T21:27:00.005-04:00

I've had a character in the works (or rather, a pair) for some time now, and after a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I've decided to make it a story for them.

The story would be (as the name implies) about the adventures of a girl and her large squid monster companion.

The original concept for the squid looked a little like this.

A few tweaks here and there. but I kind of like this one a bit more. Next post I'll do a full character study on him.

Silhouette

2010-04-19T17:08:00.007-04:00

I have here a sketch Idid some time back as a warm up piece but I thought it came out decent enough to come back to.

Doesn't that look like fun?
So lately, I've been messing around with it. Not really sure what I want to do with her. But for now, all I have is a slightly cleaner version.

I have a few things I'm trying out. But they need to be refined a bit. I'll try to get them up sometime this week.

2010-04-12T11:53:00.010-04:00

Lost track of time for the last 2 or 3 weeks. (I do that.) Brother was in town for a week before he goes to Guam. Studying some guitar and just being out. But I've picked up a bit of inspiration along the way and have a few new things I want to try out. So now I've got a list of things I need to do before I forget about them and lose them. But for now, I have a few creatures to share.

I got the idea for this random little guy from one of my dogs. The day I got the idea, his head to body ratio seemed particularly disproportionate. So I made him into a little shark dog. I also like this one because it's a little different from my usual creepy beast drawings.
The idea for this one came from my brothers cat, who for the first 2 months he was here, seemed to have a constant static charge. Makes it a little difficult to get people who don't like cats already to like you if you shock them every time you brush into them.
He came from the time when I was trying to come up with a set of creatures that were really unworldly and vile looking. (A bit more-so than usual) I was trying to make something that if you saw it in person, you wouldn't be sure what you were seeing. You'd just know it was bad, and you wanted nothing to do with the creature. Not sure if I succeeded with this one.
This one came to me in a dream. A dream in which I was a pokemon trainer. (I really don't know where that one came from.) But I had this one eye based pokemon that no one had ever even heard of. And its main attack was something called "Omeron Laser." which shot this gargantuan red beam from its eye. In the dream, it didn't look anything like I've drawn here. I had to dark it up a bit. (I also don't really remember how it looked from the neck down.)
This was a really quick sketch I did while some friends were having a jam session. (I didn't have my guitar with me.) He has 2 faces.
Now this one may be a bit tough to figure out. It's a speed based canine creature. It's a temporal creature that lives in a parallel dimension with accelerated but unstable time flow. And occasionally, these things phase into our world and do bad things. They move so fast that they're only here for a fraction of a second, and the only thing you can ever see is the after image of what they've done seconds before.

Now with that being said, I tried to draw it in motion, sense it never stops moving. So I tried to draw his head with an after image. (Swinging his head from his right to his left.)

That's all for now.

Character Study: Hellcrow

2010-03-29T11:10:00.010-04:00

Another character I've been developing over the years is a creature called Hellcrow. The concept came to me randomly my first year in college. The original sketch was pretty awful so I won't put it up here. But I'll give you some of the others though.

This is the first sketch of his redesign. (He was too simple before) So I made him pointier to mix up his sillhouette. The tail was later nixed. I really liked this sketch. It was really simple, but to me it has a little of his personality. (Which is a bit crazed.)

Just a bit more of me playing with his shape. The laughing sketch is another one of his mannerisms.

This is a very rough turn around for reference. This is his final design.

And this is a facial study done in watercolor. I'm quite happy with this one.

Character Study: Blackhorn

2010-03-22T16:10:00.017-04:00

I told you I wasn't dead. I've just been busy. The last 6 months involved employment, unemployment, travel, skiing, injuries, revalations and even car crashes. But I've finally stopped making excuses and took the time to update for you.

Some time ago, I posted a creature called Blackhorn. So I thought I'd show some of the changes over the years.

This was the first draft. I wanted to keep it fantasy so I didn't stray too far from reality. The base idea was reptilian gorill

Just a view from the front. I was experimenting with crosshatching at the time.

I really liked this monster, so I wanted to get get it to the point where I knew the proportions by heart. Here, I focused on head shape. I decided on a combination of the top 2. Another thing I messed around with was his eye. Being that he was a demon, I wanted to make it foreign, so his sclera.(Although, there are plenty of animals that have it, but it's still unusual) But that was also scrapped.
And this is a value study. I wanted to make him more believable. After considering his origin, I gave him human eyes, the only remaining part of his host body. I'm really proud of this drawing. So much so, that I think I'll get it tattoed.

And this is just a personification.(With some liberties)

Next time Character study: Hellcrow.

Quick update

2009-09-12T13:34:00.002-04:00

Sorry, I've been busy this season. (But not with artwork) Getting settled down again, working, and just trying to get into the artsy mood again. Or maybe it's the season. But I haven't been working on anything this summer. But autumn's here, and I'm slowly getting back into it. I do have some scans, but I have to get them from a friend. A few simple sketches, and some water color on the way.

But I'm not dead in case you were wondering. Thanks for still visiting.

Another month, another post

2009-06-24T19:17:00.010-04:00

It seems as though I'm only able to get about one post a month up. So with that being said, I think my post are going to start consisting of larger batches (It's the least I can do) until I get my own computer. (Which is some ways off) But alas, I am still working on things to show, I just have a hard time doing everything else, but I don't feel like going into right now.

This is a profile sketch of Avalerion. It's a legendary bird from Hindu mythos. It's actually just a medium sized bird in which only 2 exist in the world at the same time, but I decided to make it a bit more fantastic. I'm turning it into the undisputed king of avions and basing it's body off the archeopterix, which is I believe the first bird skeleton. I haven't gotten any full body drawings in because I'm having a hard time getting use to bird movements in addition to design aspects I've put on him.

This is an Asag: A hidious rock demon that poisoned rivers near villages. I supposed he could be uglier... but I think this one is a pretty cool design.

Just some random sketch idea. I liked it enough to redo it in pastel. I'm working on it now and it's coming a long nicely.

For the next 3, I tried playing around a little bit with textures. I'm okay with them for a first attempt, but I'm not crazy about them. As for the monster, this one was inspired by conceptart.org's DSG. This one was a boney plated desert goliath. ( http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=157286 ) I worked with the idea for a bit, but wandered off a bit.

This one started off as a sketch of a woman, but I didn't like how it was coming... so I turned it into a monster. If you rotate 90 degrees clockwise, you can see her better. This one's kind of tough to see because of the 2 completly different parts of it. But trust me, they're there.

My first take on a Wendigo: A former human turned cannabalistic monster. I had a lot of fun with this one. Had to study emmaciated bodies to get his texture right.

I really liked making this guy. A bit of spider influence, with some... I don't know how I got here actually. But I do know he's one of my favorites now. I really like his heavy hands (or claws rather.)

That's all for now until I get some more stuff scanned. I have some pastel work and character redesigns. (Amongst other things)
Should be fun.

Finally

2009-05-20T21:08:00.009-04:00

I can't believe it took me so long to finally get enough work together for another update. I really don't have much of an excuse, I just didn't work too hard to get to a scanner.

I have been working quite diligently I must say. I've been studying my foundations and doing a bit of exploring with my art as well. (Just a smidgen) So, I haven't really bothered to take the time to update; busy busy.

A good portion of the last 2 months were spent studying anatomy.(Specifically, the face) And I've finally learned what I was doing that would make all of my faces stretched out. That's a load off my mind. So now, I feel confident enough to go back to doing character design in addition to creature design.

P.S. I'm quite proud of those lips.

Just having a little fun here. A quick sketch and a chance to play with color pencils. (Which are a lot harder than you'd think)

And lastly, a creature/character illustration that didn't quite go as planned. But now I have a reason to try again.

I'm so sorry

2009-05-15T00:49:00.002-04:00

Allow me to apologize for the absence of post. It's not that I've been too busy to, but it's just that it's really hard for me to get a day with a scanner. But I must accept my share of blame; I'm not trying as hard as I should. But alas, I do have stuff. I haven't been sitting around doing nothing this whole time. And once I get the chance, I'll get it to you. Of this I swear.

Kevin writes a book

2009-03-25T18:25:00.006-04:00

Last night, I was doing some research to expand my monster knowledge. And as I looked around the internet, I could find information, descriptions and short stories about mythicle monsters and creatures. But there were almost no pictures what-so-ever. Not even really old poorly done paintings or sketches. I just had to work off a one sentence description, which often didn't even tell me the country of origin. Now I know I shouldn't rely on someone else's pictures, but seeing even a terrible drawing would give me an idea. I'm just saying, you'd think after hundreds of years of story telling, there would at least be one drawing of these monsters somewhere.

So, I decided to make a bestiary of somewhat obscure mythical creatures. I wouldn't really need to do the major monsters. You could find those anywhere. But how many people know what an "Asag" is? Or "Averlerion"?
I'm sure it's going to be an insane amount of work, and it'll take quite some time, but I think if and when I pull it off, well... I don't know what say other than it'll be amazing.

In the mean time...

2009-03-18T19:09:00.007-04:00

I hope you liked my last set.(Although it was a little small) But anyway, here's a few more bits for you.

This guy is a random beast that started off in a completely different direction. Not exactly sure what though, but it wasn't a bird beast. I really like his crest. I spent a decent amount of time getting the feathers to arch out just right.

This is a monster I drew for the "Daily Sketch Group" on www.conceptart.org. The sketch this time was "A Hunched back, Barrel-chested, multi-limbed, tooth gnashing monster." And Being that I love monsters so much, I couldn't resist. Rather than just give him a bunch of arms, I got the idea to split his main set of arms and the elbow and give him an extra pair. I also gave him some other arms to get to those "hard-to-reach-places."

This was inspired a bit my neighbor's garden. During this last summer and fall, I spent a lot of time over there helping them work in the garden. From that, I learned a lot about of course gardening and horticulture and what-naught. After that, I began designing a few other plant based creatures. Now with that out of the way; she is simply a physical embodiment of nature. A Treant. Oh, and on the side, I tried a new hatching technique. I like it.

The tall one is a character I designed for "Drawn to Life" on Nintendo DS. The little one is one of the side characters. The game was simple pixel art, so of course, the chracter you drew also had to be simple. There's really not much else that needs to be said. Oh, and just for kicks, every time I draw him, his hat feather always faces the camera, just to keep true to the game.

And lastly, this Naga-esque monster was based on an assasin like monster. I just designed him to be quick and simple.

Monster montage = Monstage

2009-03-10T22:35:00.006-04:00

Here is my first post finally. Here are a few of the monsters I've come up with recently.Here we have a dreaded... mystery beast. Not sure what to call it. So for the time being, The name "Baron overbite" Amuses me. The idea for this guy came from a friend taken in a different direction. The idea was a hunched monster with large arms and tiny legs. Kind of like the opposite of a dinosaur.

This is a redesign for a character for a short story I thought of in high school. The original concept was terrible and made no sense, so I scrapped it and started over and I'm quite happy with the results.

This is a sketch of a mushroom based monster. I didn't use much reference for this one. I just let my hand go to work. It doesn't really look like much without the other sketches to go with it. But the idea behind it was that it could move around. And while not very fast, it was still faster than it should've been.

Just a quick post. I have more on the way.

Comments are much appreciated.

Why hello there

2009-03-04T21:50:00.000-05:00

I'd like to take this time to obligately introduce myself a bit. (Being that this is my first post, I pretty much have to.) My name is Kevin and I'm working to become a concept artist and illustrator.

I like to draw monsters and creatures. Anything from the small and unassuming, to the villainous and inconceivable and anything in between. I also focus on general character creation as well. I try to create some back story to help design everyone. This helps me with my writing and overall creation skills in practice.

I get my influences mainly from music and nature. They usually tend to stem from a single idea skewed almost beyond recognition. Then from there I follow impulsive ideas until something finally tells me it's complete.
As far as other artist that inspire me, I don't particularly have a set list. Seeing other people's art (be it professional or not) tends to inspire me to go draw something. But if you need some names, Barnaby Ward and James Jean are the first that come to mind. There are some others I'm sure, but I'll post links for they're pages in my link bar to your right.

Ah yes... and about the posting of art on this page... I don't have a computer, nor do I have a scanner to upload anything. So through friends and charity, I'll eventually get my work up; but the first few posts are going to be few and far between.

And last but not least, for those who do stumble upon my page, don't be afraid to comment. (or god forbid... critique) It'd be much appreciated.