Storn's art for swipin'!

[Storn]

I gotta say, this certainly gets the mind going and makes me start to think of plenty of adventures... Excellent art and beautifully done! I had to sit here and go over it all, but it was well worth it and very inspiring

That makes me very happy. I hope to inspire adventure ideas!

So, the series of modern vampires and their prey and hunters I've been doing are for a collection of characters for a novel by Paul Leone.

Here is Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Mysterious-Vatican-Vampire-Hunters-ebook/dp/B00BRIENTS

And here is the link to his website with cool notes and background stuff: http://paul-leone.com/miscellany/

And here is another one of the above mentioned characters, fresh off the Storn Art table.

Next up is a "post-modern" superhero...

And then we have fantasy duo versions of Caliban and Prospero

 

[Storn]

First off, lets get the marketing/business thing out of the way first. Its been some time, but I just released another clipart Portfolio from LPJ Designs, the 24th! And this is a big one, 8 pics of art!!! I really appreciate all the commissions that I get, to continue to be able to provide this reasonable priced art for indie and small publishers. So thank you all who give me your character concepts to bring to visual life.

The link to the the portfolio is here: http://lpjdesign.rpgnow.com/product/113898/Image-Portfolio-Platinum-Edition-24:-Storn-Cook
and remember, you can preview the entire portfolio (or any of them) before buying, so you know exactly what you are getting.

Next up, Paul C. has me take concepts I've already illustrated, from his games, and put them into actual scenes. It is a ton of fun and Paul's descriptions are excellent and I think I've really gotten better at painting from the practice.

First up, Vampire and Tiefling vs. Dryder. This is my first all-acrylic pic I've painted in quite some time. I use acrylic often as an under painting, but after talking to fellow artists, Jeff Szuc and Steve Ellis, I decided to use clear matte medium as my glazing medium, instead of water. I tend to like to sneak up on color with glazes and tints. With water, I always got this kinda blotchy glazes and tints and wasn't happy with it. With matte medium, I got a nice even distribution and it handled like oil paint. Score!!!

And I decided to not really go for a cover format, allowing myself to use all the space, especially at the top for action.


Commissions are my experiment time. And this next one was a real experiment for me. I did the WHOLE thing digital. Now, I tend to do somewhat tight pencils for paintings. Here are the pencils for VnT vs D above.


V n T vs D sketch
Then I went in on that and did a fairly tight underpainting. But here is my digital sketch, which, was made possible by my cintiq and Manga Studio 5 made the perspective stuff really quick. So, really sketchy and loose. Paul asked for a stone golem, which I slipped sideways in concept to a stone marble golem.

This painting is "designed" to be a cover, even though there is no actual product for it to be on. But after the Dryder painting, I didn't want to get lazy in thinking about that.


And here is the finish. I really like Manga Studio 5 more and more. I used it for about 70% of this digital piece, bouncing to Painter and Photoshop for specific functions. Manga Studio's pencil and oil tools are few, but I really dig their them. And the blending tool is as good as Painters, which I love...and far superior to Photoshop's.


So. There you have it. A peek behind some recent experiments. And by the way, these are both available as prints at: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/storn-cook.html?tab=artwork&deleteartworkid=3825803&page=
Also, if there are any publishers who want 1st print rights at a reasonable rate for either (or both), drop me a line at storn.cook@gmail.com. These won't ever be in a clipart portfolio, as too much time went into them as well as the specificity of their narrative.

 

[Storn]

Long Hiatus

I've been very busy this summer, some of it not art related, some of it was. Went on a very nice vacation to Salem, Oregon with my wife to visit her daughter. Had a wonderful time.

Came back to Grassroots here in Ithaca (Trumansburg), NY, 4 days of bands from around the globe. Just 4 miles from our house. Unfortunately, Millie, my wife, got some kind of allergic reaction to something and we ended up waiting in a lot of medical waiting rooms. She is fine now. We are not quite sure what triggered it.

And I've been working on doing "plates" (re: backgrounds) for a movie... off and on. Which was really fun and difficult. Lots of new terminology to learn, lots of hard mental thinking trying to marry the actors in front of the green screen to the creators vision of what the background was supposed to be. Really neat job. I hope to share some of that soon.

Right now, I have 3 Legend of the 5 rings card art on my table and I'm pleased with how they are coming out. I'm doing 2 traditionally (combo of acrylic underpaint, oil finishes) and 1 digitally. But all three start out as pencil drawings.

Commissions really took a back seat while doing the movie job. But I've gotten a couple done recently for Death Tribble, both anthromorphics. One, of course, is a bit of a pun... courtesy of DT. I do love a bad pun! Presenting Hippochondria. Zebra was kinda interesting, because the description pushed him towards "Brick" archetype instead of the speedster like archetype. I love going against type. Check 'em out!

 

[Storn]

Well, my site caught hacked again, after I wiped out everything. So, I went to Securi, spent the money and had them clean the site and together, a bit more security (hopefully) was put into place.

Meanwhile, I've been getting artwork done. Here are a few pieces! Here are one from Paul L., his last of his oddball religious illos he had me do. And the Decathelete (my title) for Death Tribble as a new take on the "weaponmaster" archtype on super-hero/villain.

Working a lot with toned paper on these, doing both pencil to darken, and white acrylic for highlights. Then working with multiply, normal and color overlay levels in Photoshop and Manga Studio. I'm kinda digging it.

 

[Storn]

Here is some work I did awhile ago, but got permission to post. It is for a virtual card game for facebook, and the working title is Phaeton. I don't know how far along it is, or quite how it is played. But the core concept is based around some kind of school for teen supers, ala X-mansion.

My friend Steve Ellis was lead artist and art director on this one, and it was both fun and tough to work with the constraints and character concepts he had set up. Tough in that we have very different ways of working, especially when it comes to inking. So, I was trying to come close to his inking style. But that was fun too, because it pushed and prodded me to really think about how I do things and I learned a lot.

So here are a smattering of images that I done for the game.

 

[Storn]

The Devil is in the Details.

Well, in this case, Devil is coming out of the arch way. Here is a commission done for my awesome patron, Paul C. This one was a lot of fun to do, especially while watching my beloved Packers beat the Ravens yesterday. (I have two monitors, so I can watch stuff while I work). But I did the finishes this morning, early afternoon.

I had the layout in my head before starting the painting. I pencilled both the demon and Dana there on separate paper, scanned them in, created the cathedral and statuary in Manga Studio 5, combined it all in Photoshop and then did a semi-sorta digital underpainting.

I have not released a lot of the Paul C commissions as LPJ Design Portfolios because the time that goes into them, I don’t want to release them at the price point those portfolios go for. So. If anyone needs some 2nd use printing rights for covers or what have you, these paintings will go for a lot less than 1st use artwork. And I will make some extra monies that is more reasonably compensation.

 

[Storn]

Painting on a different canvas

I painted on Saturday. That is not particularly unusual for me. What was unusual was that it was on my friend Pete’s face. I’ve done a couple of wounds for my wife, when she does roleplaying scenarios for nursing students. My wife is a professor of nursing and recently, she “played” a patient who had fallen and had a huge gash on her leg, bleeding. The students have to access and figure out what to do. It is startlingly real for 1st semester students and they get all kinds of flustered.

So. I’ve had some experience doing blood trails, wounds and puss with cheap make up. But Pete, who is a drummer in the heavy-metal Ire Clad, was doing a gig at the Haunt, here in Ithaca, on Saturday as a zombie. Pigment is pigment, hopefully, I could pull this off. So, here is my very first horror make up job. This is all brushed on. No cool airbrushes like on Face Off. Pete did the clothes with a belt sander for the distressing and watered acrylic through a spray bottle for the blood. I think his clothes came out better than the make up. But it was a ton of fun to do.

Here be a link to Ire Clad’s own facebook page with more pics. https://www.facebook.com/ireclad

And here are my pics!





Also, unrelated, I needed to do a warm up the other day, so I decided to do the Ten Ton Studio’s sketch challenge. Which is DC comics’ Mad Dog. Come on by the Mad Dog sketch challenge thread and check ‘em out. You can vote on them too. So, if you like one sketch in particular, please vote, you do not have to belong to Ten Ton Studios to do so. Voting starts tomorrow (Wednesday).

 

[Nellisir]

This is another in Paul T's Exalted femme fatale series. This time, it is Red Lotus Blossom, described to me as a redhead (but using an actresses very orange hair color), wearing red, and being a "sword princess" but with a naginata (if I preferred.. yes, I preferred! <g> I get to draw swords all the time, naginatas are much more rare!)

p.s. Really, really diggin' my Cintiq!!!

Naginatas are tres cool.

</g>

 

[Storn]

Agreed, naginatas are tres cool.

A couple of post ago, I mentioned not wanting to release the more "cover" oriented private commissions as clip art. Well, LPJ Design and I worked out a price point that, yup! We ARE releasing some artwork as Single Portfolio pieces. Yes, these are more expensive, but compared to a cover, which I charge from $400.00 to $1000.00 depending on complexity, these are a STEAL! So, if you are a publisher who needs some fantasy adventure artwork, please consider my offerings:

Check out the Single Portfolios, 1 and 2, here:

http://lpjdesign.rpgnow.com/product/121045/Image-Portfolio-Singles-001-Storn-Cook

http://lpjdesign.rpgnow.com/product/121046/Image-Portfolio-Singles-002-Storn-Cook

I'm about to enter into a contract with a ton of work that needs to be done in a month. So my posting will probably be a bit spotty, if non existent. I don't think I will be able to put up the artwork I will be working on for awhile. But it is fantasy art for "digital" card game.

But to leave you with a bit of artwork, here is another Ten Ton Studio challenge. This week, it is Captain Marvel! I did this sketch on vellum with pencil and black color pencil... mostly the color pencil. I kinda like the waxiness on the smooth vellum.

Here is the link to Ten Ton Studios. Voting begins tomorrow on it.

http://www.tentonstudios.com/forum/index.php?topic=9973.0

And here is the artwork in case you don't want to go over to Ten Ton.


Shazam! It's Captain Marvel!

 

[Storn]

HUGE art dump!

Folks, I've had such a horrendous time with my failing computer. I won't go into it, except I'm still down a video card (which I love having dual monitors, having reference on one screen while working on my Cintiq), but the rest of the machine is up and running with new motherboard, new processor, a bit more RAM, new power supply etc.

But I've been plugging away at doing art, sometimes pilfering my wife's laptop and using my ancient wacom while the main puter is all in pieces.

So, got a ton of images for you.

First up, I was honored and lucky to get a chance to do the cover for "Wield!", John Wick's RPG on being powerful, mystical, highly intelligent and cunning artifacts and trying to get that lame brain barbarian who carries you to do the things you want him to do. Or that pathetically weak, sorcerer king to give you something for all that strength you lend him.

Check out John Wick's Kickstarter video... http://youtu.be/UIy8j7i8l9M

On that youtube site are links to the pdf of the game itself. Seems really cool.

So. Without more rambling, here is the cover! Hope you like!



Next up, I have several commissions for Death Tribble I've been meaning to get up for some time, but computer woes, deadlines and sheer inertia have prevented my from getting these up til now.

Here is a bobby with some kind of shadow powers...



Next. Death Tribble wanted a straight up Kendo master, no apparent super gadgets or anything...


Next, we have a huminoid crocodile. DT picked up on what I thought was pretty subtle Egyptian motifs immediately. Can't get nuthin past that guy...


Next, a modern-ized Roman Legionnaire. I got this one today, having put it off for deadlines for the video card game, Clash of Dragons. I am not sure when I can show CoD artwork, still checking in with the client on that one. But this was one I really was looking forward to doing.