cc:otherworlds

Project “CC:Otherworlds” is Almost Over!

My lovely friend Cislyn and I embarked on our year-long project… nearly a year ago. CC:Otherworlds has been an amazing, fulfilling, challenging, and rewarding project. No, seriously. I know those are silly buzz words, but they’re also all super true.

We drew a prompt out of a hat every 2 weeks for an entire year. For an entire year, we each took that prompt and went off (sometimes collaborating, sometimes not) and made Things. Cislyn is a fantastic, fun, and weird writer who finds amazing twists on the world. She produced some incredible short fiction and a few lovely poems. And I go off and make an illustration. Or, in one case, a flip book. And in another case, a tiny coloring book.

Our very last prompt draw was last Friday… which means in a week and a half, our project will be complete.

I’ve never done a year long project before, or anything longer, and it’s amazing both how shockingly fast it went (holy crap an entire YEAR has gone by??) but also how truly challenging it was to do this project on top of all my other commitments, and not lose steam on anything. I’m going to miss CC:Otherworlds. A lot. It’s been our baby, and I couldn’t have asked for a better creative partner.

Do you want to see what we’re up to and support us? This will be your very last chance on this project. If you ever thought to yourself, “Hm, maybe… but I don’t want to commit!” then this is your chance. It’s the last one!

Come check us out! I promise we do good work. 🙂

https://www.patreon.com/CC_Otherworlds

A Game of 20 Questions…

Or maybe not 20. But some questions, nonetheless!

While I was talking about my most recent CC:Otherworlds illustration, and mentioning that I go about things a bit backwards from a lot of artists, starting in Photoshop and ending in traditional media, a friend recently asked me for an explanation of my typical art process. I thought I’d share some of the answers. 🙂

These examples are from my most recent CC:Otherworlds illustration. The prompt for that fortnight (#13) was “Unravel.”

  1. I typically start out with a really rough thumbnail sketch done in pencil or ink. And by rough, I mean *rough.* Things things ain’t pretty. Example: IMG_20170301_061620
  2. This little sketchy stage doesn’t last too long, though. Next, I bring the entire thing into Photoshop. I don’t usually even bother to scan my doodle– a cell phone pic works just fine, since I’m not interested in preserving any of its ~beauty~ just its rough content.
  3. Once in Photoshop, I rough-out a layout and composition. This doesn’t need to be perfect, but the ‘big ideas’ need to be hashed out. Where will the figures be? What is at the center? What aspects of “flow” are in place to make sure the viewer sees what I want them to see when they look at it? Also in this phase I do some color studies, and get a general feel for what direction I’ll take the painting once I do it for real. A thing that is sometimes confusing is that all of this? Just prep work. None of this will be in the final painting. Screen Shot 2017-03-02 at 7.46.41 PM
  4. But now I have to get this entirely digital image… and make it into a traditional media painting! That means transferring it onto paper… It’s not as complicated as it seems. 🙂 I just print off the line drawing at the correct scale, and tape it to the back of my watercolor paper of choice (in this case, a hotpress 140lb paper that’s lovely and smooth) and trace over my computer sketch with pencil.
  5.  After that, it’s just a matter of painting. For this piece I used watercolors and colored pencils. IMG_20170309_061625
  6. And here’s the final painting! CCO13 - Unravel Final

Do you have any questions about my general process, or how I do things? Let me know! I LOVE answering questions and talking about art. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

CC:Otherworlds, a Patreon Project

I’ve hinted at this  long enough… time to actually spill the beans! The cat is out of the bag elsewhere on the internet (I have posted about it on my tumblr account as well as on my instagram account) and it’s long past time I mention it here, too.

I’m partnering with a friend (and overall awesome human) who is an author, to participate in a year-long art project called CC:Otherworlds that is running from September 2016-August 2017. Every fortnight (2 weeks) we draw a prompt out of a hat. Cislyn goes off and writes an amazing short story, and I go off and draw or paint something to the prompt. Then, at the end of the fortnight, we come together to share what we made.

We’re doing this project on Patreon, so our supporters on that site receive goodies based on their support level. Some patrons receive email copies of what we created and some super rad supporters receive (and this is the part we’re most excited about) mail copies.

We think getting things in the mail is neat, and we really want to brighten people’s days with little imagination packages. 🙂

The work we do for the project is shared just with our supporters, so it’s even more special.

But here’s a quick peak at what you might see if you support us!

We seal all our letters and stories with wax..

And we sign all our letters and art!

We’ve been working on this project since April, and started officially in September, and it’s one we’re both super proud of.

We love what we’re making, and we love that we get to share it.

If you want more information, or want to join us in our journey, check it out!

https://www.patreon.com/CC_Otherworlds