Sad Little Green Man

The poor little alien after a run in with some Poison Oak. You should see the rest of his body!

Merry Christmas

Did this image as a Christmas card a few years ago. Came across it while browsing some backup DVD's.

Bit older class demo

Cleaning out some hard drive space and found this demo from a painting class either last year or the year before (I can't remember). It is one of my favorites. Love the green hair. The whole thing is about 90 minutes of work and was done with only four basic colors except for the green which was two additional colors added at the very end.

Class Assignment

One day in a drawing class I teach I was talking about "Scrap". Scrap is reference material that almost all artists use somewhere in their creative process. It used to be file cabinets full of pages clipped from magazines. Now, artists have is so easy with the wealth of material available on the web. Instead of magazine clippings it is now digital imagery. I have several terabytes of images collected, mostly sorted, and cataloged.

Student artists often have a hard time knowing what reference is for and simply copy images they use. Not only is this sometimes ethically questionable if you are using an image that you did not photograph but it is not the way that scrap should be used. It should be referred to and not copied.

So, in this particular class, I gave each student a different image of a creature created in Spore Creature Creator ( http://www.spore.com/ ). If they simply copied the image they would have a very simplistic and boring drawing. They had to "refer" to use the image to and draw a creature based on it. I generally try and give assignments that I don't mind doing myself. I could not resist myself and here is my result and the original image.

TV inspiration

There is this show on the Science Channel called "Oddities". If you have not seen it, you should take a half an hour and watch it at least once. You will see the most interesting things. I am not quite sure if the show is titled for the strange things the shop sells or their clientele. The first time I watched the show, a customer came in that was so interesting I just had to draw him while I watched the rest of the episode. Here is my sketch. Yes, I do draw almost all the time I am watching TV. One of those hard to break habits.

Little Green Man

Here is a little green man that is going to get folded, spindled, and mutilated in an upcoming workshop I am teaching in January. About 90 minutes of work on this guy in Painter and Photoshop.

Christmas Story Book

I illustrated a Christmas Story book this year for a local author. Since it is now published, I guess it is alright if I post an image or two. Here is one.

Some new sketches encore.

Decided to go ahead and post a couple more since I have no idea how long it will be until get around to doing this again.

Some new sketches

Finally getting around to posting some new sketches. I guess my problem is that I would rather be drawing than posting. I need a minion. Hope you like them.

Demo Painting

The end results of a demo painting I did. Took about three hours. Maybe a bit more. Done in Painter and Photoshop.

more sketchs

Seems like all I have time for anymore is a few sketches here and there. Anyway, here are a couple new ones.

Little Something I did for My Sisters Birthday

Quick illustration I did for the cover of a photo book for my sisters 50th birthday. She likes bones.

30 minute digital figure painting

This was done in my figure drawing class last semester with a very early version of Photoshop CS5. The original is 1200 x 1600 pixels. Nothing too special but it was a lot of fun to try and get the whole figure done in a short amount of time. Unfortunately the students were limited to drawing and not painting. I guess it is sometimes good to be the teacher.

Another thing

I have been playing with water soluble pencils. They add a whole additional dimension to quick sketches. They also create a number of "happy accidents" that can add to the spontaneity of of a drawing. You do need to use watercolor paper, illustration board, or my favorite...museum mounting board as the base surface so there is not a lot of buckling.

Sketch of the moment

One of those strange things that appear when you are not particularly thinking of anything. Kind of grew from a scribble. Black Prismacolor pencil as always.

It has been a long time...

It has been way too long since I posted anything so I guess it is about time I started.
I have been working with Adobe for the bit on the newest version of Photoshop. Now that CS5 has been announced, I can talk about it. Here is a quick sketch I did a couple weeks ago. It is nothing special but just had a moment to spare and wanted to practice a bit more. This is about 35 minutes or so of work. Hope you like it and I will try and stay on top of things a bit more.

Some New Art

This last year I did a number of animating illustrations for an Xbox 360 video game to be released about the same time as the movie The Tale of Despereaux. This is one of the images. I am going to post more on my web site in the next week or so.

Finally, my new book is off the press.

Finally my new book is off the press. I am pretty happy about how it looks and hope that everyone that gets a copy will find something useful between the front and back cover. I have a very few copies on hand and will be signing and selling them to anyone that is interested. Should you want a signed copy just drop me an e-mail at donseeg@comcast.net.

Some Sketches

Seems like I don't have lots of energy for much beside sketching. Actually, I love the sketching as much or more than anything. It is the only art that I really am able to do just because I love to do it and I am not limited to subject matter. The three sketches here are of quite different subjects.

I continue to mend though it is really slow. I am still very dizzy and can't hear a thing on my right side. The best way to describe the dizzy is it feels like I am working a laptop while I ride a roller coaster. I really don't feel too bad most the time but I get tired easily. By the evening I am really tired and go to bed much earlier than I usually do. I think it is just the effort of trying to stay upright is tiring.

Anyway, hope you like the sketches.

A Few Interesting Weeks and a Strange Sketch.

It has been a most interesting few weeks. Several Saturdays ago I was heading to the mountains for a morning of fly fishing with my son. All was well at the bottom of the canyon. Seven miles later when we arrived at the chosen fishing hole my right ear was feeling like I was not able to equalize the pressure it it. If you have ever gone high in the mountains or on an airplane then you know what I am talking about. By the time I parked the truck I was feeling pretty dizzy. By the time I walked around the truck once I told my son that he had better take me down to a hospital I was so dizzy. Well, after Technicolor yawning all the way down the canyon while slipping in and out of consciousness....my son called an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital. Something haywire has happened to my inner ear. I am deaf on the right side, I have a bit of palsy in my face, and I feel like I have stepped off an amusement ride 24/7. Dizzy is not fun. While the symptoms hopefully will pass my art has taken on a new twist....namely, I can't draw straight any more. Things seem to gradually be getting better. I would not wish this on anyone.


So, my wife the other day called my attention to a news post about a girl born with two faces. She looked a lot more strange than I feel. Since everything has been a bit strange I decided to draw her a few years down the road. This is the sketch.