Halloween Countdown #10

Just a witch.

Now for Something Cute

I remembered that I had once done something cute and here it is.

This is a pretty old piece.

I was demonstrating Painter for Corel at Siggraph a few years ago. I was on a computer painting for three days. Every half day I would switch what I was working on so it would not be boring for those watching me paint. The original image only had the monster.

As I was finishing the piece one of the Corel people managing the booth came up behind me and quietly asked, "Don't you ever paint anything cute?" Up to that point I guess I had not painted anything cute. I told him that I could indeed paint something cute if I wanted. He challenged me to accomplish the task....

So, I added the cute, pink bunny in the corner getting the stuffing ripped out of him. I thought it was cute. He just rolled his eyes and laughed. I guess that peoples ideas of cute vary greatly.

Halloween Countdown #9

Tonight's creature. Never fear, I can do something cute if pressed and will try and post a cute image soon.

Halloween Countdown #8

Who you might meet if you trick-or-treat at the wrong door. Watercolor Prismacolor, Prismacolor, toned paper.

Halloween Countdown #7

It's the Great Pumpkin!

The image is about 8 inches square and done with black Prismacolor watercolor pencil. I love this pencil. Once it is wet and spread around it dries insoluble. You can then draw over the original layer to have multiple transparent layers.

Halloween Countdown #6

Just a really quick monster painting.

Halloween Countdown #5

Just a really old sketch resurrected for the season.

Halloween Countdown #4

Everybody loves zombies these days. My five year old grandson wants to be a disco zombie... go figure.

Corel Webinar Next Week

I am doing a webinar for Corel next week on the 16th. Here is a link if you are interested in signing up. It's free.

http://www.corel.com/corel/pages/index.jsp?pgid=12800021

Halloween Countdown #3

Just a  monster. Started out drawn in Prismacolor pencil.

Halloween Countdown #2

Posting two nights in a row is a minor miracle for me.

Here is number two (2) in my Halloween countdown.

Several weeks ago my wife and I took a quick and much needed weekend down to Moab, UT. For those of you not familiar with the area it is magical to say the least. Arches and Canyonlands, both national parks and Dead Horse Point, a state park are close enough that you could drive to all three and spend some time in each during the course of a long day. Not a recommended way to see the parks though as you really do want to take at least a day in each one. As a side note, late September through the winter is much friendlier in these parks as far as the temperature goes. During the summer and early autumn season the thermometer rarely dips below 100 degrees.

Within 100 miles is another state park that is hands down my favorite place in southeastern Utah. Goblin Valley is a small state park that can be walked through in a days time. It is one of the strangest and most otherworldly places I can think of. A portion of the movie "Galaxy Quest" was filmed in Goblin Valley.

We spent some time walking through the goblins and I kept seeing faces in the rocks. Maybe it was the warm turkey sandwich I had eaten earlier. Anyway I was taking photos as fast as I could focus the camera. At home I was looking through the images and came up with the idea that I would draw the goblins that are in the park. Of course during the day they look like rocks but at night, the magic happens and they come alive. You are allowed to play and wander through the goblins at night if you are brave enough. I am going to do a whole series of drawings of the goblins. Here is the first and the photo they were drawn from. I have not decided if I want to keep the goblins somewhat rock like as in this first sketch or make them even more organic and living.

It is a good Halloween #2 image I hope.

Halloween Countdown #1

I love October. The leaves blowing across roads in the late evening, great fly fishing, cooler temperatures, and of course Halloween. I have decided to post a sketch or painting each day with a definite monstrous or Halloween feel.

This first post is based on a sketchbook image but taken just a bit further.

The Illustration Club at Utah Valley University has a "Gallery of Terror" each Fall. Well, to be accurate, this is the first year of the Illustration Club and the inaugural year of the "Gallery of Terror". Regardless, anyone is welcome to display a work of art, in any medium, as long as it has a Halloween/Monster theme. I did the poster announcing the show. I wanted something that was over the top and grabbed the attention of students walking by in the halls. This is the image I used.

I guess that the sign of a good poster is how many of them start disappearing off the walls. A few vanished so at least the poster had average appeal.

The drawing is a scan from one of my sketchbooks. I used black and white Prismacolor pencils on brown toned paper. The texture in the background is watercolor. The bloody bits are Photoshop brushes. The whole thing is mixed media. It is funny how if I attach the term mixed media instead of digital the whole image gains credibility. Curious....

Inkling Sketch

Got a Wacom Inkling a few months ago. I think I like the tool. Here is a sample sketch.

Girl Walking Her Pet Spider

Sometimes the doodles in my sketchbooks end up being realized as full paintings. Here you have a painting from a sketch posted over a year ago. I completed the painting for Imagine FX as a tutorial and also entered the piece in the Spectrum competition. It was actually accepted.

Just goes to show how important a sketchbook can be. You never know when one of those old ideas can spark a new instance of creativity.

Just a little something

It has been such a long time since I posted anything I thought that I should maybe put up a few things that maybe have not been seen widely recently. The first is a cropped portion of full sized image.

These next few images are a bit older but I don't think I have posted them before. They are some demon concepts for a game I was asked to do some work on. As with most concept art, you don't get to show it around much. In this case enough time has passed it is no longer an issue.

They are a bit different in that they are a combination of sketching, watercolor, and digital. They were really fun to create and were done very quickly. If my fading memory serves me, all of them were done in a morning.

Another Fish Story

After posting the photo of my son and his fish my sister said she was impressed but thought I probably could draw a pretty cool fish too. In the interest of being fair ... I post here a painting of a fish that I have been working on (and off) for the last two or three weeks. This was done for fun but I may write a tutorial in the future.

A Big Fish Story

Earlier this week my son caught this beautiful brown trout. It was 27 inches long, had a 16 inch girth, and weighed between 12 and 13 pounds. He caught it on a #2 Trixie the Hooker fly and took about 20 minutes to land the fish. The fish was brought home only in photos and carefully released. A fish like this is a rare treat these days. We now are stalking another even large brown trout.

Well, it only takes me 8 months to post an update. So much for good intentions. Here are a couple of doodles I have done in the meantime. Since school starts Monday, it may be another three months before I update.....

Quicky

Have a bunch of these I did for a game that never got published.... so, I have decided to publish them. It will take me some time to get them posted and they will be in higher quality on my web site so if you are interested in seeing more go to www.seegmillerart.com.

I would like to graciously thank Kevin MacLeod who wrote the music. His web site is http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/. Watching these may be boring but without the music they would really be boring.

Of course, I paint that quickly. Why would you think anything else. I simply hit the "Paint like Don" button implemented in the last version of Painter and away we go....

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.