"A Dog and His Cowboy" step by step.

After transferring my finished drawing to the painting surface I spray it with a spray fixative to assure that the drawing won't run or smear. Then using raw umber and turpenoid (turpentine substitute) wash I establish my darks.

Once the umber wash has dried I wash in the basic colors.

After the undercoat has dried I begin using the paint in a thicker manner. I start with whatever is the furthest back in the painting. Background, mid ground and then fore ground. As the background becomes further away from the subject there is less indication of details.

The Dog is next. Although I try to work from back to front I always run into situations where two object overlap one another. In this case the dogs muzzle overlaps the cowboys face and the cowboys nose overlaps the dog's forehead. Someone with their arms cross causes the same situation.

Finally I finish out the Cowboys face, clothing, hat and jacket.

Cartoon Character designs

In 08/09 I did a bunch of cartoon character designs for a game called Mad Doc Jr's Doom Rails. The following is a smattering of those designs. It was a kind of dark carnival meets haunted house, cart battle game with an inordinate amount of clowns in it...I just did the art. Enjoy!

My evil chimp.

Apes in zoos always have one shoe. The car battery and ring bologna just amused me.

Gavin the Bomber Clown.

Gavin orthographic

Bud. This one wasn't for the game. My fellow concept artist, Davi Blight runs a creature concept blog http://www.creaturespot.com and I really wanted to contribute to it. Those of you who are fans of my gallery work may be a little disgusted right about now. I understand.

This was a sort of boogieman in the closet monster. I had one just like it when I was a young lad.

Chicken Juggler.

The thought of someone trying to juggle chickens struck me as funny. Chicken poop flying and eggs popping out all over... I figured his face would be scratched all to hell and slightly infected and swollen.

I don't personally like clowns and I had to draw a lot of them for this game.

Yer garden variety ghost.

Haz-mat clown.

Hot Pink was one of the characters you could play in the game.

Leper the Clown.

I liked and, at the same time, was repulsed by the puppet. Sadly, he never made it into the game.

Li'l Nosferatu.

Clowns.

An Elephant Man.

Ally Gator...(Whatever)

Hard to make a cartoon gator without it resembling the croc in Disney's Peter Pan. I don't think he appeared in the game, anyway.

The Gimp

A couple of goblins. I thought the one on the right looked a little like Jack Nicholson in The Shining (with moobs).

Another Closet creature. He appears in the game but without the cloaca.

Jam Eater. At first glance he's a machete wielding psychopath but after closer examination he's just a messy sandwich maker.

Piper.

Mad Scientist and son.

This was kind of a generic evil hunchback assistant character.

This is a more modern day version of the same character. He has on his tool belt (from left to right) a ring Bologna, a dead weasel, a turkey baster, a tire gauge and a brain in a zip-lock bag. He also has a small hat for his tooth.

A maid and butler set of ghosts.

Phideaux was a digger.

Trudy the bipolar trapeze artist and the lion tamer.

My floating Alien was done for a different game for the same company. It was the last concept I did before leaving the company.