Viking Portrait

Quick sketch paintover

New Day

Today was the first time in a very long time that I've seen a sunrise. Didn't want to waste the colors, so I did a short painting.

Heavy Trooper

Blood Pact

I've been re-reading Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series, and did this little doodle of a Blood Pact flame-lance trooper.

UPDATE: Decided to clean it up a bit and add some color.

My Love for You is Like a Truck

Etymological trivia: "berserker" comes from the Old Norse words "ber" (bear) and "serkr" (shirt), referring to the bear-pelt coats worn by the fierce warriors. For some time scholars mistook "ber" (bear) with "berr" (bare), which led to the now-abandoned idea that berserkers fought in the nude.

Pillage and Burn!

Sketchbook Thumbnails: Ballpoint + Marker

Celtic Cross

I enjoyed my last knotwork project so much that I wanted to up the challenge: connecting a radial grid to a rectangular grid. I'm pretty pleased with the results:

Here's an animated version of the process:

I started by tracing the radial grid off the template I made in Illustrator, then used the points I wanted to transition at to created the rectangular grids. Once the grids were done, I drew boundaries and turning spots to guide the designs. After a quick pass to lay in the over-under weave patters, I penciled in, then inked, the connecting strands. A little grey-tone shading helps add depth to the weave, and some adjustments in Photoshop straighten everything out. It's pretty straight-forward from start to finish, unless you mess up the weaving and have to spend an hour tracing every ribbon to make sure the patterns link correctly. 

The whole process is time-consuming and meticulous, but once you get into a groove it's an enjoyable, even relaxing, thing to do.