Mostly I Do Art...

Here we have the final design for our old salvage tug. Marks from rubber bumpers and rust from scrapes against the keyside mar her once brilliant red hull. The bright yellow of her crane and rudders has oxidized to a dirty pale orange. Still, she is a proud workaholic. The color and effects were added with prismacolor pencil over the inked and detailed drawing. You can see the steps below... Step 1: Pencil Drawing Step 2: Inked Drawing Step 3: Detailed Drawing Step 4: Colored Drawing These drawings are in preparation of a retry at the painting from the previous entry. Much better, eh? #drawing #painting #airship #steampunk #tugboat #marineillustration #sciencefiction #penandink

When you're an artist, it doesn't take long to figure out that there's a fine line between what we are trying to portray and what the mind of the viewer is willing to accept as real. Take this little gem, a multipurpose tug boat named Fair Hope.  When we first look at it, our minds automatically accept it because it looks familiar. Anyone who's ever seen a tug boat will immediately recognize its many decks, its crane, and its iconic old tire bumpers. Everything seems normal, in spite of the suspicious looking jet nozzles in the back. Of course, this tug is an airship, but that fact is not immediately obvious to most. Why? Because the ship itself looks enough like its real life counterpart to make the jets and stabilizing fins seem like they belong there. This is the art of making the improbable seem ordinary. I've been doing some painting on the side and I really like this idea of, as my partner put it, "space boats". I've already turned out one pa

It's always difficult to express your own idea when the subject you're wanting to represent has been "done and done", as they say. The subject here, of course, is poor Alice, lost in Wonderland and in trouble again. At first glance, the rabbit appears to be trying to save her, but a closer look gives the impression that he may have been the one to give her a shove. Symbols of Alice's misadventures seem to spill from the rabbit's pockets, complete with hot tea and lemons. The flurry of chaos and disorder makes the rabbit's intentions unclear. Did he drop everything in the rush to save her? Or has he simply thrown the tea party out with the guest? Alice's horrified expression speaks volumes concerning her dilemma. Does she reach for the mummified paw in the hope of rescue, or plunge headlong into the brier patch? But this Alice is not the innocent adolescent of Carroll's tale, as evidenced by the pin-up style pumps and seamed stockings beneath h