Monster, Moving and Illuxcon 6

Moving is always a big undertaking. It presents lots of unforeseen snags and sometimes great opportunities. In August, my wife was offered a job just outside Indianapolis and we decided to relocate. That meant I had to leave a really good job and was unprepared for my next step. That step being freelancing full-time as an illustrator and designer. I have relaunched my graphic design site, www.jw-dsgn.com. The big lessen from all this was to always be prepared for an opportunity.

Image above is my rendition of Nyarlathotep, the Lovecraftian horror, done for Cthuhlu Vault card game by Richard Launius. Kickstarter campaign will be up soon and game release will be summer 2014. Love this stuff! More images in next post.

Unfortunately Con season is over but that means it is time to apply what I learned and push out some new work. Last month attended Illuxcon for the first time. I was happy to meet Pat and Jeannie Wilshire who put on the most amazing show! The quality and quantity of art was overwhelming. I am already looking forward to next year. After the show I was refueled and painting happily.

Gen-Con 2012

GenCon was great. Its always great getting to catch up (non-facebook) with old friends. I was attending with some friends who were showing off their game Zombie High and had a blast playing that numerous times over the weekend. I also was able to meet a lot of the artist whose podcast and blogs I have recently found and been following (Ninjas, Awesome Horse). Lucky me, I snagged a Ralph Horsely WOW piece and a few prints from Aaron Miller, Christopher Burdett(.com), Jeremy McHugh. All these guys were kind enough to look over my work and talk shop with me.

I bought this Ralph Horsely World of Warcraft art!

Its safe to say I was there more for art than games this year. And with every year it feels like new years (artistically). I come away inspired and reflective each time. One common theme that I have seen run through many illustrators is, "the year I got serious". This year feels like that year for me. Over the past several months I have been approaching things differently or at least trying to. Here are a few things I've learned/am learning.
Do less work, better work and focus on improving your craft. I have been very guilty of taking on more than I have time for and rushing things thought. Shame shame, that ends now.
Focus on your chosen direction and don't take every job that comes along. I have a day job and family so time is limited. I can afford to be picky about what jobs I take.
Build the portfolio that I want, not the one that I have. In other words, only show the kind of work that I want to get from clients. And also have several portfolios that cater to individual companies when hitting the cons or sending out solicitations.
Find time to work on your weaknesses. There are basic problems that I have seen in my work for years but have not made an effort to correct them between projects. Its time to start using reference photos and doing little color studies before painting the image and as always work on human figure.
Community - Im starting to get plugged into the community in a way that I had not before. I have been an observer in the past but this year I have been actively seeking advise and building friendship with other artist and people in the business. The fantasy/sci-fi art community is incredible! Everyone wants to help and share with little thought of helping "potential future competition" for that prized job.
Enough yapping. Happy labor day everyone!