My digital painting Mecha-Marilyn (V1) has arrived, and I’ll share Version 2 in the coming days.
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Signature Style
I’ve worked in a lot of styles over the years, and invented several. I have not made a concerted effort to develop one style, preferring to explore a full range of possibilities. Consequently, some people think I don’t have a style of my own. Here are 52 images which share that they are created 100%…
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New Art: “Passengers on the Dystopia Express”, and a brief intro to Francis Bacon.
My latest art work, and how it relates to the work of Francis Bacon.
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New Art: Vehicular Monster Slaughter #1 [AI collab]
A new digital painting collaborating with AI, and of a creature sitting in a train or bus.
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New Art: Misfits of the Metaverse #8
Doing more of these is partly just an excuse to try out something new, or add something to the brew. There are a few new elements I mixed in that didn’t appear in prior pieces in this series. Can you guess what they are? Have a look at all 8 below. The piece was entirely…
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New Art: Misfits of the Metaverse #7
I was only going to make 6, but I wanted to try an experiment, and so now we have 7. I have a couple more experiments I want to do, so I’ll probably push it to 9. And that’s a bit better for a series than 6. This one’s very bright, colorful, and outdoors. That’s…
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New Art: Misfits of the Metaverse #6
This image ends the series of 6. Here is the entire series. And here are a few details. I could say a lot more, but for tactical purposes, I’m just going to let the work stand on its own for now. I made this series for the NFT marketplace, and, well, it didn’t get any…
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My Curious Obsession with Green
One of the most common and least interesting questions one is routinely asked is, “What’s your favorite color”. “Who gives a shit?” would for much of my life have been an appropriate enough answer. That’s before I became obsessed, and there was no question. Up until a very specific point, my favorite color was red.…
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New Work: Misfits of the Metaverse #2
This is the second in this series of portraits for 2022, and directed toward the digital art NFT community. No, it is not a self-portrait. The faces I’ve used so far are ones I generated using AI. Usually people manipulate the algorithms to create unrealistically beautiful, unbelievable, and fashionable people, but I wanted to explore…
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New Work & Update
NO, THAT IS NOT A SELF PORTRAIT, OR BASED ON ONE! I haven’t been nearly as active here, because I’ve been wrangling with the NFT sphere, which is the best place for digital artists to make money. The halcyon days of unknown digital artists getting rich selling NFTs may be over. Inevitably, the market would…
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New Page for “New Artworks”
Note: this post is a duplicate of the newly, long overdue revamping of my “new art” page, but you can also go directly to the page . The new version is simplified and updated (there are over 150 pieces), and there are blog posts devoted to all but a handful of my oldest pieces that…
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Confession: I Converted ~ Open and Free
Windows my friends, Microsoft itself, Adobe and its Photoshop, are no longer an integral part of my waking existence. You could say that they can join Facebook & Twitter in the hell-o-sphere. I fooked off the proprietary, pay-to-play, hold-you-hostage platforms, and am now smooth sailing with all free, open source programs. I would have done…
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2020 Art Highlights
See the much larger, full-width Portfolio Page version here. 2020 was a bit of a break with my more established stylistic tendencies, as I focused on harnessing new skills. I moved away from fine-art painterliness, and towards creating realistic imagery from the imagination. I studied realistic digital painting techniques from professional illustrators, and then took…
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Hyper-moralization & the art world
We live in a time of extraordinary moralizing. You may have noticed a no-holds-barred competition to see who is the most morally pure, and who isn’t, either by birthright or by belief. There’s always some of that going on. When I was growing up it issued from the religious right. Nancy Reagan famously advised to…
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New Art: Stick Girl’s Epiphany
And that’s about as far as I could take her. if you’ve followed the development of this piece on my blog you know it was an exercise in technique, and based loosely on a tutorial. It’s evolved into something a bit more, and I’d consider it part of my portfolio. Along the way I discovered…
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WIP: Adding Texture
I’m not that big of a fan of photo-bashing. That’s a technique where you take photos and superimpose them on your digital painting in order to achieve textural effects. It can be a cheap cheat that looks cheesy, or it can be a sophisticated process that when done right can really add something. Here I’ve…
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WIP: Update on Stick Woman
She’s coming along. Since my last post I’ve painted some large branches in the middle background, and some lighting and shading. There’s lots more to do, including adding texture to the branches to make them more convincing. Near the end I paint over whatever I want, and however I want, but right now I’m working…
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WIP: Adding Local Color
It’s a bit muted right now because I haven’t added any lighting or shading. There’s only a line drawing, with flat color under it. I made it more complex by varying the colors of the sticks that make up our stick figure. That helps to delineate which sticks or branches are which. Incidentally, the ability…
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WIP: Line Drawing Phase
This is another exercise in lighting, shading, modeling, anatomy, perspective, work-flow, and when working from the imagination. I also intended it as a work of art, but working within certain parameters, and with a given objective in mind. My followers know I like to compare digital painting to MMA, in which case in order to…
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Practicing with Profile Sketches in Photoshop
Quietly, and virtually unrecognized by the art world at large, there’s a renaissance of figurative artwork being created on the computer. Rather unexpectedly, digital painting has revitalized the practice of traditional drawing and painting skills. It’s a bit like how people started writing letters again after the arrival of email, and subsequent to letter writing…
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New Art: Bat Girl Bites Back
This started out as an exercise in lighting, shading, and workflow, but it ended up being an artwork I’m proud of. A lot of the techniques and procedures I employed I got from a digital painting course by veteran Disney animator, Aaron Blaise. The initial drawing and the character design are all my own. If…
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WIP: The Eyes are Testing my Metal
The eyes have been really difficult. I changed the colors, the shape, added veins, a highlight, and ridges on the bottom lids. What makes them so hard is largely the ornate bat nose which bisects one eye. I want partially obscured eye’s pupil to show, but getting it to line up with the other eye…
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WIP: Adding Rim Lighting
The rim lighting is difficult for me, and almost seems perfunctory. It’s a sort of cheap trick often used in comics. But it is also a really effective way to articulate form in shadow, which works for this sort of subject. Note that I’m not an expert at this, I’m learning it as an exercise,…
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WIP: Adding Texture
This stage is all Photoshop. I’d almost consider it cheating if it weren’t such a pain in the ass to pull off; if I weren’t going to paint over it; if I hadn’t done everything by hand under it; and if this weren’t an exercise using professional digital painting for illustration techniques. Here, one has…
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WIP: Adding Rough Shading
The much more clever way to do shading is to make a 3D model, and then move the light around to find the perfect angle. But doing it the clumsy, old fashioned way is good practice, and this piece is just about honing my skills. The shading made the bat lady more 3D, but it…
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WIP: Adding local color
Think I’m gonna’ go for blue skin with pink details, yellow-orange irises, and a dark red/purple ball of the eye. It’s a bit saturated right now, but after I add modeling, lighting, shading, and texture, it should be pretty cool. The gif animation has nothing to do with it. It’s just a snappy way of…
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SFAU 30 & 33 morphed, and why I’m a profoundly unpopular artist
SFAU #33 was based on #30, as you can see in this morph. I’m hoping sharing morph pairs helps people get into the series, though usually I’ll share them on IG rather than here. Just a little thing I can do to help people get into my work. That’s all. Unless you’re interested in some…
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How to come up with more creative creatures
I’m working on developing a bat-person for the next of my more illustrational images, like my Ant Man. Normally, at least up until recently, I’d only do one drawing, and just have at it until I was finished. There’d be tons of editing, tweaking it out, and learning from mistakes, trial and error. But I’d…
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
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