Teeney O'Feeney Group Illustration

Another illustration from the book project Teeney O'Feeney king of the Leprechauns. Here we have a group of characters from the Faerie Realm. I decided to depict this group the same way my sketch pages tend to unfold which is a kind of random spread of characters scattered about the paper. I wanted this last of the full page illustrations to be different than the others and was really curious to see if I could actually paint one of these sprawling compositions which are so easy to improvise in a sketchbook. As it turns out it is rather difficult to try and tie all the individuals together. Brian Froud is of course very good at this kind of picture making and he was definitely the inspiration behind my decision to go this way but I didn't want to just copy his approach. He spends weeks if not months on his very complex pictures and I only had a few days to do mine but nevertheless I wanted to try because I love this kind of group portrait style of illustration - especially when the portraits are whimsical.

More Sketchbook

I'm back on the book project I began nearly 2 years ago with Jim Tague called Teeney O'Feeney King of the Leprechauns. Here we have some more character studies and development work. Watercolour soon to follow - hopefully. I'm also starting a new Arctic Myth project so there's lots to do - lots of drawing.

Sketchbook Faun

Some recent drawing activity concerning a long running book project.

larry

Absinthe Faerie

This was a tough one - deciding which way to go with this concept. The Absinthe Faerie is an hallucination, a psychedelic vision - she inspires us, she seduces us, she destroys us and yet we still love her.

I have her merging with and coming from the ground and the vegetation because she is a natural being. She comes from the wormwood plant which is where the narcotic drink Absinthe comes from. The leaves and plants that surround her are their own beings with their own personalities. The leaves may have faces or they may not. I haven't shown the wormwood plant here. She has been called and is moving.

This is not for me the definitive Absinthe Faerie but one of many possible Absinthe Faeries. I had a lot of ideas for this one and finally decided to fuse several of these ideas together to make this image.
The next time I paint her she will be different. This is a watercolour 7 inches by 10.

Faerie Sketchbook

Some more recent sketchbook activity - just for fun - always searching for new ways to draw them - don't know why - just a diversion from commercial work :)

Eragon Art 2 - Eragons Guide to Alagaesia

This was a great project to work on but the deadline was a real killer which left no time for dilly dallying. I was essentially doing these drawings as fast as I possibly could which is why many of them have a monochromatic feel. A tight deadline is a very good learning experience. You have to quickly figure out where to put your effort. For everyone it will be different but for me it was trying to nail a half descent drawing and then focus on tonal relationships rather than colour. Having to also invent original costumes for the characters just added a little more stress, I mean fun. My results were mixed, which is to be expected under the circumstances but I don't mind these ones.

The Eragon series is a terrific set of fantasy novels and just full from cover to cover with cool things to draw. This book, Eragons Guide to Alagaesia will be out in November by Templar Publications in the UK and Candlewick Press here in North America.

Pictured above are one Human Soldier and one Urgal Raider. The Urgals are the bad guys in this story. They are big and mean and do nasty things to innocent people, so of course they were the most fun to draw.

Eragon Art

A few finished pieces from the project I was working on last winter. The book is called Eragons Guide to Alagaesia and is basically a visual reference to everything in the world of Eragon - Eragon being of course a best selling fantasy trilogy by the young and brilliant Christopher Paolini. My part of this project was to illustrate the peoples of this world. Some other very talented artists were brought in to picture the landscapes and the towns and cities and of course the Dragons. Dragons being something I don't do very well, I was more than grateful that I didn't have to draw any.

The guys pictured above with the ram horns are the Urgals - the bad guys. I had to do a lot of them. There's a dwarf up there too.