Victory Bunny
A client commissioned me to create a victory illustration to be shown when a player wins a solitaire card game. Bonus points if you can find all the hidden suits 😀 ♦ ♣ ♥ ♠.
Artwork shown with client’s permission
Giraffe Colouring Book
Back in December I was commissioned to illustrate a 50-page colouring book about giraffes. You can see the long-necked adventures in the following three-part collection.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
The Astounding Work of Nicholas Rougeux: Data Artist
Artists, scholars, naturalists . . . prepare to drool. Nicholas Rougeux – expert data visualizer – has taken the incredible works of historical artists and made them effortlessly accessible in an online format. Below I have highlighted his projects that have most captured my fascination.
ICONOGRAPHIC ENCYCLOPÆDIA of SCIENCE, LITERATURE, and ART
Discover a vast array of knowledge from 1851 spanning Zoology, Military Sciences, Architecture, Mathematics, and so much more, beautifully depicted by over 13,000 illustrations. The image quality is exquisite and the web-friendly formatting has interwoven the text with the pictures for seamless referencing.
British & Exotic Mineralogy
You’ve probably never experienced rocks in this way before. Artistically arranged by colour this collection of high-resolution illustrations makes my mouth water: highly educational and inspirational.
ILLUSTRATIONS of the NATURAL ORDERS of PLANTS
Soak in 160 beautiful illustrations of a wide variety of plants, ordered and interconnected in a gorgeous collection.
Humming-Birds
Nicholas presents John Gould’s 537 species of humming-bird illustrations in mesmerising swarms of lively colour. Prepare to get lost in the intricate details of these delicate beauties.
Mathematical Instruments
This is a smaller project, but still beautiful and stimulating, especially the posters. I love looking at each of the instruments in their groups. I’m a sucker for gadgets of antiquity.
Please also visit Nicholas’s main website to see more of his mastery: https://www.c82.net/. Each project has comprehensive posters that make great wall art.
Karl Kopinski’s Thoughts on Photorealism
The skilled artist Karl Kopinski did a livestream with Proko discussing his character design process and answering viewers’ questions. At the end of the stream a very interesting question was addressed, essentially, “At what point as an artist do you stop striving for photorealism and embrace your own style?”
My Summary
- Part of your development as an artist is recognizing what you do well that makes you unique and interesting, and not always striving for photorealism: your strength might be line quality, lighting, etc.
- As you gain years of experience, simplify your art and engage the viewer by letting them do some of the work; like style, it’s not something that can be forced or else it looks contrived; it requires confidence in your abilities.
- You don’t always have to prove you’re amazing at what you do; there’s always someone better than you; tell your story in your way.
Here’s a few pieces of art from Karl’s website.
Daniel 1: Pulse and Water
This is the fifth and final illustration for the book of Daniel chapter 1 from the Bible.
See the complete collection: Faith in Captivity.
God granted Daniel favour with his master and the boys were served vegetables and water for a ten day test. Appearing fairer and stronger than the others, their diet was changed permanently and they joyfully ate the food of faith.
Daniel 1: Meat and Wine
This is the fourth of five illustrations for the book of Daniel chapter 1 from the Bible.
See the complete collection: Faith in Captivity.
The pagan king offered the boys flesh of the fattest beasts, his own choice wine, and the finest dainties Babylon could produce, but Daniel purposed in his heart not to defile himself with these temptations.
Daniel 1: Israel’s Captivity
This is the third of five illustrations for the book of Daniel chapter 1 from the Bible.
See the complete collection: Faith in Captivity.
For Israel’s disobedience God allowed their enemies to enslave them. The Babylonians were wicked and did not fear the God of heaven and earth. King Nebuchadnezzar conquered with power and pride.
Freelancing: Hire Me!
I’m excited to announce that I have begun freelancing on Upwork. If you have any needs for a professional artist, please get in touch.
If interested, please click the “Hire Me” button below or in the main header menu if it’s active.
If you do reach out to me through Upwork, please let me know that you discovered me through my website (or however you found me). Thanks.
Daniel 1: Before the King
This is the second of five illustrations for the book of Daniel chapter 1 from the Bible.
See the complete collection: Faith in Captivity.
After the time of preparation the king asked the boys many difficult questions, and in every area they were found to be ten times wiser than all the king’s counsellors. God had richly blessed their faithful obedience.
New Self-portrait
One can cover much ground in four years. Choose a direction and get going.
“The grass isn’t greener on the other side; it’s greener where you water it.” – Sam Ovens
New
Old
Wild Star: Photo
A mound of fresh corn crowned with a cherry tomato and a star of creamy, wild cheese.
Daniel 1: Israel’s Idolatry
This is the first of five illustrations for the book of Daniel chapter 1 from the Bible.
See the complete collection: Faith in Captivity.
God’s people turned from Him and worshipped idols made from wood and stone, iron and bronze, silver and gold. They worshipped things created instead of the Creator.
Greg “Craola” Simkins’ Artistic Process
The quality of Greg Simkins’ work makes me want to be more diligent (i.e. get focused on making more art and waste less time browsing reference or doing lower-priority things).
“Innovation is saying ‘No’ to 1,000 things.” – Steve Jobs
I aspire to create as freely as Greg does. Watching him paint in video form is awe-inspiring. I found the following conversation on YouTube of him with a couple other artists; he goes into some exciting detail about his creative process.
I especially enjoyed the second half of the first hour of this video.
I’d love to show some of his pieces here, but he asks people not to reproduce his work without permission; so while I wait to hear back from him, go check out his website and YouTube channel for more golden art and advice.
Edit: I got permission to feature some of Craola’s art! Thank you to Greg’s team.
Edit: Jan 27, 2025
Major System Peg Words (Memory Tool)
This post is generally unrelated to art, but it features an extremely useful and versatile tool for remembering anything – the Major System peg words (see my full PDF list below). The Major System is a mnemonic technique which encodes numbers as consonant sounds (or in this case, groups of similar sounds); the consonants are mixed with vowels to form words; the resulting words serve as mental pegs upon which to hang (i.e. associate) things you want to remember. The following list is an example:
- 0 – zoo (s,z)
- 1 – tie (t,d)
- 2 – Noah (n)
- 3 – ma (m)
- 4 – rye (r)
- 5 – law (l)
- 6 – shoe (sh,ch,j)
- 7 – cow (c)
- 8 – ivy (v,f)
- 9 – bee (b,p)
- 10 – toes
Using Peg Words
To use peg words for memorization, first learn the numbers with their sounds; then use the sounds to memorize a word list. Next create a mental association between each item from the list you want to memorize with the corresponding peg word. In your mind see the two items interacting in a bizarre, memorable way – in doing so you are hanging the item on the peg for later retrieval. Mentally-visually associating two things is the most effective way to remember something easily because it takes advantage of how the mind optimally works. This system enables you to memorize lists and recall the exact numbered position of every item in the list.
This system is very useful for memorizing passages of Scripture (even entire chapters and books) as you can create and recall an association for the beginning of each verse and link it to the peg word for that verse number. This association acts as a prompt for starting the verse.
Why the Major System?
I first learned of peg words from The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas (this book is a fantastic resource for all things memory-related). You may be asking, “Why go through all the trouble of learning a whole memory system when I can use something more simple like one-bun, two-shoe, three-tree, etc. to accomplish the same thing?” The answer is extensibility. If you only want to memorize a short list of ten items, then more simple systems are great; but what if you want to memorize 50 or 100 or an undetermined number of things? Rhyming, alphabet, and other small-scale systems are limited in their scope. Using the Major System makes expanding your word list relatively easy by providing a predictable, consistent system which allows you to move between number and sound with ease (once you’ve memorized it and practiced, of course).
Peg Word List
I’ve created a compact printout for the first 100 peg words. I started with a word list from this source (which also has a great explanation of using the Major System), and then changed some words to fit my taste. The following PDF printout contains the peg word list in a compact format four times; so you can cut the page into four sections to create bookmarks or share with others. I hope the PDF is useful.
More about the Major System
Learn more about the Major System:
You may find the following website helpful in creating your own Major System peg word list: pinfruit.com.
Tim Mcburnie’s Strategy For Learning To Draw
Learning to draw is an endless journey. I’m always looking to improve my approach and mindset regarding how to learn and produce most efficiently. Tim Mcburnie’s advice on the subject resonated with me. I love the quality of his art.
What I took away
- Your need for the art fundamentals depends on what art you want to make. Many current pros just drew a lot without focusing on fundamentals.
- Follow an applied fundamentals approach: decide what art you want to make and spend most of your time making it while building your foundational knowledge and skills to support that.
- Apply foundational concepts ASAP! Doing endless studies and exercises just helps you get good at exercises. What’s most important is to understand how to integrate/apply the knowledge gained from an exercise or study into your workflow, how you can actually use it to help make art.
- Exercises are largely an academic approach; once you understand the techniques/ideas, you can skip doing exercises and apply them directly to your work.
Did I mention I love the quality of his art? 😉
Please do check out his website and YouTube channel.
Stranger Planet
Nathan Pyle’s Stranger Planet series of books is simple, clever, delightful, and hilarious.
Pyle’s humour rarely ceases to deliver a laugh. To see more visit this page and Nathan Pyle’s website.
Learning Composition
For an artist composition is debatably the most important skill to learn and employ in one’s craft. I have compiled a list of resources I’ve found helpful in learning this skill.
WARNING: there is a lot of contradicting information about composition available online. As Glenn Vilpuu says, Nathan Fowkes emphasizes, and the Draftsmen echo,
“There are no rules, just tools.” – Glenn Vilpuu
I’ve tried to list the sources in rough order of what made the biggest impact/impression on me. I’ve not watched every video here, but I am familiar with each artist enough to recommend them. Remember, too much head knowledge without application isn’t usually healthy (in any area of learning). Try to put what you learn into practice as soon as possible before taking in more information.
Free Internet Resources
Nathan Fowkes
Nathan Fowkes has some free content about composition on YouTube, but his most valuable offering is his paid course on Schoolism.
- The Core with Nathan Fowkes, Part 1: Pictorial Composition
- The (Not) Rules of Portrait Composition
- Composition conversations with artist Nathan Fowkes.
- Nathan Fowkes YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS
The Draftsmen Podcast
The Draftsmen podcast/channel on YouTube has at least one episode dedicated to composition; Marshall Vandruff is very knowledgeable about composition and often has great advice to contribute; Stan Prokopenko has good advice, but Marshall has more life experience; they have rather different backgrounds as artists and each offers a valuable perspective; they balance each other nicely.
- How to Learn Composition – Draftsmen S2E15
- What Are The Fundamentals? Draftsmen S1E04 (not strictly a composition episode, but they touch on how it fits into the rest of the art fundamentals)
- From Rocket Scientist to Professional Artist (ft. Jama Jurabaev) – Draftsmen S2E33 (Jama Jurabaev is a past student of Marshall’s and has some stunning work.)
Bill Perkins
Glenn Vilpuu (and Michael Spooner)
Glenn Vilpuu spews artistic wisdom constantly; he’s a great figure-drawing instructor; just be aware that as a classically trained artist, he works a lot from nude models.
- How to Create a Composition From Imagination with Glenn Vilppu
- There Are No Rules, Just Tools (Draftsmen talk about Glenn Vilpuu’s advice)
- Composition and Lighting, with SPECIAL GUEST Visual Development Artist Michael Spooner! (two veteran pros chatting about composition; both blew my mind)
- Michael Spooner is a wonderful illustrator. I love his work.
James Gurney
- James Gurney has much to say about composition on the Gurney Journey blog
Feng Zhu
Feng Zhu on composition (Feng has tons of free, valuable drawing instruction)
- Design Cinema – Episode 104 – Environmental Composition
- Design Cinema – EP 78 – Environmental Thumbnails
- Design Cinema – EP 89 – Just Draw! (I love this episode so much!)
- Design Cinema – EP 101 – Sketching 101 (I love this one too)
Trent Kaniuga
- Secrets of Thumbnail Drawing (Real-time) (Trent Kaniuga has a lot of good art advice)
Alphonso Dunn
- How to Draw Tips | What are thumbnail sketches? How to use them (Alphonso Dunn has some good art advice)
Kim Jung Gi
WARNING: Kim Jung Gi frequently draws extremely inappropriate content; so I don’t endorse all his stuff, but man is he ever good. He gives a bit of drawing advice and instruction, but one can learn much from watching him draw; I find his skill inspiring and something to aim for. The following content is safe.
Aaron Blaise
While I don’t find Aaron Blaise‘s composition advice to be very strong/helpful, he’s got a lot of other great art advice, especially when it comes to drawing animals; I will say though, that he composes very well intuitively through decades of creating on a highly professional level; I just don’t find that he communicates too strongly in the area of composition.
More Resources
- help-me-draw on composition (they categorize art resources from all over the internet; tons of great stuff)
Paid Internet Resources
Art Inspiration
- If you haven’t seen Syd Mead‘s art, you’re missing out 😉 – wild, futuristic concept art with stunning compositions.
- Joseph Clement Coll has absolutely amazing compositions in his ink work – so much energy: Image 1 & Image 2.
- Pete Beard‘s YouTube channel will open you up to new worlds of art and composition.
- Bobby Chiu‘s interview with Heri Irawan – if you’re struggling economically, this guy may inspire you. Bobby has tons of really interesting artist interviews and other great advice; listening to other artists talk about their lives is a bit like reading biographies; you can learn something from everyone.
- Bobby Chiu’s interview with Devin Elle Kurtz has tons of art advice and inspiration. Also check out Devin’s website.
Final Thoughts
A useful exercise is to try to break down other people’s compositions as studies; just do little 1×2 inch thumbnail copies (or go up to 3.5×5 inches); try to study how they structure the values (i.e. scale from light to dark) and the colours. What kinds of contrast do they use? How do they focus/move the viewer’s eye? etc.
A simple YouTube search for “art composition” by itself or with an artist’s name will yield many useful results. These are some of the most influential resources I could recall from several years of drawing. I know it’s a ton of information; please don’t go crazy and burn out; just pick one resource to start (whatever catches your eye) and spend some time on it; pace yourself. Don’t try to consume this waterfall as fast as possible, but do drink deeply to your satisfaction. I’d recommend visiting this list from time to time when you’re wanting to up your composition game. Composition obviously isn’t all there is to know about art, but it’s a really valuable skill, and as Nathan Fowkes’ says, possibly the most important skill an artist can possess.