The Girl on Fire

click for larger view

This was sort of an experiment that turned into a finished piece. It's what I imagined Katniss Everdeen to look like from The Hunger Games series.

Books! And the ones I like!

The other day I got an email from a student asking about books that I use for reference/inspiration when it come to creature design and animals of the sort.  I actually get asked about books a lot so I thought I'd list some of my favorite books here in my blog in case you're interested in what I like to look at and read when it come to creatures.
Here are the books that I own:
Animal Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form
I've had this book for years and I turn to it almost daily. It's a very simple guide to bone and muscle structure to most mammalian forms.
The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature
I recently picked this up and I love it! This book is older and the drawings inside are mostly about form and action - drawing animals in motion.
Animals Real and Imagined
By one of my favorite creature artists, Terryl Whitlatch compiles her knowledge into a beautiful book! I've turned to this book for all sorts of anatomy questions. Not to mention its very inspiring to look through!
The Wildlife of Star Wars
Same as above, an inspiring collection of creature designs from the Star Wars movies.
The World of Kong
This book is gorgeous. I kept getting comments on The Morae River about how people were reminded of this book after looking through the project (I was incredibly flattered!) An inspiring collection of creature designs from the recent re-make of King Kong.
Creature
This was a gift and I never thought I'd really use it for reference. However, I look through it all the time! Especially for ideas on skin texture and facial expression.
Anatomy for the Artist
Not the traditional creature anatomy book but I love this human anatomy book. The artist handles the body so well and I love the overlays inside. It really helps to see the muscle structure of the animal that is most familiar to us! ;)
Wildlife Fact Files - I got these when I was a kid. I'm not sure if you can still subscribe to them or not. They offer some photos and interesting facts about animals. They aren't extensive but are good for quick reference.
The Encyclopedia of Animals
An amazing book FULL of images and illustrations! This book helps me so much!
The Audubon Field Guides
These are small quick field guides and while they don't offer a huge amount of photo reference they offer behavioral traits which is super important when designing creatures!
Here are also a few books that are on my "To Get" List:
Art Anatomy of Animals
Animal Drawing: Anatomy and Action for Artists
Prehistoric Life
Color and Light
When it comes to referencing animals, I also like to watch Nature Documentaries. Nothing really beats seeing the animal move around in it's natural habitat doing what it does. Here is a quick list of some documentaries that I find particularly helpful and have watched too many times:
Life of Mammals - available on NetFlix Instant Watch
The Blue Planet- available on NetFlix Instant Watch
YellowStone - available on NetFlix Instant Watch
Planet Earth
Life
Life of Birds - available on NetFlix Instant Watch
Human Planet
Of course, going to the zoo and museums helps tremendously! It's something I know I need to do more of too. In any case, I hope this list is informative for those of you who might be interested in creature design and animal illustration. If you know of any books that you like to reference or share, please comment! :)

Bear Face

Got this today: Another two Q&A's I did for Imagine FX magazine. These are always so much fun to create. It's such a pleasure working with the team at Future Publishing!
Here are the two illustrations I created:

click for larger view

click for larger view

Been working on lots lately. I was also recently asked to do an interview about my work for a different magazine - I'll share more details on that later when I get the go ahead. Gearing up to start my new personal project soon as well. Really looking forward to focusing on some personal work. I've been working to round out the fantasy side of my portfolio lately too.
But for now, tea time! :)

Marmoset Warrior

click for larger view

A new personal piece I finished up. I'll be updating my website with some new work soon but for now you can see new work here and on my facebook page - Brynn Metheney - Concept Art & Illustration on Facebook.
I also wanted to give a shout out to Chris Koehler! Chris is a freelance illustrator  and instructor who I met through college. I never had the joy of taking his website class but he is an awesome and inspiring dude! You can check out his work here: Chris Koehler Art and Illustration.

He recently featured me on his awesome blog along with some other incredibly talented people:
http://chriskoehler.com/blog/artist-spotlight-books/
The post is about books and FishHooks was featured. Check out the rest of the post to see some awesome work from the other artists! Big thanks Chris! :D

Scars

click for larger view

Been working away lately and the year is going by so fast! I can't believe it's already May. Where is 2011 going? So far this year has been full of surprising opportunities and good things.  Just finished two new pieces. I'll post more about them later when they go live and such. These were super fun to create! I always enjoy painting Gnolls and weird alien creatures.

click for larger view

This critter above was actually inspired by an older sketch I did. You can find him in one of the sketchbook pages of this post.

Trying to fit in personal work lately. Finding it harder to find time for things of the sort though. However, it is a must so I'll be posting some progress here soon to stay on top of it more. I have a new project I've just become a part of. I'll be working as lead artist for a new start-up in Seattle, WA. I'm very excited about the project (as it involves a huge amount of creatures) and I can't wait to start sharing work. I'll be posting news and such as we release content online. Of course, this is a freelance gig so I'll be staying here in Oakland for the time being. :)

Here is something I'm currently working on:

click for larger view

Obviously still a work in progress. I've warmed up to the image in the process of creating it but I'm not sure if I'll keep it around. I'm wanting to update my website with some new work and this image was the beginning of that...

 

I'd also like to post a reminder about my book "FishHooks". May is my birthday month so if you buy FishHooks during this month you can save 15%! I had a lot of fun putting together this book and have started plans for my second volume. Of course, that means that I will probably discontinue this book once I release volume 2 this fall. You can view more images of the book here: http://www.fishhookstudio.com/2010/09/fish-hooks/

You can buy FishHooks on Lulu.com, here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/fish-hooks/12917022

Anyway, I suppose that's it for now. I'll be posting more news soon!

Spectrum

I am very happy to announce that I've found out that "Elegant Hunters" has made it into Spectrum this year! I am so incredibly happy and honored to be a part of this amazing publication! A big thank you to the judges for accepting me into this awesome book! I really can't wait to see it.
"Elegant Hunters" was created for Imagine FX magazine. You can see the magazine article here.

Anyway, I've been working on updating my current portfolio. This is a study I did for my concept art section - Mother and offspring. I'm wanting to try and expand on some other subjects and show them in alternate views more. I don't think I will expand this species though. I'm also working out some new environments and such too. I'm excited to start posting some new work! I haven't been able to much in the way of personal work lately so I'm excited to actually have some time. I'll be posting some progress on a few new images for my illustration section later this weekend. I'm also working on lots of new work for Sychey games. It's a very exciting project to be a part of! I'll be posting lots more on it as we release content online and such.

The Red Valley

Things have been bittersweet lately. The sketch up above was something I thought I'd finish but it's been "collecting dust". I've had some really great prospects for a new job coming up soon. I'm really very excited about it! It would definitely be a step up and more in the direction I'd like to go with my career. Of course, as it is with movies and video games, everything is "Non-disclosure". I can share things as I go along though. I've been working closely with Sychey Games recently on a new project they are creating. Here is some artwork that I am allowed to share. Sketches for Plasmagonia™ :

This project has been a blast to work on so far! Lots and lots of creatures to design. I'll be sharing more about this project as it moves forward too!

I suppose (some) of the bitterness of the last couple of weeks would come from the fact that my project, The Morae River, has come to a close. I've decided to leave it alone for now. It's hard to let go of a project that has been such a huge part of my life for the last three years. I feel as though the project has grown stagnant and I've fallen into a "system". Which is always good but I need the project to be more than that. The Morae River taught me so much though. Really, I'm seeing it as somewhat of a jumping off point for my next project. I've realized that I'd rather not be in Solturna. Of course, even though I rarely have time to work on personal work my mind needs a place to go so I've decided to take on something new a little closer to "home".

 

This is a rough banner for my new venture. I'll be posting more on this project soon but for now it's very "under construction". I am really excited for it though. I feel as though it's closer to the project I envisioned in the first place.

Also a reminder that you can follow my activity and such on Facebook now:

Brynn Metheney - Concept Art & Illustration

I also post sketchbook pages on that page a little more frequently than I do here so check it out! :)

More exciting news coming soon!

This post originated on http://www.fishhookstudio.com 

Elegant Hunters

Got this today :) Another set of tutorials I did for Imagine FX magazine. This magazine actually holds two of my tutorials from Artist's Q&A and a Reader FX Posé. So lots of work in this one!

A very big thank you to the Imagine FX team for featuring some of my work! :) It is always such an honor to be included in this magazine and always so much fun answering questions for the panel!

Here are the two images that were created for the tutorials:

That's it for now. Some other really great news to come soon along with some new work from a new project I'm beginning to work on.

:)

This post originated on http://www.fishhookstudio.com

scribbles

This month as been crazy! Actually the it's been crazy since January. I'm tired of talking about secret projects because it's going to be a long time until I can even think about showing anything I've been working on for them. I have a craving for gouache! I'm thinking I might need to pop over to the art store and grab some proper paper! I've tired to pain in my moleskine with no luck - the pages don't take the color all that well. There's lots I'd like to experiment with.

click for larger view

I don't have much to post in the realm of personal work. Adjusting to my work load has caused some of my personal stuff to become neglected. I do manage to sketch here and there though. This is something I like doing - just sort of sketching lots of body-forms quickly in pen. I have a tendency to want to get everything right and so this helps me to loosen up and try to let go of making the drawing perfect.
Here are more doodles:

click for larger view

click for larger view

click for larger view

I've also recently made a facebook page for my artwork. I was sort of opposed to the idea for a while - only because I already update a million things on the internet already so one more thing seemed like a bit much. However, it sort of needed to happen. If you'd like to keep up with my work on facebook you can here:

Brynn Metheney - Concept Art and Illustration on Facebook!

I know a very talented lady by the name of Laura Guill - we went to school together and had studios almost next to each other in thesis. Recently I commissioned a small illustration from her and just had to share it!

click for larger view

This tiny tapir is literally the most adorable thing in the world. Laura's work involves her painting subjects in acrylic and then cutting them out and pasting them to a background to created a three dimensional effect. I love my tapir so much! Thanks Laura! :D You can see more of Laura's tiny animals on her blog, here: http://crown-of-laurel.blogspot.com/

Anyway, I'm off to work on some developmental work. I do have a about 10 card illustrations I'm hoping will be released so I can show those as well.

This post originated on: http://www.fishhookstudio.com 

Alpha

This was an old sketch I stumbled across and I thought I'd post it. I was reminded of it by my recent "Daily Deviation" feature over on DeviantArt.com. "Dinner With Gnolls" was part of an idea I had to explore gnoll customs and physiology as a way to boost my portfolio with more fantasy/concept work. The piece was sort of a turning point for me as I began to experiment with light-source a bit more than I was used to. While I'm not really fond of the piece now it was a nice surprise to have it featured as it was to stop and remember it for a minute. In any case, I'd like to explore gnolls a bit more as I usually think they are overlooked in fantasy and such. Most times they a written off as bloodthirsty and dangerous - which I suppose could be the case. However, I always have fun taking something like this and putting a naturalist twist on the subject. ;)

This is a more recent piece. Another one for Imagine FX magazine. This one should be out in stores soon. I have a few other Q&A's that will be out sooner that this one but I felt as if I should post about it now since it hadn't been put up anywhere else before now.

Work on personal projects is slow as I am busy with other projects - I feel like I've been saying this a lot. :P  Either way I'm beginning to adjust to the work load so I'm hoping to get some personal work done soon. I have some ideas for a new project I'd like to start. The Morae River has been halted for now. I think the project has been exhausted. I think there were too many restrictions with the way it was set up. In any case, I'm excited to start exploring a new world.

This post originated on: http://www.fishhookstudio.com