Video demonstration of the BelleChere portrait

A video of the BelleChere portrait, explaining my process of painting- narrated by myself! 

Commission oil painting- "Garden Repose"

"Garden Repose" 

A little oil commission with gold leaf and silver paint borders.

About 9" x 12" on wood panel. 

Batty Girl oil commission

Oil painting commission from a request at Comic-Con 2013. This is a small painting 9 x 12 inches on fine linen mounted to a wood board. 

I'm going for a bit of a misty overcast atmosphere in this one, keeping the light cool, and the shadows as warm as possible.

Bettie Page Portrait in Photoshop

Bettie Page portrait done in Photoshop at the Wacom booth from Siggraph 2013.  Thanks to the Creative Talent Network for inviting me to demo! 

For this demo I worked essentially the same way I do in real oil paint- starting generally and softly, sharpening and correcting the drawing as I go. I make artistic choices to emphasize what I want, and lessen what I don't want to be prominent as I work. 

#Wacom #CTN #Bettiepage #CraigElliott #Siggraph

Live Painting Interview at Comic-con San Diego 2013 from Ideate TV!

Here I am just starting the painting of Erin I previously posted so you can see what the early stage of an oil painting looks like. 

I start by blocking in some tone to work off of, and the main shapes and colors of the facial skin tones. I then work on my shadows into that tone, and build them up until I feel they are right and then put the highlights in. I go back after that and add more dark accents and final details. 

I work very generally to specifically not being afraid to make mistakes because I can fix them as I work. 

Enjoy the interview!

Portrait painting of Erin at San Diego Comic-con 2013

I spent 2 days doing portraits of some of my friends at at Comic-con San Diego 2013 this year. Here I am painting Erin Montemurro's portrait.   

Erin made this brilliant costume based on the cover of my art book and my painting "Music". needless to say, Erin and her costume was a hit all over the con!

 Craig Elliott painting portraitCraig Elliott painting portrait

Craig Elliott painting portrait

Little Surfer Girl...

Here is a 7 x 10 inch watercolor I did for my Publisher John Fleskes, on my last visit to his place.   I started in terra cotta pencil and finshed off in watercolors.  John was kind enough to scan the piece when I had finished the drawing, so you can see both stages.  There will also be a time lapse film of this some time soon, as the whole 3 hour process was filmed as I worked.  

Surfer Girl - Watercolor by Craig Elliott

Surfer Girl, preliminary drawing -by Craig Elliott

Horse and Maiden~

Here is a little commissioned sketch / watercolor of a nature girl and the horse she loves. :)

Little Watercolor sketch....

Watercolor on Arches  paper, 7 x 10 inches.  

T- Rex! Grrrrrr....

Here is a sweet T- Rex (maybe the only one in history?) and his gal-pal collecting some fruit up in a tree.... 

Watercolor and pencil on Arches paper. 8 1/2" x 12"

Sur-Realism show at Arcadia Fine Arts June 16th - 29th

I have a big painting in NY right now at Arcadia Fine Arts- SoHo.  If you are in the area and want to see a grea group show check it out!  The whole show is available now for viewing on the Arcadia web site - Just go to the "Exhibitions" area and Choose "SoHo"  you will be able to scroll through all the works available! 

Alla Prima oil painting demo video

Here is a short narrated video of me sketching in oil on canvas.  The painting is about 9 x 12 inches and was painted in about 2 hours. The oils were thinned wth a medium of 1 part stand oil to 5 parts turpentine, and occasionally thinned with just turpentine.  

Enjoy~

Craig

Warcraft painting- Lady Sylvanas

Another recent World of Warcraft trading card game painting from the icecrown citaldel raid pack is of Lady Sylvanas.  I actually don't know if it is possible to fire 3 arrows at once, but I tried to make it look convincing.  She does have red eyes and blue skin, and that is not entirely real either... 

Lady Sylvanas

My sketches for this painting were a little more developed than I usually do, and I like some of the other ideas enough to paint them as well some day.  The focus of this painting centers around the action of shooting arrows, so most of them attempt to emphasize this.  I think I enjoy action more than I realized before I had done this painting, and hopefully will do more in future! 

Warcraft painting- Blood Queen

I have been doing a series of paintings for Blizzard's World of Warcraft trading card game. A new set called "Icecrown Citadel" has just been released so I can show the images of the cards!   The first painting is of "Blood Queen Lana-thel"  She is a giant vampire queen in the game-  they also have used my painting as the main image for her on the online wiki- lucky me!  

http://www.wowpedia.org/Blood-Queen_Lana'thel

Prints of the painting will also be available at Comicon this year! 

Blood Queen Lana'thel

Below are the sketches for possible compositions (left image).  After Blizzard chose a sketch, more detailed sketches of the chosen figure for the painting were done.  I try to work out the anatomy and face of the figure in enough detail before hand so I am not slowed down with trying to work out the details when I am painting.  

Flesk Publishing Blog!

John Fleskes of Flesk Publications came to visit me last weekend and has posted a little treatment of some of our recent adventures at the Gallery Nucleus show and elsewhere. Check out the post and his wonderful art books! 

JOHN FLESKES BLOG

Final "Music" pinup painting!

Here is the final painting that will be in the Gallery Nucleus "Poster Peepshow" group exhibition.  Come by Feb 5th at 7pm and see this and all the other work, and pick up some free cheesecake or do some life drawing with the Sucide Girls!  

See you there!  

CLICK FOR DIRECTIONS

Middle steps in "Music Pinup" painting

Here, the first shot shows the dark and light sides of the figure blocked in, as well as starting to add flat areas of color in the hair and stockings.  The background color and pattern is also finished here, and the drawing corrected a bit with the cream color as I filled it in.   

The second image shows an adjusted and darkened skin tone as well as all of the basic colors in the center of the picture blocked in. next I'll move to block in the border colors and then go back into the center panel and make all the finishing touches.  

"Music" Pinup painting beginning stages

In the first image is a color sketch I have done on top of the drawing from the last post- I just scan the drawing and paint over in photoshop until I get the colors I am looking for. You need a good printer to use this technique for traditional painting. This is because the printout has to be exactly the same as the sketch on the monitor, or it is of no use.

Here I have transferred the drawing to my painting surface. I am painting on Rives BFK paper that has been gessoed white, and then a wash of brown oil has been applied and allowed to dry. I do the drawing in hard colored pencil, and then start to block in the shadows with oil.  

Paris show announcement and more images!

Here is the official announcement for the Gallery show in Paris!   And below are a few more images form the show itself.  almost there!  

Paris show art #3

Here's more images of the artwork that will be available at the show in Paris! The first is pencil and enamel, and the second is oil on Rives BFK.  

The work will be available from Galerie Daniel Maghen at: www.danielmaghen.com sometime around November 5th.  -More to come!