I’ve been working on a video game, for now codenamed Project Raccoon, that’s based on an old Board Game that I designed when I was 11. I won’t give any details yet, but I’ll be gradually releasing information, character concept art, and more as I develop it, on this blog. It will go under a new heading: Project Raccoon.

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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Fire Fire, Man

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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Blue Self Portrait

So, I’m back, and there’s a new artwork in the digital color gallery.

This is a self portrait of part of my psyche. I experimented a bit with much more muted colors than I usually use. Let me know what you think in the comments.

It’s also in a really messy style. The drawing took about 2-3 hours by my estimation. The painting took about 2 hours. In this case, there are really no major highlights, because I decided to play around with more ambient lighting. My next piece will likely end up being punchier because I’ll use highlights again, but I plan to continue with the muted colors. It’s closer to how colors appear in nature.

Hope you like it!

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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Sorry folks. In the meantime, there’s a few stories and a bunch of art on the site to enjoy. Feel free to leave comments. See you in 30 days.

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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nudenu1

A more substantial post next week. XD

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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That Which Heals

This is a piece that’s been in the works for some time. It builds on some of the earlier ideas of previous works, and is the first major example of an art-as-language conception I’ve been working on.
More emotionally, this piece is very meaningful to me. I invite you to experience the piece and leave a comment about what it means to you.

I’ve also uploaded a higher-resolution version of this piece here:

link

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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Actually, this really isn’t much of a revelatory post, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about that’s really important, but often overlooked.

First, no thumbnail today. Why? Because while I do have a new drawing up, it isn’t here.

Nudenu2

I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to keep this site PG-13, or at most OT-16 for those of you familiar with that Graphic Novel rating system. So, while I only use nudity for the sake of art, and I DO NOT do porn, I still choose to post and nude works in my DeviantArt gallery, where in order to view mature work you must sign-in and verify you are of appropriate age to view the works.

Anyway, the secret to Art. At risk of sounding like I’m preaching tautology, I must say that the secret is to Practice. I don’t think practice gets it’s due in many circles. As humans, while we are all born with varying natural talents, and we are capable of deepening our understanding of something intellectually, we are ultimately adaptive beings that get better at things according to what we do.

Doing art is the key to getting better. There are a number of things that can enhance the benefits of practice, but it’s probably better for most beginning artists to think of these things like this: while something that isn’t practice may help you get better at art, it’s only because it helps you get more out of the practice. It doesn’t have nearly as much effectiveness on its own.

Now, here’s where I can volunteer a little bit more than just tautology. Some people practice regularly without getting better, and they think they just suck. This is probably NOT true. There are usually two things going on there–either you’ve hit a plateau, and what your learning is under the surface, where it will randomly explode into a burst of insight when it gathers enough mass… Or you aren’t focusing enough. The best way to do better when you’re making art is to focus on doing art.

It’s really easy to do one of two mistakes when it comes to focusing like this. The first mistake is more obvious, but we still miss it–Focus on art, and try to minimize interruptions. What most people don’t realize is humans aren’t capable of true multitasking–we can only switch back and forth between rapidly and alternately. When we get interrupted in a task, the longer we were interrupted, the longer it takes to get started back up again on what we were doing. If you keep letting yourself get distracted, you’ll spend a lot more time where your brain is trying to switch tasks instead of actually doing art. You don’t want to waste time on starting and stopping–you want to spend your time on doing.

The second thing people do sometimes is that they are trying to focus on their mood, or posture, or a number of things that aren’t exactly art but they were told would help them with their art. This may be helpful sometimes, but watch out–if you’re spending more time focusing on these side things than actually making art, then you could be setting yourself up to stall out.

So, if you want to get better at art, make art! And when you’re making art, if you want to do better, focus on making art!

That should be number one. If you want to work with tutorials or whatever else that helps you, then of course enjoy that process. But number one should be making art, and the other things should come second.

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

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Corra

Today’s post is about Incremental Transformation in creative endeavors. Also, as my art is often about playing with (and ideally breaking) the boundary between reality and abstraction, this post is about abstraction as well.

Definition (as I’m using the phrase):
“Incremental Transformation”, (noun phrase): The process by which an idea gets developed through increments, or repeated steps.

A quick example: Many artists develop a character through a process that involves
(1)drawing rough shapes
(2)tightening and refining those shapes
(3)solidifying choices and finalizing the shapes
(4)Adding details until the piece is finished.

This is a classic work flow, incrementally transforming rough shapes into a finished piece. However, there is another process I’ve observed Incremental Transformation occurring through.

Abstraction of ideas or concepts is a quintessential component to creative endeavors. Artists frequently abstract certain elements of a picture that aren’t meant to receive too much attention in a piece. An example is naturalistic backgrounds. If you look at my piece

Familiar

…I chose to abstract many background elements, including trees, mountainous shapes, rock forms… in order to create a tension between the sharply defined areas and the lucidly so. Too much detail can be overwhelming to the viewer, but thoroughly fleshing out a scene requires many elements. One solution is choosing which elements to fully detail and refine, and which to leave loose. Actually, this mirrors the way our brain processes information, as we selectively choose what to give the most attention to. Additionally, it mirrors physiology–the eye is a lens, and as such cannot focus on everything in the field of vision at once. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field)

Abstraction is necessary for development of games as well. In order to make fun simulation games, you must choose what to treat with an abstraction. A basic example is attacking ability for role-playing games. The ability of someone to attack someone or something is extremely complex and variable by circumstance, and is the reason why martial arts and military sciences cover volumes. However, in most games, a single number is assigned to “attack value” and then some situational modifiers are applied to adjust it based on the circumstances. In order for this to be perfectly realistic, one would have to program an infinite number of possible scenarios that could affect this number.

But it isn’t fun or practical to check if the character is slightly depressed and queasy after eating nachos and it’s reducing his coordination a little.

So we skip some detail. But when we have to work with abstractions we create, we have to treat them as “good enough” and the “reality” of the game at some point. This affects everything in the game, and you find things happening that you may not have expected: suddenly, perhaps, a character with a high attack value is capable of fighting many more lesser characters at once than a real person might, because there are less circumstances that hinder his attacking ability. Maybe you could program a penalty associated with attacking swarms of people…

OR, you could choose to leave it. Even more, you could embrace it. This is where the artist comes out. You’ve created a system of rules in which a high level fighter can get good enough to take out 20 guys at once. You then choose to enhance that–first, you add that to the story–there have been legendary fighters in the world’s story that have shaped History LITERALLY single-handedly. Their rise and fall have defined epochs in the world. Second, you add weapons that increase the effect even further–when a character wields a powerful sword, they can fight many more enemies at once, easily.

You also add powers–you figure the best explanation for a fighter attacking that many people at once is they learn new techniques that people in the real world never learned. You like that, and get the idea to then create specific techniques to teach the character–such as a dashing sword swing that drags the sword across multiple enemies at once as the character runs. You realize this would require very fast movement, and develop a pathway for the warrior that involves them becoming inhumanly fast as they discover new, untapped metabolic pathways for energy–similar to the way the runners described how it felt when they first broke the 4-minute-mile in reality. This feeds back into the story, as such warriors have the power to determine the fate of the masses, even without other political power…

And on and on, it goes, until you’ve created a fantastic world that runs on a specific rule-set that is different from that of the real world, but rich and vivid, with its own vast consequences and stories. And that is exactly what happens when incremental transformation and abstraction interact. As we abstract certain things, it changes the picture, and as we notice these changes, we have something new to play with and build on, which leads to more possible abstractions and possibilities. This positive feedback loop can be a powerful creative tool.

One last note–remember when I talked about Chaos Theory, here and here? This is another example of how small choices you make when creating a composition can be harnessed and amplified, intentionally or not, to enrich a piece. It’s a process of discovery, and what you choose to focus on reflects you as an artist and can help you create more original, powerful pieces.

Hopefully this inspired you, or at least was interesting. If you like it, share it with others, who might like or benefit from the ideas.

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

Like this post, tweet it, or subscribe! It’s fun!

I still don’t have a job, but I did win a bunch of money in a casino (thank God). I also realized that it’s reprehensible for me not to keep up with my artwork. So the site will update on Thursday again as normal.

In other news, I’m branching out in media yet again, with 3-D digital work. I haven’t made much in the line yet, but I’m experimenting, and you can expect to see some of it at some point in the future.

So, I’ll be updating soon.

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

Like this post, tweet it, or subscribe! It’s fun!

Corra

This piece is a tad unique in that I went about it differently than usual. Normally, when drawing from my imagination, I do a decent amount of sketching general shapes and lightly roughing in guidelines and such to help nail proportions. However, in this piece I mostly free-handed the whole thing.

Also, I’m still planning on cleaning up my galleries a bit, as they’ve gotten rather full and I’d like to keep the highlights. Let me know what you like or just in general want me to keep!

–Llux

All images, writing, characters, artwork and related indicia are (c) Earl Isbell

Feel free to leave a comment, browse the galleries, or contact me if you wanna buy a print, commission me, or just drop me a line. Just navigate using the links at the top ^^.

Like this post, tweet it, or subscribe! It’s fun!