Some covers and a poster (updated with some wip's)

[lyon]

Alright, I know that these paintings are all in my gallery (thanks Jason!) but I figured that I would give them a home here as well. These are some fairly recent cover paintings that I have done.

Mephistopheles is for the cover of Dungeon #140 for Paizo

The painting of the fat guy with the girl in front was an illustration for Orson Scott Card, for his webzine, Intergalactic Medicine Show

The guy with the monkey on his shoulder is for the cover of an RPG called Ramlar, done for White Silver Publishing

and the Stargate image was done for Cheyenne Mountain as a poster.

Thanks for taking a look and if there are any questions, I will be happy to answer if I possible.

[Kian]

Great stuff. Well done Lyon, these are easily A*
I love your colour palettes

[Ostrander]

Great rendering. Great colors. You're one of my favs here on CA.
I'm sure you may have answered some of these questions elsewhere and shame on me for not doing the legwork to find out but...
How long does a cover for Dungeon normally take you, from thumbs to final?
I'm guessing you're using Painter for your work, I could be wrong, but if you are, which brushes do you feel yourself using most of the time?
You seem to have a wonderfully smooth and creamy quality to your work, is there any chance you could show us a tutorial on how you achieve this or how you work in general?
Thanks in advance and I look forward to seeing more of your work!

[Mandryk]

wow these are beautifuly rendered - great work man. Your color choices are really getting amazing. A minor nitpick - the second last one gives the illusion that the guy is slightly cut-out from the background - the rimlighting doesn't feel natural.

Cheers man, and keep up the good work!

[Rich Pellegrino]

These are great Howard. Each piece lives in its own world which is something hard to achieve. I enjoy the sense of depth you have created in these.

Rich

[foster]

I turn my back for a minute... and Howard gets years of progress in what seems to be a blink of the eye.

I'm thrilled and amazed at seeing these Howard.

Jon

[Matt Dixon]

Really lovely work, Howard. Keep 'em coming!

[Marko Djurdjevic]

Love the fat guy Howard, great expression, looks like his bowels are going to explode every second from holding in for too long. :D
Hope you're doing well man!

Cheers
M

[lyon]

Kian – Thanks man. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I have been trying to get my color to come up a bit, thanks for noticing!

Ostrander – Thank you! I usually take 1.5 – 2 days to paint the image and an hour or so to work up the sketch. I will attach some wips for the Dungeon cover below. I do use Painter, usually 100%. Sometimes I use Photoshop for some manipulation, but mostly Painter. I like to use oil pastels, smeary round with the tip set to circular instead of bristles or camel hair, and I also use chalk and ink brushes here and there.

Mandryk – Thank you very much for the compliments. I agree on the guy looking cut out. Good call. I will have to go back in on that piece and fix the edges. I don’t normally go back, but it bugs me too much to leave it now. Thank again for the visit and the feedback. I hope that all is well. Talk to you later.

voodoochile – Very kind. I hope that all is well. I read some feedback that you gave to Gilead (I think) good stuff. Thanks again for stopping in.

MikeCorriero – I see what you are saying with the feedback. Definitely working on the movement, fluidity of the characters. Still looking for ‘it’ in some of my paintings. Definitely not nit-picking, I appreciate you taking the time to give thoughtful feedback. I really enjoy doing skies and clouds. That might come from being raised in Arizona. The sunsets and skyscapes here are pretty inspiring. Skies used to take me a while, but now they go pretty fast. I will see if I have some good wips to post on those. I did the poster is 3600x 5400. I don’t usually work that large, but it was to be printed at 24 x 36. The Stargate image, from start to finish was 3.5 days. The sky was a big part of it, and the other parts of the background. I am embarrassed to say it, but I didn’t plan very well on this one and I ended up having to adjust the perspective and fudge it until it was right. That is usually something that I get right from the start, but I had to repent on this one a little. On the top one, it probably took 3-4 hours to get the background done and then a day on the character and foreground.

Jon - You are very kind. Comments from you are definitely part of the payoff for posting here. I am drooling greedily in anticipation of getting your new book. It is waiting to be shipped overnight as soon as Amazon gets one in. I am happy to read that you see some progression in my work. That means a ton coming from you. It was good to see you at the comicon and see some of your paintings. I look foward to next year and hope to make it out to the next MB workshop.

Matt – Thanks! It is always a good day to see a new post from you. I think you are due pretty soon here aren’t you? :) When are you going to make it over to the states and what have you been working on. Send me an email sometime.

Marko – Hehe, the fat guy was lots of fun to paint. Thanks for taking the time to respond here, it means a lot. I have been blown away with the Marvel work you have been doing. Thanks again for the response. You brighten my day brother.

[lyon]

Here are some of the wip's for the above paintings. Probably a lot more than anyone would want, but maybe they will be helpful to someone. If you save them off and do a slideshow or flip them with ACDSee, it will probably give you a better idea with the process. Thanks.

[Idiot Apathy]

Greatly appreciate the steps, very interesting to see you start greyscale and then colorize it so well in the first few steps. PS or Painter? I can never tell any more.

Say, I heard you used to live in Utah? I've missed my chance to stalk and beg for art goodies... :(

[lyon]

and a few more.. ad nauseum.

[Ostrander]

Wow, Thank you so much for sharing the WIPs! I love seeing the process. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions too. Great job!
I don't suppose you could explain your process when you go from greyscale to color could you? Are you working in low opacity color or doing a color overlay layer? I'm curious to know.

[El Chief]

wow, those are so amazing :)

After seeing your greyscale sketches i really wonder how you get your color in.
Do use a layer mode (colorize or color) or do you simply paint over the grayscale base?

cheers

[nicolas]

Awesome work Howard!!! I really dig the WIPs for some reason I thought you worked over a tight pencil drawing, but it looks like you start painting pretty loosely, which surprissed me.... but who cares really? as long as the final looks great. which they do ;)
Kudos.

[Dan.v.D.]

you have such a nice knack for gentle lightening of surfaces and objects

[Jason Snair]

MAN oh MAN. I love these.

Thanks for the WIPs. It just great seeing your processs. If I may, what kind of brushes are you using for the sky? (I love how that Egyptian one turned out)

[Evil_Sloth]

That shit be whack yall, man I love the colour combo's totally epic.

[cmalidore]

Wow, great WIP shots there Howard, I like them all a lot! I agree with the feedback toward them being stiff in spots - but in comparison to your earlier work, things are certainly getting more fluid, Mephistopheles for example has a very strong visual flow. That's great :).

Keep at it man, I'm totally diggin it.

[Eric Gerhard]

My godness!

[capitan_popo]

amazing work, they all look great

[TheGnoll]

You're my hero dude, i love this stuff.Something similar to your style is actually what i'm aiming for...so keep sharing!

ciao

[Hyptosis]

Awesome work man. Your style is very classy, solid, and just makes me want to go play fantasy games and stuff. =] Thanks for the steps, heck, I'm a fan of half the people who've posted here saying they love your work. So I'm like, a sub fan now. =P Keep it up man... very nice as usual.

[Whammybar]

I really love your work, although, from looking at your gallery, I noticed that whenever you draw robes you seem to make them feel to flat and square-like in the front. May just be me.

In the piece with the guy with the monkey, the candle's light doenst seem to be effecting the scene because theres no warm color being reflected from the scene, instead theres some kind of white light from the right side of the piece that we cant see. I think it would add to it to have the candle's light be reflected in the scene.

For the evil warlock guy, it looks like it would really fit in this game called World of Warcraft, dont know if youve played it or meant it for that, but you could submit it at http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/fanart/rules.shtml
heres the fan art that is already there http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/fanart/page38.shtml
i think it would be a great addition to their archive, and im 100% positive they would put it in there.

Anyway your pieces are amazing, hope to see more in the future.

[right573]

Stunning works Thank you for sharing with us

[Gilead]

These are great Howard. I have no crits to add to what's already been said. Bring your computer to life drawing class and show me how you do that.