Craig Elliott Gallery

Thanks to my friend Christian Alzmann, I found out yesterday that I had won a silver medal in the Olympics of fantasy art- the Spectrum Fantastic Art annual!  Spectrum has posted a video of the award announcements, and my painting was the first one announced by John Fleskes of Flesk Publishing (who is a super-great guy by the way!)  The winning piece was Never the Twain.  This is a painting first sketched in the fist few days after my brain surgery using my new re-found skills of sight. 

"Never the Twain"
-From time to time in human history taste for different body types changes, but all types remain. Never are all types happy together at one time. Only human social structure prevents this equality from happening. Members of one society are prevented from differing in their tastes by ridicule, the threat of abandonment by others in the group, guilt and many other modes of social manipulation. I find these aspects of society no longer serve us in any positive way.

 A 12.5" x 17.5" print is available for $45

 Thanks to Arnie and Cathy Fenner, and all the Judges for this honor. It is much appreciated, especially for illustrators such as myself who work primarily for movie and TV studios and have little chance for exposure of our work as individual artists. 

Here are a few sketches of my beautifully blooming Magnolia in the front yard...  They are also studies for a poster I am working on.  More on that in a few weeks! 

Where: Icon6 Illustration conference

When: July 17th 4:20- 5:00pm

What: I will be speaking about my work  in film and TV and how it relates  to my illustration and fine art work.  Stop by and see me!  Also joining me on the panel are my co-workers from Disney's "The Princess and the Frog"  Ian Gooding, Bill Schwab, and Disney veteran and all around great artist John Mahoney.  

The second card I did for the Warcraft card game set Scourgewar, is titled "Mighty Shadow Protection Potion."  Here is an image of some sketches, and 2 of the final versions of the painting.  This is a digital painting in Photoshop.

Enjoy! 

Sketch on paper in pastel and Prismacolor pencil, 10" x 10" Final painting, digital The final warcraft card as printed!

This isn't a post about how to walk down stairs, don't worry!  By stairstepping, I mean a way to see subforms on any shape.  This way of seeing forms is based of the simple shape of stairs, and when taken to a more sophisticated level resembles the ridges and steps in a shale rock face.  One of the artists who most clearly uses this idea is the american illustrator Dean Cornwell. His drawings show this very clearly, and he uses this in his paintings as well, but blends the simple geometry more to create a more finished realistic look.

The basic concept is to imagine a tubular or other basic solid and then carve steps into it that will be in shadow. This technique is great for all sorts of subjects such as trees, rock, buildings and the shapes on an animal or human.

Below are some of the basic steps of this technique as applied to a human figure:

Figures drawn, and basic outline of steps drawn in line

Steps filled in with shadow valueThe shadow areas are blended where the edges are softHighlights and smaller details are added