A new home


After much frustration with Blogger, I have decided to move to a new home. You can find my new blog here:

www.daarken.com/blog

I will keep this blog open for people that would like to view my older entries. Thanks!

Article Madness!

We are very fortunate to have two great articles on two of the top gaming sites: Kotaku and Joystiq. You can read both of them here:

Kotaku
Joystiq

It is great that we have received so much support for this event in such a short amount of time. Thank you all for your help.

Popping the cherry, one change at a time.

My new cover for the Horus Heresy game by Fantasy Flight Games was just spoiled today. I have been waiting for a long time for this illustration to become public since it is my first 40k illustration. Unfortunately, when I saw the printed version I noticed that they altered my art. The monitor behind Horus was changed to a bunch of windows that look out into space. I wish they had just asked me to make the change so that the illustration would look consistent.

Dragons, rawr...


The other day I was googling "dragons" for reference when I came across this:

The left and right sides have been cropped off in this image because they wrap around the sides of the box. I'll have to post a full version later.

Some new stuff

One of my new Warhammer covers for Fantasy Flight Games was released today. You can find more information about it here: The Gathering Storm

Some new WoW cards from the Scourge War set.

Black Friday print and proof sale, ends Nov. 30th!

$5 off glossy prints.
8.5x11 - $10
11x17 - $15
$5 shipping

$50 off canvas prints.
18x24 - $100 (stretched and varnished)
$30 shipping

$3 off proofs.
Proofs - $2 each (MTG and WoW proofs available)
Korlash - $7

The official site for Beautiful Grim is now open! Check it out for more information about the show as well as the artist list.

www.beautifulgrim.org

I have created a group page for Beautiful Grim on Facebook. You can find it here:

Beautiful Grim

In order to save time, I am going to keep the artist list on the group page up-to-date instead of here on my blog. Thanks!

Beautiful Grim

My friend Leif and I are organizing an art auction for charity that will be held next year. All of the information for the show will be posted on the show's site www.beautifulgrim.com. We hope to have the site up and running by Nov. 22nd.

You an also visit the group page on Facebook here: Beautiful Grim

If you would like to create a piece of art and donate it to the auction that would be awesome. The art can be anything from a quick pencil sketch to a painting. There are no limits or restrictions and any media is acceptable. So far we have 110 artists contributing that hail from all regions of the industry: concept artists, animators, photographers, sculptors, fine artists, illustrators, you name it. The theme for the auction is Beautiful Grim. Right now the tentative deadline for the art is the end of January 2010. I am currently researching venues to hold the event, but so far it looks like the event will be held in San Francisco. We also had the idea to release all of the art as a book and donate all of the proceeds to a charity.

Please let me know if you are interested or know someone that is.  I really appreciate it.

Here is the current list of artists willing to contribute:

Kei Acedera
Hyo-jin Ahn
Scott Altmann
Richard Anderson
Joy Ang
Chris Appelhans
Daren Bader
Tom Bagshaw
James Baxter
Steven Belledin
Matt Berret
Andy Brase
Jeff Bruton
Matthew Buck
Wes Burt
Peter Chan
Michele Chang
Bobby Chiu
Carmen Chow
Robin Chyo
Aaron Coberly
Dan Cole
Mike Corriero
Daarken
Dean DeBlois
Marko Djurdjevic
Daniel Dociu
Horia Dociu
Daniel Dos Santos
Albert Ramos Down
Jayel Draco
Jesper Ejsing
Wayne England
Tracy Flynn
Jon Foster
Mike Franchina
Anthony Francisco
Randy Gallegos
Kim Gilbert
ScarletGothica
Rodolphe Guenoden
Ricardo Guimaraes
Katy Hargrove
Eli Harris
Aaron Hartline
Sam Hogg
Levi Hopkins
Gabe Hordos
Jessica Van Hulle
Evan Hunt
Jamie Jang
Steve Javiel
Leif Jeffers
Ben Jelter
Jakob Jensen
Sylvia Ji
Sze Jones
Jason Juan
Dave Kendall
Douang Khamsitthisack
Jonathan Kirtz
Kekai Kotaki
Christophe Lautrette
Khang Le
Ron Lemen
Fabio Lignini
Chenoa Lindsey
Todd Lockwood
Nat Loh
Sergio Lopez
Scott McFall
Jeff Miracola
Lisa Mistiuk
Jeremy Natividad
Mark Nelson
Viktoria Novakovich
Simon Otto
Sunil Pant
Tamara Peklich
Gabriele Pennacchioli
Pierre Perifel
Kristen Perry
Mike Phillippi
Danielle Pioli
Shane Prigmore
Chuck Pyle
Willie Real
Robert Revels
Chris Sanders
Griselda Sastrawinata
Dan Scott
Marcos Shih
Kevan Shorey
Jessa Sininger
Douglas Sirois
Aaron Smith
Darron Smith
Rick Smith
Ariel Soto
Oliver Staphylas
Maja Stasni
Neal Thibodeaux
David Thierree
Cyril Van Der Haegen
Tyler Walpole
Doug Williams
Megan Wolfe
Alena Wooten
Scott Wright
Brandon Young

Until the Beautiful Grim site is up and running I will update this blog with new information. Thanks!

The box cover illustration I did for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition along with another illustration I did can be seen in this video.

I just finished a short, real-time video of Nibru that focuses on refining the face. I plan to release a few more of these real-time videos, so stay tuned!

Nibru - Refining the Face

I am currently in a transition with my YouTube site, so if you are looking for the Liche Priest video you can find it on the 3D Total site here.

Today conceptart.org had their Self Portrait Day. I decided to take a couple hour break from my freelance work and paint a self portrait. It has been a long time since I painted a self portrait, so I figured this would be some good practice. The painting took two hours to complete. I ended up recording the whole process, so now all I need to do is edit the video and add audio.

I found these on the WoW TCG site today. The first is a playmat for the Scourge War expansion, and the second is a deck box with my Dwarf Priest on it.





Focal Press was also kind enough to upload some of my video tutorials on the Digital Art Masters micro site. You can check it out here.

If you haven't seen the epic Nibru thread that has taken conceptart.org by storm, you should go check it out. Many of the "heavy hitters" have contributed to the craziness, including Andrew Jones, Coro, Marko, Dos Santos, Wes Burt, Whit Brachna, Rich Doble...the list goes on and on. The criteria for the character was what intrigued me:

- he is old, has long hair, has only his left eye

- has stitches for eyebrows and his mouth is stitched shut

- has a halo over his head

- carries some type of spear

- has a necklace with the letter "m" on it

I figured this would be a great opportunity for me to create another video tutorial, so I gave it a shot. The version of the demo that I have now is a short, 10 minute video documenting the entire process. The next version I plan on doing will take you through the entire process in real-time and give you a much greater in-depth look at how I go about creating a character. You can find the short version on my youtube here.

This was our last day in DC with Sylvia. First we went to the Natural History Museum and then we ran to the National Portrait Gallery before it closed. Unfortunately we only had about 30-45 minutes to look at the whole museum.

Detail of Charles Dana Gibson

Detail of Norman Rockwell

This was an actual life cast of Lincoln before his death.

Some details of Anders Zorn. As you can tell, this was one of my favorite paintings.

Saaaaaargent!