Tag: #TraditionalMedia

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Grotesque Moi! #27: It’s Been A While

20160627 211334 a

I’ll start with where I’m at now creatively and how I got here.

It’s been a roller coaster from COVID lockdown forward. I left a non art job of 15 years due to poor management decisions on their part. Started a new management position with a new to me company. Two months later COVID hit. After work opened back up the company decided to down size and I was with the newest employees so we were let go.

Some health issues that I’ve been dealing with for a while returned or developed.

I had a serious injury 45 years ago. Among other things, unknowingly, my hips wound up being affected. Around 25 years ago I was at the point of needing both hips replaced or getting a wheel chair. My orthopedic surgeon suggested that I try a device that came available with my insurance. I used it and got back my ability to walk without any problems. 14 years later I started having problems again. The original injury was still healed but arthritis had set in and was causing me problems with walking again. It has been progressing since then to the point that just going grocery shopping takes me forever. I’m exhausted by the time I get home and walking is affected for days. It’s progressively taking more days, the pain doesn’t fully go away anymore and I don’t really bounce back like before.

Around 10 years ago I believe I had a minor stroke. It was during a stressful situation I was having with my parents. I read a message from my wife about a meeting with my dad and stepmom and it didn’t sit well with me. One of my coworkers noticed that I was struggling with my words and had slurred speech. She said that my head and ears were bright red and that the left side of my face was slumping. Ever since this I’ve had problems that slowly develop with my short and long term memory. It’s so frustrating trying to keep up with things that I’m doing from minute to minute.

Art wise….

I lost my main computer for illustrating. I still have my IPad but I did final editing and adjustments on that desktop. I was able to wake Artsy up one more time and double backed it up so I would have all that work. The laptop I have doesn’t have the drawing program or the graphics capabilities. It’s also Windows 7 so internet is on again off again continuously.

Traditional art is a bit harder than it used to be. I don’t have the tools I used to have when I was doing it more full time.

It’s been hard staying motivated but I know this story has to be told. It feels like multiple books already.

Where I’m at now.

I have continued with the journal, making sketch notes of the locations that the creatures I’ve been creating live in.

I’ve also been working on writing the story of that world. I’m trying a different style of writing and storytelling. It’s from a current perspective for the characters. It’s also less of a narrative format. I want the reader to feel as if they are there experiencing things with the characters.

I’ve given strong consideration of a written and illustrated companion guide with reference details explaining things in the main story. These guides will be specific to each book they reference.

I’m still open for commissions to illustrate your creature portraits from the Grotesque Moi collection. Details are available in my shop under the tier banners. http://www.xtillos.com/shop

I hope you all are well! I’ll update when I’ve gotten a little further along. Thank you for your support!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Grotesque Moi! #25 – Planning for 2021

Img

I hope everyone has had a great holiday and a Happy New Year celebration! I’m really hoping that everyone has a successful year in whatever you do!

Plans for Grotesque Moi! are as follows:

  • Illustrations – The goal is to produce 6 to 12 new portraits this year. some may be in the form of scene illustrations combining multiple creatures.
  • Illustration Canvas Print Frames – I plan to continue creating customized frames for each of my illustrations.
  • Red Bubble Catch Up – Setting a deadline for updating each newly finished and released portrait or illustration.
  • Expansion – Develop illustrations on a splinter line that are quicker to create and potentially making a separate set of pricing tiers that fits with these quicker illustrations.
  • Plan for phase II and III of Grotesque Moi! – More on these after the above has been integrated.
  • Grotesque Moi!’s Patreon Page – Add more sketches and line drawings to Grortesque Moi!’s Patreon page..

Plans for Terrene and Ba’anta

Now that Terrene and Ba’anta have been hinted at in the lore of the Grotesque Moi! creatures, it’s time to start the story debuting this world on Patreon!

  • It’s time to share the first posted sketches that was in my early blog posts here to Patreon.
  • All future sketches will debut on Patreon first.
  • Publish the updated labeled geographical map of Ba’anta on Patreon.
  • Create a large (maybe 48”x36”) illustration of the lands of Terrene.

There’s a lot of things planned out here! I will have to create a calendar to keep things on track!

Indicates Grotesque Moi! Exclusives And White Tier Merchandise!
Posted on by — Leave a comment

New Things for the New Year: Part 2

Img

I mentioned before that I have some new things planned for this year.

The first new thing is a plan to create coloring pages of the original released art!

The original line drawings will be converted to ink line drawings. The scenery and creatures / monsters will be simplified to make them more appropriate for coloring pages. The pages will be made available for digital download by purchase through my store here on my site!

Next is new watercolor art of all of the released art!

It starts with the ink drawings from the coloring pages! Using watercolors, the images will be brought to life!

Follow that with stickers!

The creature / monster watercolor art will be converted to stickers! This means the scenery will be removed giving the creatures / monsters a chance to really shine. There will be two sizes to choose from! Sets of three will be available for purchase through my store, as well!

How do you feel about stuffed toys?

Grotesque Moi!’s released creatures / monsters are on their way to become a bigger part (ok, a little bigger part) of our world! I’m working on the basic form designs to turn the released creatures / monsters into really great stuffed toys! You will be able to carry your favorite creatures anywhere with you! There will be one size for most of my creations available for purchase in my store, too!

The Grotesque Moi! illustrations will continue!

More Grotesque Moi! illustrations are on the way! The first one is close to being finished! there is also two more ready to start!

Show!

The show season is well underway! We have applications out to some of the bigger ones and waiting to see if we get in to them! Meanwhile, we are lining up events, markets and shows! Keep an eye out for where we’ll be next!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Latest Updates 1

I thought I would update you guys on my current status on my projects. Before that I wanted to ask a question of you:

When you don’t have your materials redily available, what do you do about creating?

My position on this will be explained within this post.

Here I am working on a very long term project, “Relative Perspective”. (I plan to share the whole journey once it is finally finished.) I’m having breakthrough after breakthrough and making good progress, for this project. I find myself delayed, again. It’s not from any issues with the work.

As I have mentioned before, having a portable art tool has been a liberating benefit. My daughter is enjoying the benefits with her school work. Because she has assignments due, the tablet is spending time with her this weekend, again.

Luckily I have traditional work to continue. I was able to get some sketching done last night. I plan to bring that journal with me out today so that I’m making progress. As much as I hate multitasking and it’s horrible side effect, symptoms of procrastination, at least one of the projects waiting in the cue gets attention, today.

I’ll have to remember my mindset when I can resume “Relative Perspective”. I hope my daughter does great! I’ll keep plugging away on the other work.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

A Quick Update Part 2

So, to update on the IPad Pro tablet with Procreate. I’m enjoying the freedom to take my work anywhere and be able to work immediately on a project. It’s a very useful tool, especially that I can create right on the screen!

It’s so beneficial that my daughter is finding great uses for it! She had not fully adopted it, yet. I’m glad that we got it and it is helpful to her, too. I’ll get to working on my project when I can. Until then my daughter is working away with it!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Relative Perspective WIP Update #7

I finally have some updates on this project to share with you!

I’ve got screenshots of my progress! It’s been good having this tablet. The freedom to take my work anywhere and some really great tools. I’m still learning it’s limits but it’s been very helpful!

I’m debating on putting snow in the mountains. I’ll put them on a separate layer so I can change them if it doesn’t work out. The details are coming out very nice! There’s still a lot to do but the scene is setting up pretty good! I’ll post more proper progression photos next time.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

What’s Been Happening? 

Hi everybody!

I thought I would ask you what’s happening in your world. Aside from the recent holidays, what events are influencing you? Is there great positive things going on? Maybe it’s not so positive. It’s ok, you’re welcome to share that, too. 

Many of my friends are gearing up for this year’s convention circuit. Either submitting work, getting notifications of their submissions or preparing for an upcoming convention. 

Some of my friends are dealing with tough life events. Physical or emotional pain has entered their lives. Stress in dealing with these situations, trying to erode their peace of mind. 

For myself, it’s a mixed bag. For the negative side, problems from a old injury have come back on me. Sometimes there’s pain for days, even weeks. My real world paying job is affected because of this. I’m stressing over where my future is going. What about my family? How will I continue to be able to support them? Will I return to having constant pain? How much this is triggering my blood pressure and depression. A lot of heavy things.

On the positive side I’ve celebrated 20 years of happily married life with my wife! Both her and our daughter are my whole world! I’ll be turning 54 soon. I’m reworking a piece of fantasy art that was started as a pencil sketch in ’96. I’ve posted progress photos of it before here, “Relative Perspective”. I’ll post updates of it later.

Here are some photos from before: 

I hope all is well with you and your world is great! If it’s not, I hope you find a way to get peace and balance. May the right side always win.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

New for the New Year 2018

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you’re enjoying your holidays! Hopefully you have plans for something great this year! 

I’ve got a new project that will need your help! More about how that will work in the upcoming posts! I hope to roll parts of it out in stages this year. I’ve been sneaking out images of the plan, recently. It’s focused around the fantasy self-portraits I posted before and some creature drawings. Like this Lupine-Naga:

For now, here’s to many great things for you in this New Year! 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Creative Celebration Update #3

As promised here are the details in photos of my creations for the 20th Wedding Anniversary gifts to my wife and the ones we got for our daughter. The basic idea for the paper is from when I would make my own stationary to write to my wife, before we were married. It was made the same way aa this project but in smaller scale.

First was the creation of the wrapping paper. I used a roll of 36″ poster paper, acrylic paints, a 2″ brush, water and saw horses with planks for a large makeshift table.

 

I worked in sections basically making a color wash stain of various colors with the acrylic paints and water.

 

Once I had what I felt was enough paper painted to wrap with and it was fully dry, I moved inside to start decorating it. First thing was to cut the roll so that the painted part was more manageable. Then I started painting some hearts and balloons on part of the paper.

 

For the next part I had to get decorative stickers and of course the gifts. The stickers were some elements that I couldn’t make. Also, there’s no sense recreating the wheel. I like the way they fit each person. The focus for my wife is the hearts and flowers. For our daughter the focus was butterflies and balloons.

 

I made custom name cards for each gift. Most were in the form of riddles.

 

Next were the personalized hand crafted cards. They’re created with Canson paper, scrapbook pages, a color printer, hot glue and more of the stickers.

 

Both cards were butterfly fold with personalized printed transparent inserts and envelopes. This is how the finished cards turned out.

 

Everything turned out great and the back story made for some great points to reminisce and share with our daughter.

DSC_0329

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

My Ipad Was Almost Mine

Well, after experimenting a little with my new Ipad, it turns out that the Ipad is really helpful for doing school work. In particular IB Art classes. So it has been quite useful for my daughter. I got to play around with Garage Band before the second wave hit. It’s OK though I still have old school illo journals to work in!