Pit of Ideas

I've been really busy lately with a lot of commissions and other client work. I'm pleased with how they've turned out! Characters for @narnoot (Twitter) Characters for @SugaredStars (Twitter) Character design I made for some downtime - I wanted to make something with Boudicea and kilt vibes! ArtStation Twitter Instagram

I entered ArtStation's Feudal Japan: Shogunate challenge to try and push myself to do more environments since I'm very character/creature focused. I learnt a lot doing these and it was a nice change from concepting people. 1 - The Geisha Eavesdrops. It was not uncommon these days for the wealthy to use those of her profession as spies and assassins, as such, the Geisha would not have been surprised if samurai had been present whilst she entertained the neighbouring Daimyo. However, this entourage he had brought with him was unexpected - unsettling even.  As the Daimyo conversed and fell deeper into his sake, he spoke freely to the strange men who sat at his table about power and glory, and about a plot that would allow him to take it all. Starting with her own Lord. 2 - The Household is Cursed. As fast as she was able, the Geisha returned to her Daimyo to report what she had overheard. The castle was eerily quite and held a sense of unease. She heard ...

This is my interpretation of elves, using the Hulder in Scandinavian folklore as inspiration. The main goal of this was to develop a more illustrative concept art style, like the character and creature concepts done for God of War.

Steeds are native to hilly and mountainous fields. In the past century or so, they have been domesticated by humans and are used as pack animals or transport.  Microscopic scale-like structures in their chest fur bristle when a Steed feels threatened. The change in structure changes the perceived colour of the fur to reveal imposing warning patterns.

I like drawing muscles :) And that's about all I have to say.

Final Year Project Semester 02 Self-Set Brief:  Concept 1 character, mount and prop. Illustrate 1 environment. Setting is a xeric shrubland/desert with influence from Chinese and Himalayan tribes. Nomad: The Environment Whilst the nomads travel a xeric shrubland-like desert, their ancestors were once one of many much more advanced tribes. However their disregard for the land led to their deity stripping the land's abundance from them. Thus, they had to leave their settlements in order to try and find sources of food and water, all the while attempting to appease the deity and show them that they could be worthy of its blessing once more. The final painting - I learnt a lot about photobashing doing this project, and also about painting fast. This was a huge challenge for me given that I rarely sketch environments, let alone paint them as finished pieces. A small amount of the thumbnails I made for the final painting - none of which I liked ...

Final Year Project Semester 02 Self-Set Brief:  Concept 1 character, mount and prop. Illustrate 1 environment. Setting is a xeric shrubland/desert with influence from Chinese and Himalayan tribes. Nomad: The Mount These bird-like mounts traverse the desert, using their large thin ears to regulate their body temperature. Whilst they can fly, they have evolved predominantly to run with their long legs. I sketched up a lot of rough thumbnails (only a select few are shown here), exploring a wide variety of body shapes and animal types before even coming to create a moodboard. I ended up going with a predatory, bipedal creature since I had previously been designing a lot of herbivorous quadrupeds. Plus I love ghost bats and had wanted to use their ears in a design for a long time. Whilst I didn't have much time to do many secondary iterations due to an injury, I did play around with the idea of a more raptor-like and scaled creature, and also with fleshy area...

Final Year Project Semester 02 Self-Set Brief:  Concept 1 character, mount and prop. Illustrate 1 environment. Setting is a xeric shrubland/desert with influence from Chinese and Himalayan tribes. Nomad: The Scout These scouts travel the xeric shrublands on their bird-like mounts trying to lead their tribe towards new water and food sources. The instrument they carry is used to communicate with each other over long distances. Research went into a lot of different tribes, eventually settling on Chinese and Himalayan styles, particularly the Mustang tribe and their masks. I start off with some initial silhouettes using a calligraphy pen - I find it's easier to get ideas flowing if I start out on paper. After I've narrowed down the direction of the design, I move into digital silhouettes which are more accurate to the brief and can have more detail put into them. I then choose a design I think works best and push tha...

This week's #SundayFishSketch is a Slender Sunfish (Ranzania Laevis). I like the prompts Rene Martin posts on twitter because they make me draw, and therefore learn about, fish that I otherwise wouldn't be that interested in.  Slender Sunfish are also known as Trunkfish, Oblong Sunfish, Tsunami Fish, Truncated Sunfish, Slender Mola, Short Sunfish and Dwarf Sunfish. They will school together when swimming (and as far as sunfish are concerned, Ranzania Laevis is very agile and quick in the water) and their skin, which looks smooth, is also covered in tiny hexagonal scutes - exterior bony plates.

Between 1908 and 1913, Olivia Tonge travelled India and part of what is now Pakistan, illustrating the world around her in vibrant watercolour renditions. Whilst her work is beautiful and rich in colour, it may not be the most scientifically accurate. Despite this, the notes she wrote alongside her paintings are insightful and eye-opening, especially to someone like me who doesn't have much knowledge of cultural history. And that's another thing that I admire about Tonge's work; she documented a wide variety of subjects from fauna and flora to jewellery, food and small local creations such as the 'Hill Man's Impromptu Pipe' (see below image). I love Tonge's work for the little insights into the past. Packets of Betel Nut and Hill Men's Pipes are things that I doubt I would have ever known existed without her illustrations and brief but lucid notations. Especially as a concept artist, I find these to spark an abundance of ideas. Sometimes...

 Oyster Toadfish - Opsanus Tau Tailspot Blenny - Ecsenius Stigmatura I recently set up a twitter account ( https://twitter.com/arik_burniston ), and came across this awesome weekly sketch called #SundayFishSketch I want to get more into sciArt/scientific illustration whilst also leaving my mammalian comfort zone so this was a perfect kick up the backside. Not only that, but I'm also only doing it traditonally so I'm learning a lot about how to use my coloured and inktense pencils which have sat in a shoe box for almost three years now. My next step will be to learn how to use watercolours and - probably more importantly - how to get rid of grain in photographed and scanned images. Because those full res images are an eye-sore right now haha. But for now, here are my first few attempts - an Oyster Toadfish and a Tailspot Blenny.