The spikes on the collar are a personal reference back to the spikes I used to wear on my leather jacket back when I was a punky kid. I mean, there is no time like your teen years where you get more obsessed with the sound pressing into your ears. I had long hair back then too, but Kokabiel has clearly been taking better care of his.
Finding a working value structure for this piece was a pa...
I've been wrapping up work on The Book of Watchers and I keep discovering little pockets of work that I didn't realize I needed to finish. One of them is an illustration to compliment the prologue. In the rough layout there were some awkward spaces and reused illustrations that begged for a better solution. What they needed was a portrait of Enoch's son, Methuselah. His is a name you might know. H...
2018-11-14 16:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Want to see some of the stuff that inspires me? I'd love to share some of the stuff I've found that has helped inspire the Angelarium aesthetic.
Let me know what you think about seeing content on here that I didn't make. It'll all be free and public. Just a fun addition to the feed. My hope is that you'll get a clearer sense on where my work comes from, but also get to share appreciation for som...
2018-11-12 16:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Circling back on these familiar figures has been a joy. With much of the design work already established by his first portrait, I'm able to build on the themes behind Kokabiel's character.
To me, Kokabiel represents a sort of escapism. In the first piece, he's looking to the heavens while water rises around him. This time around I wanted to pull the camera in closer and show a private moment as ...
2018-11-09 12:34:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Rahab ferried the bodies of the dead into the sea. His promise to mankind was to bring them to a place where they would never be disturbed. They prayed that the abyss would give the dead peace. No one could know for sure except the grim Watcher. That dark place was his home and his alone. The passage into darkness was a place of no return. That is its nature.
2018-10-31 04:59:01 +0000 UTC View Post
All wallpapers, works in progress, high res finals and PSDs for Rahab, Keeper of the Faith are now on their respective Discord channels. Log into the Angelarium Discord channel to download them and access the complete archive.
This month's Patreon exclusive 10% off promo code is LOST10. It's good for anything on 2018-10-31 04:59:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey Patrons,
I'm working on finalizing the second book and part of that has been organizing the work that's been done for the it over the past....uh, 3 years?
My memory for art is pretty good, but not so much for writing. A lot of the stuff I've written sounds totally foreign to me rereading it several years later. That freaked me out a little. Largely because I'm not the only writer who h...
2018-10-26 20:26:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Part of me keeps thinking that if I could just pull in the camera a little closer, I would have less stuff in frame to detail. Instead, the closer I get to the figure, the more details I want to reveal. That's left this piece with a lot of textures and lighting I need to resolve. Not to mention a million little strands of hair.
If you've never taken on a project that requires thousands of t...
Hey folks,
I forgot to mention that I'm running the yearly playmat event on the store right now. Until October 22nd, 50 discontinued playmat designs are available for a limited time, plus there is a 20% off sale on mats across the board:
https://www.angelarium.net/vault
...
Here we go.
Whenever I'm getting stuck adding color, the thing that needs fixing is almost never the color itself. The answer lies a step backwards in the values. Pushing the background into darkness brought out new opportunities to bring in a more powerful mood. Now this piece makes sense to me. Now I can see its final form.
Ultimately, this thing needs to get brighter. Doing a dark...
Do you have experience building custom wood or metal items? We're looking for some help making custom hardware for our convention tables. Paid or trade.
In the past, we've worked with some people using a CnC mill and a laser cutter to craft print stands, signs and other amenities for the Angelarium convention booth. In preparation for next year's shows, we're looking to work with some new p...
Two paintings in a row started with a failed attempt at going to color. Must be my own cosmic punishment for having such an easy time with Azazel.
There is something slippery about attempting to get colors to stick to a painting. It's not like there is anything overly complicated going on here that is causing this piece to give me trouble. I'm sure that this seems like a perfectly fine piec...
Hey folks,
I've been thinking recently about revamping the structure of this campaign and I wanted to get your feelings before I put anything into motion.
First off, I've been talking about posting two paintings per month for a long time. Even though the required productivity to do that has returned, I'm glad that I didn't implement it yet. It messes with a couple of structural things hav...
The Angel of the Deep is one of the few Angels I've painted that actually has some classical lore attached to him.
When the Book of Raziel was thrown into the oceans by jealous Angels, Rahab was tasked with bringing it back. Despite the fact that he knew it wouldn't redeem him, he did it anyway. His connection to Raziel's book feels important, so it's exciting to finally get to depict that.
<...
Hey guys, a lot has been happening, so it’s time for an update.
There was a studio/warehouse where I was renting space for a year or so called The Secret Vault. It was a worthwhile experiment, but I put an end to it a couple months back. That meant moving the whole business back into my home studio and letting go of my assistant Jasper. So far, it definite...
2018-10-08 20:11:16 +0000 UTC View Post
All wallpapers, works in progress, high res finals and PSDs for Suphlatus, The Patient Hand are now on their respective Discord channels. Log into the Angelarium Discord channel to download them and access the complete archive.
This month's Patreon exclusive 10% off promo code is CREATE10. It's good for anything on 2018-09-30 15:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Suphlatus built a growing collection of halls and spires that cracked the desert horizon. Each one, it’s own a jagged landscape. Everyday, men would witness the Angel’s latest creations and each night they would cheer as he brought them down. As this cycle became commonplace, the only fanfare came at their destruction.
As children, we tear at flowers and rip the limbs from trees. Their...
2018-09-30 04:59:59 +0000 UTC View Post
After peeling the color back out of this piece, I thought about what colors I WANTED to be there rather than which ones I thought SHOULD be there. Letting a 'should' into the creative process is always death. Whenever I try to help a struggling artist, this is always what I try to impart on them but it's not a piece of advice to take, even if you know it well.
Rather than waiting for some e...
We're all done with conventions for 2018!
I'm clearing out all the random stuff that I built up for shows over the past 9 months and I wanted to set aside the most fun items for you Patreon people. There is an unlisted part of the website where I randomly start selling secret stuff like this and it's o...
I love painting night as day. The mixture of bright colors and starry skies just do it for me. Seeing a chance to do that, I messed with this approach to the color palette for a long time.
Looking back to Burning Man for the colors in addition to the themes, I tried to pull from the intense look of the sky over the desert at dusk/dawn. Over and over, I kept thinking I was about to get this ...
This month's upcoming piece is of the Angel of Dust. He's the first character I ever designed for Angelarium. This will be his 4th incarnation and the most different from the all the past versions.
Back in the day, each time I re-illustrated an Angel, it was just an aesthetic upgrade. The series has been growing with me for so long, that after a while, each piece would start too look a littl...
2018-09-10 21:59:58 +0000 UTC View Post
All wallpapers, works in progress, high res finals and PSDs for Azazel, The Fallen Star are now on their respective Discord channels. Log into the Angelarium Discord channel to download them and access the complete archive.
This month's Patreon exclusive 10% off promo code is STAR10. It's good for anything on 2018-09-01 04:56:00 +0000 UTC View Post
The First Watcher of the North was a favorite among many. Azazel’s beauty and kindness were a thing of legend. He taught mankind to forge swords, handling both his hammer and his blade with equal grace. And though he loved mankind, he feared them as well. This was their land. He had tread upon it without invitation. A stranger. He was many wonderful things, but he was not human.
2018-09-01 04:06:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Chosen,
I've been doing a really bad job listing the original sketches for all my paintings. They've been carefully scanned and archived, but most of them haven't been listed for sale quite yet.
I'm choosing to list them a few a time, starting with the process sketches for Libra and Taurus first, since they were on the top of my most ready pile.
This is one of those rare pieces where the early stages of the painting process really make clear what the final work needs to look like. It's appearance is that of a slightly mushy, slightly blurry version of a finished painting. That leaves most of the final hours or work to simply cleaning up edges and transitions with a small brush.
Not every element in this piece is going to stay where...
This is a character I think about a lot, so making a new piece for him has been going very smoothly. The sketch was finished almost immediately and the color has fallen in place just as fast.
The palette in this piece is similar to a favorite old personal painting of mine called "Wake". The muted green tones and ruddy golden hues make for a simple addition to any painting that already has c...
Azazel has a special place in the Angelarium lore. He's the only Angel who looks like a traditional depiction of an Angel. The idea behind that choice was to suggest that he left such a strong impression on the people of that, every time someone thinks of an Angel, they image a being that looks similar to Azazel.
For this piece, I wanted to show Azazel later on in the story after a lot of b...
All wallpapers, works in progress, high res finals and PSDs for Turiel, The Hero Immemorial are now on their respective Discord channels. Log into the Angelarium Discord channel to download them and access the complete archive.
This month's Patreon exclusive 10% off promo code is KING10. It's good for anything on 2018-07-31 04:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
The First Watcher of the East
The way Turiel carried his massive stature was a matter of public spectacle. His feats of strength were sometimes put to good use but often bled into showmanship. The praise people showered him with seemed to sustain the angel almost as equally as food or air.
Many came to seek the mighty Turiel’s favor. They hailed him from afar at the common grounds ...
2018-07-31 04:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys,
I'm getting ready to move my warehouse and we're digging through all the flatfiles and stuff around here. Some of the things I'm digging up are ending up on the store.
These aren't extensions to the print run, they are prints that were never sold for various reasons: