Cactus Hotel Project Finished

Saturday afternoon marked the final upload of the art for the Cactus Hotel project. Here are a few more of my favorite pieces from the project in their final state. All final images were created in Photoshop using digital brushes and handmade texture over the top of the graphite drawings I posted about earlier.

Enjoy!

Cactus Hotel Progress

Here's a little sneak peek of the final for the book I am working on called Cactus Hotel.  Just a little full page of a roadrunner having a little lizard snack in the shade of a big Saguaro. A few more of the drawings were posted earlier, if you would like to have a look. I have been a bit busy the last week or two working on this project as well as a little thing for Barnes & Noble, which I will post in a few weeks when it hits the stores. It's nice to be busy again with nice illustration projects. I have a lot on the plate, but will try to post more regularly as the work progresses. Thanks for having a look.

Baby Groundhogs

Here are selections for another easy reader book I just finished. The story follows a family of groundhogs as the babies venture out of their den for the first time.

They enjoy munching on the green grass for a time before escaping back to the den when a fox appears. I tried to give the little guys some personality despite the need to portray them as realistically and not stylize too much.

I would rather have made them more animated and characterized, but the art direction dictated they be "real" groundhogs. I think I struck the right balance between real and cute.

Once again, I made all the preliminary drawings traditionally and then scanned and painted them in Photoshop.

Wolf Den Cutaway

Just a little sketch for a textbook project I am working on. This is the preliminary drawing that will be painted digitally next. I'm not sure how I became the "cutaway" specialist for this particular client (this is the third or fourth such project this year) but I am OK with that. It's a fun challenge to show what goes on inside the different animal's dens without making it look weird or cheesy. See the previous cutaway I posted earlier of the beaver lodge here.

Octopus Battle

Octopus Battle- acrylic/mixed media by Greg Newbold.

In this scene from Stormalong, our intrepid hero Stormy dukes it out with a giant octopus in a liquid battleground. The ship's anchor was being dragged deeper and the ship along with it. Of course Stormy dives deep, wins the the wrestling match by tying the octopus' legs in knots and makes it safely back to the surface. I posted a couple of other pieces from this series earlier and you can see them at the links below.

Baby Stormalong discovered on the beach
Stormalong's carved memorial 
Stormalong title page illustration

Tribute to Stormalong

I was updating some portfolios last weekend and found a series of paintings I did a couple of years back for the American Fable Stormalong. The story of Alfred Bulltop Stormalong who begins life as a larger than life abandoned baby who is raised by an entire harbor town. He was hauled back to town in a wheelbarrow and continued to grow until he was as large as a whale. Stormy then goes on to have all sorts of adventures as a sailor on the high seas. In the end, a statue is erected in the town square
as a tribute to his legacy. I have enjoyed American Tall Tales since I first heard the Paul Bunyan legend, but I was not as familiar with this one. I did a total of nine images for this story that was included in a reading anthology textbook for elementary aged students. I'll post some of the others I have not posted before later this week.