Merry x-mas!


Better be good its Krampus !

MORE WAR

ITS WAR

Bug Monster

This one started as a idyllic farm scene then look what happened !! Better run not that it will do much good. Sort of a work in progress that I am tired of working on and gonna call finished for the time being.

Space Elephant


Well due to my thumb I am having strange sleeping patterns and stayed up working on this guy. It started as a sketch like 6 years ago and I colored in maybe 3 years later and thought it was OK but I think my standards have really improved so I worked on it a bit more and its getting closer to how I want it to be. Still a great concept overall I think. Elephants never forget... to KILL.

Hurakan Final

My final book cover at Art Order Its not as good as I had hoped due to this gross huh

Fayetteville

Its been a while since I posted due to upheaval and new opportunities. Here is my first new watercolor in a while of the local Court House that will be for sale in my new Gallery !! I will also be teaching a workshop there on digital painting more info on that soon. I have some really good Illustrations I am working on but due to other things haven't quite got them finished.

Spear


This is one that is a little bit different because I did the original drawing in pen and then painted it with watercolor. I then just did a little clean up and changed a few things in photoshop. I think the result is ok as long as you don't look too closely. I was also playing around with doing a more splash type illustration. One thing I am trying to do is to stop playing catch up to the current style and go my own way to be ahead.

Hurakan

Part 4 for the Hurakan ArtOrder competition. Including color schemes and BW layouts for the cover. He is supposed to be hammer throwing a tank with his mighty lightning powers but I dont know if it comes across that way to other people.

Dragun Soldier

Another quick painting about 3 hours using some of the new texture and brush painting stuff I learned about from the last image. This time I used just a tiny bit of Painter. I should redo the gun and clean it up a bit and I think it might be a good enough piece for the portfolio.

The Controller


I was looking at some work that I liked and ended up watching a tutorial from Dave Rapoza (www.DaveRapoza.com) of an amazing painting that he did in two hours so I thought I would use some of his tips and do one of my own. While not as good as his I think I have discovered (by which I mean learned) some great ways to paint with texture in photoshop. I had been feeling my stuff needed a boost and this maybe the way forward.

CyberMan


This is some Dr. Who fan art of the cyberman done for a friend. I do not own the rights to this character it is property of BBC. Done in painter for some metal practice and love doing some robots.

The broken Stile

The light for this painting was excellent with the well lit middle ground. I tried to rush a bit to capture it and maybe its not as well done as the scene deserved. However, I like the final result and its one of my favorites so far. There may have been too many layers here for an on site watercolor and I would like to do this one again in acrylic or oil perhaps with more focus on the fallen tree.

Orc Face

I wanted to do a monster portrait so this is an Orcish face that I think I might use to replace my self portrait. I wanted it to be pretty fast just using some photo-reference but I ended up spending more time on it than the result is possibly worth. But I think its OK for now.

Soldier


This is a painting I did trying to be more loose and painterly with my figures and it turned out pretty well. I had done sort of the top part as a drawing a few years ago and just painted over it and added some legs. He is a near future US soldier.

The Yellow Tree


I really like how this painting turned out. I was looking to do some nice fall colors and found this great tree where all the leaves were bright yellow. The interesting part was all the leaves on the left had fallen off but most of the ones on the right were still on. Then all the leaves on the ground make for a nice balance with the tree. I originally did the sky blue although there was a building behind the tree and I later added it back in and I like the result.

New Zombie King

New Zombie Robot King. Better watch out at night. I wanted this to just be a quick zombie painting but ended up spending more time on it than I had wanted. I was trying to keep it more painterly than trying to worry about every detail that tends to kill some paintings. Dont know if it worked as well as I had hoped.

Hurakan

These are my submissions for the Hurakan over at Art Order. He is the mayan god of storms for a book cover competition.

Nellie Tribute


This is a painting I had wanted to do for a while but never got around to it so I thought it would be fitting to do it today for Nellie.

The Path and The Field


This painting is called "the path" the dark bit is the trail leading down to a tree which has partially fallen over. I used some of the unfinished looser approach like "the trees" painting and I am pretty happy with the result. It got a bit too cold to finish all the detail I would have like in the foreground but I think I am going to leave it alone. I think this is a good view because it has the old dark foreground light middle ground approach that works so well in landscapes.

This is a nice field with distant views and bails of hay that had some great shadows on them. I wanted to keep it loose and I like the final result even though its unfinished. I think I am going to try to paint over it to do a final digital landscape that fits more with my Illustration style.

The Tyrants Claw

Soon the fleets of the Holm empire will tremble in fear of the coming destruction. It was really fun to just to a space ship design and even though its not really something I have done before as an Illustration its what I usually do with legos so it seems like a natural progression. I think it turned out pretty well and I am gonna use it on my webpage. Thanks to Johannes for the inspiration!

The Trees


I re-photographed this painting and re-uploaded it to get a better idea of what it really looks like. This painting is a bit of a style change where I wanted to show some of the painting as left unfinished. I did a bit more drawing with the brush and putting background elements really far into atmospheric perspective. I am going to do a few more like this and see how they turn out but so far I really like it. It goes a little faster and looks more "painterly".

New Wepage

This is just general news but after some serious work I have redone my webpage with new layouts and artwork, vast improvements are to be found ! ZAMPOLART.COM Check it out and feel free to email me with comments or suggestions.

The Garden

Havent done a new watercolor in a while because of some other projects but I think this one turned out really nice. It is by far my favorite yet however the picture still looks washed out but its better. This one took me about three days of attacks by midges to complete. It was a good practice because of the variety of trees and depth of field involved also the colors starting to turn for fall helps to separate the different trees.

The Gateway



For this painting I wanted to start using inking and watercolor again so I wanted to show the progression from the pencil sketch to the ink version to the final image. It would have been nice to maybe just ink the whole thing but I was afraid that the trees would become too dark and I was thinking they would sit back more if the in was only in the foreground gateway. The crow actually landed on the ruins I was using as reference for this image so that was a good sign to include him.

DraGUN

Thats right Dragons with Guns. I thought of this while doing another dragon and I mistyped it dragun. I really like it it turned out pretty good for what started as just wanting to do a quick drawing of an idea I had.

Bridge Final


This is the finished bridge painting its really one of my favorites despite being on a new type of paper. Once again I think the photograph is not doing it justice.

Death Knight


I decided that I wanted to do some fantasy paintings this one is of a Death Knight. I started with a pretty bad drawing that I almost gave up on that was just of a head then kept going keeping the painting loose and I think it turned out pretty well.

RatMan Final

This is the finale RatMan painting. From the earlier version I obviously cropped it in mainly because I wanted to focus on the face and forward arm which I think have the most interest. I also played around more with making this one more like an Illustration rather than just a figure rendered out which I think is working much better for me and what I really love to do. I imagine him as some sort of magical rat man hybrid who escaped and is running rampant through the woods. He had a tail at some point and maybe I should add it back in again.

Cottage

New watercolor ! I think this one is one of the best so far although the photograph still isnt quite right I know I have heard before that yellows show up weird on photos but you can really see it here. I think I enjoy doing trees and buildings more than sea scapes now and below is the next one WIP of a bridge that I think will turn out pretty good if I ever get another sunny day...

Castle Sands


.A new watercolor from the Castle Sands. This is a great beach by the castle with lots of old stone work walls to stop erosion on the cliffs. I had to go to this location 4 times to finish this painting due to the weather pretending to be beautiful then when I had gotten set up it proceeding to rain on me from no where.

RatMan WIP

I don't usually like to show things I am not finished with but I wanted to show some Work In Progress. This is an evil Rat Man who will live in my upcoming fantasy world and hunts people from underground. I will show the finished work soon !

Your Boned !

This concept was inspired by a trip to the natural history museum where I saw some really cool fish skeletons. The mouth of sting-ray is really unusual. I wanted to make some sort of monster image and thought it would be cool to do a monster made of bones but not like a skeleton or other things I had seen before.

Hideous

This concept started from wanting to do an online avatar for myself. I spent more time on it than I should but originally he had a whole body with squid like arms but it felt too symmetrical and I felt the interest in the face was lost so I cropped it in. I used another persons brushes for the background elements.

Self Portrait

This is a new self portrait I did mainly to play around with the brushes in Painter more. I am finding I like the digital painting more if I use a looser and wider variety of the options. Before I had just been using one or two that I had found that fit my style. I did this copying a photograph closely which I don't normally like to do but I know the end result is better.

Space Dwarf

I am finally somewhat happy with some new concept art. I have a bunch I am working on but trying to really get some more refined stuff to post completed. This was just an idea I had for a dwarf soldier with a space setting. I should probably redo the gun he is holding but I think I would rather move on to some other things.

St Andrews Boats and Cathedral

This is my most complicated watercolor yet and took me three times as long as the others. It started out with me just wanting to paint the amazing old red boat docked in the harbor then I thought instead of inventing what the side looks like I should include the other boats. I drew it pretty tightly in pencil first then came back with the watercolor. If anything its too structured and perfect and it feels a little dead, otherwise I really enjoy this one. It is a great view with the cathedral ruins in the distance and the old city wall. Where the green shed is in real life there is an ugly ice cream shop that I replaced with this fishing building from another location.

St. Andrews Tide Out

This is another watercolor near the painting below. I got here at a good time when the tide was out and the boats were grounded. This scene has a great amount of interest and subjects from the foreground to the distance. To the right is the old city walls which I painted purplish red sort of on accident but I liked the result. The photo of this one is a tad washed out and I should shoot it again its closer in saturation to the painting below.

St. Andrews Pier

This is another of my new on location watercolors. I think I am getting better each painting with the medium and I enjoy sitting outside on the nice summer days and painting. I had some people ask me why I included the truck and trailer in the bottom left and its because I wanted to add some life to it. The distant shore could have more atmospheric perspective. I think these sea scenes are my favorite to do right now.

St Andrews Castle


This is another watercolor of the castle ruins by the sea in St. Andrews. I love the views here by the sea and I have a couple more paintings to finish up from around the same area. The cathedral below is actually right to the left of this view. Its pretty rare that you can see the land on the other side of the water so you can tell it was a nice summer day.

Ruins


This is my latest drawing from life. It is the ruined cathedral here and it has been done many times before. I wanted to do another watercolor but after spending so much time on the pencil I am hesitant to move on with it. I am working on painting it digitally now and I will see how it looks. I really like it so far and I had fun drawing every stone.

Stream

This is my second watercolor landscape I did and I think I did a better job with the watercolors, but I miss my acrylics. This is on the walk into St. Andrews by the stream, the best commute in the world, except when it rains.

Fix-it


This is what I call a "fix-it-bot" A general all around helper who can repair and upgrade other robots and androids in Metropolis. There is no person inside the head area but a helpful touch screen for user interface purposes, fix-it's also respond to voice commands like any modern machine.

Bounty Hunters

This is the first bounty hunter I did for the Metropolis project I am working on for Wondaland Arts Society. Since this is also my first post I will save some of the details about the actual project for later. I imagine this robot as a ruthless killing machine powered by the blue liquid I like to use for many of my creations. I think maybe it has too much of a "terminator" or "IG-88" look but it is a good starting point.