Random Acts of Artwork: Archive

Chupacabra de Mayo

It’s hard to believe that April is done and we’re now into May. This year has been a lot busier for me than normal. It’s not a bad problem to have, it just makes putting together new posts a little more hectic. Nonetheless there will be new posts made to keep you all happy :). Most of you seem to enjoy the “art in process” posts so here’s another for you. With...

May 4th

Dragunny

It’s Easter time again. Time for more twisted Easter themed sketches from the sketchbooks. What’s Easter without the Easter Bunny and brightly colored eggs. How about swapping out the cute little bunnies for dragons. Dragon + bunny = Dragunny! Of course they start out like cute little chicks hatching out of their brightly painted shells like so. Dragunny Hatchling (...

Apr 2nd

Green Day

As you may be aware of, I like to post holiday themed art from sketchbooks both traditional and sometimes digital. Being St. Patrick’s Day, I dug up this batch of pixels. Something I did a couple years back. Leprechaun’s Skull (5”X5” Photoshop) No pot of gold here. Just a tooth. Judging by the state of the little guy, he didn’t have that much in the way of luck...

Mar 16th

Spider-Skull

Artists usually have favorite subjects they enjoy drawing. These subjects tend to repeat a lot in their sketchbooks and layout pads in various forms and styles. For me, skulls are one of the subjects that tend to reoccur in my sketchbooks (as well as knights and dragons). Sometimes the drawings are straight forward and sometimes they stray from the path of normalness. One morning I started yet...

Mar 12th

Illuxcon 4 Pt 4 - Acrylics Unite

Ok! It’s time for the last installment of my four part post on Illuxcon 4. This time it’s about other practitioners of my medium, acrylics. There were a bunch of artists at Illuxcon 4 representing the medium in fine fashion. I got to meet one of my favorite newer artists who doesn’t make it over to this part of the world too often, Jesper Ejsing. Jesper does a lot of work for...

Jan 30th

Illuxcon 4 pt 3 (in 3D)

After a little break in the action I’m back continuing my 4 part Illuxcon post. This time in 3D (no 3D glasses required). Yes, we’ll be breaking that third dimension this time around (sort of). This segment is about the sculptors at Illuxcon. Figures and objects carved and cast in various materials like clay, resin, latex, and even bronze. We have a large array of fun stuff to oggle...

Jan 20th

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Year End Interlude

2011-Another Year Shot To Hell. (Pencil in a 5” x 8” Moleskine sketchbook ) Well another year has come and gone. 2011 was, overall, a pretty good year for me. I hope the momentum carries over to 2012 and continues to swell. I’d like to thank you all for visiting my blog regularly or irregularly and hope you continue to check in on what I have to say and post. I try to keep up...

Dec 31st

Illuxcon 4 pt 2 Showcase

One of the great things about Illuxcon is the limited amount of people allowed to get “memberships” (otherwise known as admission badges to get in). It allows you more time to soak in the sights and talk with the artists in a more relaxed atmosphere and not a crush of other attendees. Some artists are seen just hanging out at their table working on paintings, like Alan Pollack here. ...

Dec 22nd

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Illuxcon 4 pt 1

After some time trying to catch up on deadlines and other loose ends associated with being away from the studio, it’s time to get back to the blog. About a month ago it was time for me to travel to Altoona, PA, for the artistic spectacle that was Illuxcon 4. Time to gather all my thoughts, photos, recordings, and materials from the show and share the experience with you. I’ve...

Dec 12th

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It Came From The Sketchbook

Well it’s that fun time of the Autumn season again, Halloween. To tell you the truth I haven’t been in the “spirit” of things this year and getting a snow storm just a couple days before doesn’t help much either. Fear not my friends, I’ll still dig through my tomes of inky goodness for a few pieces to fit this holiday theme. Let’s start with a more recent...

Oct 31st

Here There Be Dragons Part 2

Welcome back to part two of the “sketch to final” process for the two pieces I did for Talisman: The Dragons game expansion from Fantasy Flights Games. Last post we looked at the Brimstone Wyvern piece. This time it’s the Fire Drake’s turn. Drakes are described as smaller versions of dragons with no forearms and a slightly smaller build. This particular piece called for a...

Oct 20th

Here There Be Dragons Part 1

Where be there dragons? In the latest Talisman boardgame expansion called “The Dragons” produced by Fantasy Flight Games, that’s where. I painted a couple pieces for this expansion that are, surprisingly enough, dragon paintings. I’ll take you through the various phases of the two paintings in this two part post. One this week, the other next week in the interest of keeping...

Oct 12th

Gen Con: Free Range Artists

Welcome back to the last post about Gen Con Indy 2011. Here’s my table in the Gen Con art show. Usually we are all in a penned in area of the main exhibit hall but not this year. This year the art show is smack in the middle of the exhibit hall floor and all my artistic brethren are loose in it. That right, FREE RANGE ARTISTS. I’m absent from my pen because I’ve taken my...

Sep 24th

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Art @ Gen Con 2011

I’m back with part 2 of 3 posts about my Gen Con trip. Gen Con can be a lot of fun but, manning your table in the art show can get boring at times. During these lulls when con goers shuffle past your table in the “*conveyor belt of indifference” and despite your best efforts no one seems to be stopping, you resort to a few things. Start conversation with your neighboring...

Sep 14th

More Gen Con. (in audio form) →

I joined in the fun with the Ninja Mountain podcast in a round table discussion about this year’s Gen Con. Other artshow attendees were Ralph Horsley, Christopher Burdett, Drew Baker and Jeremy McHugh. Give it a listen. Later, Prof.

Sep 10th

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Gen Con 2011

I’m back from my trip out to Indianapolis, Indiana, to attend this year’s Gen Con Indy. Gen Con has the tag line “the best four days of gaming” and there’s a lot of it going on there. Gamers of all different types (boardgames, CCGs, RPGs, miniature wargames, video games, etc.) attend this gathering to game to their heart’s content with like minded fans as well...

Sep 8th

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Aug 30th

Hot Enough For Ya?

It’s summer, and with that comes heat waves and inane reporting from the news morons about how hot it is and what to do about it. I’m not a warm weather type of guy. If I’m not at a beach or a pool for a quick cool down, forget it. I have an easier time getting warm in the winter than getting cooled in the summer. In the heat and humidity of the northeast I just wilt and melt. I...

Jul 24th

Light The Fuse

The 4th of July weekend is upon us here in the U.S. once more. One of the main things to do on this holiday besides having a cookout or going to one, is lighting off fireworks and blowing stuff up. I’m talking fireworks of all manner and magnitude. It was, in part, how we won our independence. Gun and cannon fire of the battlefield is now remembered in the form of colorfully orchestrated...

Jul 1st

Day of Remembrance

Wow, have I been away from my blog this long? Really? With Memorial Day coming up it reminded me, being a day of rememberance, to really pick my brain. Seriously, to go through my sketchbooks and pick a couple pieces of brain art. I notice thumbing through the collection of sketchbooks that certain themes recur throughout them. Among the themes are skulls, dragons, eyeballs, cyborg critters, and...

May 27th

Moving Along

OK, current deadlines are met and now it’s time to get back to my much neglected blog. I had other plans for posts in March but the month just blew past so fast that those posts will have to wait until next year. Enough about March, we’re in April now so onwards. Can you believe that this blog just past its one year anniversary? I can’t. It sure doesn’t feel like it to me....

Apr 12th

Angry Leprechauns

Hey Random Readers, sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been working on a bunch of new paintings/game art and free time’s been a little slim for me. Even with all the busy-ness I couldn’t let St. Patrick’s Day slip by without sharing a couple of leprechaun themed sketches from my sketch tomes. Shillelagh Swinging Leprechaun Most leprechauns are shown as happy...

Mar 17th

Of groundhogs and shadows.

February 2nd, Groundhog Day. That day when the groundhog emerges from its subterranean lair to tell us if we’ll have six more weeks of winter or an early spring or the time that Bil Murray relives this day over and over and over again. We’re talking about the furry rodent kind of Groundhog Day. Ever wonder why the groundhog is afraid of its shadow? Groundhog Day That’s...

Feb 2nd

New Year, New Art, Still Random

HAPPY NEW YEAR! A new year has begun. Take a breath. It’s got that new year smell to it doesn’t it? Kind of like a new car smell but a little different. There’s a freshness to it, a clean slate, a new beginning. People are making their resolutions (which usually fail after the first month or so but that’s a different topic) and their top 10, best of/worst of lists from...

Jan 20th

Tis the Season

I don’t know what insidious creature takes all my time away in December. I had so many ideas and projects to do and here it is, the week before Christmas. Guess I won’t be finishing my Christmas card artwork for this year. Despite the lack of time, I couldn’t let Christmas go by without showing a couple of Christmas themed pages from one of my sketchbooks. Of course, because...

Dec 23rd

Illuxcon 3 (Pics and comments) part 2

Illuxcon 3 panarama from the balcony I’m back with an extra large post featuring the rest of my pictures and comments on Illuxcon 3. This time around we’ll take a stroll around the artist tables and see some of their set-ups. Here’s Bill O’Connor. I’ve known Bill for many years through Gen Con’s artshow. Aside from his great artwork he’s also quite...

Dec 15th

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Illuxcon 3 (Pics and comments) part 1

A view from the “crow’s nest” Illuxcon 3 ran from November 11th to November 14th in Altoona, PA. It’s an illustrators’ convention where artists in the sci-fi and fantasy field gathered to show and sell their incredible artwork. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the event this year for the first time and let me tell you, it was a blast. I got to catch up...

Dec 8th

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Autumn Reapers

Reaper in the Field Well Halloween has past and now we are moving farther into our lovely fall season. Thoughts shift from ghosts, goblins, and candy to friends, family, and turkey. Harvest time is here, which is as good a time as any to show you some variations on a recurring theme for me, the Autumn Reaper. The scythe, the Grim Reaper, and the Autumn season seemed to go well together in a...

Nov 17th

Pumpkins Flambé

It’s closing in on Halloween so I thought I’d continue with the pumpkin theme from the last post. There’s always lots of inspiration for me around this time of year. I mean, c’mon, with a holiday centering around monsters, zombies, and ghosts how can you go wrong? If anything, I have too many ideas. To quell the overload I just jot them down in a notebook to revisit at a...

Oct 30th

From the Pumpkin Patch

Another sweltering summer is behind us (bye bye) and my favorite season has now begun…FALL. Leaves are starting to do their swan dive from the trees, air is getting cooler and crisper, and folks are making their day trips to apple orchards for picking apples and choosing their pumpkins. For this post I’ve got a couple fall/pumpkin themed sketchbook pieces to share with you. Pumpkin...

Oct 14th

Ice Cream (double scoop)

Welcome back to the second part of my art of Ice Cream game article. If you missed last week’s post, you can find it just after this one (if you need to catch up or review it I’ll wait ;). This time we’re focusing on another card type in the game, the ice cream supply card. In the game it’s referred to as a “gallon,” but I modeled it after the pint...

Sep 13th

Ice Cream (single scoop)

As some of you may know, I work in the gaming field, for the most part, creating art for CCGs (collectible card games) and RPGs (role playing games). I also contribute my talents to producing art for boardgames too. Some boardgames, as implied, are played on a decorated, flat, (usually) folded board with a set of rules on how to navigate said board to achieve victory. This applies to classic...

Sep 1st

Sketching and Gen Con

Ok, first off I want to apologize for not getting to post much here in the past month or so. The reason for that is Gen Con Indy 2010 or more to the point, preparing for Gen Con Indy 2010. A lot of you are probably muttering to yourselves, “What’s a ‘Gen Con?’” For those of you reading this who do know what it is, you can skip ahead past the next paragraph. Gen Con...

Aug 16th

At The Beach

One of the main things I associate with the summer time is the beach. Hot weather and beaches are a great combo. Whether it’s sun tanning, swimming, playing in the sand, or just relaxing with a great book in your beach chair, lots of people love to take in a day at the beach. Like this little guy for example: Caterpillar at the Beach He’s ready for some fun in the sun. Let’s...

Jul 19th

American Samurai

Happy 4th of July! It’s Independence Day this weekend here in the U.S. of A. The day we celebrate our independence from England and becoming our own country. A national holiday with lots of parades and fireworks as well as backyard cookouts and other fun things to do. In the theme of the holiday I’ve got something different to show you. What’s more American than a samurai...

Jul 1st

Savage Amusements

Well the weather’s getting warmer and the days are getting longer. Looks like summer is here. That means more work for yours truly. Lawnmowing, hedge trimming, weeding and hacking back encroaching foliage, harvesting three blueberry bushes, and just trying to keep up with general house maintainance on top of getting my artwork done. Having more to do isn’t always fun, but it is...

Jun 21st

Digital Sketchbook Dragons

Color? Yes my friends we have color this week. Not a wide range of color but it is still a break from the black & white linework I’ve been posting. If you like the BW stuff, don’t worry, we’ll return to that soon enough. In my intial post I did mention I would show you different artwork you may not normally see on my website or in published form, so here we are. Sometimes I...

Jun 9th

Unconventional Lawncare

We’re approaching the big Memorial Day weekend. That time, to me, signifies the transition from spring to summer up here in New England and a time to reflect on those no longer with us to enjoy it. Before all the grilling and chilling though, some of us have a bit of yard work to get past first. Those of you who don’t be happy for that. Most people I know who deal with lawncare have a...

May 27th

Beasties

Brooding Beastie There he sits on the sidelines waiting for the coach to put him in the game. He’s just waiting for his big chance to prove his worth to the team by wracking up a high scoring bodycount with his mighty axe. This beastie is from sometime in the early 2000’s. I wasn’t too big on putting dates on my work until over the past few years (after my other half kept...

May 20th

Stuffed With Fluff.

What do you think of when you think of a ragdoll? Raggedy Ann or Andy, a sock-monkey, or some other stitched together wonder of the toy world that’s stuffed with fluff? As you know or have guessed, ragdolls, as they started out, were a hodge-podge of scrap material sewn together in the form of a person or an animal, filled with scrap material or some other fluff to fill out it’s...

May 14th

Abstraction of Tools

Sometimes I try to come up with an interesting piece of artwork for advertising and marketing purposes. When doing this you can go one of two routes here, one being that of using a piece of recently published artwork that you like and want to show as a representation of your work. The other route is creating something entirely new, specifically made for advertising yourself. This week we have a...

May 6th

Podcast Appearance

I recently had the pleasure being a guest on the illustration podcast WIP episode #13. Hosts Jeff and Caroline Himmelman and Pete and Anna Mohrbacher were having a roundtable discussion on the pros and cons of going to art school. Joining the discussion was Joe Acone, Aaron Miller, and Mark Winters, and myself. You can give it a listen by downloading it free at their WIP website or off of...

May 6th

Cloudgazing In Sepia

Sepia Demon This week we’re playing with Prismacolor sepia pens again. As I’ve stated in previous posts, I occassionally enjoy inking some pages with sepia ink for a change of pace instead of the standard black ink pens. This one started with no pre-concieved idea. It started out as an evil face and evolved into this demonish looking guy. That’s it! Not much of a back story...

Apr 27th

The Wind-Up

Wind-Upasaurus One of the many themes I enjoy drawing is mechanical, cybernetic creatures. I enjoy splicing mechanical features to organic tissue to create fun and interesting critters. Mix this with old style, wind-up, mechanical walking toys for a little more added fun. This little guy is my Wind-Upasaurus. He’s made up of gears, tubes, and hydraulics with a couple of mini-flame thrower...

Apr 20th

Taxes are for the birds

Keeping Your Eye on the Money It’s tax-time again. Time for you to take back some of the money that was yours to begin with. Getting back a good sized refund (or ANY refund) is always a good feeling. Especially in these lean economic times we’re experiencing these days. I thought this week’s little scribble tied in well with the tax deadline time. I like bad humor, dark...

Apr 12th

Bunny Time

I often like knocking out some holiday themed art in my sketchbook, especially around holidays with fun and easy themes associated with them. Easter is one of those types of holidays so I have a couple to show you. Easter Bunny the Morning After The Easter Bunny has a rough job. Not as tough as Santa’s but still he’s got quite a busy night. Hiding all those eggs, delivering a...

Apr 5th

Prof's website →

Apr 3rd

Romans, Berserkers and a gathering at the...

Hello everyone, Well I’m back for post #2 of Random Acts of Artwork and if your reading this so are you. This past Saturday I attended the first ever PAX East convention (Penny Arcade eXpo) at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston (known as the video game colosseum for that weekend). If your interested in hearing more about my experience there you can click on the PAX page link here....

Mar 30th

Alright, here we go!

Hello? Is anybody out there? You! Yes you looking in the screen. And you folks! Lurking in the dark corners. Come on over and pull up a virtual chair. Hi! I’m Paul Herbert. I’m also known by my nickname “Prof” which is short for professor. No, I’m not a real professor but, I’m not stupid either (ignorant to some things, sure, but not stupid ;)....

Mar 22nd