"Final Ride" Process

 

Tribute piece for the cast of Sons of Anarchy. Amazing show - amazing cast and creative team. Going to miss the madness when it's over. Commissioned by David Labrava. 

My artwork can also be found on Facebook, Tumblr, and DeviantART.

Check out the illustration's progress below.

-MelB

Toonstyle Mayhem

'Toonstyle Happy and Chibs - two personal favorites from Sons of Anarchy. This was actually a warm-up artwork for a separate illustration that got completely out of hand - Wound up being a fun exercise in FX/color/light. 

Also thought I'd share another warm-up: Quick first attempts figuring out how to draw Charlie Hunnam’s face. Kudos on being seriously fun to sketch there, fella.

-Mel

2014 Design & Illustration Portfolio

  

Hi all! Here's my latest pass at a general Animation Design and Illustration portfolio. Click each image if you'd like a closer look. If you have any questions or are interested in hiring, feel free to contact me at artbymelb@gmail.com. Thanks for viewing! -M

Vigil Model WIP

 

The more I work all-digitally (Which is a pretty new thing for me) the cleaner the tie-down phase of my drawings keep getting. Whoohoo!

Here's progress on yet another Garuda Rising character model, this time for Vigil.

Artwork by Javadoodle. 

Cheers,
-Mel

Dwarrow Doodles

Had a few minutes to do some scanning last night, so I jumped on it. Here's sketchbook doodles from the weekend before last, as well as some process on Balin. My "Hobbit" kick continues with Bofur, Bombur, and a random little dwarven lass for the sheer sake of cute. 

-Mel

Lotus Emblem Promo Progress

I'm currently working on the first of a series of promo pieces for my husband Art of the Niles' fantasy adventure comic, Lotus Emblem, to be made available as prints at upcoming conventions. Here's the line work and flat color stages of the image. Final colors coming soon.

Thanks for viewing!
-Mel

"For Cardassia!" Painting Process on Ziyal

I have a spankin’ new Facebook gallery page for Javadoodle! to celebrate, here’s a compilation of the live stream session I did earlier this year om “For Cardassia!” while working towards teaching myself how to better paint in Photoshop, sped up to a much more viewable pace and length. Music has been provided under creative commons by the talented Mr. Kevin Macleod. You can find his work at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/ I will try to do more of these paint sessions in the future, as time permits. Thanks for viewing!

Cardassians and Doodles and Pizza oh my

 

In the sparse instances where time permits, I've been pushing to try and improve my digital coloring  (Slowly but surely, it's coming along nicely.) I also re-watched Star Trek:Deep Space Nine recently, and in combining these two efforts, fan-art was bound to happen. Above are a series of portraits of DS9 Cardassian characters - one of my favorite species from Trek in general. Clockwise from the top left: Dukat, Damar, Garak, and Ziyal. These proved a great practice exercise - I've included the rough and tie-down sketches and final line work here as well. 

Above is a recent page from my sketchbook - all my own character design musings, apart from the pair in the top left corner. Just one of those silly things I had to get out of my system. For reasons.

And then you have... Pizza. So fairly recently, the DS9 fandom on Tumblr exploded with a delightful bought of silliness called "Deep Dish Nine." DD9 in an alternate-universe scenario wherein the DS9 characters (All human) run competing pizza delivery joints, Deep Dish Nine vs. Dominion Pizza. The plotbunnies and speculation that sprouted from the idea were so genuinely goofy and funny and often downright delightful (Right up my ally, given I'm incapable of taking any fandom too seriously) I couldn't resist divvying up a couple of sketch contributions when one of my afternoons produced a couple of hours down-time. Pictured in each doodle are: (Top) Pizza!AU Ziyal, Dukat, Kira, and both Dax's (Middle) Garak and Weyoun and (Bottom) Damar and Dukat.

Nerdlady out,

-Mel

Piquid Walk-Through

 One of my original characters, Piquid, from sketch to final cell-style color.

-Mel

Reich for Ren52 Progress

On to my next commission for Renee. Here's some progress on artwork of her character, Reich.

Thanks for viewing,

-Mel

Fun with Lil Bub

 

It's worth noting that Lil Bub has been a huge source of smiles since discovering her blog recently. So it's really little wonder that a silly little doodle of her in my sketchbook this evening started to gain life of its own. I'm hoping to take colors on her further - she's been all sorts of fun to draw.

Thanks for the smiles, Lil Bub!

-Mel