Ravenstein - cover art for the 2013 Halloween issue of Pittsburgh City Paper

Ravenstein. 

It all started with an email inquiry late on a Friday afternoon.

In her message, Art Director - Lisa Cunningham explained a brilliant concept for the Halloween issue cover that involved elaborate caricatures of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Bill Peduto. It poked fun at the twitter scandal that Ravenstahl had reportedly been at the center of. I couldn't resist the opportunity to draw a caricature of the both of them!

That weekend I created the artwork. A mixed media painting of Doc Martin Dyes and gouache paint, with some line work done in colored pencil. I painted quite a lot of bleed so that Lisa could move it around however she wanted.

It turned out so well that in a poll readers voted it Best Cover of 2013!
I cannot tell you how honored I feel.

This is what the original painting looks like (click on the thumbnail to see the full image):

Below is an image of the CP cover:

Was this cover one of your personal favorites? If so, good news! The original painting is now for sale!  It is unframed, 18" x 13.5" on illustration board. 

From now until February 12th, 2014 it is only $250! (plus shipping)

If you are interested, please contact me via email. 

rhonda@rhondalibbey.com

Thanks!

Mother Hydra - Cthulhu Mythos art

As some of you know I have been working on a collection of drawings dedicated to the Cthulhu Mythos. These drawings will eventually become paintings, and I have plans to create something very fun with them. I will announce what that will be closer to the time I launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project.

This week's drawing is Mother Hydra. This character is the mother of all Deep Ones, and mate of Dagon. She and Dagon are both described as being just really old Deep Ones that continued to grow and mutate. So she may not be winning any beauty pageants, but there are advantages to being one of the meanest things in the sea and having thousands of minions.

I wanted to take a different approach from the usual creature with many heads (hydra) or giant Deep One. I hope that you enjoy this sketch in progress. Anyone interested in purchasing the sketch or the painting when it is finished, just let me know!

good ink

As some of you know, I am an active member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators. Every now and again we put together a directory of illustration to send out to prospective Art Directors and pretty much anyone else who may commission illustration. This year we decided to spice it up a little and make it a recipe book! A drink recipe book to be exact. It turned out really nice and there are some great illustrations in there along with some tasty drinks, some call for alcohol and some are simple every day things that anyone can enjoy.

In addition to our nice directory, we are exhibiting the original artwork (and many of us selling it as well) at GalleriE CHIZ. We are also selling copies of the recipe book there for $5.

Ok, enough of the plug for our book.

It's cool, the exhibit and gallery are cool, and there was a wonderful article about it in this Sunday's Tribune Review. It was written by art critic, Kurt Shaw; and I have to say I am flattered that he highlighted my piece in his article. He talks about a bunch of other artists and their work, so check out the link when you get the chance. :o)

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/museums/s_755962.html

http://www.pittsburghillustrators.org/

Discovering a Muse, now available for purchase!

I am very happy to announce that the book Discovering a Muse is available for purchase!

There are two versions available: 7" x 7" soft cover, and 10" x 10" hardcover with a dust jacket.

100% of profits will be donated to the children's program "Discovery Arts". It's a program that benefits children suffering from cancer.

My painting The Lure is featured in this art book along with many other wonderful work done by my contemporaries in the Science Fiction and Fantasy art world.

sketches and secrets

Hello again, friends! I know it has been a long time since my last post, but that is because I have been hard at work on a new project. And while I don't think its a good idea to let the cat out of the bag completely on this one, I am just so excited that I wanted to post a couple of sketches. It is an adventure story, and some of it takes place on the high seas! So you will likely get to see some really fun stuff with a tall ship, monsters, and much more. I promise I won't keep you in the dark about it for long.

Discovering a Muse

My newest painting! I call it "The Lure"......

Lately I have been very busy preparing for the Three Rivers Arts Festival, but I have made a little time to create a new painting.

What's it for? Well, in short, it is a submission to this fun art competition called "Discovering a Muse". You can read all about it here: http://artorder.blogspot.com/2010/03/discovering-muse.html

But it's much more than that. I was trying to create something interesting for the competition, sure, but I also wanted to tie it in to the top secret project that I am working on for myself. I will reveal more about all of that here in my blog at a later time. But for now I can say it involves: adventure, angels, ghosts, the Watchers, Nephilim, rednecks, cultists, and prophecy.

So, you may be asking, "what the heck are the Watchers"? Well... the subject of my painting! Here is a link to a page that can explain more in depth about them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)

I was trying to imagine what it would have been like in the time that the Watchers fell. And I thought it would be nice to create a painting of this forbidden love between a human and an angel. It was so forbidden that the angel fell from heaven just to be with her, and she was also cursed by God. They would have been outcast from every community and everything they had ever known. And their kids? Eeek! Those were the Nehilim, and I don't even want to get started on that topic at this time. Look it up on Wikipedia if you are still curious.

Ok, You have probably noticed a few things about the painting I did, like the fact that her eyes are closed and she is not looking at him, and that's because she is not facing the reality that he is not human and she is not focusing on what will happen to her if she falls in love with him. I also thought it would be interesting to depict him as clearly non-human, and a little scary. Not all angels are pretty ladies with swan wings or big fat baby angels like what you see in rococo art, in fact most are really scary to behold. Biblical accounts tell us that typically they have had to say "Be not afraid" to the prophets they visited. And what the heck is this guy in the painting doing? He is looking at us as if to say "yeah, she's all about me and you can't do anything about it." He is toying with a lock of her hair, and I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the 200 Watchers who fell before the great flood had a thing for the ladies with pretty hair. There are reasons why he is ultra pale colored with glowing eyes and black wings, all of these things are pretty standard in accounts of these types of angels. I added face paint and tattooing because it made him look more fierce, and that's something he would need because the angels who did not fall made war on the Watchers. Going up against the archangel Michael? Yeah, you're gonna need every advantage you can get.

Ok, enough of that. I wanted to be sure to invite everyone out there in blogo-webo-sphere to come and visit me at the Three Rivers Arts Festival this year! If you are in the Pittsburgh area at this time, I will be there from June 9-13, 2010. Booth #59

I will post more about this closer to time, including images of original paintings that I will be selling... so if you love Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the 5 Rings (L5R), Middle Earth, or any of the other millions of games I have illustrated for; make sure you stop by.

http://www.artsfestival.net/

Dr. Ferretstein and the diving bell

Hello friends! Blogger is now cooperating and so I can show you the diving bell illustration. You will have to forgive the absence of a formal color corrected image at the end, it is being photographed at this very moment.

So, let us start at the beginning and with the sketch.

It was not as easy as you would think, designing a diving bell suit for an average sized ferret; all while still maintaining a distinctly victorian-steam punk feel. I tried to also imagine all he would need for air flow, weighted boots, etc. There is a little bellows type of thing on his front that could serve to circulate the air, and a propulsion system on his back. Ah, come on, you know he would need it, those tiny little legs couldn't get him anywhere fast. ;o)

After the folks at the Gamers Realm gave me a thumbs up on this sketch I moved on to color studies. After creating 7 versions all with different color schemes, this is the one they liked best:

After that was all settled I primed a hot press illustration board with gesso, transferred my sketch down at the size I wanted to paint it, and got started with the underpainting right away.

This stage seen above was done with Vandyke Brown acrylic paint. Mostly I hate using acrylic, never could master the medium; but that seems to be the way doesn't it? It seems that artists who primarily use oil don't like to use acrylic much and vice versa. It's not a snobbery thing, I assure you, it's just a matter of being used to how this or that medium behaves.

Now, in the stage below you will see that I have begun to apply another layer to the underpainting stage using Burnt Sienna oil paint. Ahhh, speed gained and back in my comfort zone.

this is what it looked like with all of the underpainting done. Why Burnt Sienna for the underpainting and not some other color? Well I learned in college how to use oil paint and my instructor said it was the best and its really hard to paint in layers like I do if you use much else. I tried other stuff, and you know so far she is right. Other colors don't usually work out so well.

Here is where it starts to really get interesting as I add other colors. I will list a bunch all together so you can see the progress. Not much I can say other than: yep, it's progress.

ok, so there is most of the progress. Now for the finishing touches like making sure the convex glass is looking more like glass:

done!

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next post: The Group Painting. 10 of the characters in the Dr. Ferretstein project have been painted in color, all together in a line-up style showing height!

likely I will also have the nice color corrected image of this piece to show you as well.

I feel I must reiterate, at this time, that these images are copyrighted. So nobody better borrow any of these images for their own purposes, seriously... I mean it.

Dr. Ferretstein in glorious color

Ah, finally I have have some finished pieces in color to share with you from the curious world of Dr. Ferretstein! I will post, as I have done, the color studies and a few various stages of painting so you can see how the work looks in progress. Hopefully it will help some budding artists out there and encourage them. Sometimes paintings have to endure an ugly period before they can be finished. I would be happy to go on about this, but I will let the artwork and photos of it do all of the explaining here.

I would like to share with you, the creation of the "Vitruvian Ferret"

First I lightly gesso an illustration board. Then I print out the sketch I did really big and transfer it onto the primed board. Then, I begin painting some darker details with a really watery acrylic paint, all the while trying to keep in mind that this is supposed to look like its done in ink and the paper is aged. For the text I used a crowquill pen dipped in the same watery acrylic.

For the most part, the illustration is finished. It is important to note that I have chosen to sort of work in reverse. What I mean by that is that I do all of the stuff first that would actually be ink sitting on the surface of paper, right? Then my plan is to scumble in a translucent color on top that makes it look like its on aged paper.

Oops! better have my ferret, Icarus, inspect my work first!

Ok, next step is to mask off the edges we do not want paint on. Because of the irregular border I gently trim my masking tape to fit. Note: I really do keep referencing my color study throughout the creation of a painting.

See here, the color is applied. I chose oil paint because of its permanence and brilliance. Besides, if I do something I don't like I just wipe it right off and its like it never happened; so I can control how much yellow and brown I want in it very easily. It's a messy business, but you can see why I masked off the edges now.

Tape removed, and done!

Photographed by Alexander Patho and the digital file also precisely color corrected.

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In my next post I will show you Dr. Ferretstein in a diving bell suit. I know, right! What on Earth could be cuter than a little ferret scientist in a diving bell?

But you will have to be patient my friends, the blog spot is giving me a bunch of errors at the moment.

Dr. Ferretstein contemplates his own existence

Greetings, art lovers! If you are following the progress of the Dr. Ferretstein project, have I got something for you! New drawings and color studies!

"What the heck are color studies", you ask? Well, for those who aren't illustrators already, here is a briefing in the stages that are commonly used to produce a color painting:

1. thumbnail sketches

2. gather necessary reference materials, shoot photo reference

3. rough drawing

4. final drawing

5. color studies

6. prepare painting surface and all of that sort of thing

7. create final painting

I don't intend to bore you with thumbnail sketches or reference shots or any of that... well... ok maybe just one photo of my model for Dr. Ferretstein himself. This is my own little buddy, Icarus. Lucky for me he likes to stand on his hind legs a lot:

Yep, these are some of the photos that I reference when I am drawing Dr. Ferretstein. The markings that Ferretstein has are borrowed from my dear old buddy, Frodo, who sadly passed away in '07.

This is the "Vitruvian Ferret", I based it on Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and I also wrote all of the text. It is a little hard to read in this JPG, but its written from a ferrets perspective if he could contemplate his own existence.

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Ferrets are mammals of the type ‘Mustela putorius furo’. We are sexually dimorphic predators with males being substantially larger than females. We have a long and slender bodies covered with brown, black, white, or mixed fur. The height of a standing ferret is about eleven paws tall from the top of his head to the bottom of his hind feet, which translates to about fifteen to twenty inches tall with a tail that measures about five inches long. We are light and lithe, weighing between one and a half to four pounds. Among our many habits, we are obligate carnivores and we are also crepuscular. We are territorial, but we are also quite social. And yes, it is true that we have an eye for treasure.

The ferret body is so designed by nature that the face, if viewed from the front, is one-eighth of the ferrets whole height. If viewed from the side, a ferret's muzzle is one paw width in length, between the corner of the eye and the edge of the nostril. Also, the ear is one paw width from the back corner of the eye to the base of the ears. The length of an ear is equal to one paw and the distance between the eyes is equal to one paw width. So it is that our heads are two and a half times as long as they are tall. The length of a ferrets legs are one-eighth of the ferrets height. A ferrets center of gravity can be found five-eighths from the top of his head. Ferrets have a dynamic quality inherent in their physiology. The placement of the ferrets low center of gravity and length of body allow for kinetic energy to be accessed most efficiently and quickly. I endeavor to understand wether if it is merely that the spirit of a ferret is galvanized by our most fortunate body design or if it is that our bodies are the manifestation of an ancient and fundamental component of the spirit of our intelligent and fearless race, perhaps it is both.

– Dr. Nicola Ferretstein

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I did 3 color studies for this piece, but I was pretty sure I knew which one the folks at Gamers Realm would go for. Turns out I was right, but was good to give them a few variations.

This is the one they chose (keep in mind that these are ROUGH images, created for the sole purpose of finding the right color combinations) the final images will be painted far finer. I should also explain how I do them, its easy enough, I print out my sketches on plain old paper then I paint over top with gouache paint. I don't use oils because that would take unnecessarily long to dry, I don't use watercolors (though I probably could) because gouache is more opaque and it does not mix the printer ink into it as much, besides the colors appear as much like oil as a water based paint can. Acrylics? Eek, well that is the one medium I don't do so well with so I try not to use it at all.

These are the alternates that they did not choose. They are ok.

Thats it for today folks. Check back soon to see Dr. Ferretstein's awesome Diving Bell!

Upcoming events!

Today as I continue my work on the Dr. Ferretstein Project, I am compelled to post these two bits of good news that have come to me as of last week.

1. I have a piece on display in the Toonseum! In downtown Pittsburgh.

The show features the top 25 best covers of the Pittsburgh City Paper.

The opening night has its reception on Friday, March 19 at 5pm to 7pm, but the show is set to be up until April 4th. Not only will the cover itself be on display, but the original oil painting I did for it will too.

You may be saying "Rhonda, which piece made it in?" It was the 2005 New Years issue:

But I strongly recommend seeing the original for yourself, its a different experience. And the other covers aren't too shabby either. :o) Which brings us to the second point of good news!

2. I have been accepted into the Three Rivers Arts Festival artists market!

I will be there in booth #59, June 9-13. Noon to 8. Its very interesting prospect for me. I'm not entirely sure how my work will be perceived, or how it will sell in a shopping environment primarily for decorative arts. My work has always been focused on telling a story, so we will see how it goes. Maybe some die-hard fans will make it out to purchase some of my original art that has previously not been available on any market. :o) Most of it is oil paint, and tends to be ridiculously large in size, but I will be sure to have some giclee prints and sketches available too.

Links!

http://www.toonseum.org/

http://www.artsfestival.net/

Dr. Ferretstein, the second wave of characters all finished up

Welcome back to my blog, and to the development of the Dr. Ferretstein project. I have the second set of black & white character designs all finished. There are some things that have changed, like gun design and such, but you will see for yourself. enjoy!

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The Adventurer (Mr. Lukas Baer):

The Chronicler (Mr. Daniel Gascoigne):

The Heiress (Lady Vianne Bunnyfeld):

Louis Adams:

Dr. Ferretstein:

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Next posting I will bring you up to date on the color pieces such as "The Vitruvian Ferret"

...and more!

Dr. Ferretstein, the second wave of character design

Here I have for you the second set of character designs for the Dr. Ferretstein project. 5 more rough sketches of characters whom you shall meet here below. I understand too that the stories about these characters are being written now and as we work together. At a later date I will include links in this blog to any stories that are posted online.

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Dr. Ferretstein:

Professor Nikola Ferrestein (a ferret)
Bio: The world renowned inventor of items such as the Dimension-Shifting Autogyro, the Self-Propelled Sidereal Shunt Steam Coach and the Portable Tesseract Carryall is remarkably publicity shy. Little actual fact is known about this genius of our modern world. There are the myths and tall tales that surround him and accounts of his alleged adventures abound from plays and motion pictures to novels and endless ‘exclusive interviews’. He is a Doctor of Xenomorphic Biology and Oscillating Alternative Hyperkinetic Mechanics, but has lower degrees in a variety of disciplines such as Archaeology and Anthropology as well as Architecture and Art Restoration just to name a few.

One of the few facts that is known is that this eccentric recluse has set up shop in the Dallas area. He has his workshop above the store The Gamers Realm, where he supposedly observes the clientele in search of someone worthy of assisting him with his researches.

He has three confirmed associates, but they can shed little light on the rumors that surround him like a fog.

The Heiress:

Rumored to be European royalty, The Heiress has been a fixture around The Professor for years. She handles a great deal of The Professor’s public affairs, including running his latest operation – The Gamers Realm. However, her exact relationship with The Professor is unknown. She is herself an inventor and artist, but is merely a dabbler at this point. She has a university education, but doesn't talk about it even if asked.

She has been involved in a number of incidents associated with The Professor and met The Adventurer during the affair surrounding the Dimension-Shifting Autogyro.

Louis Adams (a raccoon)
Ferretstein's field assistant and head Ferretstein's network of engineers, mechanics, and spies. He is always out in the field either accompanying Ferretstein or doing other research under Ferretstein's orders. He is generally wearing Victorian field khakis and a pith helmet, and tends to have his field pack close by filled with all the essentials for field work.

The Adventurer:

He is a man of action who is rumored to have been covertly employed by a number of the world’s governments to solve particularly troublesome problems. He has led countless expeditions into uncharted territories ranging from the frozen wastelands surrounding the Arctic entrance to Pellucidar to the core of the biomechanical forest of Vulskryer in the South Seas.

As at home in his workshop as he is abroad in the world, The Adventurer often makes use of apparatus of his own design in his undertakings. His Variable Nutating Meson Collimator is his trademark weapon of choice.

It is believed that he encountered The Professor when he was hired to test his Dimension-Shifting Autogyro, leading to one of his more fantastic adventures. The success of that project formed a bond between the two that continues to this day.

Currently, The Adventurer is in semi-retirement assisting The Professor with his latest project and having his less sensitive exploits documented for posterity by The Chronicler.

The Chronicler

An amateur writer and aspiring novelist, he was out in the world gaining ideas for his “great work” when he met up with The Adventurer. He started documenting The Adventurer’s exploits and soon found himself traveling with him. Currently, he continues in that capacity, but has expanded his efforts to include recording some of The Professor’s works for posterity as well as working on an unauthorized biography of the eccentric reclusive genius.

Well, there you have it. Check back in a couple of weeks for the latest on the Dr. Ferretstein project.