We Have A Winner!!

In March of 2011, my agent Richard Solomon and his staff began a contest for young aspiring illustrators.  It was called Breakthrough and it provided an excellent opportunity for up and coming illustrators to really show of their stuff to the industry.  The judging panel consisted of 20 art/creative directors and top illustrators and they have found a winner.  His name is Michal Dziekan, from Poland, and he is an amazingly talented young artist who already has a brilliant portfolio.  Take a look.

Breakthrough Contest

You can read more about it all here at the RSAR Blog...As well as the Runners-Up and Staff Picks.

Congratulations to Michal and all the Runners-Up!!!  Great work.

Tell all your friends about this and continue to celebrate great illustration!!

Medusa Crime Boss

Sorry to all for the huge gap in posts. I will be trying to get more updated work up on here over the next few weeks.

Here is a piece I did for D&D, for Dungeon Magazine issue 194.

Hopefully more to come soon.

Neverwinter Fortune Cards

A few months back I did a piece for D&D's new Neverwinter Fortune Cards set. While they only used a small portion of the image for the box art as you can see here, I painted out the whole figure so that they could use more of the image for other marketing purposes, dealing with the Neverwinter set. This was a really fun peace and I had a great time working on the landscape in the background. Had a bit of inspiration from Albert Bierstadt on that section.

Hopefully, more work will be freed from NDA's soon and I can post again.

Happy 4th!!!

I thought this would be a fitting post for today. I recently completed 6 illustrations for a Men's Journal article on our military special forces units. These JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) members are the guys who got Osama bin Laden. This was a fun project from start to finish. The AD and I both agreed it would be great to paint these images in a similar way to the G.I. Joe box art we both grew up with in the 80's. It was very nostalgic. You can find the article in the July issue of Men's Journal. Happy 4th to all, especially all those serving in our armed forces!!!

MicroVisions!!

I was asked to participate in the Microvisions exhibit at the Society of Illustrators. The small 5"X7" pieces will be exhibited at the Society and then auctioned off for the Society's Student Scholarship. They have raised upwards of $15k with the Microvisions over the past few years. I am very honored to be involved and I had a great time working on my little piece.

I am out in Seattle and can't make it to the exhibit but if you are in New York City certainly drop by the Society and check it out.

Ground control to Lt. Gagarin...

April 12th 2011 was the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight. That man was Yuri Gagarin, soviet cosmonaut, and his ship was the Vostok 1. I thought I would do a little portrait for the occasion. It has been a while since Gagarin made that first amazing trip and many have followed in his footsteps. Gagarin died in 1968 when is MiG 15 crashed during a training flight.

detail

Muddy Colors

I recently did a guest blogging (is that a word?) over at Dan Dos Santos's blog Muddy Colors. It has a short little story about how I got started working with D&D and a Q&A section about my art and process. Check it out: http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-blogger-tyler-jacobson.html

Thanks all!

BRUCE!!

GROOVY!!!!!! So I want to get some more portraits into my work seeing as I have done a few lately for commissions. This is a little work in progress of just that, which I have been working on in my spare time. I am really a movie nut so I want to do more film oriented portraits from some of my favorite movies. We will see what comes of these. I am not sure if I will do caricatures for the other images but I couldn't help myself on this one. Plus I have never really done a caricature. More to come on this....hopefully soon

Dragon 397 and a little process....

Recently I did another cover for D&D's Dragon Magazine, Issue 397. The scene depicts the True Priests battling their corrupted brothers in the defiled holy temple. Jon Schindehette was AD on this and as always it was a pleasure working with him.

For this post I thought I would include a little process or step-by-step on how I approached this illustration, and pretty much how I approach all illustrations. I start with a super rough thumbnail keeping it loose. There were a few others, but I just included the one I went with. I usually do a little value or lighting comp over these thumbnails as well, but on this project I was working a bit fast to hit the deadline and I skipped some of my usual steps. After the tight pencil I normally do a full value comp and a fairly rough color comp. I basically lay the colors I am after over the image in Photoshop so I can see where I want to take the finish. Then, magically I paint the finish! Ta Dah! I would like to post an actual timelaps painting process video, but that will have to wait until I can figure out how to do it.

Cheers! Dragon 397

D&D Fortune Cards

I recently did some illustrations for D&D's Fortune Cards game Shadow of Nentir Vale. They were really fun small illustrations and they ended up using one of the Dwarf Slayer pieces on the box art which is great. This was a character named Fargrim who I had developed for D&D's Heroes of the Fallen Lands. It was great to get another opportunity to illustrate him.

These small cards can be a bit of a challenge, considering the tiny window you have to work the art into. It really made be think about how to maintain dynamic, exciting compositions in such a small space.

I am currently working on a some more which should be out in a few months. Here is a link to the current Nentir Vale set. The art director was Mari Kolkowsky who is always a pleasure to work with.

Here are a few of the pieces I did as well as a shot of the box and some of the actual cards.

Rolling Stone Magazine - T.I.

I recently did a portrait of Hip Hop artist T.I. for Rolling Stone magazine. The issue should be out in stores today or tomorrow. Issue 1122 with Jimmy Fallon on the cover.

A few pieces from the end of 2010

Here are a few pieces I completed right before the year ended.

For this first one, my agent Richard Solomon and his staff have been putting together an illustrated Factoid sheet. I got to illustrate the factoid "Olympus Mons on Mars is the largest volcano in our solar system". I am a big space nerd so this was a great one for me. Mons is really massive at about 15 miles tall and hundreds of miles across.

This next one was a set of portraits for some famous alumni for Baylor Magazine.

This last illustrations was for the FED magazine for an article on college degrees in our current economy.

Bramble Queen and Gloomwrought

Happy Holidays everyone!

Here are some recent pieces I did for D&D. The first is a cover for Dungeon #185, The Bramble Queen, and following is the Bramble Queen in original form. The last image is the cover for an upcoming box set for D&D called The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond, set to come out in May of 2011.

Tony DiTerlizzi on Art Order

Jon Schindehette just posted a story on ArtOrder by artist Tony DiTerlizzi titled "How I Made it".

It's a great little story about how Tony got his first job for D&D and TSR. I just had to post about it because as a kid I basically learned to draw from a book he illustrated for D&D called the Monstrous Compendium Annual: Volume One. Tony did all the interior work and every piece is simple awesome. Particularly, the dragons really got me fired up and I probably copied just about every image in the book in my sketchbooks at the time. I still have the book and although it is starting to yellow a bit, it still sits at the top of my bookshelf. We must not forget our roots. Here are a few pictures of the book, and Tony's website.

http://www.diterlizzi.com/

Thanks to Jon and Tony for the great article over at the ArtOrder

Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms

It has been a while.... I got married a few weeks back and things have been pretty crazy from right before that, up to now, and they are still going. I thought I would slap a few things on here really quick. Here is a selection of a few pieces I did for the Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms book for D&D. The book went live recent so I am free to post them now.

Also Spectrum 17 came out a fews weeks ago and I have three pieces in there. You'll have to pick it up to find out which ones. The book is full of amazing work this year, as always, along with a kick ass cover by Greg Manchess. Congrats to everyone that made it into the issue.

One of my pieces is right across from a friend of mine, Scott Flanders. Well done Scott, great piece!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Heroes of the Fallen Lands

Here are a few new pieces for D&D's Heroes of the Fallen Lands book that was released on September 21st. They are for the Iconic characters named Fargrim, Dwarf Slayer. It is great to get some more work for D&D's printed books and I had a blast working on these two images. AD was Kate Irwin and she was great to work with.

Release the hell fire!!!!

The Weekly Standard

I just pulled what you might call an overnighter. It is a cover for the current issue of The Weekly Standard. I worked with excellent AD Philip Chalk and we hammered this sucker out really quick. I won't say exactly how quick...lets keep that a secret, haha. The little girl is my good friend Joe Bereta's daughter Hayden. Thanks to Joe and Heather and Hayden. And thank you to Amanda Barnes for letting me use some of her photos of Hayden for reference. I would not have been able to fly down to LA in time to take them, considering I got the job on Wednesday.

Check out the issue at WeeklyStandard.com

I have returned!

Let me start by apologizing for the lack of posts lately. I was out of town for most of August and I am finally back and attempting to get a rhythm going again. Not easy after so much time off.

The ball is starting to roll again and to kick it off, here are some images I recently got printed in a new D&D Dark Sun Creature Catalog. I did a few interior pieces for the book and it is great to see them actually in print. The excellent cover for the book was done by Wayne Reynolds.

I should have some more work for D&D coming out in the next few months but I can't post just yet. The NDAs have bound my hands as they always do.

Additionally, my agent Richard Solomon has created an art for sale section on his main website, www.richardsolomon.com. This link will take you to RonSusser.com. Richard and Ron have set up a great list and here you can purchase originals as well as prints from many of his artists. Greats like Marshall Arisman, James Bennett, Mark Summers, Rick Farrell, Mark English, John Mattos, and many others all have pieces available for purchase. I am up there as well. Please check it out.

I am going to have some of my Wizards of the Coast images posted there soon to be sold as prints so keep an eye out if you are interested in any of those.

D&D Character Pieces

Here are a couple new character pieces I did for D&D.

Back in action....I think.

Sorry for the huge gap in posts. I have recently been in the middle of moving up to Washington state. I am now in the Tacoma area and have almost completed setting up my studio again. Tomorrow I have to hit the ground running, hopefully, and get back to work. I thought I would throw up a few D&D pieces I did. Now back to work.......

Lines and Colors!

I was recently featured on Lines and Colors, a fantastic site I visit just about every day. I am truly honored. Check out the site if you never have. the article

Some New D&D Work

Had a few new pieces I did for D&D go live recently. They are mainly small character pieces. All of them were a whole lot of fun as usual.

Spectrum 17!!!!

I forgot to mention a little while back that I made it into Spectrum 17. This would be my first time so it is very exciting. I'll let the pieces that made it in be a surprise, so look for them in Spectrum 17 due out in November '10. Cheers to all!

Sketches

So I guess these will be some DoDs. I found this middle toned sketch book the other day and was doing some more stylized doodles. voilà

Toned paper is so much fun to work on.

Quanah for Texas Monthly

I recently complete a painting for Texas Monthly Magazine for an article titled Last Days of the Comanches. Here is a small excerpt from the piece: "By the autumn of 1871, the Western frontier was rolling backward, retreating in the face of savage Indian attacks. When a ragtag army of federal soldiers arrived on the Llano Estacado to crush the hostile natives once and for all, they had numbers and firepower on their side. What they didn’t know was that their enemies were led by Quanah Parker, a half-white war chief who may have been the greatest fighter of his time." By S. C. Gwynne.

I worked with AD TJ Tucker and had a excellent time. I hope to work with him again in the future.

You can find a preview of the article here - Last Day of the Comanches

18"x24" oil on board