Today isn't one of those days though.  That's probably a good thing, because I don't have anything terribly important to do.  In fact, I'm planning on spending a few hours in Photoshop working on one of these 5 works-in-progress that I've been working on this week. Then I'm spending the rest of the day away from the computer, I promise!

By far, my most used brushes are hard rounds, like 1 and 2.  I start with them to block in color and I don't change to another brush until I'm nearing the stage where I need to add textures. Changing the opacity and color-picking constantly helps me get a lot of mileage out these brushes, especially in the first half of my painting process.

Soft rounds don't get nearly as much use from me. I like the textures that layering hard edges creates and I've found that if I use the soft brushes too often, my paintings start to look airbrushy.  However, big soft brushes are great for heightening washes of dark and light in large areas.  If I'm applying color in brush mode other than normal, I often use the soft brushes to keep the effects subtle as well.

4 is a new favorite of mine.  It has a nice toothy texture and works well to emulate pencil strokes.  It's also a nice alternative to hard rounds, when I want a less mechanic stroke.  The calligraphic angle helps add an extra variant to my strokes, so it works well with a lot of organic shapes.

6 is a rough round bristle brush which works great for smeary textured shapes.  It is my go-to cloud brush guy.  Upon discovering it, I found that painting clouds became about 10 times easier for me. This alone makes it one of my favorite brushes, but it is a great texture brush even without considering its awe-inspiring cloud powers.

7, 8, and 9 are a few of my favorites for texturing images. I have a ton of these kinds of brushes and they make up the bulk of my collection.  These three are some of the more commonly used ones.  I especially like 9 if I'm trying to make things look a little more painterly.

10 works great for wood boards, but I mostly use it for clothing.  When I cross hatch with this brush, it works well for creating a cloth texture and it's really good at building up believable form on fabric.

11 and 12 are hair and fur brushes.  I usually start with something like 11 to softly brush in the general forms of the hair and then I work details in with 12. 12 works great on a high-strength smudge brush when combing out hair as well.

I use 13 and 14 mostly as smudge tool brushes.  I don't use the tool a lot, but occasionally I need to soften up the edge of an object or blend skin tones.  13 works great around 5% strength in a small size for blurring effects.  I lightly smudge with the brush, by outlining around the form to soften edges. I find that it works better than using the blur tool, especially with really large canvases.    14 works best with a high strength (75%+) smudge.  It blends colors while adding texture.  It's tempting to take a shortcut and use it to blend everything, but overuse seems to muddy colors too much. 

I've been working on a few private projects in my spare time.  The first is a business card I worked up for Casual Connect and other events.  I edited the typography on one of my portfolio images to work as a promotional piece with my information.  It is fantastically fun to hand out "Admit One" ticket stubs instead of business cards.  I did change my phone number for the web version, but you can still imagine what it looks like.

The other two are little side illustrations that I am working on in my spare time.  The first is really close to completion.  Most of the image is refined, I just have small objects and textures left to paint.   The second one has been slower coming along.  I've done about 6 color studies and I haven't found one that sings yet.  I'm giving it a break for the time being and focusing on work illustrations.  I'm hoping I'll have a better idea for it after I've given it some time alone.

Earlier this year, I was contacted by the lovely people at Amaranth Games to do some background art and other game assets for a time management game, Yummy Drink Factory. I was told it would be a casual game in which you play as a barista who serves drinks to various fairy tale creatures. I jumped at the chance to illustrate for them and there was probably some excited squealing too.  I love things that are quirky and cute, so I knew that it would be a treat doing the art for the game. 

I spent a few months working closely with the game designer and she gave me a lot of freedom to create some unique and colorful backgrounds.  At some point, I was even asked to draw a bowl of warts, which was oddly delightful.  I believe I sat there with a stupid grin on my face while I was drawing them. Honestly, I made them look quite tasty.

While I was smitten with drawing warts, the wonderful Claire Belton created some fantastically adorable creatures to inhabit the villages and various game assets as well. Together we managed to cram all the cute we possibly could into this game.  So I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart.  If you're diabetic, I'd avoid it, because it's awfully sweet.  

As you can imagine, I've been eagerly waiting for the game to be announced so that I could share the artwork here on the site.  The game has now officially been released over at the Amaranth Games community.  There's even a nifty one hour trial version available for download. Later this month, it will be available at some large game portals. I strongly urge my fellow gastropods fanatics to check it out.  I, in fact, challenge you to find the slug on a stick in the game.  Oh yes, there's a slug on a stick in the game.  That alone is worth the $20.