Books are coming

I expect the "Book of Drawings" to arrive soon then straight out the door. Tell you what it has been a process to say the least, I learned many things.

If you missed the chance at Kickstarter you can get a book here: Davemalan.com/store

Book of Drawings

A book of my drawings is out an available for purchase on Kickstarter.

Check it out here: DaveMalan.com/store

Book of Drawings coming soon!

Hi blogger friends. Like the neighborhood I grew up in. Still makes me nostalgic to come back to where it all began, a simpler time of posting art and thoughts for others to come by and interact at a slower pace.

Alas, the world has changed and I apologize for not sharing my latest work over here. Let me know if there are still visitors and I'll make an extra effort. Regardless I wanted to share my upcoming project. I'm going to launch a Kickstarter campaign next Tuesday June 27th. The time has finally come to compile my best drawings into a book with good high quality prints for anyone who would like one. Please come on over, I'll post when I launch, but you can get a heads up by signing up for my mail list at DaveMalan.com. There will be some early bird discounts and a few originals you won't want to miss.

A uick drawing video!

30 minutes squeezed into 145 seconds. This is my process, I always work general to specific start with the biggest broadest shapes and just get something down on the page then react to it. From the start I could tell the proportions weren't right so I had to cut back on the left cheek a couple times and slide the edge of the mouth to the right. Getting some hatching in there allows me to get a better feeling by getting more accurate weight. If you just outline the eyeballs you are missing some of the weight the eye has and throwing your drawing off.
I am really happy with the final result after the rocky start.

portrait

I really like this one, just the right style and polish for me. From a picture by the talented and lovely Natalie Malan.

Straight on

From the sketchbook.

Harper

@jeffersonhayman is my favorite photographer on instagram. Stunning portrait work. This is his beautiful daughter @harperthenoodle
I was so glad the drawing turned out as well as I hoped. It's much easier with great reference.

Boxer

Did this one recently for the Weekly Standard. I love how it turned out( especially with about a day and a half to get it done).

sketch #108

Art Drop Day

Any of my friends in the northern Utah area keep an eye out for this #ArtDropDay piece I plan on leaving somewhere tomorrow afternoon. Sorry you'll probably have to keep an eye on my Instagram or Twitter to get the clue immediately.

Cosmonaut

The latest illustration has a little different style. I've been pushing to let my line work stand out more. I had a feeling the fully rendered style I have been using had a really overworked feeling to it. I think the lines keep it more fresh and overall it is faster. Below you can see a lineup showing the steps to get there. First a rough with pencil and paper, then i move to digital making that really light and tracing over it while adding a rough digital drawing fleshing out much of the detail. Then a second pass again tracing the last but with clean finish lines, then the color work.

2-tone

I really enjoy drawing in my toned paper sketchbook. Just to have the ability to go in 2 value directions with the pencil gives you a lot more interest.

Searcher

Thanks very much to the kind comments from the stalwarts still sticking it out in the Blogger world. 

I wanted to work on getting my style a little less overworked. I also wanted to keep the line work. Here is the product, hopefully I can keep developing the look but I was really pleased with the final image, enough that I may further develop the character and story.

Peter and the Wolf

Here's my latest illustration. Hope there's still some viewers out there, I still think Blogger is the best of the social media outlets and it saddens me how it's slowed down(from my perspective).
Anywho, here is a digital painting of the classic Peter and the Wolf tale sans orchestra. Posed my little boy again, it feels a little overworked as far as the rendering, I think my next task will probably be spending some time trying to develop a less intensive rendering style.

little girl

Came across this beautiful little image at instagram.com/courtneyadamo.

boy

I love my little boy.

Wizard

My try at the world of fantasy. I thought I might need a pointy hat to sell him as a wizard. Does feel a bit biblical without but I prefer the composition without so I gave him a sword an pipe to compensate.

Younger boy and the jungle

While my older son is out at sea, the younger is in the deep jungle. Sure it’s dangerous but he’s 2 years old and knows how to handle himself.

Young boy and the sea

My boy, out hunting giant squid.

Edge of the woods

Here's a new one. I focus down on faces and characters so much I wanted to concentrate and develop a fuller environment. Kind of a test to see if I could. Surprisingly, I think it turned out pretty well. There was a time when I couldn't do trees and those types of things because I would try to approach it too literally. The key is painting the idea of the foliage not specific leaves etc.

Dr. Funke

Here's the finished painting. I'm trying to develop my style to something polished but still retaining some of the loose crosshatching of my drawings. This worked out here, if you look close you can see a lot of sketching lines.

Cover

Got the kids to model for a recent cover for the Friend magazine.

Listening in

I was looking at some beautiful digital paintings and got a hankering to really see how far I could push the rendering. This is the result. I had to include a closeup on the face because I spent so long working in up it would be sad to not be seen.

sketchbook

Sketch 79

Dinner

Just finished this painting. I'm very pleased with it, probably heavily because of the subject. My favorite kids. This is nice and big and will probably hang in our dinning room.

24"x 36" Oil on Board

Sketch #78

Mr. Ben Folds

Saw a Ben Folds concert recently. He puts on a great show. I thought I would do a digital painting of him. A little different technique here put I was pretty happy with the look. A soft painting with some hatching work over top.

Collaboration

So you've probably seen the pictures where the artist has kids do a drawing then he renders then out. After I finished this one up my 3 year old decided to do the opposite and finish up one of my drawings. I think it's great.

and Color

I've got plans to post a video of the color process I used for this.