Painting in Feeding Hills

A couple of weeks ago I was at the L5R charity tournament organized by Team Whiplash -- Eric, Ralph, Kevin, and... a couple of other guys I haven't talked with as much -- in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. I go nearly every year (and nearly every spring, for the Massachusetts Kotei they organize), and this time decided to do some painting at the event. I brought along my oil paints and the tired ronin from July, in a convenient 5"x7" travel size. It was a leisurely day of chatting and painting, and ended with a nice visit with my older brother and his family. I don't see them often enough.  Thanks for a fine day, everyone.

Here's a quick scan of where the painting left off:

Blight Mamba sketches.

My work for Scars of Mirrodin came just as I was trying out my gridded sketchbook, so my early posts about it had to skate around the NDA-covered bits. I try to avoid for-hire work on my blog, but I thought some process sketches might be interesting and this is a good example. Also, since I'll be at the Toronto Grand Prix this weekend, Magic has been on my mind.

(I know it may not look like many thumbnails, but in my defense I do a lot of erasing. Any sketch that feels wrong at the outset gets erased and that spot gets another chance to be useful.)

And the final:

(I also talked about sketching in Ninja Mountain episode 83, if anyone's interested. I like to think there isn't anything particularly scandalous in the episode.)