Recent Portrait Sketches

Recently I have been doing a lot of random portrait sketches out of my head.  I plan on taking a few of the better ones and doing little paintings of them to help cover some wall space at my Spectrum Live booth and also just to get more practice painting.  Usually I do these sketches while I am sitting on a plane or at a convention.  I was very pleased to have actually sold one of them (the first one) at the Illuxcon showcase.  It's a really good feeling when somebody decides to drop some money on your artwork when there is so much great stuff all around them... even if it is just a little sketch!

Princess of Mars Art Order (Part 2)

I have decided to do another wave of thumbnails because none of the others were really jumping out at me as what I should go with.  I am much more satisfied with this group, there are at least 3 or 4 that I am seriously considering. After hitting something along the lines of 'thumbnail block' I was lucky enough to get some great advice from my buddy Tom, who suggested that I was trying to force it too much and not let my own sense of composition come through.  I tried to really loosen up and find shapes and rhythms that I connect with.   Thanks Tom!

I would love to hear what you think!

John Harris style sketch

I recently returned from Illuxcon 4 where I picked up a few paintings and sketches.  While none of them were from John Harris, I already have a couple of his paintings and a couple of sketches as well here in the collection. I am a huge fan of John's, and I want to talk about him a lot more in the future.  I think he is one of the best painters around today, not just because of how he applies paint but because of his decision making process.

During Illuxcon he did a 2 hour painting demonstration which I attended with my buddy Arthur, and it was fantastic.  He ended it with a short speech of sorts which I really connected with. I know they were filming it and hopefully it will be made available at some point for those who were unable to attend. I would love to hear it again as well of course! Already being a huge John Harris fan I did a few sketches awhile back trying to emulate the approach and impact he gets in his paintings.  I took the best of these and worked it up a bit further and actually emailed it off to him to get some feedback.

He seemed to like the sketch and I am definitely going to be painting it after the Princess of Mars piece is complete.  I would love to hear what you think!

Princess of Mars Art Order (Part 1)

I have started doing thumbnails for the Princess of Mars Art Order challenge.  So far, none of them stand out to me definitively as the one I want to move forward with but because there is so little time to complete the challenge I will likely just pick one I feel best about in the next day or two and get started on a more elaborate sketch.

I have numbered them, and would love to hear which you guys think are the most successful.

An Introduction

Hey everyone, I figure that I should probably start this blog by introducing myself. My name is Ryan Schutter, I am an illustration student and an art collector.  I intend to focus this blog on both of those pursuits.  I have titled it The Illustration Board after the small art community I run at TheIllustrationBoard.com

While my collection itself is not massive, I do have some very nice pieces and quite a few artists are represented. It is my hope to convey to the reader why I purchased the artwork I have purchased and to be as honest as I can about my thoughts on collecting, my own collection and illustration art in general.

As far as my own work is concerned, I will be posting progress on paintings as I work on them as well as drawings I may have done in class or while sitting around at some convention or restaurant.  Hopefully I will also be able to post little interviews with some of the artists I collect or other collectors as well.

Anyways, hope you find this blog interesting!