The thing I love about doing fantasy art is the freedom it affords me to play with color. I can give someone blue hair and purple skin and it’s fine cuz it’s a fantasy painting. I also like to imagine the stories of characters that I’m creating. This one is called Daughter of the Sky. She’s a person who comes from a world where the sky and everything in it are considered sacred. She wears feathers in her hair out of respect for the creatures that live in the sky and she has a gust of wind tattooed on her face. I imagine that her people live on high cliffs in order to be as close to the sky as they can manage. It’s just fun to play with the imagination sometimes.
The other thing about color in a fantasy piece, or in any piece for that matter is that it can be used to help tell the story. In this one I tried to only use colors that you might see in the sky. I was playing around with the idea of the sky being so important in her world. I also wanted it to feel a little strange and even foreign because those things that are normally warm colors are cool and vice versa. Not only that, I just thought it would be fun to draw a purple and blue person.

I just drove down an absolutely beautiful highway at 2:00 in the morning. It’s been rainy all day and as I was driving home these massive clouds were just rolling across the road. The moon was shining through them and every now and then I could see glimpses of clear sparkling stars shimmering in the sky. It was breathtaking. Because the moon was so bright I could see the mountains through which the road passes and great masses of clouds were just resting all over them. The clouds almost looked like they were tired and decided to take a break from the efforts of hovering in the sky.

I think sometimes that the reason nature is so fascinating is that it’s beauty is transitory. It shares with us these moments of stunning asthetic perfection and then in almost the blink of an eye it changes and we are left only with the memory and the sensation that we are part of something amazing.

This is a painting I did from a photo that was taken in Zion’s national park. A gallery down there wants me to do a bunch of paintings of the area so my family and I went and took a ton of pictures and this is the result of one of those photos. The one below of the cowboy was from the same photoshoot. The cowboy is actually my brother Shane. Anyway, I just finished this last night and really like the way it came out.

Sunset is my favorite time of day. I love to take long walks just before the sun is going to set so that I return just after dark. That way I don’t miss anything. I love this best in the wintertime. There is something about the combination of the vivid beauty of the sky and the crisp cold of the air that is invigorating and inspiring. It is at these times that I feel the most alive. I become acutely aware of each breath that I take as the cold forces its way into the warmth of my lungs. My mind becomes clear and I am reminded that most of the little worries and frustrations of life are of little consequence. There is a bigger world out there and I am a part of it.

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