#conceptdrawings

2023 Year in Review

Alright, I’m notoriously bad at grasping the passage of time, but instead of being bewildered that 2023 just ended, I’m a tad surprised that I almost titled this post “2024 Year in Review”. I think that’s the first time I’ve thought more time had passed, rather than less.

Either way, growing up in the 80s and 90s, thinking ahead to anything past the year 2000 always seemed like the future. I mean, yes, literally it was, but I mean some kind of sci-fi, flying cars, robots, teleportation, and computer brain implants utopia kind of future. I suppose there are plenty of things I take

Lee’s Dragons: Elephant Dragon

It’s September, which means it’s time, once again, for this:

For my wife’s annual birthday dragon 2023, I kind of knew what I wanted to do well ahead of time. Given that the whole concept of these illustrations is that there’s a planet basically terraformed by dragons, that eventually evolve and speciate to occupy all the different biotic zones, I try to think of an environment first, then figure out what would live there. Right now, everything is heavily influenced by life and ecology on earth, but I hope to deviate from

Gallery Update: New Revery Concept Art!

Hey look! A new blog post! And a new little logo title thingamabob!

But mostly: NEW REVERY CONCEPT ART! It’s been a minute, but I finally, randomly, decided to produce a piece of concept art for the story that I will eventually get off my butt and tell. There’s a lot of work to be done, more world building, updating and editing the existing story and thumbnails, and then actually drawing the thing, but a step forward is a step closer.

This is the first piece of concept art I have done for Revery

Lee’s Dragons: Arctic Dragon

It’s that time of year again! My wife had a birthday, so she got another dragon illustration!

This year’s dragon for my wife’s birthday: the Arctic (or Polar) Dragon. This clocked in at about 56 hours and 4 minutes, give or take. It’s a slight departure from the previous entries in that it’s (digital) pen and ink, rather than a fully rendered digital painting. It was my wife’s request, she prefers my ink work I guess.
I studied some images of polar bears to get an appropriate gesture as well as looked up

Update: I’m Alive

Yes indeed, I’m not dead! Yet! (I feel happy…)

It’s been far too long since I’ve updated, and almost as long since I’ve had consistent studio time. I spent almost all of June plowing through some house renovations (some of which have been on the “to do” list for 11 years, so it was about time anyway) that needed to be done before we hosted my wife’s family for a reunion the first week of July. Between that and scout responsibilities, the studio time sadly gave way first. However, the family have returned to their respective parts of the country, so

Tablet Art: Making Technological Frustrations Mobile!

Okay, a couple of things right off the bat. First, dang it’s been a long time since I’ve posted! There’s been lots of “life” stuff going on, plus, it’s Inktober! I’ve been trying to spend my evening hours pumping out It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time! panels rather than trying to update this place. Given a choice, I’m usually going to chose to draw, which is good, I guess, though if I don’t put myself and my work “out there” via this place and FB and Instagram etc, then my theme park dreams are going to be hard to realize…Anywhat, most

Gallery Update: It’s Tick Season…Yay.

It’s been a little while since an update. I’ve been plenty busy both in the studio and out. I’m wrapping up the camp shirt design, I think I’m done with another project for my cousin (still waiting for final word), finally finished up a gift/project for my nephew that became more involved than I originally thought (I got carried away), as well as finished up yet another project (that I can’t post about until next week…you’ll know why when you see it), all while churning away on the comic strip. Outside of the studio, there’s been a few camping trips

Gallery Update: A Jedi’s Strength Flows From the Force…

I think I’m finally calling this piece done. I’ve had this idea kicking around in my head to do a series of drawings depicting myself and Plunger Monkey doing various things. In many ways, he’s kind of like my Hobbes, I guess. But I could also argue he’s kind of like Yoda to my Luke…hence the idea for this drawing. That, and, I’ve had a lot of Star Wars on my brain lately. Actually, that’s not unusual, but more on that in a minute.

At first I was thinking I’d just do a line drawing…

A digital painting of
</p srcset=

A Recent Read: The Metabarons

Inktober is all wrapped up for this year. I managed 31 self portraits in 31 days. I’ll put together a big post showcasing and comparing all of the images later, but if you want to check some of them out now, go to the TOBY’SBRAIN FB page (if you love me, you’re already following it. If you’re not following it, you don’t know you love me yet.).

Anywho, in the meantime, I thought I’d share an epic graphic novel I recently read: The Metabarons.

The-Metabarons-cover Bonjour! I come from France!

This 536 page,

Experiment…

Well, it’s the first full week of school, and with all the after school stuff going on, the start up of Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts looming, family events, and other obligations and projects, I haven’t settled into a studio schedule yet. However, I do try to take advantage of whatever un-busy moments I have to read about and learn new things, like this:

Toby-Gray-willy-mceyeballs-gif-experiment Testing, testing…is this thing on?

I watched a great Phlearn YouTube tutorial recently on how to make GIFs and videos in Photoshop. I decided I’d “quickly” try

Go to Top