#fantasy

2024 Sewing Project Round-up

Obligatory “I can’t believe it’s already MARCH of 2024”. Truly, though, I can’t. It doesn’t help that our winter has been lame (but global warming isn’t real. Nope. No way), I feel like it hasn’t even started and yet the stupid trees have stupid buds. I absolutely loved every minute I spent snowboarding so far, I always do (even when conditions stink), but I want more. Also, I only managed one campout in the cold weather (on the coldest night of the year), and it didn’t even dip below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a bummer. I was looking forward

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

PMD Xmas Card Envelopes and 2022 Year in Review…and how the heck is it 2023?!?

Another year, another…something? As cliched as it is to say, I’m baffled that another year has slipped by. On the one hand, it’s great we all made it through to be reading (or writing in my case) this here blog post. On the other hand…where did the time go? I don’t often think about how old I am, and the fact that I keep getting older (though I do think about other people getting older, strangely), but more and more these days I am aware of my age and just how many things I still haven’t managed to accomplish. It’s very

Lee’s Dragons: Bird Dragon

So, how ya doin’? It’s been a bit. Again. I haven’t been very good about updating the content on this here digital manifestation of my Brain this year. I have been keeping busy, though. Aside from basic sketching practice, the vast majority of my studio time this year has been consumed by my Inktober illustrated book Inklings. It has been a ton of work, particularly since I designed three whole fonts and embellishments just for it. I may slap together a post about it at some point. Or maybe not. If you want to catch up and continue to follow the

Lee’s Dragons: Cat Dragon

‘Sup. It’s been awhile…Since June 18, according to my last blog post. Life has been, well, nuts. I’ve made art over the last 3 months, but not as much as I’d like. If you follow the Toby’s Brain FB page, you’re pretty aware of all the “real life” things that have been getting in my way. My last blog post here was about an illustration I drew for my oldest son’s high school graduation. Since then, he was scrambling to get his Eagle Project and paperwork done and submitted before he turned 18 (which he did. Mostly. Thankfully he

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

Enter the (Forest) Dragon

I’m pretty proud of that title…cuz, like Bruce Lee…Enter the Dragon was a Bruce Lee movie…my wife’s name is Lee…I’m a big Bruce Lee fan…I’m a big fan of my wife…it’s allllll connected.

Anyway, it’s September, so that means it’s time once again for another annual tradition I started (this being the fourth year): drawing a dragon for my dragon-loving wife for her birthday. I do these in Procreate on my iPad Pro to take advantage of the time lapse feature, but the fact that I use it so infrequently leads to problems for me. I have to relearn how to

Here Be LEE’s Dragons

Well, it’s a few weeks late, but I finally pulled off the next phase of my wife’s birthday giftage: custom shirts depicting the dragons I draw for her birthday. I attempted yet another new process, and I had to hide my work from her again, and life was getting in the way, but, I got it done. Right now, her shirts are the only ones. If there’s enough interest or encouragement, I may release them to the public at large as their own line of shirts: Lee’s Dragons.

Anyway, about that new process. I uploaded all the layered PSD files of

Gallery Update: Here Be Dragons!

Everyone loves dragons, right?

Of course. But few love them as much as my wife.

It’s birthday time for my wife again, which means another dragon wallpaper from me! I went back to Procreate for this one and spent over a week noodling away at it. Here’s a breakdown of how it came together.

The first step to any art I create-whether it’s digital or traditional, whether the media is pencil, ink, or paint-I start with a rough drawing. I knew I was going to draw a dragon. I even knew it would be a

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