Skottie Young

I wanted to try sketching and coloring some things in sketchbook pro and my wife just got me the Marvelous Land of Oz book by Skottie Young. So I thought I'd try and do a quick copy to get a feel for it. I really like sketchbook pro and want to learn it better. And I absolutely love everything Skottie draws.

The Shogun of Harlem

I did a quick painting for my friend for her birthday, and she really loves the movie The Last Dragon. I hadn't seen it before and it was incredible. Changed my life.

SHO'NUFF!

Gandalf

Just a quick painting of Gandalf in honor of the Hobbit movie. Go see it if you haven't already!

Why Bilbo? Because I'm afraid, and he gives me courage.

Silent Night

Christmas is a time of love, joy and zombies eating snowmen.

Happy Holidays!

I have this print and a dozen others up for sale at on my Etsy shop! Check it out! RowboatRobot

Persistent Little Bugger...

The only thing cooler than a shark is a zombie. False. They are equally cool, and therefor will periodically fight each other during the Zombie Apocalypse. With blank, soulless eyes, these relentless eating machines make the perfect match for an epic underwater battle. The zombie may be out of his element, but he'll continue to scrape and bite long after his chunks and guts rest inside the sharks belly.

Daryl Dixon Ya'll

With his apocalypse-friendly crossbow and the sleeves torn off of everything he wears, Daryl is easily one of the coolest characters in The Walking Dead. After I started watching this show (I haven't read the graphic novels) I was surprised at how much I cared about this character. Maybe it's his rough past that's concealed by his squinty eyes, or his Hungry Man squirrel dinners, but I think there will be riots in the streets when they decide to kill him off.

Borderlands 2 concept art

These are some of the silhouettes I did for Borderlands 2 DLC concept project. The armored robot I was designing was supposed to be made up of CL4P-TPs.

So the story we came up with was that while digging in the iridium mines they came across this sphere that activated and then magnetically pulled in any surrounding CL4P-TPs and/or loose pieces of metal to form this huge destructive robot that walks around on its hands. After killing Diamond Dan and some other mini bosses your player would come across this guy while trying to escape through the tunnels.

These are some sketches I came up with for some extra monsters/creatures you could fight.

This Sand Tuber is basically an underground venus flytrap. It waits under the sand with a weapon or loot as bait for the player to come get. Then when the Tuber feels approaching footsteps it snaps shut in an explosion of sand. Its inner jaw extends up out of the sand and chews up the unsuspecting prey. The "mouth" is made up of four bone-like edges with a thin membrane between them that spray neurotoxins when it shuts. Although it is usually rare, its not impossible to escape once you've been trapped.

The B4N-D1T0 is the six armed bounty hunter robot with 6 six-shooters. His extremely agile arms slide up and down his rib rails making for a faster-than-lightning quickdraw. With one good eye and an empty chassis in place of a heart, the B4N-D1T0 always gets his target.

"Trust me son!"

Remember when you were little, and you were afraid to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool? And your parents were there saying, "don't worry, it'll be okay. You have your floaties!" THEY WERE WRONG. In fact, your floaties would probably keep you suspended at just the right height for the grabbing zombie arms, like some kind of fleshy pinata.

Borderlands 2 Concept

For our concept design class our next project we are coming up with art for Borderlands 2 make-believe downloadable content. My assignment was to come up with some kind of armored robot that can be used as a weapon that you would have to fight. We decided that it'd be cool if he was made up of tiny claptrap robots. So I tried to imagine what it would look like if they were all suddenly magnetized together to form a huge mech-like robot. I like the top left design of a robot that walks on his hands, but it would be made out of small scraps and have more guns like the 4th robot down.

Unsuspecting Happy Dog

For my advanced Illustration class we had to choose a theme for all the projects we will be doing this semester. You'll never guess what theme I chose....

I tried to do this Illustration in the style of Jean Baptiste Vendamme. He is an excellent artist and I can appreciate his style even more having tried to emulate it. I have to admit I spent as much time (if not more) on the design and shape of the dog than the actual painting. For anyone who thinks an artists way of illustrating is easy just because their work looks simple, try it out and see for yourself.

Featuring Jared Salmond!

"Hey Nate's blog visitors!
Jared Salmond here, Nate's schoolmate at UVU. Nate accepted the call of the blog trade (or whatever this is called) and gave me an idea of what I should do for his blog. He suggested I do a triceratops on a tricycle. Which I thought was a hilarious idea he posted earlier on this blog. So Nate said his was chewing three pieces of gum, mine is in a triathalon. I wanted to have him prescribing tricyclien (or however you spell it, like on Arrested Development!) but I think that stretched it too far. So enjoy! I did one in a more realistic style and then some cartoons for your viewing pleasure."

Here is my original sketch that Jared used.

Make sure to check out Jared's blog to see some more excellent artwork!

Elk

This is a quick line drawing of an elk I did for my friend. It will go up on his wall with the beartender and some other pieces.

Long.......drawn out......sentences

So my good friend Lee VanNoy Call invited me over to watch a movie called Starcrash (1979). It was so out-of-this-world awesome that I had to make this illustration (plus it's been a while since I've worked on something just for fun). For anyone who hasn't seen Starcrash, go watch it. For those who already have, go watch it again. It's one of the best worst movies of all time, it even gives Troll 2 a run for its money. It's extremely quotable and is fun to watch with a group of friends. With Christopher Plummer as the Emperor of the Galaxy and David Hasselhoff as the Prince, you can't go wrong. This is a scene from just one of the many excellent parts of the film. If I knew being emperor came with such power I might have gone a different direction in school.

Adventures In Provo Canyon

Last week I went up Provo Canyon to do some plein air painting with Adam Dove. I had only painted with oil once or twice before and I definitely wasn't confident using it. But he gave me some excellent pointers he learned from Perry Stuart and helped me along the way. It was a really fun experience and I'm starting to understand oil painting a little bit more. Now I know why so many people like it.

Even though we had put on bug repellent there were so many flies all over the place, and they had no problem landing on us and biting us. There's nothing better than having flies land on your eye while you're trying to paint with a brush in one hand and holding your pallet in the other. This guy landed in my cadmium yellow and got stuck for a few hours. My my, how the pallet has turned.

After he finally escaped my glob of paint I thought "Wow, I can't believe he survived." Right up until he waltzed his way into my little puddle of turpentine and started washing his hands and face as flies so often do. So whether he died right where I left him on the picnic table, or if a bird swooped down to get him for an easy meal and died from fly poisoning, either way he got what was coming to him. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you flies.

Figure Drawing

      These are some drawings of the figure that are from both figure drawing and figure structure classes. I didn't have a scanner big enough to scan them in so I used a camera to take a quick picture. Between the terrible lighting in our apartments, the newsprint, and that fact that I don't draw dark enough sometimes, some of them look kinda funky. I messed with them in Photoshop enough that you can see most of the basic outline.

    These figure drawing classes have been a huge help. At first I was kind of reluctant to take figure drawing and I probably wouldn't have if it wasn't required. But I am always surprised to see how much my drawing skills improve by the end of a semester with a figure class. I'm actually starting to enjoy drawing the figure now (and not just thinking of it as medicine) but I still have a lot of improving to do. I guess the human figure is the ultimate drawing practice, maybe that's why the masters have been using it for hundreds of years. . .

Nixon

Last semester our assignment was caricatures and I got Richard Nixon. My professor suggested that instead of going with the cliche' Watergate scandal, I do something positive that Nixon is known for. So this is Nixon opening relations with China, shaking hands with Mao Zedong. So I guess it was a dual caricature. I felt like Nixon was pretty easy to do, he has very exaggerated features. It was a lot of fun working in all the different textures and fabrics.

Beartender

My friend wanted me to do some artwork for him to put in some cool frames he got at the DI. He really liked the Octopus I did in a suit and he really likes bears so I did this for him. I will probably do a few more of different animals as he gets more frames. He has kind eyes, a bow tie, and seems sincerely interested in your rambly drunk stories.

The Seven Geases

For my Concept Design II class last semester we were given the story The Seven Geases by Clark Ashton Smith and then we were supposed to come up with designs and develop some looks for the characters from the story. The first one is Tsathoggua the frog/bat God, he's the first one Ralibar encounters. There's been a few images that people have done of Tsathoggua but it was a lot of fun creating a character out of text and coming up with my own design. The second is the archaeopteryx type bird that belongs to the Wizard who curses Ralibar. The bird is sent to lead Ralibar to where he needs to go. I wish I would have had more time to work on these paintings but it was a lot of fun to develop these guys from start to finish. I have a ton of sketches for these guys and other characters throughout the story. Ill post them once I get them back from Don Seegmiller.