The Legend of the Golden Dragon

"The Legend of The Golden Dragon (Tong Long Huo)"
12"x16" pencil and digital
©William O'Connor












click on images for larger view

The Legend of the Golden Dragon

A new Cover for a project coming out soon by the same name. Thought I would share some of the images and the process work. This was a great deal of fun because I got to play with Asian/Chinese design which I have always loved since my early work on Legend of the Five Rings.

Thumbnails:












Working in a sketchbook on thumbnail designs for the project is always the first step. The narrative was one that entailed great joy and celebration in victory. I wanted to denote this by a grand upward sweep in the composition. Confetti and balloon-like lanterns would give a frenetic and active element to the design to help enhance that sense of movement.

Finished Drawing:

Whether I draw digitally or traditionally is decided from project to project. I have been returning to more traditional techniques over the past year, favoring traditional pencil work.
This graphite on ledger drawing is 11'x14"

After doing some research I realized that the floating lanterns of china are not round but rectangular.




Painting Process:














Right from the start of painting I realized that I didn't like the square lanterns. They did not give the sensation of floating and appeared like bricks, so I changed them back to my original concept sketch with round lanterns. Although the lanterns are tethered, their balloon shape look like jelly fish and the perception of lightness and floating reads better.

The painting progresses in this manner for several days until complete.



Enjoy.

WOC




©2011 William O'Connor Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Chesley Awards

Two of my paintings have been selected by the Chesley Award committee as suggestions for nominations this year.
The Chesley Awards are the annual awards selected by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. Only Members can vote, so join and vote early and vote often!
ASFA




















"Dragon Song"
Unpublished (Rights Available)
oil on panel 24"x36"
SOLD

















"Paladin's Charge"
Institutional (2011 Art Order Calander)
12"x16" digital



THanks.

WOC

The Cousins of Valinor: Radagast and Gandalf

I'm working on a series of Lord of the Rings paintings. I was very inspired by the work of EA Abbey at the Boston Public Library, and recently some stunning stained glass windows I've seen. As well as the works of Albrecht Durer.
This Diptych is of Radagast and Gandalf that I've recently been working on in this continuing series. I hope to do more in the future, of other characters from the books. Larger and more complex paintings. For other paintings in the series see: Bard of Laketown.

Sketchbook #1

Art in the Boston Public Library

My February road trip to Boston to take part in Boskone 48 was a lot of fun. I got to visit with and see art by some of my favorite colleagues and spent the weekend in one of my favorite cities. Boston is a very exciting city for artists, with galleries, museums, art schools and one on the best artistic treasures in the US, The Boston Public Library.
The 13 panels of Edwin Austin Abbey's epic "Quest for the Holy Grail " is worth the trip alone, but the treasures also include a muraled great hall, and "The History of Religion" ceiling murals by John Singer Sargent, (currently closed for renovation), as well as sculpture and architecture that is the very apex of Victorian Gilded Grandeur. If you haven't been there yet, get yourself to Boston and see the library.
Enjoy.

WOC

Conquest of Nerath

"Conquest of Nerath"
(2010) 16"x24" digital
©Wizards of the Coast


The most challenging compositions are when you either have to go extremely big or extremely small. In the instance of this painting I had to go very Big!! Juggling a two page long art description with dozens of image files of reference, leaving room for graphics and bleed is like running an artistic marathon...exhausting but very rewarding when finished.

"The Conquest of Nerath" (2010) was illustrated for Keven Smith at Wizards of the Coast for a D&D board game, of the same name, slated to be released in June 2011, and has been included in the Dungeons and Dragons 2011 Calendar .

A lot of students and young artists always ask when they see a complex work like this "Where do you start?" The answer is the same for every painting, at the thumbnail-design stage. Develop a simple design motif. In this example, the aspect of the art description that struck home for me was "Good vs. Evil". That was the heart of the image. As you can see by the attached thumbnail I quickly developed a concept based loosely upon a yin-yang symbol. This motif was reinforced by the idea that as a board game (similar to a chess game) the color coded game pieces of both sides should be given equal prominence. In this instance the description detailed Silver&Blue vs. Black&Red.



Once I have a design established I can start developing details like costumes. This is the part of the process I love the most and I think is the most creative. I often spend several days doodling in my sketchbook developing costume designs. As you can see by the attached sketch, the central figure was originally an elf on a unicorn, which got altered by the designers to a human on a warhorse.







The rest of the painting follows the stages that I have demonstrated in earlier blogs. The real work for this image was the hours and hours of rendering detail. There's no magic trick-just lots of time!
















Enjoy.

WOC




©2011 William O'Connor Studios
www.wocstudios.com

I loved you not.

"I Loved You Not"
©2011 William O'Connor



A study, inspired by the line of Hamlet to Ophelia that sends her over the edge, literally.
I wanted to sketch and play with the contrast of satin white and rough dark green grasses.

Enjoy

WOC