Justin Gerard

April Roadmap!

Hi guys! It was great seeing a lot of you at Spectrum LIVE in Kansas City! Annie and I had a great time (And Annie won an award!). We are just now getting in and finally catching up with everything. So first things first! Let's talk about what is happening here in April:

ROADMAP for the Month of APRIL 2019:

-The Monster of the Month for April is a variation on the Jabberwocky, and you will be meeting him very soon...

Surprise Sluglord Stickers!!

Guys I've got some exciting news! Earlier this month I promised a little surprise, and well, they all just arrived! So this April, I am going to be sending physical Sluglord stickers to all Monster of the Month subs! (...and he isn't the only little monster we've got in store for you!)

I'll be sending out more details about how to get yours next week in our Monthly Roadmap Post. I'm ex...

Monthly Brush Set for March!

Most of my brushes are typically themed around the Monster of the Month series, but this month my new brushes largely came from my Classic Fantasy Illustration. While working on that painting I ran into an issue where I just wasn't getting the clouds and soft shading to match up with the pencil work on my drawing. So I actually sampled some pencil hatches from my drawing and developed these brushes based off of those. These ended up being really successful for the piece and so I thought I wou...

The Stovepipe Hero Hi-Res Wallpaper and Animatic!

Here is the wallpaper for our Monster of the Month for March! Woooo I loved working on this one! At first I was worried it would be static and lifeless (it is just a lump of metal after all).  But in the end I found that there was a lot of movement to play with in elements like the springs and tea set and I feel like those things helped keep the whole thing feeling alive as I worked through the colors. You can see the development in the animatic below:

2019-03-27 12:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

"A Plague of Dragons" Hi-Res Wallpaper

Today I am pleased to share with you the finished wallpaper for this month's Classic Fantasy Illustration, A Plague of Dragons! 

I am also attaching this month's (very high-res) Process Guide. It has been broken down by stages to try and explain a little bit of what I am doing and when as I paint the image. Sidenote here: I am still trying out different methods for this Process Guide so that it is clear and helpful, along with bei...

The Stovepipe Hero

Here is the hi-res drawing for our final entry for #MarchofRobots, The Stovepipe Hero! 

Since I posted a review of mechanical pencils earlier this month, you may be curious which pencils I used for this drawing, I went with a Staedtler 925 with Ain Stein leads in HB and a Pentel P209 with Pentel SUPER leads in 2H.  So far I stand by everything I said in the review. The Staedtler just outperforms and is waaaay more com...

Noble Heavy Titan Drawing for #MarchofRobots

Today we have the heavyweight for the Noble Machines. 

These were drawn on smooth Strathmore Bristol paper with 2H and 2B leads in mechanical pencils. 

Also, I did a line-up of all the Noble Machines to see what they would look like all marching together: 

I've got one more little steambot to share (hopefully tomorrow!) and then we will be diving into...

St. Patrick's Day Monster!

Hey guys, I have a quick high-res drawing to share with all of you today for St. Patrick's day! It is a Puca, a creature from Celtic folklore that is often associated with the harvest and blackberries. They are sometimes helpful and bringers of good fortune... and sometimes not. The Puca is a shapeshifter that is said to take on the form of a black horse, or cat, or goat, or even at times a human. 

Happy St. Patrick's day everybody! <...

Vile Trickery: My Favorite Mechanical Pencils

Welcome to the Gallery Gerard Mechanical Pencil Review! I love mechanical pencils and  use them every day for my drawings. Today I'd like to share with you my review on some of the best (and worst) available to artists today! 

For final recommendations skip to the very bottom!

The Test: For this test I used only mechanical pencils in 2019-03-14 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Chaos Infernal Titan for #MarchofRobots

Here is the heavyweight unit for the Chaos Machines. 

These were drawn on smooth Strathmore Bristol paper with 2H and 2B leads in mechanical pencils. 

Also, I did a line-up of all the Chaos Machines to see what they would look like all marching together: 

Next I'm working on the Infernal Titan's Noble counterpart! When that is done I plan to do a fun ...

Noble Construct and Automatons #MarchofRobots 2019 Drawing

Hi guys! Here is a bonus hi-res drawing for another group of robots, "the Noble Machines!" Counterparts to the Chaos Machines, these constructs use good, old fashioned steam power instead of the mad energies of the Chaos stones. They are meant to look like old stoves and tea kettles that have been hastily converted into mining machines. 

These were drawn on smooth Strathmore Bristol paper with 2H and 2B leads in mechanical pencils. 

Speaking of mechanica...

"Plague of Dragons" Classic Fantasy Illustration for March

This month's Classic Fantasy Illustration is entitled, "A Plague of Dragons." It is to be the cover image for my upcoming sketchbook. Today I am sharing the Hi-res Drawing with you! I've been saving this image for a while and I'm excited to finally have a chance to tackle it this month. 

I don't get to do many peaceful landscapes so this will be nice. Ahhhh yes, a chance to work on something restful, tranquil, peaceful, and pastoral for once. Well... or at least it...

#MarchofRobots: Chaos Construct and Automatons

Welcome to our first venture into #MarchofRobots! 

My goal for all of the robot designs this month them to feel like they could exist alongside the other monsters in our Monster-of-the-Month series. I want them to have a more primitive feel to them, like they were cobbled together by a frantic clockmaker and a drunken smithy in the dead of night, and made from old cookpots and rusty sawmill tools. They should look deadly and intim...

Roadmap for March!

Hi guys! Here's what we will be up to this month:

1. This month is #MarchofRobots on Instagram, so the Monster of the Month posts for March are going to be largely dedicated to medieval monster mechs! There will be more drawings than usual this month and we will be conducting some polls this month to see which ones you think we should colorize first. It should be a lot of fun and I hope you'll join me for it. 

2. For our 2019-03-01 16:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

February Brush Set Folder is up!

The brush set from this month has a lot of new brushes I developed for painting the Common Miscreant as well as a few from the Rose Knight. The "MXR Gnarled Thorn" mixer brush was used ALOT on the Rose Knight. It is great for doing trees, roots and evil planty textures. And I used all of them at one point or another when adding light textures to the Dragonslayer.

I hope you enjoy! 

"The Dragonslayer" Hi-Res Final and Process Guide

The final image is painted in Photoshop. In the Process Guide below you can see the top half is all transparent layers (Multiply, Color Dodge, Soft Light and Screen), while the bottom half of the guide you can see that I used primarily Normal layering. I also switch into using more mixer brushes in the last few shots to help build up some nice chunky brushwork and texture. 

I hope you like it. It was a ton of fun to work on. Special thanks to 2019-02-26 14:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

VILE TRICKERY #12: "Color Masks"

POINT 1: START USING MASKS IN PHOTOSHOP

I don't always use masks, but for characters with heavy colors and/or complicated patterns (like the thorns and armor here) I find that adding them in first can make the whole image come together much more quickly. They can keep local colors together, and most importantly, they can help knock shapes out from what is behind them.

Now, I do caveman-tier masks. I never took any courses on Photoshop, (I only got into the program...

"Rose Knight" February Monster Animatic!

Here is the Monster of the Month animatic for February! I did this one instead of the Miscreant because I'll be referencing this one in this month's Vile Trickery post. (Plus this one just came together very clean and easy, which makes me look like I know what I'm doing; whereas the Miscreant animatic looks like the work of deranged lunatic)

"The Dragonslayer" Hi-Res Drawing

The idea for this month's Classic Fantasy Illustration image was thought up by my wife, the incredibly talented Annie Stegg Gerard. Initially, I wasn't sure what to go with for this month and I asked her over coffee what she would do if she were me. All I mentioned is that it needed some dragons since I wanted it to fit with the theme of my upcoming sketchbook. So she came up with this idea on the spot and I thought it was perfect. 

So Annie will be playing art dir...

Thank you guys!

Today I learned that my painting, Lair of the Firebreather was nominated for an award from Spectrum Fantastic Arts! It's a huge honor for me and I wanted to thank you guys for supporting me here. 

A big reason that I made this painting was to share it with subs here on Patreon. It was a painting I had wanted to paint for a long time because I loved the idea of a knight and dragon composition, but one seen from the perspective of the dragon. I hadn't been a...

Happy Valentine's Day! I got you flowers...

I hope you like them! And I hope you like this surprise monster for Valentine's Day. "The Rose Knight," along with this bonus hi-res file I am including the hi-res drawing as well! 

Stay tuned for this month's Vile Trickery post (coming soon!) where I will be going into some useful tricks for laying in colors on complicated figures like the Rose Knight. 2019-02-14 13:59:59 +0000 UTC View Post

"The Common Miscreant" Hi-Res Final Art for February's Monster of the Month!

Meet the Common Miscreant! This little kleptomaniac is largely to blame for the mischief and mayhem in modern houses. I'm pretty sure he is why my keys go missing, why the milk gets left out, and why I can never find a complete pairs of socks anymore. (It's definitely not because I'm a parent of twins...)

I hope you like him! I'm still working on the brush sets and the animatic for him and I plan to drop those for you here later on this month. Right now I'm working on a little Valentine...

"The Common Miscreant" Monster of the Month for February 2019!

This month's little villain is The Common Miscreant. While not quite so bad as the Greater Miscreant, nor as destructive as the Fire Miscreant,  nor so widespread-panic-inducing as the Tiny Miscreant, it is still quite troublesome to any household cursed with it and every measure possible should be taken to prevent it's entry into one's home. 

Make sure to burn the proper leaves and sprinkle the correct sand at your doorstep as has been laid...