*2013 Hugo Award Nomination

It was announced yesterday that I've been nominated for a Hugo Award this year for Best Professional Artist! I never dreamt that I'd get a nomination this early in my career, and I want to thank everyone who believes in me and my work. Congratulations to the other artists nominated, Vincent Chong, John Picacio, Dan Dos Santos, and Christ McGrath; I really hope one of you wins, you deserve it way more than I do! In the meantime, I hope I can live up to everyone's expectations and keep doing work that people enjoy. :) Thanks again! 

*Two big new projects!

I have two big projects to announce! :) 

Last year I was contacted by Simon & Schuster to do new covers for their upcoming five book boxed set of the beloved and award winning The Dark is Rising Sequence By Susan Cooper! I am incredibly honored to have worked on them, they are such wonderful books. The boxed set will be available 6/11/13. :)

In addition, as you may have already seen in my gallery, I have completed work on Llewellyn Worldwide's 2014 Astrological Calendar, which is currently available for pre-order and will ship July 2013. 

The cover art is shown below, and the interior pieces are available to view at my deviantArt gallery. 

*Illustration Tutorial

I made this in 2010 for a project that didn't take off, but I wanted to make it a PDF and share it with you guys.

Digital Illustration Tutorial

It's a little old and the image quality isn't top notch, but there's lots of information there about how I approach brainstorming, composition, color, and storytelling. Some of you might be interested. :) 

*Chesley Award

To my absolute surprise, I was nominated this year for two Chesley Awards. Even more to my surprise, I actually won one of them! I still can't believe it. My Planetary Alignment piece (pictured below) won in the 2010 Best Unpublished Color category. I am completely blown away. I can't tell you how honored and humbled I am to even be mentioned in the same sentence as the other nominees and winners. My deepest thanks to everyone who has supported me over the years, to ASFA for nominating me, and for everyone who voted on my entry. I promise I'll work even harder and keep doing my best to contribute to the science fiction and fantasy community. :)

(Also, I will be switching this journal to Blogspot or Wordpress soon; Squarespace's native blog is clunky and makes commenting trickier than necessary).

*Art Show and Steampunk Specimens

I'll be showing a few pieces in a steampunk gallery show in Pomona, CA in March. The curator has a kickstarter page to help raise some funds, so check it out if you have a little money to spare it: The Brass Age: A Steampunk You can even get some great donation incentives from some of the participating artists, too.

 Included in the show will be several of my existing pieces, as well as these new images, the first four in a series of steampunk animal specimens. :)