What happened to Rudolph?

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday, and if any of you are traveling, that you are safe and enjoy the time you may have off at this time of year. See you all after the New Year!

Remember JEM and the Holograms?

Maybe you remeber her... I only do by association. Honestly I never got into the show as a kid... Or as an adult for that matter. But I did do a portrait of her for my good friend James Eatock aka Busta Toons.
This piece is for his Cereal:Geek Magazine, issue #3, due out in January '08!

If you're interested in checking the magazine out, I give a word to the wise... It is not a children's magazine. The demographic this publication shoots for are those of us that were children in the 80's and enjoyed the toons of the 80's, but are now all grown up. It's not an "R" rated magazine per se, but it definitely is more "PG-13". For instance the cover I illustrated for issue #1 depicts She-Ra with a black eye and bloody nose. The intended article explores the idea that she is a Warrior, that goes to War, thus she's bound to get a hit or two. So the cover reflects the two sides to her, half being the beautiful princess of power that she is, the other half depicting what she might look like after a brawl with Hordak and his evil crew. So again, probably not for the kids.

Now back to the JEM piece, much more light hearted, here is JEM showing off her fabulous hairstyle that was "soooo like, IN" durring the 80's.

Enjoy!

FANtastic Exclusive

As posted below, the Ramathorr figure came about through the FANtastic Exclusive event that the Four Horsemen held throughout this last year.
If you're still curious to know more about the Four Horsemen or the Ramathorr figure, check out this cool new article on the whole thing at Figures.com, including a cool interview with the Four Horsemen themselves and links to reviews on the Ramathorr figure and his variants.

Enjoy!

RAMATHORR!

I can finally post this!

If you're a fan of the Four Horsemen's work... (2001-2007 He-Man, Mattel's DC Super Heros line. NECA's Nightmare before Christmas figures and MORE!) Then you would also know about their own personal endeavors with the FANtastic Exclusive and the Seventh Kingdom. Well I had the honor of producing artwork to go on the packaging of this year's "Ramathorr, the Elephant Swordsman" 2007 FANtastic Exclusive figure! If you know me, you can imagine my excitement, let alone the fact that I can share this openly now! Here is a look at the artwork I produced:

And here is how it was put together for the card back packaging (Djordje Djakovic did the layout and the rest of the packaging design elements):

A HUGE thanks to the Four Horsemen for letting this FAN be a part of the FANtastic Exclusive experience! It really was a treat and a great experience working with them on this.

ALSO! Just announced at San Diego Comic Con, the Seventh Kingdom, (the line that Ramathorr comes from) Will be it's own action figure line separate from the FANtastic Exclusive, with it's first figure, the Queen Alluxandra coming out in winter 2007/2008!

Check this link out at Figures.com for more information on the FANtastic Exclusive and the Seventh Kingdom from the Fabulous Four Horsemen!

My good friend... Jeff L. Davis...

Here's an illustration, one of my favorites, from a very good friend of mine, who is also an amazing traditional artist. This guy knows traditional costumes and lovely lady figures like no one else I've seen, and he blends the two in a very innocent and beautiful way to produce amazing images.
He has just started his own blog so what you see there is but a small scrape of the volume of great stuff this guy has done. Keep an eye on his blog as I'm sure it will continue to grow and grow with awesome classical imagery. Here's Jeff's blog... Enjoy!

As to anything more from me? Bah, I've just been a lazy lump for the last three months... Not done a single piece of art at all... And if you believe that... I've got a car to sell you. ;-)

Sorry.

I just realized it's been over a month since I've posted anything new.

So to add insult to injury, all I can post here is a piece I did four years ago!

It was when Photoshop 7 came out I think and I was playing with the new brushes and the joys of liquify!

This was the result of a bit of play, nothing more, nothing less. Something I would expect to see hanging in some tex mex restaurant... Or something. I think an ingenious thing to title this one would be Frankenstein.

I promise I'll have stuff up as soon as I can, most of what I'm working on right now cannot be posted. It's great fun stuff! And I can't wait for all to see... but for now, it's still under the wraps.

Best!

Nate.

Spring colors

Just a very quick... 15 - 20 min. memory color and value study of what the sunrise was doing this morning. I wasn't capturing any specific place per se... just trying to remember the colors and values of a scene.

Mr. J.R. Lintstockings...

Here's a fun little friend. Again, an Imagine Learning Artist's challenge. Pick a name from the 700 hobo's site and go with it.
So I picked #53, J.R. Lintstockings! I did this in Flash and Photoshop. Happy Friday! And Happy Easter! Not that this image pertains to Easter... Or maybe it does? Maybe he made his socks out of the stuffings of an Easter Bunny?

Lady in the lake... sketchin'.

This is from out artist's challenge... I didn't get very far on it, but it's a start.
Sorry I've not posted in a bit. Have a great day!

Banshee Boo!

This is my imagine learning artists challenge completed.
Nothing too flashy, but a bit of fun for a Friday afternoon.

A Celtic Beach?

If you're following the imagine learning artist blog challenge... You know what will soon be haunting this moody beach in the north brittish isles...

I think I hear something, something beautiful, and horrific at the same time...

At the end... and Angellic Queen.

At the end of this MotU fan art memory lane. I put up my redesign of Queen Angella. Never would I have ever guessed I would ever paint such a barbie, pink and purple character that looks like she should be slapped right onto a Barbie box. And if anyone knows me personally, they probably never would've guessed that I'd illustrate such a piece either. But truth be told the reason I saved this for last and why it IS one of my favorite pieces I've done, is the fact that I'm the proud daddy of two beautiful daughters. This one is for them. In fact, I've redesigned a handful of the Princess of Power characters, you saw some earlier with Scorpia and Catra. I did that for them. Because simply put I love my kids, and as a parent I take interest in their interests, and if I can paint something that they will enjoy, and gain imagination and inspiration from? I won't say no. I have a good stack of ideas that are barely past the sketch stage for the Princess of Power characters, someday, I will complete that stack as a series of stand alone character images like this one. Heck, even this one isn't complete, you can see it's still pretty rough and sketchy in spots. But it conveys very well the look I would give PoP were I in charge of a redesign on the property.

Thanks for following these various MotU and PoP pieces from the past. From here out if I do anything MotU or PoP related it will be either for my kids, or a commission that I still have on my plate that I need to finish... and trust me, there's still a small handful of them to do. (That battle in front of Castle Grayskull for one.)
Thank you for your comments! A la prochaine!

Another Tribute piece.

This is my cover to the Masters of the Universe Volume 3 #1 he-man.org exclusive cover.

Wow that's a mouthful. Even if it uses the modern designs on the characters, and Skeletor isn't flying the Talon fighter over both He-Man and Teela... This is still a tribute to Alfredo P. Alcala's cover for the record book that came with the vintage Point Dread and the Talon Fighter vehichle/playset for the classic MotU line. This is probably my favorite comic cover I ever did for the He-Man comic run. MVCreations owns this image. You can even still buy this comic from the good folks over at Grahamcrackers Comics. Check it out!

The Green Goddess

This is the Green Goddess. If you're asking yourself, this is just a green Teela with the Snake Head Dress on... You're pretty much right. A long time ago... years even, I did a sketch of her, and colored her too quickly. And then later, I painted over top of that. There are a lot of things I wish to change about this piece, and the biggest thing would be to pull back a little so we can see her feet. It's just a bad crop there where it is right now. There are also a handfull of anatomy issues and costue tweeks I would like to do. For instance I'd like to push the design closer to what my good friend Tom Tolman (Royalt1us) did for the mini bust that he sculpted of her, also pictured below.

This "Green Teela" appeared only once in the very first minicomic "He-Man and the Power Sword" (Click the link to flip through and read this silly old book!) where she was more or less just an early concept of the Sorceress character.

I was always amazed whenever anyone would reference this image on the he-man.org forums.

After a while I would make a joke of it and post it over and over myself for the silliest of reasons.

She's pretty much become her own character, being drawn by many other great fan artists, and she also has been known to appear in a fan fic or two or five. Some see her as the first sorceress, some see her as some kind of Snake men queen, others as her name would indicate, simply a Goddess diety to the world of Eternia. It would be interesting to think of what would become of her if we gave her an actual name other than "The Green Goddess". LOL!

Below is a picutre of Tom's Green Goddess bust, he sculpted it, as well as created molds and cast it. I then painted it. She comes complete with removable Head Dress and Pony Tail with the use of Magnets. She's a very very cool bust. And now the Four Horsemen own a painted cast of this bust for their own collection. Way to go Tom! :)

Minicomic Madness!

I loved that the old figures came with little minicomics. These were my first introduction into the world of He-Man way back in late 1981. And my all time favorite minicomics were the very first four illustrated by Alfredo P. Alcala. There was no silly little Orko. No Cringer, the concept that Adam, a silly little prince was the alter ego of He-Man, NONE of that nonsense existed on Eternia, that all came from the cartoon. The first few minicomics showed a world that was maybe a little more edgy, a little more barbaric, mind you it was all still completely safe for kids, I quite enjoyed them. There also existed in these stories the concept of why He-Man and Skeletor have two halves of the same sword. And when that sword was whole, the possessor of the complete Power Sword could enter Castle Grayskull. (A feature found in the toys) Instead of being a prince, He-Man was a great warrior from a primitive jungle tribe that went forth to protect Castle Grayskull from any evils that might wish to overtake the mysterious, sacred Fortress of Power. A little while back a board member named "Jafari Stew" threw out a challenge to do an old minicomic cover using the new updated look designed by the Four Horsemen. I did a combo. The designs of the characters are the Four Horsemen's and I kept the classic color schemes. This particular cover echo's my favorite minicomic "He-Man and the Power Sword". The only MotU story ever to portray the Sorceress as a mysterious Green Goddess... I bet you can guess what my next post will be... :)

Panthor

I like drawing big cats. This one was done in painter. Not much to say about it other than it's one of my personal favs amonst my MotU art. I tend to like my more loose n' sketchy stuff. This one definately fits into that category. Happy Friday everyone!

Here kitty kitty kitty...

This one started out as a mindless sketch in a horrific, boring meeting. I remember the meeting was headed by some big jumbo wumbo who wanted to completely change the management of where I used to work. Basically, force creatives to be more coorporate... BAD idea in my opinion. So in retaliation, I didn't pay attention at all and just got lost in this little sketch. I later brought it into photoshop to color as it seemed to have potential, and became what it is. No that meeting is not why I left that company for where I work now... In case you were wondering. Is there something subconscious about that sketch? I wouldn't doubt it. Nor deny it.

More Evil Women

Here are two Princess of Power redesigns that I had done, and was quite happy with. Catra, and Scorpia. I remember the fans recieved Catra well, but didn't like Scorpia so much. I guess she was maybe a bit TOO monstrous, but I like her as is. They're bad, not all bad females should be pretty in my opinion.

The Pumpkin of Calamity!

One of the things I love most about the he-man.org community is just that, it feels like a nice friendly community. Fans collect together and share. They share their drawings, their writings, their custom and sculpting work, as well as their general love for all things dealing with Masters of the Universe and Princess of Power. These pieces are from a fun little fan project headed by Sllohcin (Ric Nicholls). The idea was to do a classic Halloween themed battle using the masters, drawn in a style that mimics Mike Mignola's fabulous work. The Evil Lyn sketch below was my first stab at getting a feel for his style for the project. The above is the final piece. Ric did a lot of hard work organizing this thing as well as planning out the look of the whole thing. I helped a little with some background work and some colors as well as the drawings of Evil Lyn. All credits are listed on the piece. It was probably one of the more successful fan projects done. Way to go Ric!

President Washington

Today is double post day!
I also just finished my Washington portrait for our Imagine Learning Artists challenge. Enjoy this brief break in the MotU madness. And though President's day is long gone now for us Americans. Still nice to reflect on history for but a second.

Teela, Gold

If this looks a little exagerated and stylized... that was the intent. I was playing in photoshop, I think it was when 7.0 came out, and I was going for some more varied textures. The heavy oils in the border, the gold foil in the center, and a classic painted look on an exagerated Teela. Very wierd piece overall, mostly experimental, but I still keep it around as one of my favorite MotU pieces that I've done over the years. I think if I ever did a print of this, I'd have to play with gold leafing or at least some gold paint on that circle. :)

Man-At-Arms

I wish I had done this one at a higher resolution, but what you see is what you get. I did this a long time ago, when I was doing a digital sketch a day. I kept the sketches small and fast. I remember I was looking at a lot of Bob Peak's stuff when I did this one, I was more concerned with texture than anything else here if I remember right. I've always liked this piece for how loose and raw it is.

Hordak's Separation Spell

In the She-Ra post, Hordak is mentioned. He's basically the baddest of the bad. In the new Mike Young Productions Masters of the Universe cartoon, we learn that Eons ago, Hordak tried to split Eternia into two pieces, a good half and an evil half... He almost succeeded. I was working from a cool tutorial on how to illustrate planets in photoshop, and came up with this piece. Kinda fun no? Now honestly... splitting a planet in half? He may be the baddest of the bad... However he's lacking in the brains department methinks... But then, most evil beings are.

She-Ra!

He-Man's twin sister. They were separated shortly after they were born. The Evil Horde ruler Hordak invaded Eternia and snatched away the infant princess. He raised her as one of his minions. Many years later, after the twins had reached adulthood, the Sorceress of Grayskull summoned He-Man to go to Etheria to find his long lost twin sister and give her the Sword of Protection, that she may also share in the Power of Grayskull and fight evil in the Universe. As the princess was convinced of her wrong affiliation with the Horde, she left with He-Man to be come She-Ra, Princess of Power and leader of the Rebellion against the evil Horde on Etheria. This was a drawing I did shortly after the Four Horsemen sculpt of the character was revealed to be the Mattel exclusive figure for the 2004 Comic Summer Conventions, both San Diego Comic Con and Wizard World Chicago. This design is based on the new exclusive figure. ( The sword is different as at that time I didn't know what the sword was going to look like, it hadn't yet been revealed.)

Castle Grayskull.

Here is a rare post. Something traditional from me.
I did this way back in 1998 or 1999 when I was working for DSW, an ad agency in SLC.
This was done on tracing paper, with a black and white prismacolor pencil, and some fancy schmancy expensive markers for the color. I then spray mounted it on some black matting. Why? I have no idea. Just for the heck of it I suppose. I remember I wanted to sculpt a little Castle Grayskull to put in my fish tank... Again, Why? I have NO idea. Needless to say, I've not sculpted one yet for the fish tank. Though I did have a mini Merman in there for some time.

Skeletor

MotU is always about He-Man vs. Skeletor. Skeletor trying to get into Castle Grayskull. We all know that story. Skeletor is an iconic villian, no one can deny that. He ranks up there with Darth Vader, Hitler, the Devil himself... Skeletor holds his own very well against them all.

I love the redesigned Skeletor that the Four Horsemen did in 2001, they really captured a great and very definitive look for ol' bonehead. But there is a side to Skeletor that I see, that is more akin to the early minicomics penciled by Alfredo P. Alcala, something dark, sinister, a creepy goblin kind of look that he captured that I wanted to capture here in this sketchy portrait at best. An essence of gloom and doom and spooky evil. The oposite of our Heroic Warrior He-Man.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ala Nate Baertsch

If you like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra Princess of Power?
Then don't visit this blog for the next few weeks!
I'm going to be posting some of my favorite fan and professional works for MotU and PoP. It's interesting as I pull my favorites, the different little experimentations I've done over the years with these characters. Most of what will be posted has already been seen on the He-Man.org fan art forum. But here you will get to see some of them at a higher resolution than before. And on a very few, I've retouched some of them up a little nicer than they were before. This little body of work will span about for to five years. With one piece that I did traditionally way back when He-Man.org started sometime in 1998. Let me know what you think of the pieces as they pop up. If you've followed my work over at the .org, then it should bring back some funky memories. By the Power of GRAYSKULL! :)

This first piece was a fast head study of He-Man quickly colored in photoshop. The Four Horsemen recently announced that He-Man will be in Wave 6 of their mini statue line up by Neca. I doubt he'll sport a new hairdo, but I'd love to see him look a little more like this.

Brush strokes...

Sometimes it's fun to see some of the up close details in a piece.
Not that mine is anything spectacular, but one can still see how I built things up as you look at the brush strokes on this piece. It's really not as tight as one might think.
Hope all my American friends had a great President's day Weekend!

A Great President

As a part of my Imagine Learning Artist's challenge, we're doing Lincoln or Washington.
Abraham Lincoln is probably one of my favorite Presidents, so I quite enjoyed taking the time, this time of year to remember him, as well as Washington and all the other great men that have served in this capacity for our country. Whether or not you agree or like any particular president of this country. It's still good to pause and respect that person or that office. It's an enormous task to put on any one human being, a very great and respected responsibility.

So I went with a straight forward painted portrait. Pretty boring I know, however for me it felt SOOOOO good to do a face study, and really paint in some detail. I feel like it's been ages since I sat down to do just that, I'm feeling rushed on a lot of things so it was nice to just focus on this for a few moments. It took a total of about five hours, some at work durring training time, and a little at home. It was all done in Painter, using their Oils flats brushes.
You comments are welcome.

Inky Oz

This is another challenge that we had over at the Imagine Learning Artists challenge.
I didn't get as far on this as I had hoped. And I'm only half satisfied with what I've got! I do hope to finish this sometime, it's been fun living in Oz for a little bit. I hate the Tin man, and I hate some of the poses so there will be some major fixes and revisions next time we see this...
But here it is anyway, sorry I've been away for a spell.

When Men were Men!

This week's challenge at work was "Cowboy"
So yeah... here's a cowboy! Shoot 'em up! kachow!
Sadly, my Spectrum entry didn't make it.
I'll still finish it though, as the character means something to me.

The Beginning... of the End.

This is a color/composition sketch that I've had on my plate for years... literally.
It's for a good friend who has been incredibly patient with me. Joe Amaro. He spent a lot of time and hard work on a very cool custom Green Goddess figure for me, and in return, I'm doing this painting of his castle Grayskull in a scene that hopefully harkens back to the origional magic of the the Box and Poster Art for the origional Masters of the Universe line. This will be fully painted when completed that will hopefully pay homage to other fantastic MotU painters like William George and Earl Norem. Your thoughts are welcome!

Devil Woman...

At a request, I don't do a lot, but this happens to also be a favorite Disney villian of my own as well. The evil Maleficent!
It is what it is... I played with Painter's chalks some more.
Happy Friday!

Mirror mirror on the wall...

Y'know, I saw a face of some singer on msn.

Started sketchin.

Ended up with this... Go figure!

In color! ... Sorta

Hey you three guys that visit me!

Here's a progression on my spectrum entry... I don't know if I'm gonna make it, but I'll try. Either way I really want to finish this. I keep telling myself I'm gonna pull it into painter and start rendering in there, but so far this has been a Photoshop only show...

Let me know what you think!

Thundercats... Remember them?

I found an old sketch of Cheetara today, and for some personal training time at work, I colored her.

I played with a technique where the underpainting so to speak was just a dark gray blue for the shadows, and a light yellow/creme color for the light side, with little blending between the two.

Then with Painter's watercolors, I "washed" some local colors over top, giving a nice watercolory texture. Then I blurred it in photoshop.

Kinda fun. :) Happy Friday everybody! Enjoy the weekend!

Oozor!!!

This is something I just simply colored. The REAL work was done by the following friends and artists extraordinaire...

The artwork was drawn by Cody Constable (Buffalo-Bill-Man on the he-man.org forums)

The text and logo treatments were done by Ric Nicholls (Sllohcin on the he-man.org forums)

If you want to learn more about Oozor and his uber cool mini statue kit created by Tom Tolman (Royalt1us on the he-man.org forums) then check out this link right here! It's a lengthy thread, be sure to check out all the pages to see Tom's progress on taking the design from Ric and sculpting the finished statue. Oh and not just a cool sculpt, but all the casting and mold making that goes along with it. Tom Rocks!

It's a part of a very cool fan project that Tom put together on he-man.org. Ric Nicholls is the creator of the character Oozor.

How many names can you keep straight now eh?