The Art of Joseph A. Wraith

Tormund Giantsbane GOT Illustration ©2017 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith      Well it's been a long horrible month, from weather storms to media storms.   Nope, don't like it, not one bit.  Today I deactivated my Facebook account.  I realized I spend far too much time soaking up the negativity from that ridiculous forum, and I get nothing from it in return, but anger and a headache from all the boundless stupidity and idiocracy flailing from everything from Bad Ads to Real and Fake News, and lets not forget about the Comments that follow it all... everyone has an opinion and must vent it.  They should rename it HateBook.  I mean I follow mostly artist pages and it's becoming a big political/race driven mess. Someone puts a piece of art up and no one can just enjoy it without adding something negative, or political about it even if the art is innocuous. It doesn't really seem to matter what I remove as far as...   .....

The Hound ©2017 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith        I love, love drawing, doodling, or cartooning, but since I have aged my eyes are not what they used to be, thank God and Apple I have an iPad Pro! It allows me to doodle freely using an Apple Pencil at any size I want so I can see the details of my work, which in turn keeps me from straining my eyes.    I remember as a kid just spending the day doodling and letting my imagination run away.  I have never been educated to be an artist, I kind of picked it up from my artistic heroes, learning line weights, the thick and thins from Disney and MAD artists like Mort Drucker, or Don Martin.   I was never into hero comics that much until Image Comics made their debut with Spawn.   That brought hand inking to a whole new level for me.   Crisp clean think and thins are awesome when done right at the right places.   They really help sell dimension in a simple Bla...

Sleeping Giant - WIP Making progress on my new works! ©2017 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith     I'm thinking of cloning myself, but I don't think I want to share my toys.  Although I really need to get more stuff done.   I love my day to day job, my random art idea projects and my continual side projects, but I also really love sleep and eating, yea eating is good.   There are just not enough hours in the day.  I like being diversified and doing many different things, but it's a double edged sword.   When I was young child I had many different c reative projects then as well. From building a Death Star trench war scene on my small desk (with big Styrofoam pieces and my models) in my bedroom and making Star Wars models (X-Wing, Millennium Falcon and Tie Fighters) for the trench scene, costumes (Darth Vader was my first, wandered through the Miami Omni Mall in 1978 as a short 16-17 year old skinny football padded Darth Vader, I mus...

Grandpa meets Telior and his friend the Bee. Copyright 2017, Joseph A. Wraith   Ok, ok, it's been awhile since I have been on this blog, apologies, but I've been a bit busy with the Monsterlings™, work and hanging at the beach.  I'm very much a sucker for the wonderful Florida climate and love taking advantage of the beach when it is cool and beautiful out.  Living in Florida can definitely make you not want to do much, but hang out at the waters edge, at least until the Summer sets in and the temps rise.     So after a long over-due series of procrastination I decided to jump back on the Monsterlings and create some new background characters and some main story characters as well. Being a one man show, I usually design the characters without a lot of fanfare toward drawing them first, I like to just open up Zbrush and start playing with the ZSpheres and go from there. It's easier for me to start from there so I can see the character in 3d....

The Elders ©2017 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith     I believe in learning as I work, I do it all the time, it's how I get most things accomplished.  If I have never done it before than it automatically becomes a self-tutorial. I love working Zbrush, C4d and After Effects, along with Element 3d. These are mostly my production pipeline.   The above image was created in multiple programs.  The Alien Grey Skulls were created in Zbrush and painted using Zbrush's Polypaint.  Then I exported them and the texture and imported it into After Effects using Video Copilot's Element 3d.  The Skull was multiplied by 3 and 3d rocks were added and then textured. I then added a few image treatments to get it to look aged.  Then rendered it to Photoshop and created the antique edged photo frame. Probably took about 3-4 hours with the Zbrush Sculpt time. What did I learn? I learned that every time I work in Element 3d I love it more. It's extremely easy t...

  Telior - Monsterlings Budling King At Home with Telior. ©2017 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith Underneath Studios   So I'm locked up in work mode and haven't had a lot of time for my own creativity.  Which is kind of a bummer because I have so much I want to do and need to do for the Monsterling series, as well as the Grossters, I would also add the Outside Earth Series, but I had a bit of a unfortunate event happen to all my files on the Outside Earth series and I may have to rebuild it all from scratch. Not cool. So I'll put that one on a shelf for now with an idea of upgrading the series to something better and possibly pick it back up in another life.   Anyway, onward and upward... My next animation test for Monsterlings will be the Run and Jump scene of Telior running and jumping on to his Bee friend from his treehouse's steps.   This part will be difficult for me because I'm not at all sure how I'm going to do it yet.  I mean,...

Monsterlings -At Home with Telior 2017 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith     Hey, so I just completed another Monsterlings piece and I'm loving where this is going, but to be honest it's a little scary seeing all of this come together like it has.   Everyday I work on a new part of the project and I get closer to the goal of seeing it completed, but like with anything else, one step forward can be two steps back. The more I create the more I see that needs to be created, it can be exhausting.     I get sucked into creative mode trying to figure out all the parts for past, present and future, and when I try and look back on what's already done I notice I have very little completed, except for some small parts to a larger puzzle... there is literally hundreds of parts and pieces to this that still need creation and assembly, I am most definitely building a full on world within a world. I must have patience and take my time so each piece is as good, if ...

King Raze - The Monsterlings 2017 Copyright Joseph A. Wraith    My brain, my brain, my brain, it wont let me go to sleep.  It just keeps me awake giving me all of it's so-called plans and demands. It's always telling me what to do like I don't have a choice. "Hey you, get up I got an idea!" It says to me at 3:30 am.  Well I wont take it anymore!  I'm going to build a wall around it and it's going to be beautiful, and I'm going to make all my bad ideas pay for it!  I wont let anymore wild and crazy ideas in unless they are extremely vetted of course.  Especially at 3:30 am.  I just wont stand for it!   If only being a Hyper-creative were that easy.  It's a persistent problem that I actually enjoy, yet hate at the same time.  I enjoy the fact that creative ideas flow through my head all times, I just wish they wouldn't wake me up at 3:30 am gnawing and clawing at my skull for freedom. Ok, so I created a new Monsterling...

DNA Scan Copyright 2017, Joseph A. Wraith    I usually find myself being the most creative either late at night, or early first thing in the morning. All brain jets are firing and I'm wide awake at 5 am, UGH..., Ok, let's do something... but like what?   I figure if my brain is up I ought to be as well.   I really don't own an alarm clock, in fact I don't remember when I did if I actually ever needed it.   One of my superpowers is to be able to set my mind to wake up at a particular time everyday, or whenever I wanted to wake up that's when I would wake up.  Usually I wake up early to that mind time, sometimes too early and I would just have to get up and do something.  I never let time for creativity go to waste, I use it to either create something, or find reference for something to create.  I Like looking at art, or photography from different sites.  Sometimes it sparks an idea, or finalizes an idea I couldn't figure ...

Galaxy Ursus 2017 Copyright Joseph A. Wraith    I believe 2017 is going to be a very productive year.     A year where at first a lot will happen very fast and then things will slow a bit and mellow.    As a professional artist and illustrator I have combined my passions into a way of life and a way to support myself doing what I love to do everyday.   I'm not saying it isn't full of challenges, because it is.   Change is a big challenge and we all have to submit to change because if we don't we will go the way of the dinosaur.   Those who stand in the way of change often find themselves in the middle of a drowning flood, you either have to sink, or swim by then.   For me I'd rather sip my Pina Colada from an inner-tube floating down that river of change than trying to swim through the speeding rip currents in the other direction. As an artist I do my best not to get caught up in religion and politics, ...