Fairy Grove

I wanted to create a dwarf for my next painting.  But I needed a setting.  When I thought of adding a fairy to the image it seeming like a fun idea to have the dwarf playfully blowing a smoke ring at it.  I figured that the dwarfs might find the fairies to be annoying.

Even though the fairy is small I wanted to make sure you could see that she is a beautiful woman.  For that reason I got in close to the dwarf's face.  I also liked the idea as it would let me add a lot of detail to the dwarf's worn, wrinkled skin and dry, scraggly hair.

Once I had decided to include a fairy it made more sense to me to have the location be outside.  By having another group by a fire in the distance I only had to hint at the idea of a fire on the dwarf in close-up by adding warm light on him too.

I used a fantastic photo taken by Marcus Ranum of a model I thought had the perfect pose for the fairy: LINK

I used other various references online to guide me in creating the dwarf, the beer suds, the mug, the pipe and the smoke ring.

Chosen for Expose 11

I'm very honored to have my digital painting The Hunt chosen to be in Expose 11.  

You can find the publishers website HERE

Morning Hunt

I had a bit of a change of heart with what I've been doing lately.  In my attempt to improve as a digital artist I've mainly been painting images of science fiction and fantasy stories that I've had in my head for years.  In doing so I feel that the images are more like single frames from those movies.  But recently I've been asked to work on some card art for Fantasy Flight Games.  While working on the card art I realized that this is the direction I should take.  So in that vein I've decided to push myself to improve by studying the artwork done for the many properties of Wizards of the Coast.

This is the first image I've done with that in mind.

Also this is the first image I've painted with my new Medium Wacom Intous 5 touch and I love it!  My Small Intous 3 had developed a few divots on its surface so it was time for an upgrade.  Thank you tax refund.

When I started thinking about creating this painting it was very different from the painting you see.  It was in looking for reference on the many stock images of DeviantART that I ran across an image I figured would be much better than the one I had in mind.

You can see the image I use for reference here: LINK

YOU CAN BUY THIS PRINT HERE

LINK

Chance Meeting

Wow this was not at all what I had set out to do. I had a very different idea with some futuristic hover cars to push myself to do vehicles, something I have not done much of. Then I wanted to see if I could make it look like it was raining to challenge myself and before you know it, as I began to add the people, I found myself adding Dr. Who. I figured it was a cool place to find him roaming around. Then as I painted the girl I thought maybe she had once been his companion and by complete chance found herself running into him again so I did my best to make her look as though she is beginning to smile with tearing eyes.

I just wanted to do something scifi and with the new season of Dr. Who starting up soon I thought it would be fun to paint him. Also having him facing away from the view, I thought, would make him more mysterious. I wanted to paint Tom Baker's version as the iconic scarf would be a dead giveaway, plus he was the one I grew up with when I was in high school. Fun, fun, fun. I really enjoyed painting this but it ended up being one of my many layered images. I think I ended up using just over 200 layers on this. That was the not so fun part. It can be annoying sifting through all those layers so I generally don't like to do it anymore.

Prints of Jon Hrubesch's Art

I now have a place to sell prints of my artwork.  

I currently have five images available but will add to the list in time.  

If there are any particular images you would like to have me add to the list

 let me know in the comments section 

or you can email me HERE

Link to the prints page HERE

Thanks for your support!

Last Stand

This is another illustration for the first chapter of The Wizards of Pangea.  The female warrior is Aurora, the newly appointed Queen of Ambergale.  I believe I have only one maybe two more images that I would like to paint for the first chapter.  At this rate I think it will take twenty years to finish all the illustrations I would like to do.  I'm thinking I will never really get them all done but I'm having fun trying.

If you're interested, the book can be purchased here: LINK

I have the new cover showing on the Lulu page but it will take sometime for it to change on Amazon and the ibook store and all the other sites on the interwebs.

Ambush

Another illustration for chapter 1 of The Wizards of Pangea. As with all of these illustrations I had to be careful to get the details right. This one in particular because of the number of dragons. I nearly forgot to add the thresher dragon at the lead of the group. Triton, the main character, is on the thresher dragon just above the tree at the right of the image. The three gossamer dragons in the center are carrying the newly appointed Queen of Ambergale (the one with the red flag) and her entourage (the two just behind the queen). The other bat-like things are the gorgonon dragons with demon riders looking to kill the queen.

This was a tricky image to create because of the perspective. I hope it got it right. I had to make a few corrections near the end to fix the perspective of the canyons.

If you are interested, you can buy the book here: LINK

I've posted the new cover there, but the print and ibook versions will take some time to be updated so you may find that it still has the old image on it.