I am happy to announce that “Welcome to Monster Isle” is now online in digital form through a very innovative and exciting website, astorybeforebed.com, which has partnered with my publisher, Immedium, Inc.

astorybeforebed.com allows anyone with a webcam to record themselves reading a book from their online library, page by page. The user can then purchase their reading of the book and share the link with friends, family, or whoever. Like a picture-in-picture feature on television, the recipient can then see the video of you reading the book, along with the actual book on screen. Check out the site and view the demo. It is pretty cool!

The website also offers discounts to men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces.

For a direct link to the Monster Isle book, click here.

For the past few months, in between various other jobs, I’ve been working on a series of 12 animal illustrations for Ferdy Christant , a developer that is creating a very unique social networking site for animal enthusiasts (I know I’m over-simplifying it) called Jungle Dragon. A while back, I created the lizard icon/mascot for the site. The illustrations will be used in various ways throughout the site, as well as marketing materials in the lead up to the site launch date. Well, I finally completed the final illustration and wanted to share all of them with you.

Each of the illustrations was completed entirely in Adobe Photoshop CS4 without any preliminary sketches thanks to Ferdy giving me free reign. I used various reference images for the creatures and started with a blank canvas using Photoshop’s pen, marque, shape and brush tools. Each image took from 4 to 6 hours to complete.

Advanced Photoshop magazine 63 is now available. Visit the official website to learn more about what’s in this issue. I have a five page tutorial that walks through some of the steps needed to create the above Yeti image. I talk about my technique and which Photoshop tools I use to create my artwork.

The idea for the Yeti artwork came straight from Editor, Julie Easton and Senior Staff Writer, Adam Smith. It was a very tight deadline so I just rolled with their original concept of a Yeti (Abominable Snowman) in a wintery scene, Northern Lights in the sky and some other element/s in the background. Julie had suggested possibly a cabin or another creature looming in the distance, but given the time frame, I had to keep it simple. So I added a snowman! Go buy a copy of the magazine and see how the image was made.

I’ve done two previous tutorials, issue 36 and issue 41, for Advanced Photoshop magazine that also go into my Photoshop technique.

Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art 16 is now available. I have a piece of art in the book entitled “Run, Run, Run.” The book, published by Underwood Books and edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner, is the biggest yet with 264 pages of amazing fantasy art by hundreds of talented artists, such as Brom, Jon Foster, James Gurney, Adam Hughes, Jason Chan and many, many more. You can buy a copy of the book at Amazon here. The official Spectrum website is here.

Hey everyone,

A buddy of mine has a chance to have his children’s book, JUMP!, put into boxes of Cheerios in 2010 and needs our help to cast votes for him. Let’s do what we can to help make sure fans of Cheerios become fans of Scott! You can vote once per day and there are only a few days left. The top five books will get into Cheerios boxes.

Most of you that enjoy my work will no doubt be aware of Scott’s work. We both cut our teeth in the fantasy industry working on Magic, D&D, etc.

Vote for Scott’s book here.

Here are two more animal illustrations for Ferdy over at Jungle Dragon. Enjoy! I have about five more illustrations to complete, including a bull frog and giant tortoise.