To the followers

So it seems the time using blogspot is now over! I have moved on, and my new website is over at ricardobessa.com, as usual, so please update your bookmarks/feeds! Hopefully there's a lot of good stuff to come. I tried to make this new website something I'm really proud of, and I definitely feel like I have something I really like in my hands now.

Here's to new stages!

XIX - The Sun

XIX - The Sun

My contribution for Light Grey Art Lab’s Tarot exhibition. I am so happy to be part of this - each one of the 78 cards was randomly assigned to one of 78 picked artists, and I can't wait to see this thing happening. I got card 19, The Sun (which is totally a major arcana, fyi - sounds rad).

Tarot, Mystics and the Occult exhibition
Opening October 19th
Reception On October 26th
Light Grey Art Lab
118 26th St. Suite 101
Minneapolis MN, 55404

Actual decks (aw yeah) can be pre-ordered here. On the exhibition bigger prints of each individual piece will also be on sale. All in all - it was worth drawing three hundred sunflowers over this.

This is the version of the card I based mine on.

This post has images.

Some random tidbits from recent times! 

1. Cael - private commission

2. Self-initiated quickie for a brief - "god randomizer". Tumblr, what can I say.

3. Initial idea for my piece for the Tarot, Mystics and the Occult exhibition.

 

Communitree

When I was approached to participate in the 6 Seasons and a Movie art show, I felt super honoured (super  is the technical term for it, yes). From the likes of Claire Hummel to Polly Guo and Sam Spratt, these people have been kicking ass for longer than I've been sitting on mine. And it was going to happen in LA! I've never even been anywhere but Europe. So it was a definite yes.

I hadn't actually watched NBC's Community before, so that set me back a bit - fortunately, I turned out to like it. At first I was going for the usual "turn ensemble cast into something nerdy" approach (it's so much fun!), but then this happened and I just went with it. You can always count me in to make something unfunny.

Anyway, of course this is enough to convince anyone to go and see it next month - have the address:

Six Seasons and a Movie art show

June 23-24 | Monk Space gallery

4414 West 2nd Street Los Angeles, CA 90004

Generally speaking

So my Florence + The Machine vinyl cover really did get picked for the Secret 7" show! It was supposed to be a secret, but this happened in April and apparently my cover was sold right away during the weekend, because it wasn't available for the eBay auction afterwards.

Oh, charity.

In more recent news, I attended Kapow! Comic Con last weekend and it was great. I had the chance to meet Will Dennis from DC / Vertigo for a portfolio review, and I'm still not sure how that happened because there were four companies there, and I got picked precisely by the one I like the most. Insane.

To get myself psyched up in the days leading up to the convention, I sketched some super heroes. Because I am that nerdy. This is one of my favourites.

I am currently working on other things, but those will come later.

Katniss

Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. Day 11 of Daily Draw February 2012. 

My first digital sketch in a long time and one I'm particularly fond of.

Daily Draw February 2012

Day 24 - Feral Children II

Daily Draw February is an event that happened for the second time this year, courtesy of the Satellite Soda forums. There's not much to it: you draw something new daily, and post it daily. 

I only heard about it at the last minute and decided to participate - and no one was more surprised than me that I actually managed to keep it up and didn't miss any day! It feels really good as an accomplishment considering my (non-drawing related) work schedule lately. I'm glad it's over so I don't have worry about scanning and posting every single day, but I'll definitely do it again in years to come.

My thread can be seen here. Some days were good, some days were crap, but they are all there.

Day 16. We have pretty big iMacs at work.

Florence & the Machine - The Ghost

Oh boy! It's been a while. I really should get back on the horse on this whole being a professional thing. My bad.

I have actually been pretty productive since the last update, but I've been posting everything to my other channels (Deviantart and particularly Tumblr).

Let's start this off with this Florence & the Machine illustration I did for a competition over at TalentHouse.

The Ghost (2012)

It was for a vinyl cover - pretty exciting stuff.

More to come!

Beasts

This illustration was done for a Secret Santa exchange at tumblr, for etherelle. She likes the video game Shadow of the Colossus and so do I, so it was win-win.

In other news, my work have been popping up in the nicest places, such as the Juxtapoz and notcot and places where I can't even understand the language. So thanks to whoever it is that's tipping people off - I swear I'm not paying anyone.

I have some more stuff to post but I'm not sure if I can/should, so for now enjoy your colossus. Happy holidays, everyone!

Ever After - Collected Posts

A collected post with all the illustrations from Ever After. The response to this project has been amazing, way more than I could have anticipated. So because it IS supposed to be a cohesive book, even if the worlds and characters are different and separate, I thought I would do this last thing - a video where you can see the actual object. Many thanks to my friend Grace Yu, for holding the book AND lending me her camera.

Below, the introduction to the project and twelve illustrations. Just click each one to go the the respective post, for the full text and preliminary sketches - and from there you can also navigate to the previous and next page. And don't forget, many of these can be purchased as prints from my Society6 shop.

It's been fun!

Introduction (there's a poem!)

Prints!

We all know I love announcing stuff with a zany loopsided screen capture. So anyway, I have recently started selling prints at Society6, and here's where you can find them. Might as well put it in here while I don't make a button to put up there.

Proper updates will follow soon, hopefully - but for now, some doodles.

Sketches say the darndest things.

The Kwimbles

So, I pitched this for a position as a concept artist for an educational video games. Didn't have much time to make them as finished as I would have liked to, but oh well. Here's a character sheet of sorts, a customization screen and a gameplay screen.

It ended up not being picked, but I quite like these little guys now. I decided to call them kwimbles - I don't know why, I just randomly thought of the name and will probably regret it in the morning, but that's how you know you're living in the fast lane.

Ever After - Intermission

Intermission

Twenty-two years, seven months and four days would pass before he would be able to feel her again.

And so it ends. The twelfth and last illustration of my Ever After project, and apparently the least clear one since people never know how to interpret it. I have my own version of the story and there's a certain way I wish people would see it, but hey! Ever After is all about interpretation, and if people want to go and think things, I'm totally up for that.

As usual, a couple of sketches. This was one of those where I had an idea, but I didn't know how to tackle it visually, so I had a bit of a hard time with getting across what I wanted in the early versions.

Previous page - Anabelle, the Human

 

And there you have it.

FFIX - Alexandria under attack

Alexandria under attack

An entry for Tantalus Review Magazine, a Final Fantasy IX zine being put together by Zac Gorman. Might or might not get picked, but I had a lot of fun doing something for one of my favourite videogames.

onedotzero_cascade 2011

So last week was very intense - I was one of 40 graduates selected to participate in the onedotzero_cascade workshop. I had the chance to meet an amazing group of very talented people, create a project with them and (as if this wasn't enough), we had lots of talks and workshops by the likes of Mother Agency, kin Design, The Guardian Digital team and many others. And later on, we're actually presenting said project during the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival, at the BFI.

That should be fun.

Make sure you also check out the awesome talent that was part of this years group. Crazy stuff. I felt tiny.

Photo by Alex Nevill.