Something different, more of a mechanical creature, it reminds me of the cover of a Fighting Fantasy novel I read as a child and I really feel a got a good hold on the form this time.

Another piece from my dark imagination, I wanted to produce something that looked quite digital but also with an alien type style.

This took a long time and for most of this painting I had no idea where I was going but I always strive to finish and I suspect I ended up learning a lot.

A completely made up piece using no reference, the sticker spray made life much easier to generate the snow texture.

A big experiment with the soft palette knife to try and bring some blending and sharp edges, in hindsight I think I should have added more texture and contrast.

My initial reference was an eagle but half way through I was a bit bored so I turned it into some kind of creature!

My idea here was to plonk some paint down and then use mainly the palette knife (the soft one) to move the paint around to achieve a smoothing effect. I really had a good go at pushing the lighting and trying to achieve a fiery lighting effect.

Started this painting with a little tracing and wanted to primarily use the airbrush to see if I could figure out a better way to apply gradations to the skin, in the end it doesn't quite look like my style as the edges and texture are not really there, but with all these experiments I ended up learning a lot.

I am starting to feel a little more comfortable with the oil brush, again I mixed the media, by applying an airbrush at times for subtlety and also the pencil which gives me a level of detail and roughness.

A straight forward painting from reference with fun with the scaly details and pushing the colour with the blend mode overlay. Unusually I started with a pencil sketch which was how I used to start my pastel paintings but using charcoal.

A falling creature which I call a Squirm, I felt that I am starting to get to grips with the lighting and applied a little more blending to this one.

Extensive use of the fur and hair brushes for this one and even though the sticker spray brush in ArtRage does save quite a lot of time thought still needs to go into the layering.

I had tried a Willow portrait before but couldn't quite get the likeness, so I thought I would have another go, this time the dark version. Simply mainly using an oil brush.

I wanted this creature to look sinister in a very creepy way and to almost have a spiders eyes, the fur brushes were extensively used here to achieve an animal effect. I couldn't quite work out what to do with the body so I just cut it off, which I'm not quite sure worked too well. You will also notice a common background that I often apply from the default ArtRage texture section.

I really struggled with this painting as I found the likeness really hard to come by and the facial colours quickly started to get quite muddy, I felt like I was caught between using the oil brush and the pastels.

I hybrid of robocop and the terminator I always enjoy a mash up and also a disfigured face. The detail on this was fun to improvise.

I thought I would have a bit of fun with this one, combining a Game Of Thrones type dragon. To get the Santa facial expression I actually took a picture of myself and worked off that reference.

This came from a suggestion by a work colleague, of course I started with a horse reference, and then just added on the horn, I was going for a more pastel ethereal look.

Just the oil brush on an almost full body portrait which is unusual for me and therefore I had to have the challenge of rendering clothes! Of course I am currently watching Gotham at the moment!

What would happen if an octopus played tennis? well this is the answer, as you can see I pulled quite a few references for this one.

I was inspired to start this in the style of some manga focussing on some big eyes and a flat colour to the face and then go from there. In effect I was trying out a different style. Again this turned out to be a more of an illustrative look, in hindsight I might have liked to have blurred more the background or at least done something a little more interesting with it.

A very straightforward portrait, although the pose with a hand fully visible was quite challenging. I focussed on quite a watered down oil brush for an oil glazing effect to build up the colour.

I was playing around with this painting at the start, I knew I wanted to start off with something cute, so I focussed on the eyes and then played around until I felt an idea coming through, a cool dude of an alien idea then started to form and I just went with it, very much focussing on an illustrative look again.

A landscape using mainly the oil brush!, I had fun with this one balancing the tones and contrast and just plain making things up, I think I was channelling Bob Ross a little on this one.