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Seren
It took a long time for me to get the hang of digital painting, and I still have a lot to learn. This portrait of Seren is one of the first digital paintings I did. It dates to 2009. This is all on one layer because I still didn’t get the hang of layers back then. I had a digital art job published in “Tori Amos: Comic Book Tattoo” in 2008, but carving out time to practice was rough, since I was usually so busy with my assignments I could go months without making any computer art. I’d forget everything I’d already learned. I did the “Tori” job in layers,…
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Etan and Child
The website is a little funky now as it is undergoing some repairs. It should be back to normal in a day or so. UPDATE: FIXED. www.colleendoran.com still wonky, give us another day or so. This is the only painting I did of Seren’s predecessor Etan. It’s a watercolor, and this was scanned from the original. It’s one of my favorite A DISTANT SOIL covers. One of my biggest influences was the German artist Sulamith Wulfing, and I think this piece shows a good deal of that. I would love to get back to doing some watercolors one of these days, I really enjoy them. But so many of my…
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Galahad Meets Jeff Smith’s The Red Dragon from BONE
8-23-16 WEBSITE IS UNDERGOING SITE MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR, PLEASE PARDON OUR APPEARANCE. The Red Dragon is used with permission. The original watercolor art was sold ages ago, though I tried to buy it back, unsuccessfully. This was scanned from a photocopy, though a pretty good one. I realized I’ve spent the better part of a year posting nothing but pinups and no new story. Image doesn’t want me to post story before it goes in the book, understandably, and I need to build more inventory before we can resume print publishing. I keep thinking I’ll run out of art any day now, but I have so much of it, I…
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BAST
This was originally done for a set of trading cards, and I think I scanned this from the original. It’s watercolor. I haven’t posted this in ages, I almost forgot about it! Sorry to have not updated these last few days, I’ve been out of town. Had the most financially successful convention of my entire career at Tampa Bay Comic Con. Was so gratified by the response to my work, but it was an incredibly busy show. While I usually have time to get some drawing and writing done, I got blasted by a cold bug, which I must have picked up before I even arrived at the show, as…
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Kovar and Sere
This was the original cover art to A DISTANT SOIL #12. It is watercolor and colored pencil. It’s funny to think of Sere wearing these spangly, pastel outfits, it’s not something that’s easy to convey in the black and white art of the book. I remember some people being surprised to find out D’mer was a redhead when he finally got a decent color feature on the book. I also envision Sere, being a sadist, falling in a kind of love with anyone she wants to destroy. Hence the tangled hearts.
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BOOKMARKS
These are hand drawn bookmarks of Niniri, Bast, Galahad and Kovar. I love doing these, they are a lot of fun. Also, this gives me a chance to post an important message! YAY!
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BAST by Nick Cardy
Legendary comic artist Nick Cardy, co-creator of The Teen Titans, did this wonderful pencil drawing of Bast for a collection of A DISTANT SOIL pinups, and you can imagine how excited I was! Not only was he one of my favorite artists growing up, he was one of the kindest, most gentlemanly men in comics. It is a highlight of my career to have had him as a friend. While I do have the original negatives for this in storage, this is scanned from a copy, and isn’t as clear as it should be. I am afraid to go digging through my archives to pull out the negatives. They are…
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Rieken and D’mer
As most of you know, I did an incentive fundraiser on the site, with several drawings submitted as samples for a print as a gift to people who donated. I totally screwed up the digital file and had to redo the whole piece. This is very annoying. I just had to find time to get around to it again. Sorry it took so long. A blessing in disguise, because between the time I started and the time I got around to doing it again, my digital painting has improved guite a bit. I decided to go ahead and fix some drawing things I wasn’t happy with also, so here is…
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Aeren
Aeren in the snow. Fairly early piece, pen and ink, with digital tones added later. If you’re reading this as new pinup pages upload once a week, remember, story pages are being added 10 times a week. Use the drop down menu to find THE GATHERING chapter to read from the beginning.
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Liana Asleep
I tried coloring this once, but it didn’t turn out very well. Now that I have more digital chops, I could give this another go. Or maybe I should just move on to new things instead? Anyway, the original is in pencil.
