Here’s another look at the A Distant Soil fundraiser print, almost finished. I am so sorry this took so long. Aside from screwing up the original digital file, I have had such a heavy work and tour load getting all the packing material that finding time to ship was rough. I have everything I need now and people should have their prints in time for Christmas. I made sure to save the file at different stages in case I had another serious goof. I could just find an earlier version of the file and fix it.

The cover from the original edition of the third volume of A DISTANT SOIL. This was painted in Genesis Oils, which is not really oil, but works like it. It dries on demand at 250 degrees, which is a delight for illustrators. I quite like using it, but don’t get much chance to these days. This was one of the first attempts to work in this medium and it’s a little awkward, but I like the color. It did not print well at all, and it looks terrible on the book, but nice online. I think the printer actually used a low res scan instead of the one they were…

An unusual mixed media cover, in handmade paper, gold leaf, pencil and digital. One of my favorites, I think it’s really unusual.

Or more like almost new…I did a series of prints of highly rendered pencil drawings over 2 decades ago. Some of them were well done, and some of them were kind of awkward. While I liked the original drawing (not too bad especially considering it is older work,) Jason’s face was way off model. I’ve been reluctant to show the work again because of it, and don’t think I’ve shown it since I did it. I tweaked it in Photoshop, and am very happy with the result. I’ll use as an incentive print, and here is the coloring in progress. Below, the original drawing. As you can see, Jason’s face…

Mixed media collage. First off, Allan Harvey, the brain and brawn behind the restoration of A DISTANT SOIL, takes his art full time starting end of this year. Which means time to work on A DISTANT SOIL. Volumes III and IV will be a lot less labor than previous volumes, as we have almost all of the original art. A couple of setbacks, however. We pleaded with fans to loan us art back for the restoration of the books, but in a few cases, some fans opted to send us scans of the art. Turns out some of the scans are unusable. A lot of people with home scanners simply…

I haven’t done many variant covers for A DISTANT SOIL, but this is one of them, for issue 25. Watercolor. This was photographed by a pro before I could scan my own art, so the colors are a tad off. Hard to believe it, but this was painted in 1998.

These were used in a backup section in the A DISTANT SOIL comics with character portraits and info about the members of the Hierarchy. I am afraid some of the scans of the rest of these drawings seem to be missing, but these were shot from the originals.

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,…

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…

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.