This is the finalized colors… it could be better but I’m trying to speed up and work as quickly as possible. As it is, this page took about ten hours to color. Now to add words…
Sequential Art – base colors
19 Oct
Here is the same drawing with the flat colors added. There is no shading and very few gradients at this point. It’s taking far longer than I anticipated, as I have about six hours into coloring this page already and still have another 3-4 hours to go on highlights, shadows, and effects. Ugh.
Sequential Art
17 Oct
Here’s my first attempt to draw and ink a full page of sequential art in about 12 years. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it but still see more flaws than I care to count. On to the next page!
The Lamest Avenger – Hawkeye
13 Oct
Well, that’s not really fair. Spider-Woman is lamer, as is Wonder Man, whose name is so wretched that most other Avengers call him Simon. Anyway, a little forum was asking for a Hawkeye redesign and everyone else was modernizing him so I thought I’d go more Roman archer with the character. After all, he’s predominantly purple and wears a loincloth. It’s not as if anything I did was going to dishonor the heritage of the character.
Did I mention the character has a giant “H” emblazoned on his forehead? Jesus. Terrible.
Channeling Bill Watterson
05 Oct
Rachel gave me the idea of drawing a little girl with a cape and wooden sword and I thought it sounded like fun. The girl ended up sans cape but instead received a viking helmet treatment. As I was drawing this, I was chuckling because it reminded me a bit of some of Watterson’s old Calvin & Hobbes’ drawings that were interspersed in the trade collections of his work. I have an undying love of all things Watterson so this drawing has made me happier than almost any other I’ve completed in recent memory.
An alternate take on Connie
04 Oct
I wanted to draw something a little steampunk-y and I also wanted to take a stab at Connie from CONvergence so I thought I’d do both at the same time. I love the aesthetic of steampunk but generally, despise the genre because it’s nonsensical and is utterly ridiculous by any line of reasoning (really, steam-powered robots and spacecraft?). So, my take is a little more conventional and C-3P0-esque. It was a fun little exercise because I didn’t really think about her look beforehand. I quickly drew Connie in her regular guise and then steampunked (that sounds rather kinky and/or disgusting, depending on my mood) a design over the top of the sketch. Except her arms. I totally winged that crap from nothing.
Color guard with a pike-thing
01 Oct
Since I haven’t had a ton of time to do any real drawings lately, I’ve tried to rough out a few sketches over lunch. Today, I just decided to draw a cliched shirtless warrior guy doing something dynamic that would surely get him killed in real life if he managed to avoid tripping over his ribbon-things before bloody death was dealt to him. This drawing was quicker than most, as I wanted to see how quickly I could get a somewhat detailed character on paper. I spent a little over 20 minutes on this and the anatomy is alright but there are niggling errors here and there that I shouldn’t be making at this point. Oh well, on to the next sketch…
Supergirl being, well, super
28 Sep
I wanted to mix up my style a bit and add a few elements of manga to the piece mixed with American comic art. I thought it’d be challenging to REALLY skew the perspective while I was at it. The most difficult part was definitely her left shoulder/armit, which didn’t turn out correctly but considering I only gave myself one lunch period to finish this and did not allow the use of any references, I’m merely glad it didn’t turn into a giant mess, which was a distinct possibility.
Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever drawn Supergirl before. Probably because she’s, you know, pretty fucking lame.
Distressed man loses contact lens in alley
22 Sep
I’ve been forcing myself to draw more environments lately and this was the first one I sat down and inked on bristol. It’s an idea for a cover I’ve been bouncing around but I’m not sure if it will amount to anything final. Overall, it was a nice experiment to try heavy lighting in a set environment (which will be more visible once it’s colored) and a lot of solid blacks. It will be a bitch to color, though. It will probably take me a few days to work up the endurance to start on it.
Coloring in Photoshop
20 Sep
I’ve been reading up on modern coloring techniques in Photoshop and decided to try some of them out. I achieved pretty mixed results but given my infrequent use of my Wacom tablet and attempts to use newer techniques, that’s not really a surprise. I’m mostly excited to move on to the next project at this point. I’ve run my course with this piece, though I may print it on a shirt down the road for kicks.