Well, I said I’d have more art ready in the coming week. Turns out, I had more art ready 36 hours after that last post. I’ve been cranking out drawings over the past few days and given my satisfaction with how most of them have turned out, I may move up my schedule and start production on the comic by mid-week. I wanted to crank out several of these one-off images for a few reasons: first, it’s great practice. Even though I’m not drawing my upcoming comic in a traditional “superhero” style, superheroes make for great anatomy study because of their tight costumes and ridiculous bodies. Second, when I’m done with this “practice”, I’m going to go into full-blown production mode for the next few months. That means I won’t be drawing any con-related drawings to prepare for the summer convention season. May as well get them out of the way now and be done with it. If I find time to draw a few more in the next couple of months, good on me.
So, here you go. A Black Widow (somewhat in the vein of the Scarlett Johannson with huge curly hair), a Gambit (never been much of a fan of the Cajun creepster but his coat makes for a great fabric study), and Mister Miracle, a mostly ignored character in the DCU and a personal favorite of mine for years (mostly due to his ridiculously-colored costume). Hopefully I’ll have a new set of these ready for mid-week. Stay tuned.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here but I’ve been busy working on a new project that I will start production on in the next 2-3 weeks (and release sometime in late spring). To get ready for this new comic, I’ve been pouring a lot of time and effort into shoring up some weak spots in my drawing and writing; reading a lot of books, studying a lot of art, and drilling myself on some of the basics. I spent a week doing nothing but anatomy studies, then a few days on reading up on composition, and then a few days of reading about vehicles and environment drawing. This will continue for a another ten days or so and then I’ll start work on the comic itself, which has now been in pre-production for close to six months. I’m working as hard as I can to make the new comic the best I possibly can… After falling into several pitfalls with Variables, I am doing my best to be as prepared as possible for this new project.
Now that I’ve spent a bunch of time working out some of the kinks, it’s time to start playing around with different styles to see what I like best when I go through the entire process of inking and coloring. Here are a few examples of recent work: the Mary Marvel and Green Arrow pics were earlier attempts at trying out new ideas while the Wonder Woman is something I finished just last night. I’m going to spend about a week doing a bunch of these one-off drawings to refine the style and get back into the swing of producing finished art. All of this work was done on bristol board with Copic Multiliners for ink and Copic Sketch markers for color. Expect to see more of these in the coming week.
I haven’t posted here in awhile and forgot about these posters until I had to print them last week for the CONvergence convention in Bloomington, MN last week. Unlike last year where I did one poster for the entire weekend, this year I took the opportunity to use Space Lounge’s different themes to create a set of posters. Overall, I like the designs and had a good time putting together the posters. I hope you like them as much as I do.
PS. In case you couldn’t tell, this theme was all about women in sci-fi.
Here is the completed version of my White Phoenix drawing. You can see the ink-only version here.
I colored most of the inks on the Phoenix, a trick I don’t use that often. It works well for entities that are made of fire, energy, water, etc. Since I don’t draw that sort of thing often, I don’t get to use the trick much.
I don’t have much to say about this drawing. I really like it and think it turned out well.
I don’t often post just my inks but I thought it would be interesting to do it for this piece. I used a brush on about half of this drawing, then switched to my standard #102 quill. After that, I went nuts and literally threw ink at the page. It looks pretty cool (to me, at least) and I thought the linework was worth posting for others to see. I’m going to color it digitally and post the finished piece in the next day or two (whenever I finish it).
Most importantly, I think I pretty much nailed the anatomy of Jean Grey in this image. I used a photo reference to get the torso correct and then moved around a few of the other pieces to better suit the pose. Overall, it’s better (and more accurate) than most of the other pieces I’ve done lately and I’m excited to keep plugging away at fixing some of the problems I’ve been having with my drawings.
I usually don’t draw stuff this… cheesecake-y.
But recently, I’ve been fighting through issues with drawing anatomy, particularly female anatomy. I’ve been pouring through books and reference photos and decided that instead of filling up a few pages of a sketchbook with junk sketches, I could try to use this time to draw some things I normally don’t draw… Namely, half-naked women and that sort of thing.
Who better to draw in a situation like this than the original X-Tramp herself, Emma Frost? Emma is a great character and one of the most popular pin-up characters in comics. As per my usual, I toned down breast size and tried to actually draw the corset as it would fit a human being as opposed to a rail-thin woman with two cantaloupes strapped to her chest.
Overall, I think it works okay. I have a few issues with the piece but this is meant to be more of a learning process than a perfect drawing. Expect to see more anatomy studies like this in the near future. I’m going to spend at least a week working through some of the problems I’ve been having lately. Next up, I’m itching to draw Phoenix…
Here’s another piece I tossed together in an hour or two for my upcoming appearance at SpringCon. It’s Daredevil, in his classic yellow costume. I still don’t understand why this costume only lasted a handful of issues in the comic. It’s my favorite. That’s not a knock on the red costume, but I’d like to see DD in this outfit a little more often.
With SpringCon this weekend and The Avengers movie breaking records left and right, I figured I should have at least one or two pieces featuring the crew in my portfolio. I had drawn a pic of the Hulk last week so he was off the table. I did a quick Cap painting earlier in the week so that was old hat. I’ve drawn Iron Man quite a bit lately. That left Thor and the Black Widow. I butchered a Widow piece and decided to give Thor a whirl.
Then I realized that I hadn’t drawn Thor in well over 20 years. I’m not a Thor fan, never have been. The old Walt Simonson Thor stuff was great but that was kinda before my time and I’ve only read bits and pieces of it. I now realize that Thor is kind of a pain in the ass to draw. He has a lot of stuff going on. Lots of circles, armor, cape, and hair flowing all over the place. Now I know and knowing is half the battle. Or at least that’s what was drilled into my head by several badly animated characters during my formative years in the 80s.
As I prepare for SpringCon this weekend, I need to get warmed up to drawing mainstream superheroes and I need to draw them quickly. So here is one of the better examples I’ve done in the past few days. It’s a Nightcrawler drawing that took close to 90 minutes to finish. Nightcrawler has always been one of my favorite comic characters and is definitely my favorite X-Man. The piece was inked with Copic Multiliners and colored with Prismacolors.
After I did the Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy piece a month or two ago, I said I wanted to turn it into a set of drawings. Despite me recently seeing The Avengers and naturally wanting to do something with The Hulk in it, I decided that I should finish this piece first because I find the concept amusing. For those of you who aren’t comic fans, Reed and Doom are two of the smartest men on the planet. They also happen to be life-long rivals. It only makes sense that at some point, they sat down and played chess against one another.
