Wizard & Glass Process #6

Still making incremental progress on this one - fixed the sleeve and finished most of the torso. Getting the shirt to look like suede without using texture overlay or fancy brushes is kind of tricky. I'm going to try to overlay some blotches of color to age it and make it look less monochrome:

Hulk Smash Puny Pixels!

I was at the Wizard World Chicago comic book convention yesterday and was talking with the friends I was with about drawing comics 100% digitally. Just for fun, I threw together this Hulk sketch today start to finish in Photoshop. The inking is not as smooth as real brush work, but I think with some practice and modifications to my style it can work. The hardest part was sketching in the initial layout. There's something about looking at a drawing on paper that gives you a better perspective on design and proportion that you lose going digital (for me anyway).

It definitely went a lot faster than doing it traditionally, but I don't know if the drop in quality offsets that:

Wizard & Glass Process #5

Not a lot of progress since last time - just working my way down the torso. The chest is done, but there's still a lot of work to do on the shirt. That right sleeve is going to be reworked since the wrinkles aren't working for me:

Wizard & Glass Process #4

After having a lot of problems with my home PC I ended up getting a laptop, which I've finally got setup for doing artwork on. Since I hadn't worked on this Roland piece in a while I decided to take the opportunity to redo what I had done on the character. He wasn't matching my mental picture of him and I wasn't really working on him in a smart way. First thing I did was to rough in some local color and very simple lighting to define volume:


Once I had that in, I went ahead and started working on the head, which is what really bugged me about the previous version:


I'm a lot happier with that - it's hard to avoid Clint Eastwood-isms in portraying Roland, especially since Stephen King describes him as looking like Eastwood, but I wanted a face that matches the voice I hear when I read the books. He's far from perfect, but better than where I was before.

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, this is all done in Photoshop.

Fox Noir

This month the Siskel Film center in Chicago is running newly restored prints of many of the film noir classics from the Fox library. I saw Night and the City last weekend and it was great to see it on the big screen. The movie is about a down and out hustler in London trying to make one last grab for the brass ring by horning in on the wrestling promotion racket.

Richard Widmark was great, as usual, playing the frantic loser who won't face the fact that he'll never be a big shot, but the real highlight of the movie for me was the grudge match between the old master wrestler, Gregorius and the reigning king of the ring, The Strangler. Gregorius was played by Stanislaus Zbyszko, a real old time wrestler who was 71 when the movie was filmed. The scene was very visceral, filmed in what felt like real time with tight camera shots, long cuts and no music or sound effects.

It was a great film overall. I love the way that old movies were able to throw in some humor without losing the sense of peril or emotional intesity.

Hopefully, I can go and see some of the other movies before month is out.

King of the Sea

Quick sketch after a water cooler discussion on who would win in a fight - Aquaman or Sub-Mariner:


'Nuff said.

Memorial Day Delay

I meant to post this for Memorial Day weekend, but my home computer was on the fritz again:

Go Speed Racer, Go!

I drew this today for a raffle at my wife's school this week:

I cut a lot of corners to get it done on time, but it came out alright.

Wizard & Glass Process #3

Started roughing in Roland today:

Wizard & Glass Process #2

Getting back into the swing of things today - I managed to finish the background for the image I started last week. Here it is with the sketch lines taken out:


I also did some research for Roland's outfit and overall look. I'm resisting the obvious urge to make him look like Clint Eastwood. Facially, I think Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West is a better match - he's got those blue "bombardier's eyes".

Time Out

I'll be out of town for some family related matters for the rest of the week. Enjoy the work of some artists far better than I am in the mean time:

http://jacksonpublick.livejournal.com/

http://ronniedelcarmen.com/

http://billpresing.blogspot.com/

http://www.devilpig.com/index.html

http://kierondwyer.com/

http://rocketfiction.blogspot.com/

http://surebeatsworking.blogspot.com/

http://corenthal.blogspot.com/

http://www.cameron-stewart.com/

That'll keep you busy for a while.

Wizard & Glass Process #1

I'm reading the 4th book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series now, so I have a lot of imagery from the books in my head. Yesterday, at lunch, I started messing around in Photoshop on an image of Roland, the main character, with the Dark Tower in the background.

First, just a loose sketch to lay everything out:



By the end of lunch today I had quite a bit of the background laid in. I'm just working my way from back to front on this, trying to balance things as I go:

It's About Damn Time

I finally had a chance to finish the last page to the little story I started a long while back. It was frustrating because the drawings took no time at all, it was just a matter of finding time to draw them. Changing jobs, getting a new puppy and a million other little things got in the way.

Also, since I was just making the story up as I went along I didn't have any real burn to get back to it. I'm sure it reads very disjointedly (is that a word? I don't think so. "Blog" isn't a real word either, but here we are.)







Thanks for sticking around.

Pegged

Some cartoony studies based on Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz:

Indiana Who?

Some pulp type stuff that I never bothered to post before:

Process #4

Here's the final version of my Charlton Heston sketch:


I laid the wash down pretty loosely - I didn't want this to feel stiff as a lot of photo referenced drawings tend to feel. The paper got too wet when I was putting in the background so it's kind of messed up. That's what I get for doing this on a piece of scrap paper.

Oh well, it was a fun change of pace.

The Mars Volta

I saw The Mars Volta in concert last night with my friend Jack:


I felt like an old fart, but having grown up on Yes, King Crimson and Genesis it's good to see the kids don't all listen to top 40 dreck.

FYI - Charlton Heston needs a few more washes of ink, but should be done tomorrow.

Process #3

Got a chance to finish off the inks tonight:
Since I'm going to lay in some ink wash, I left a lot of medium & darker values undefined in the inks, especially towards the bottom of the figure. We'll see how it goes this weekend.

Process #2

Not quite done with the inks tonight, but it's getting there:


I don't ink with a brush very much anymore, so I'm feeling my way through this one. I had hoped I'd pull off some crazy new way of doing things as a result, but I'm not confident enough to let that happen. As usual, I've fallen back onto the same old crutches I've always used.

Maybe I'll redo this one when it's done and force myself to ink it differently. I'd like to get away from any and all feathering and find more varied ways of laying in texture and shadow. Why? I just think it time for an overhaul. I'll never be Wally Wood so I might as well explore some other approaches.

Process #1

I'd been wanting to draw Charlton Heston since I'd heard that he'd passed away. As a kid, we didn't have big budget CG extravaganza superhero movies coming out every week so Charlton Heston was as close to a superhero as we had. On any given weekend, you could catch a re-run of Planet of the Apes or The Omega Man on TV and of course, every Easter we got to watch The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur. I certainly didn't agree with the man's politics, but he could play bigger than life heroes like few others.

I just had time to do some rough pencils today, so I thought I'd post each step of the process. I'm thinking this is going to be pen & ink with some ink wash laid in when it's done. We'll see:

Edited to add the reference photo I'm using (a still from Ben Hur):

Creature Concept

A while back, a friend from work was planning on making a short film and asked me to design the creature for it. He wanted something that was both organic and crystaline and, as part of the story, had a female scientist fused to it. Here was the initial sketch I gave him of the full creature and a close up of the scientist:


and the final concept rendering layered on top of a photo background:


Unfortunately, the project didn't get past the planning stage, so I never got to see the design realized. I'm not normally a monster guy, so it was fun doing it anyway.

Barsoom!

Going through more old stuff - some John Carter of Mars doodles:

Spaghetti Sketchin'

When I watch a favorite movie for the umpteenth time I like to pause on interesting shots and sketch. This is a page I doodled a while back while watching Once Upon a Time in the West:


There are some amazing faces in that movie - Woody Strode looked like he was carved from stone and of course Charles Bronson was Moebius's model for his Lt. Blueberry character.

Still in a Marvel mood

Here's a Captain America from a while back with some color thrown on:


He looks kind of bummed out, but hey, he's dead. I'd be bummed out too.

Mea Culpa

The Thor sketch I posted yesterday sucked. Here's another pass at Goldilocks (still not 100% happy with it, but it's better):

God of Thunder

After a recent discussion on the heavy metal credentials of Thor, I drew this quick sketch:

Papal Shotgun Gladiator

Someone sent me a link to an online video game name generator. One of the names it gave me was "Papal Shotgun Gladiator" - that seemed like a good idea for a quick sketch:

The Most Dangerous Game

I watched the 1932 movie "The Most Dangerous Game" last week. It's about the mad Count Zaroff who lives on an isolated island and causes passing ships to wreck so he can hunt the survivors. It was filmed concurrently with King Kong and had most of the same cast, crew & sets. The actors were chewing up the scenery left and right, but it was a fun movie with some nice visuals:

Space Miner

Friday randomness:

Master of the Mystic Arts...

...and 40's matinee idol. Dr. Strange (old) Hollywood style: