Ghost Rider and Friends

Not posting here much anymore, but hey, here's something.

 A friend from work had requested I draw Beavis and Butthead. Then he asked me to do Ghost Rider.

Looky there. I even added color.

Avalir

Here are the first four pages of Avalir. Look for it on it's own site, coming soon.

Hidden Influences

India Ink, Colored Pencil

  It's funny how artists subconsciously absorb their surroundings and let it influence their work. I was going through a creative dry spell for a while. Two days ago I went to a local tattoo convention. Being around so many artists with so many styles punched me in the creative gland, and I was itching to draw when I got home.
  This image immediately popped into my head, and I had to make it happen. I don't know where the gas mask idea came from. I didn't see any gas masks at the convention. The convict influence definitely came from my fiance's recent obsession with police and prison documentaries. Overall I really like this, and had a good time letting it out.

Here Comes...

I've done plenty of drawing, not so much posting. Hey Hey Here's Daredevil!

Spidey

Cartooning

Now that my semester of generals is over I'm getting time to draw again. Been drumming along to Ivan Brunetti's course-in-a-book: Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice.

A few single panel cartoons from one of the "homework" assignments. The guidelines were to limit it to one line of dialogue, or none at all. And dialogue was to be in a caption, not bubble. Also it was noted to pay attention to placing black objects in harmony to guide the eye through the composition. The goal was also to not necessarily be funny, but more to express a whole story or concept within a single panel.

Mythology

 

I am fascinated by all theologies and folklore, and love to learn about them. I enjoy finding the similarities, differences, and connections between them. For this project I wanted to illustrate the impermanence of religions.
As time passes, new religions will rise, and the old ones, no matter how strongly they were once followed, will eventually be set aside and labeled Mythology. To name the most common examples, Greek, Roman, and Norse (my personal favorite) theologies all fell victim to the passing eras. In class we’ve been discussing religion and mythology being one and the same, but the word mythology has a certain stigma attached to it that seems to say “false religion from a past civilization.” Put simply, mythologies are stories created by humans to explain the natural and supernatural worlds. Christianity, Hinduism, Islamism, and all other modern religions are mythologies as well, but saying this in a public place is sure to earn the stink-eye, or worse.
Marvel Comics’ successful use of Thor as a superhero shows that after a religion crosses into the realm of mythology, it is fair to use (or abuse) its content without invoking the wrath of the public. Thor was the God of Thunder, Son of Odin the Allfather. To those who worshipped him, he was very real. As real as Jesus Christ, Son of Yahweh, is to Christians today. For the most part, when someone hears Thor’s name in our era, they think of the superhero, not the all-powerful God of Thunder that, for many centuries, inspired fear, respect, and awe in the hearts of faithful Norsemen.
If history is an indicator of what the future holds, the Christian faith will someday be publicly known as Christian Mythology, and Jesus, Adam, Yahweh, and all other characters of the Bible will be open to artistic interpretation. Maybe there will be a Jesus superhero comic book, in which Gentle Jesus, with his Crown of Thorns and Holy Powers, defends mankind against monsters and villains. The idea is sure to offend today, but you can be assured that the brave Norsemen and women of Scandinavia would take offense to depictions of Thor in tights and a silky red cape.

Thor Cover

  An original piece for my Humanities class term project. It accompanies another cover that I have yet to do, and a paper. My topic concerns the impermanence of religions.

  And, since we're on the topic of Thor, a doodle from earlier this week. 

Phil

  I've been writing a little story that someday I'll turn into a graphic novel. After reading Bone I was inspired to write a funny, cartoony, yet still mature and serious fantasy story. It's weird, I've never had an easy time writing a story, but this one is different. It pours out of me like I'm just typing it as somebody else tells it to me. I hope that's a sign that it's good. Anyway, here are some character-creating processes for the three heroes.

Sketchdump

  As promised, a pile of sketches (not particularly in chronological order).

Studying King Kirby

Ferrit

Studying Walt Simonson

Obligatory Update

Not much has happened since my last post. Lots of work and lots of drawing. Today I hung out with my beautiful girlfriend, Emmalee and her friends as she worked on cutting the script for Hamlet. She'll be directing a high school performance of  it this fall. Gonna be sweet! Anywho, I dragged my sketch book along and got some gesture drawing done while she wasn't paying attention.

Each drawing was about 30 seconds.

  Also, I finally got page 1 of Avalir penciled, inked, and colored yesterday. I still need to letter it, but I feel I made some definite progress. I'm planning on having at least 10 pages finished before I start uploading them weekly to the site I set up. 

  So... yea.

Comic Cover Recreation

When I woke up this morning, I had an idea that I didn't think would take all day, but it most certainly did. I picked out a cool cover from my Daredevil collection to redraw myself. I wanted to practice composition, posing, shading & inking, and color, so I figured a good way to do that would be to copy a pro, and hopefully absorb some knowledge from it. I chose issue 155:

I started out drawing in blue pencil, so the scanner wouldn't pick up the construction lines when scanned in black and white. This took about 2 hours.

Then about 2 hours of inking...

I immediately noticed that, despite scanning at 600 dpi, the scanned image looks much choppier than my drawing on the paper. Damned computers. Next, 3 or 4 hours of coloring in photoshop. Then about 1 hour to cut and paste the title bar and other word effects. TaDa!!!

Not too bad... if you don't look at Beast or Hercules' faces. I wasn't aiming for it to look identical to the original, so long as I got some practice with the inking, coloring, etc.

There ya go, an effective way to spend a day... my butt's a bit sore, though...

Hulk...

I slowly started to hate this one as I was drawing it. Feels kinda flat, and shading kicks my butt sometimes. Oh well, here it is.

Here Comes.... Daredevil! Man Without Fear!

Good hell, I love Daredevil.
drawn and colored with india ink pens, colored pencil, and a big, fat sharpie.

Poor R2...

  I watched A New Hope and my personal favorite, Empire Strikes Back, this weekend. No time to watch Return of the Jedi, but I'm not missing much. I'm happier without watching Ewoks and mediocre acting. Here's a doodle inspired by one of Luke's oh-so-cheesy lines from A New Hope. 

Spidey

Hopefully the movie kicks as much ass as the trailers. Though it was made by Sony, I still have hope.

Colors!

  Thinking about all of the work I have yet to do on Avalir, I realized I only had a slight idea of how I was going to color it. I scanned in a recent drawing to play around with it in photoshop. 

I isolated the linework onto a single layer, and filled in flat colors underneath it.

I'm really happy with this look. Early on I planned on coloring Avalir like this, with the inks handling the shading and simple, flat colors to give it the look of old comics. But I kept fiddling and added slight shading with color.

I do think this looks better. More rendered and finished. I guess we'll just see when the time comes to color Avalir. The flat color/inks method still looks great, and is MUCH faster, but I might throw a bit of colored shading into it if another hour shows up in the day.

  Overall I've grown to like this little doodle. It was nice to break out of my comfort zone and play with colors. Thanks for reading. 

Silent Progress

  I haven't been posting, but "Avalir," named for the continent in which our story takes place, is coming along very nicely. ...Except for the fact that I haven't drawn a page yet... Let me explain.
  I actually have drawn one page. The first one. And it was so poorly drawn and unstable that I forced myself to a screeching halt, and turned to research drawing. I've been drawing landscapes, villages, villagers, studying and drawing clothing styles, etc. In short: I really need to improve before laying this thing down.
  I needed a more solid model of my characters, and needed to draw them ten thousand times in order to keep them consistent. These are my final say on Ferrit and Owan.

  I've been reading Darkhorse's Conan series, one: because it's freaking amazing(!), and two, to study the cities, costumes, poses, weapons, backgrounds, landscapes, etc. Lots to absorb and apply. But after all of that absorbing, to state the painfully obvious, drawing is the only way to get better at drawing. So hopefully from here on out I can apply the things I observe in my reading to my drawing.

  As for the story, Ben and I revised and reworked the first issue to make it more solid and, frankly, it's pretty damn good. We're constantly workshopping and developing ideas for the future, and I can't wait to get underway. Just gotta keep drawing.

Practice, practice, practice, practice practice! That's what will bring this thing to life.

P.S. On a side note, Today I finished a sketchbook! Sure, I have several full sketchbooks from years past, but this one was the first to be filled with diligent, regular, (almost daily) sketching. I opened up my next sketchbook, and man is that first blank page intimidating.