Mediocre art weekend

Working on a cover idea for Special Deliver my 24 Hour Comics Day comic from 2010.

I did a bunch of sketches and refinements and this inking seemed to work as a proof-of-concept. I did it with my Pentel brush pen (which works much better after my hack that allows me to replace the crappy stock ink with Higgins Black Magic). I'm finding I really enjoy using the pen, but I really need to practice with it a lot more. This POC is pretty good with a few elements I like. There's a fair amount that I now believe sucks. Regardless, with the original piece having a size of 6.5" x 10", it's the biggest face I've drawn in a while.



I'll hit the drawing again tomorrow and see if I can get something better.

Listening to while posting: "Typical American" by The Goats

fan art!

Last night I hosted a meet-up for comics and graphic novel fans at my local bookstore. It went pretty well. One guy who showed up was Mark Gonyea. He's a cool guy and a mad scratchboarder. One of the books I brought to introduce to people was Ross Campbell's fantastic TBP Shadoweyes.

This morning I got up at 7:30, made a lot of strong (French press) coffee and hit the studio. I sat at the table and decided to do some Shadoweyes fanart! Yay! The only other fanart I've done was a Missile Mouse for Jake Parker, but I didn't let that stop me. It went pretty well. The pencil drawing came together in about an hour, the tracing and inking another hour, then, as I was getting ready to scan, I found I'd FORGOTTEN THE DARN TAIL! Gah! This seems to happen every time I want to draw Shadoweyes. So, I had to scramble re-trace and re-draw.

However, it turned out pretty well. I must say, that I'm overall, pretty happy with it. There are some small things I see, but they're mostly technique stuff and not big mistakes. One thing I did change was the color of Shadoweyes' calves and forearms. In the comic, they're straight black with the hands and feet just black shapes. When I drew the original pencil, I tried to extrapolate the extremities and I liked them so much, I had to keep them. I hope Ross doesn't mind



So, go get Shadoweyes. It's pretty darn awesome.

In the FUTURE!

Listening to while posting: Ghostrider by RJD2

update: post +15 minutes. Wanna hear something kind of crazy? I also posted on my Deviant Art page (yes, I have a deviant art page, but so do lots of people who don't suck. Like Ross Cambell for instance). Anyway, I posted the pic but, decided I wanted to edit my description. I got into edit mode, wrote an new sentence and saved the changes. In that time six people had viewed it. I really never had the immensity and 24/7 nature of the internet until that moment. I mean if six people viewed it, that must mean that thousands are online and watching the Deviant Art new submissions page. Sheesh.

wrinkles part 2

Continuing my attempt to understand clothing wrinkles, I grabbed a stock photo from set of Steampunk costume photos from Zeldyn-Stock. The photo I used is 'in storage' and I really should have used this one because the hands are less problematic.

This is a bit better than the first wrinkles test, but there are still many issues that need addressing. I may try again with the photo I linked. Here they are in order. The original is 7.5" x 3" or so.







Listening to while posting: Some sort of violin concerto coming from the radio in the woodstove room where Sweet Enemy is chilling with the cat and reading some Hugo Award-winning stories from the seventies.