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I’m doing the “Discover a Muse” contest over at Artorder.com that I mentioned a few posts back. I finally got around to starting on this and thought I’d share as I went.  Gotta post something to keep my mom happy.   Here are my first few steps. I’m still designing and changing as I go along. I need to add some more narrative elements too. Maybe some eyeballs and dragon wings in the pot.

I start as usual doing some quick sketches which I didn’t show because basically I think I may be the only person on the planet who can interpret the things.  They just look like a mass of lines.  I then get my reference but in this case since the contest supplies the reference I already had it.  I did look over the reference before I started sketching because I needed to use some of the supplied reference.  I usually look at reference until I’ve got my sketch going because I don’t the reference to become overbearing in my image.

I then get a tighter sketch going, throw some tones on it in Photoshop and start playing around with a color palette.  I ended up going with a gold and purple basic color scheme.  Lotta cremes.  I think it gives off a mystical quality like the scene in Gladiator where the women is walking through the wheat fields.

I also may need to add some monkeys. Everybody loves monkeys.

The beautiful model supplied by Artorder is the talented Veronika Kotlajic.

Details on the contest can be found HERE.

Here is the (hopefully) final painting for the Incredible Hulk piece I’ve been working on. A number of things just were not working for me in the previous one, mostly the composition. I take a new approach and tried to add a lot more design elements as well as insets of other characters to make a montage of Hulk coolness.  I think it feels a lot more like a cover now.

The post below is from the Discover a Muse challenge of which I’m entering.  I encourage everyone to go check out all the amazing art that’s sure to be flowing over there.  If you’re an artist, don’t be shy.  Join in and discover your art muse.

I’ve got a good friend, Jason McLellan, who works for Marvel on some of their sketch cards.  Check his stuff out here.  (Free plug)  He’s been trying to get me to do them too but two things stop me.  One, the sheer volume of cards you need to do for these sets is pretty high.  For one of the sets he told me the minimum cards to do was over 100.  The second thing holding me back is that it feels weird to draw that small.  I’m just not used to it but it’s all the rage and collectors seem to love the things so with the con season approaching I thought I’d give it a try.

Here are three that I penciled last night whilst watching the telly.  I’ll ink and color them shortly.  I actually kinda really like the Spider-man one.

I’ve done some more work on the Hulk illustration.

I went over the whole image with some texture brushes with some red to get rid of all the white.  I choose red because it’s green’s compliment so it’ll make the Hulk pop.  After that I began to block in the Hulk.  Block in is simply filling in area as shadow, half tone, and light.  This defines your basic form and is a sound structure for my next layer.  I’ve already done it but what’s the fun if I post everything at one time.

I often wonder what types of things I should include on my blog.  Should it always be just about my artwork?  More stuff on technique or maybe an article on my favorite artist.  I’m never sure, so I’m just going to start posting everything.  More general comments, sketches, dabs of paint, etc.  More in process shots of stuff I’m working on (that I’m allowed to share).

Right now, I’ve been updating my portfolio to target Wizards of the Coast and Marvel Comics.  With the Incredible Hulk being so incredible (and my favorite character) I thought a nice trading card type illustration would be a groovy thing.  Yes, I still like the word groovy even though it’s popularity was well before my time.

To begin an illustration I usually do some thumbnails or if there’s a minimal background, I just start sketching to see what grabs me.  I ended up with this to start with.

Looks OK.  I like the pose and the expression on his face.  It’s time to refine it a bit and add some spot blacks.  I’ve also decided that it needs somewhat of a proper background.  What could be better for the Hulk than a big mushroom cloud?  Fun to paint and that will allow me to add some abstract qualities to it that I like when painting.  I also changed the size to 10×16 over all just because.    Here’s where we are now.

Now, in general I’m pretty good at just drawing out of my head but good reference will always take your work to a higher quality.  You don’t know what you don’t know and reference will give you the information that you don’t know.  Man, that was a sentence and a half.  I think my brain just started smoking.

Here is my reference.  I’ll probably take some photography later for specific parts like the face and anything that looks off after I get going that needs some attention.