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Here is my latest finished piece.  It’s for my portfolio.  I plan to do a number of very similar ones.  Different character classes from Dungeons and Dragons.  It’s a combination of Photoshop and Painter.

I’ve begun putting together a portfolio to send to Marvel comics.  My goal is to get some card illustration is possible even some cover work.  With that in mind I got quite a few pieces planned out.  A few pinups like you might see in a Marvel Masterpieces card and then later some much more intricate pieces.

This first one is Kitty Pryde of the X-men.  She’s always been one of my favorite characters.  Excalibur was one of my first comics back when you could buy them from 7-11.  I’m working on much more of a painterly style.  To that end I’ve discovered Corel Painter (actually rediscovered).  I’ve been so used to Photoshop all these years and Painter is a bit of a different animal.  I love squishy paint.

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

I grew up on He-man.  Loved him.  Mom and Dad bought me the toys.  I watched the cartoon like it was my religion.  My evil old hag of a baby sitter tried to ban the program because she said Skeletor was the devil and she was protecting me from Satan’s clutches.  Needless to say, I used the Diamond Ray of Disappearance on her butt and continued on my quest to battle the evil forces of Skeletor.

He-man was a big influence on my artwork and love of fantasy.  He was my first and biggest exposure to the genre so when I recently had the chance to do some c0mmission work for a He-fan, I jumped at the chance.  It didn’t hurt that I did it for some hard to find He-man toys.  Man, I love me some horse trading.  He wanted a Merman piece which suited me just fine but there is one thing I hate about Merman.  That character is one of the hardest to pull off without making him look like a total goof.  I couldn’t exactly redesign his face although I really wanted to so I just sketched his face over and over until I was reasonably happy.  So know, it’s done.  Now, the only problem is I want to do some more He-man artwork.

I’ve started a new sketchbook for 2010.  Click on the Gallery drop down box at the top of the screen for access.  It’s kind of..er..sketchy…right now but it’ll be updated often.  Here’s the first image.

I discovered a new figure drawing class locally and went to their first session Tuesday night.  It’s called Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School.  It’s figure drawing meets burlesque.  Tuesday night’s theme was Mardi Gras so there were a lot of beads.  Very well done and a ton of fun.  Another cool aspect of the class is that numerous times throughout the class they will have a contest.  For instance, at one point everyone had to draw from a 5 minute pose using their non-dominant hand.  Afterward everyone judges who they liked the best.  The winner might receive a bottle of wine or a gift certificate to a local restaurant.

They hold the class once a month and I can’t wait to go back again.  Here are a few of the drawings I did.

(Please read part 1 of my post of Gesture Drawing HERE)

I was hanging out with a friend a few months ago during a sketch group.  My friend asked me to draw a certain pose.  I looked at the blank page and started to put together, in my mind, how the pose would go.  What foot is the weight on?  Where is the elbow is relation to the rib cage?  How many heads tall should I make this figure?  Structure?  Angles?  Depth? Lighting?  OK, you’ve got the chest connected to the arm this way, connected to the neck at this angle, etc., etc., etc.

After a couple of minutes my friend asks what was wrong and why I was taking so long.  I know you can draw, he said, and you should be able to knock this single pose out in seconds.  You’ve drawn it dozens of times.  I was a little taken aback.  I’m not the fastest artist I countered.  I told him about my thought process.  He picks up the pad and draws the sketch quickly, going boom, boom, boom.  There.  Done.

At the time I just thought my brain didn’t work like his.  He was self taught.  I was more classically trained.  I had a process.  He just drew.

I now understand and realize that you don’t drive a car by thinking about the individual parts.  Micheal Jordon does think cross-over, spin, put the ball in my right hand, then my left, and stick out my tongue before he dunks a basketball.  It’s a gestalt thing.  A left brain holistic thinking thing that my natural logical right brain tendencies try to overrule.  It’s hard to remember all the details of a person’s pose to draw but it’s very easy to remember the gesture of the person’s pose.

The really, really cool thing too is the gesture is what our brain recognizes most as the pose.  Like my earlier example from part 1 of this post on Gesture the image in your head of a man with his foot on the chair got much clearer and sharper in your mind when I added the context of him being sad.  It’s the same way you can remember hundreds of different faces of people you’ve meet.  When you see a person you recognize you don’t see the nose, add the eyes, the ears, the width and height of the face and then know who the person is.  You see the gesture.

So, do some gesture drawing every day to warm yourself up and after a while that looseness and life will begin to seep into your regular work.  Drawing will become easier and a lot more fun!