I drew the image on a 20×30 sheet of 140 lb. drawing paper.  I take the paper and mount it onto a wooden panel using water and Mat Medium.  When everything is dry I’ve got a great surface to begin my oil painting.  I first heard about the mounting process from Donato Giancola HERE.  He explains the process much much better than I can.

Next: Oil Painting

After I’ve filled a folder full of images it’s time to gather some props (or build your own), find some models and schedule a photo shoot.  In this case, the props were very minimal.  The gun and the sword.  For the gun I used my son’s Nerf dart gun.  I mostly needed the way a hand would hold the gun at a certain angle.  For the models my gracious brother and his wife agreed to be my subjects.  Along with my props, camera and lights I went to their house for the photo shot.  In this instance it didn’t matter the location since the background was completely dark.

My camera is a Nikon D80.  A great camera.  I make sure to not just take overall shots of my models posing.  I take close-ups of anything I’ll want details for in the drawing and painting stage.  I always get close-up of faces and hands.  You can mess up the entire rest of an image but as long as the face and hands look good you’ll be OK.  At least that’s what I was told by Dan Dos Santos.

After I’ve got all my photography shot and my references, I take it all into photoshop and digitally produce a comp that’s arranged as close as I can get to my final image.  The it’s time to transfer my image to my paper.

Next: Transferring the image!

I began this project with a brief from Ron who had a few selections from the book that another artist had done interior pen and ink drawings for.  I got to choose from those scenes in the story for the cover.  The one I liked best was of our Hero discovering a human like Bat creature.   I began doing thumbnails right away.  Initially, my thumbnails are really, really loose.  I was looking for a nice composition first and foremost.  So I just start arranging shapes and letting whatever comes happen.  It important at this stage not to get to tied in to something.  At left is one page of many from my sketchbook of some thumbnails for this project.

After I’ve got dozens of thumbnails and I’ve explored the idea pretty well I select a few to work up to a more finished stage to send my client.  I try to pick slightly different ways I could approach the cover.  Some of more narrative while other may have more of a pinup or movie poster feel.

I pencil the roughs and then scan them into Photoshop to add some gray tones.  Ron and Rob both loved the 3rd image and approved it with some minor changes involving facial expressions and where the characters were looking.  Armed with my approved rough it was time to take some reference and pencil my final image.

Next up:  Ravenwood Reference.

Here are a few progress shots from my refined drawing in Photoshop to the finished digital piece.  It’s all Photoshop.

I’m working on doing a drawing of the creatures that have been after me.  Keep that on the down low.

Here is the final for the Muse contest over at Artorder.com.  Be sure to head on over and check out all the great entries.  For details on this contest check out this previous post.

I’ve been working on a Hulk pinup recently and I thought I might be done but as is often the case a day or two later can make all the difference.

I also posted it in a few online forum and numerous people had the same reaction.  That reaction being that it look like the Hulk is ripping an massive, giant, fart.  (I wonder how Google will index this post?)  This just goes to show you one really needs to think about composition when doing a piece of artwork.  You shouldn’t just start sketching in Photoshop willy nilly like I did.  So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he want it.  Well, he gets it.  A giant Hulk poot!

I was way to anxious to get started and ended up with Hulk farting.  I should be hiding my head in shame or rolling on the floor laughing but instead I’m determined to take this “happy accident” and turn it into gold.  I’ll use this as an opportunity to make a better composition and give the piece a lot more impact and excitement.

Stay tuned.

Anybody that can find the movie quote in this post and name the movie will get a bfowler.com noprize.

I’ve retooled the cloud quite a bit and repainted Hulk’s face.  Overall, it’s just a matter of bring up and refining what’s already there.

I finished the oils a few weeks ago but have only just now gotten around to posting them.

Even though it’s different from the TV show the version of the Hulk in my mind has always been more Gorilla like.  A real square shaped caveman type with the features of a Silverback.  He should be unintelligent but gentle with a childlike innocence and always feel like smashing.  I don’t think that I could get all that in my illustration but hopefully a lot of it comes through.  Below are some progress shots I scanned as I went.

Process

This commission was done on 14×17 Bristol board in pencil, then inked and colored with acrylics and colored pencils.  You can see the progression above from pencils, to line inks, to filled in inks, to color wash and finally the finished product with a few more layers of paint and some colored pencils.

Through my progress I’ve found that I hate using a ruler on anything including architecture.  I love that loose contour line.  There is so much more life and energy to it even in things that are more defined by their mechanical or processed nature.

I’ve also found that I need to catch up on the materials curve a little bit.  There are these wonderful things out there called Copic markers that apparently are the bomb.  (Am I dating myself here or what)  I plan on ordering me a set and hopefully use them on future commissions.

If anyone out there wants to send me Hulk swag (or Copics), don’t hesitate.  Until next time…

There’s a scene in an old Frankenstein movie from 1931 where ol’ Frank is sitting beside a little girl at a lake. The little girl makes friends with Frank and they end up picking flowers together and throwing them into the lake.  To me it defines the character of the Hulk.  Despite all his strength and power he’s really just a child that wants to play.  Now, I know in the end of that scene he runs out of flowers and throws the little girl in who drowns but that doesn’t diminish my point.

This is the pencils for an oil painting.  It’s a commission for my best commission client.  I got the idea after playing hide and go seek with my own 3 year old.   I was after that expression of wonder, of discovery through innocent eyes that I think is really a defining characteristic of the Hulk.  Did I mention he’s my all time favorite character?

But then again, there is always that part of me that wants to have Hulk smash so  I drew this in a way to be both. If you cover up the right side of this face (his left) Hulk want to smash but if you cover up the left side (his right) Hulk just want to play.  I purposely tried to be a little coy about his expression.

Below is the clip from the Frankenstein movie I was telling you about.  Enjoy.

Here is the Domino commission I’m working on after the first painting session.  I’ve probably got 3-4 hours into the whole thing so far.  I’d probably be a lot faster if I wasn’t trying to watch “Weeds” season 4 on DVD at the same time I’m painting.  I have to apologize for the pictures.   They are photos taken in low light so they are not the best.  I can’t scan wet oil paint.  I’ll take some good ones of it presently as I have some daylight left.

I just put the finishing touches on this last night.  It’s 100% oil paint.  I painted it to donate to the upcoming Heroes Comic book convention art auction.  The proceeds of which go to help Heroes comic book store owner Sheldon Drum put on the Heroes comic book convention every year.  It’s the best comic convention I’ve ever been too because the focus is almost exclusively on comics, the books, the writers and the artists.  It’s a great show and I’m very excited to be able to set up a table in artist alley there.  If you get a chance stop by and say hello and bid heavily on the painting at the auction Saturday night at the Westin Hotel in downtown Charlotte, NC.

I really happy with how Jean Grey, aka the Black Queen  came out but I hate to say that for better or worse the original looks so much better.  Most people don’t realize the short comings of photography and scanning.  They just don’t do the original justice.  I’m an amateur photographer but I often wonder what I might be missing that a professional photographer could do with my work.  Oh well, when my paintings  start making a lot more money I’ll pay for some lessons from a pro.  Until then you’re stuck with my Nikon D80.

I hope you like the painting and remember, I’m always open for commissions and job offers.

I’ve recently been giving my work a lot of thought in regards to what I want my art medium to be.  To that end I’ve decided that I’m going to focus more intently from here on out on my oil painting.  This extends, hopefully, to my commissions.  I’ve never painted this fast before and I hope it’ll turn out well.  Whereas I normally do an oil piece in 2 to 3 weeks this time around I’m going for 2-3 days.  Last night I did some thumbnails and figured out an image I thought would be fun to paint.  Then I took some quick reference.  If I had any guts I share that too but this is the Internet and since I used myself as reference, that’s not going to happen.  Yes, I know Domino is a hot babe and I’m a slightly above average manimal but you’d be surprised how the artist mind wields reference shots and imagination.  My wife got a good laugh out of it asking me why in the world was I standing like that.  Here are the pencils before the paint.

And just for FYI, I’ve finished the oil paints on the black queen image I’d been working on.  I just have to wait for a few of the white parts to dry some I can put some retouch varnish over it to bring back the colors.

After the inks were dry I broke out my acrylics and threw down some washes of color.  I like a messy, let the color do it’s thing, kind of painting when water is involved.  You can get some great color intensities and effects.  After I laid in my initial washes I started to actually paint opaquely in spots careful not to over paint the inks.  They still had to show through.  In fact, I considered this finished when I approached the point where I could no longer keep going unless I started to paint over the blacks and if I did that this would quickly turn from a commissioned sketch to a full painting.  There wasn’t the time (or the budget) for that.

When I was finish a piece I alwasy let it sit a day or two because after some time away from a painting I alwasy see glaring things that I missed.  In this case it was some cool colors in the shadows.  I had such a warm intense yellow light hitting all that green that I really needed to cool my shadows.  Remember what Richard Schmid says in his wonderful book, “Everything I know about painting“.

If there is one rule about color it’s that “warm light produces cool shadows and cool light produces warm shadows.“

I didn’t want to paint over the blacks so I put strokes of blue and purple in lower light areas and areas of my halftone where the dark meets the light.  I think this really helps the color harmony and add a lot more visual interest to the piece.

The most important part is that the client loved it and has already commission a second piece.

I don’t like to use a lot of halftone as I really like large areas of black and white.  Plus, I’m leaving something for the color to do beside just fill in white areas.

I won’t talk a ton about it as I’m working on an upcoming post about the subject of reference but I will mention that I do use it.  I combine photos from the Internet, magazines, and many that I produce myself as I’m also a novice  photographer.  This image is a combination of 3 or 4 photos that I put together in photoshop where I can digitally paint over top of them to create special effects or retool the lighting so that it all matches.  I’ve found through hard trial and error that the more time I take with preliminary things to prepare for a drawing or painting the better (and easier) they come out.

After I’ve got the photoshopped reference printed out I transfer it to my 14×17 bristol board.  I do this with a classic grid method.  Be careful if you use this method as if you don’t already know how to draw it can become a significant crutch.  I use it to make sure my proportions and angles are correct.  I bounce back and forth between drawing from reference to straight out of my head because while I want a correct looking drawing, I want it to be my drawing and not just a reproduction of the photos.  This can be a very fine line and the line is different for different artists.  (This topic sounds like a post in it’s own right)

Now that the ink work is done it’s on to the colors which I’ve already finished but I’ll give you a few days to absorb the ink before I post the color.

Here is the initial sketch of the revisited image.  I got some reference this time as it’s time for me to take myself seriously and not just let myself try to pull the artwork out of my butt fully formed.  I’ve fallen into that pit to many times in the past.  The image just comes out covered in..well, let’s just say the aroma is a tad more unpleasant than the cobalt dryer I use in my painting medium.  Then again I’m sure there are those that would disagree.  That cobalt stuff is deadly.

I just got the sign off on a few freelance assignment so it may be a week or so before I get back on this one.  I know you can’t hardly wait but I can only work on one project at the time.  Just check back every day and tell all your friends to come to.  The ego of a freelance artist can always use a boost.

Oh yeah, the website is going through some growing pains.  Overlook the mess.