Comic books will always be my first love and I drew one of my favorite characters while watching a movie over the weekend.  Can’t remember the movie but drawing Spidey was loads of fun.  I’ve been trying to do more of a montage type feels to some of my drawings instead of a classic pin-up.  I also probably need to work with a slightly harder lead.  This is a 3B and things smear a little too easy.

Not gonna mention the other stuff.  There have been..uh…developments.

Inside is outside, inside is outside, inside is outside…..

Just a little sketch for a possible painting.  Don’t get your hopes up though.  I do a lot of sketches for possible paintings that never go any further.  Other paintings get in the way, projects come up, people offer to pay me to paint other stuff.  Things happen so I thought I’d start sharing more of these from time to time because I get see them finished in my head and they look awesome.

I took my son to the park yesterday.  It was a new 100,000 dollar addition they just installed and it looked every bit the price tag.  This was probably the coolest playground I’ve ever seen.  It looked more like a water park or theme park more than a local kids play park.  After trying everything out my young mini-me comes up to where I sat relaxing on a bench and says, “Daddy, why are our neighbors in the woods over there?  What neighbors,” I respond.  “You know, those funny looking ones from the neighborhood watch.”  Only “neighborhood watch” come out like “naybahud och” because he’s only four and still has a slight lisp.  I look over but don’t see anyone.

I tell him they probably just want to see the new playground too.  I start to ask him more about the “naybahud och” people.  “I just wanna go slide,” he says looking away.  I don’t push him.  He goes back to sliding and I got back to sitting on the bench, only I can’t relax anymore.  I pull out my sketchbook I brought along and start drawing, every few minutes stopping to glace towards to the nearby woods.

I’m not the only one who can see them.

One of the creature came into my house last night.  I had begun to believe it had all been some fever dream and I did the unthinkable.  I didn’t draw the last few days.  Jeez, I feel like I’ve left the castle gate down with the entire armies of Mordor outside.

I woke up last night and went into the kitchen to get some water, maybe grab a middle of the night snack.  The kitchen is dimly lit by a small light over the stove.  As soon as I open the cabinet I get that feeling I told you about a few posts again.  The feeling outside when you’re inside feeling.  The screen door is open.  I know this because I can hear it banging against the porch railing.  I can hear them outside my front door scratching against the to cold metal.  I dropped the glass of water I was holding and it shattered on the floor.  I didn’t clean it up.

I walked slowly to my computer as the door knob twitched slightly.  I keep my Mac in sleep mode most of the time.  Some say that’s not a good idea but I was greatful I didn’t have to wait the minute it would have taken to start up. My computer is against the window by the door.  I didn’t know if I had a minute.

Luckily, Photoshop was already open.  I started to draw and quickly started to feel like I was inside again.  Here’s the sketch I did in Photoshop.  I’m just messing around with different brushes and playing with tone.  Notice how the different tones of background, giant arrow, skin, and costume separate and add contrast to the image.  Small lesson.  Lay dark tones against light tones and vice versa. Big lesson.  Draw everyday because they’re out there.

I love doing portraits but I’ve never worked very much in charcoal.  The first lesson I’ve learned is that I don’t like working with charcoal on Bristol Board.  I think the paper needs to have more pulp or rag to it.  The only other paper I’ve used with charcoal is newsprint paper in figure drawing classes but even though it’s cheap paper I like it better than Bristol.  I’m going to pick up some actual charcoal paper this week and see what happens.

Regarding that other thing, I have not seen one for a few days and am starting to feel sane again.  Maybe it was all in my head but I’d swear on a complete box of Copics they were real. I’ve been asked to describe them or heck, I’m an artist, draw them but it’s not that easy.  Visually, is just flashing out of the corner of my eye.  It’s more a feeling.  Like you can feel if you outside or inside.  I can feel them watching.  Waiting.  But as long as I’m drawing I’m safe.

I love drawing the figure and have this desire to be able to draw very realistically out of my head as if I had reference right in front of me.  To that end I’m drawing out of my head and then finding reference to correct some of the weaker points of a drawing.  The WW drawing is a example of that.  It’s a great way to improve your drawing and learn in general.  This is the fixed drawing and the biggest errors were where her lliac crest and greater trochanter push to the skin creating turning points around her hip.

I actually really dig the Spider-man!

People labor on to no end about the beautiful world of color and there are plenty of those follows of black and white line work but the tone people seem to be a forgotten lot.  I would say that tone is more important than all of them.  Color is dependent on tone and really, when you get down to it, black and white line drawing are just shorthand for tone.  Tone is king I say.  King.

I just finished another commission.  This time it was Odin, the father of Thor,  according to Marvel Comics.  This has turned out to be one of my favorite commissions by far.  More than anything else I tried to focus on my composition and my inking style.  In the past year I’ve found I much prefer inking with a pack of Micron pens to a brush.  I like that flat dead line and thick chunks of black.  This piece is pen and ink, acrylics and colored pencils.

I was going through all my artwork that I’ve been meaning to post and I came across a few photos of commissions I did while at the Heroes comic book convention.  They’re not the best pictures but it’s amazing the corrections Photoshop can make.  I’m incredibly slow at conventions.  Over three days I only did 8 or 9 commissions and I only had the presence of mind to snap pictures of these two.  If anyone out there that received commissions from me in the past please feel free to scan them and email them to me.  I’d love to share them.

Here are a Poison Ivy piece and a Rogue piece.  Both were done on Bristol board with ink, acrylic wash and colored pencils.

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of sketching from life and reference instead of my head all the time.  Over the years I’ve gotten too caught up in drawing strictly from my imagination.  That’s not a bad thing in and of itself but I think doing that exclusively leads to stagnation and a bit of a lull in one’s artistic progress.  Without reference or life studies and putting in new visual information into your brain you start to draw, paint and produce the same things you’ve done before.   The above sketch is from an image I found online.