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I’ve uploaded a few new pictures to my sketchbook and of course I wanted to post them here on the blog because on a blog you can never have enough content.  I’ve always been a fan of doing more tonal rendering in my drawings even though it takes more time.  I just love the way it looks.  All those beautiful gray scale tones.

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’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.