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I just finished a commission of the Incredible Hulk which was fantastic fun.  To those of you that don’t know the Hulk is my all time favorite character.  Some of my best memories are watching the old Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno Hulk television show.  I’ve got every one on tape and I got them the old fashion way.  By recording them on VHS when cable would show reruns.

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…

Another commission I finished the other week.  Ink and acrylics.

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.

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’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.