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I did some penciled sketch cards recently and thought I’d add some gray tones and/or color.  I like the ink work and the grays but haven’t figured out a way to color them that I like and is fast.  I plan on doing these at convention and don’t want to go the full painted route in that situation.  If anyone has any ideas, I’d welcome them.  I’m going to try to color my next ones with some Copics as that seems to be all the rage.

I actually really dig the Spider-man!

(Or, a very Incredible Hulk, part 5)

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.

We’re really rolling now.

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’ve got a good friend, Jason McLellan, who works for Marvel on some of their sketch cards.  Check his stuff out here.  (Free plug)  He’s been trying to get me to do them too but two things stop me.  One, the sheer volume of cards you need to do for these sets is pretty high.  For one of the sets he told me the minimum cards to do was over 100.  The second thing holding me back is that it feels weird to draw that small.  I’m just not used to it but it’s all the rage and collectors seem to love the things so with the con season approaching I thought I’d give it a try.

Here are three that I penciled last night whilst watching the telly.  I’ll ink and color them shortly.  I actually kinda really like the Spider-man one.

The Hulk is coming along rather nicely.  After getting most of him blocked in and even a little rendering, I started to work on the background some.  I knew the mushroom cloud was going to be difficult to paint and it has been so far.  I took about 2-3 hours on it last night in Painter.  Half that time was figuring out some techniques in Painter.  I love the program but I’m still fairly new to it.  I filled in the background with some light blue.  I wasn’t really feeling the red and it was affecting how I painted the Hulk.  Then tone was much to dark too as the background needed to separate more from the Hulk.

I’ve started to really look at my tones and my tonal edges in the Hulk’s skin and begin to build that up.  It’s a continuous process of building up, reassessing, painting over lightly and restating my tonal patches.  A tonal patch is any area of tone/color that my eyes see (or I decide) to be separate enough to paint.  It’s all this interlocking tones that creates the image.  The decision of those edges is also really important.  It the difference between something looking choppy when it supposed to be choppy and smooth when it supposed to be smooth.

I also did a bit of rendering on the face but as is my habit I’ve went out and got some reference for it.    My plan now is to block in the lower part of the image and focus on those hands.  I may need to some indication of something in the distance.  A city scape or maybe some canyon like mountain.  Something to break up that blue but not be intrusive.  I’m babbling on now.  My art brain is getting in the way of this post.

I’ve done some more work on the Hulk illustration.

I went over the whole image with some texture brushes with some red to get rid of all the white.  I choose red because it’s green’s compliment so it’ll make the Hulk pop.  After that I began to block in the Hulk.  Block in is simply filling in area as shadow, half tone, and light.  This defines your basic form and is a sound structure for my next layer.  I’ve already done it but what’s the fun if I post everything at one time.