THE KING III - final

Hello again,

You might have noticed I played a round with the titles of a couple posts here. The last post I did was originally THE KING III, but since it wasn't technically a finished piece (and i wasn't happy with it anyway), I decided to just call it something else.

Anyhow, here is the "THE KING III". I did a rough of this in my sketchbook the other day, and was really pleased with the look of it. So I decided to do a full piece for it. It's a little different look for my guy here. I've been toying with some story ideas for this fella for a while, and the more I draw him, the more the story seems to evolve.

I'm actually thinking about doing some art prints of some of these pieces. If that's something anyone would be interested in, please let me know in the comment section below this post so I can get a gauge on the level of interest.

As always, thanks for reading !



THE KING III
9x12, brush & ink on Strathmore smooth bristol

THE KING sketch

Hi, everyone ! Here's a quick piece I did yesterday. Not exactly thrilled with the way it came out, but I promised myself that I would post some failures as well as successes here. Anyway, I had an idea for this piece and for some reason I just couldn't execute what I wanted to do with it. So I ended up just rushing through it, and that usually doesn't end well. There's just a lot wrong with this. Maybe I'll use this as a reference and make a second attempt at this one somewhere down the line. Even though it looks bad, it felt good just to sit down and draw something after not having done it in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading !

WORMWOOD : GENTLEMAN CORPSE

I've been a big fan of Ben Templesmith for quite some time. If you aren't familiar with him, he's a comic creator from Australia who has worked on projects such as 30 Days of Night with Steve Niles, FELL with Warren Ellis and several of his own books from IDW Publishing.

I finally got around to reading the first volume of one his IDW books, WORMWOOD : GENTLEMAN CORPSE. This is by far my favorite work of his that I've read. You can tell he really puts a lot of effort and heart into his work in general, but this series especially. The thing I like the most about Templesmith is that his art is completely unique. He isn't afraid to break the rules of traditional comic art, and because of that it really stands out. The colors and textures that he uses are so different than anything else out there.

I liked the book so much that I decided to do a piece featuring the main character of the story, Wormwood. When I was done, I decided I wanted to try doing something with another character from the story, Medusa. I bought some red India Ink a while back, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to put it to use.

If you're interested in checking out some of Ben's work, Amazon has a great selection of his books at great prices here !


I hope to be posting more stuff soon. As always, thanks for reading !


WORMWOOD : GENTLEMAN CORPSE
9x12, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen on Strathmore smooth Bristol

MEDUSA
9x12, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, brush & Bombay red India Ink on Strathmore smooth Bristol

FRANKENSTEIN FRIDAY !

Hey, did you guys know that the last Friday before Halloween every year is Frankenstein Friday ? Yeah, I didn't either until today. Anyway, just did a quick 5 minute sketch on my lunch break to celebrate the occasion. Enjoy !

BANG YOUR HEAD !

Just another quick, very random sketch to post today. This is NOT what I intended on drawing today. I was planning on doing something different, but when I tried to get started this morning, I apparently forgot how to draw. Just a slight case of artists block. Later on I came back and picked up my brush pen and this is what came out ! Hope you like it !

ZOMBIE !

Here's a quick zombie sketch I threw together this morning. Certainly seems appropriate for the season ! This is about a 20 minute sketch done with brush pen & multiliner on 9x12 Bristol board. Hope you guys like it, and feel free to leave comments below. I'm always open to suggestions for subject matter, so if there's something you want to see, let me know !

Thanks for reading !

INKING MODOK - FINAL

Here's the final inks for Kasra Ghanbari's MODOK commission by David Finch. This was probably about 6-7 hours of work altogether, about 30 minutes to an hour at a time. The paper I had it printed on was not the best quality, so I had to go over most of it twice. I used a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen for most of the piece. I used Copic Multiliners for all of the straight technical lines, and just a regular paint brush & ink to fill in the crazy bubbles. It's by no means perfect, but I still like the way it ended up. I really enjoyed doing this piece ! Hope you all enjoy it (especially you, Kasra) !

100 BULLETS - AGENT GRAVES

 

I've been reading 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso lately. It's an amazing crime story from Vertigo Comics. This is Agent Graves, the main character behind the scenes of the multiple stories going on in the series. Just another quick sketch I threw together.

Also, the guys over at THE SINDIECATE are doing a 100 bullets theme this week. Go check out the amazing art of Ryan Ottley, Mike Choi, David Lafuente and other amazing comic artists !

Thanks for reading !

 

SATURDAY SKETCHING

Hello everyone ! Just sitting around relaxing and I threw a quick sketch together, so I thought I would post it.

INKING M.O.D.O.K.

And once again I've been MIA from the blog for a couple of weeks. Very sorry for that, just been very busy !

Anyway, last week Kasra Ghanbari, a fellow Chicagoan and the co-creator of the highly anticipated comic MONOCYTE, posted this M.O.D.O.K. piece by superstar artist David Finch on twitter :

Now, Kasra is apparently the worlds biggest M.O.D.O.K. fan, and he owns this piece along with several other amazing comissions of the character . In his tweet, he asked if anybody would be up to the task of inking this monster. I don't know if he was serious or not, but I figured I'd give it a shot. He e-mailed me some high quality scans, I had a couple copies printed out and I've been working on it little by little ever since.

Here's what I have so far :

This thing is a monster. This is probably a total of 2-3 hours of work and I've barely made a dent in it. But I'm enjoying it. I think you can learn a lot as an artist by doing things like this. I'm going to work on it and post some updates here (along with more original art as well ).

By the way, Monocyte #1, by Kasra and the amazing artist menton3 comes out next week ! I've been really excited for this book to come out, as it looks absolutely amazing ! If you haven't heard of it, you can check out a 12 page preview here and an free 8 page digital prequel here ! Check out the links and make sure to go buy issue #1 when it hits stores !

Thanks again for reading !

TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL !!!!!!!

300 was on TV last night so I decided to watch it for probably the 50th time. It's one of those things where if it's on, I feel obligated to watch it and then I can't turn it off. Ironically my wife Liz and I were just talking about the movie the night before, so it felt like kind of an omen. It's one of my all-time favorite movies. 300 is probably the most visually stunning film I've ever seen ! Obviously the action and fight scenes are legendary, but it's the look and feel of the whole thing that really gets to me. The colors, backgrounds and landscapes are just so perfect. I was so glad to see that they took so much influence from the look of Frank Miller's tremendous comic book.

Anyway, I decided to do a piece featuring Gerard Butler as the great Spartan King, Leonidas. In my opinion, he's one of the most bad-ass and perfectly cast characters in movie history. I referenced a screenshot from the movie I found online. I wanted to make it look realistic and recognizable, but also stay true to my "style". Not too much detail, and using lots of big black areas to form the image. I think I accomplished that pretty well here. I might do a few more movie characters down the line, because I really enjoyed doing this !

Thanks for reading !

King Leonidas, 9x12  Pentel Brush Pen & Copic Multiliners on Bristol

THE KING II - Finished

Sooooooooo, as you can see above, this piece took an unexpected turn ! About this time last night, I was ready to tear this thing up, throw it in the garbage and start all over again. I'm glad I didn't.

I started off with a basic pencil sketch of my central figure here, The King :

I was honestly really happy with the way it looked, so I went ahead and gave him some ink :

So far, so good, right ? At this point, my intention was to make this a grayscale watercolor painting. So I got out my painting supplies, started applying some gray wash and proceeded to butcher the entire thing. I don't know what happened, it just did not look anything like it should have (sorry, no pic). I nearly ripped it up, but instead I kept it to use as a reference because I planned on starting over from scratch.


Fast forward to today. I put my son down for a nap and decided to revisit the devastation. I was just about ready to start over when I decided to do a little experiment. I just started penciling in some skulls in the background. I drew in 5 or 6 of them, then grabbed my brush pen and started adding some ink. Apparently I was on to something. 81 skulls later, we have the finished product. I added a few highlights at the end with a white gel pen. The gray wash I had originally put down actually worked perfect as a contrast between the skulls and the central figure.

I can honestly say that this is the most rewarding piece I've done in years. Not because I think it looks great, but because I was able to persevere through failure and make something out of nothing. I hope you all enjoy looking at it as much as I did making it !

Thanks for reading !!!

THE KING II - Pencils

That's right kids, 2 posts in one day. A new record !!! Anyway, here are the final pencils for a new piece that I'm working on. It's actually a sequel to The King watercolor painting I did a few posts ago. I'm going to be inking and painting this, and I have some interesting things planned for this character down the line. Thanks again for reading !

CREEPY

I mentioned a couple posts ago about doing more original work. Well here is a result of that. Just had this image pop in my head and decided to run with it. I think in the last few pieces I've done I'm  really starting to define my style. I'm feeling a bit more comfortable every time I start something knowing how I want things to look. Thanks for reading !

11x14, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen & Copic Multiliners on Bristol

SUPERMAN

I know, it's been a while. Unfortunately I've been going through a pretty bad case of artists block. Been struggling a bit to find motivation and inspiration to get anything done. Well today I found some. I read an article today about a mentally disabled man in St Louis who recently had a large portion of his Superman collection stolen from him in a pretty heinous way. Apparently the authorities are attempting to get what they can back to him, but there are people out there who want to help him if they can't.

So I decided to do an original piece of art to send the guy so he can add it to his collection or help start a new one. Check out this blog post on Comics Should Be Good at CBR to find out more about the story and for information on how you can help if you'd like to !

I'm hoping this will get me going in the right direction creatively. While this isn't my best work by a long shot, it felt good just to get something out after a couple weeks. Hopefully have more frequent posts in the future here. Thanks for reading, and if you can, help out Mike !

THE KING

If you follow me (or the #comics hashtag) on twitter, you may have noticed i posted some work in progress shots of this piece. Well here is the finished product ! I have never been much of a painter, but as I've said before I'm trying to teach myself some new things and not keep myself confined to traditional pencil on paper illustration. This piece was done with watercolor (mixed Bombay India Inks with water) on 9x12 watercolor paper.
To be honest, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I just decided to start painting, and I kept on painting and this is what I ended up with. The figure in the image is something that's been in my head for a while now. But as far as executing the painting process, I really just let it flow. I like the way it came out ! There are certain aspects of painting that I'll need to work on a bit, but I really enjoyed doing this piece.
Thanks again for reading !

Experimenting

 Well I've decided to take a break from drawing other peoples creations for a while. It's time for me to get creative and just come up with things on my own. The 2 pieces above are the result of experimenting with some new materials and techniques. Both were drawn with my new Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (which I love so far) on 9x12 watercolor paper. I also added a little inkwash to these for some background and shading. I'm gonna be trying some more new things here. Using different types and colors of India ink and different methods of applying them. I'm enjoying playing with these new toys right now, and I feel like it's starting to lead me in a good direction creatively. Still trying to define myself a little more stylistically, but I feel like I'm getting closer. Thanks for reading !

ROLAND DESCHAIN - THE GUNSLINGER - Updated

So here are the final inks for the Gunslinger piece I posted yesterday. It's certainly not perfect as far as I'm concerned. Inking is still something that I'm trying to teach myself, and it sure isn't easy. Luckily, I made a copy of the original pencils so I didn't ink directly over the original. I really like the way the penciled version looks. Maybe down the line as I get more comfortable with inking, I'll take another crack at this one. Thanks again for reading !

PRIME - Updated

Ok, one more post for the late night crowd. This is a colored version of a Prime sketch I did last weekend. Of course, I used my amazing Copic Sketch Markers on this ! I love the skin tone markers !!! In case you missed it, here's the original :

ROLAND DESCHAIN - THE GUNSLINGER

I've recently started reading the first book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger. It's absolutely incredible ! A couple years ago I read a few of Marvel Comics adaptations of the books, and as I'm reading the novel I have a beautiful mental picture of the characters and settings thanks to those comics. The artwork by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove is so breathtakingly beautiful. If you're familiar with Jae Lee, I think you can see the influence here. That is how I picture Roland as I'm reading, just the way Jae drew him.

I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. I was originally going to do just a loose sketch in pencil, and then render it out in brush & ink. But as I was sketching I just got into a groove and decided to do full pencils on it ! I will end up inking this in the next couple of days, I just wanted to show the pencils beforehand because I really love it so far.

Thanks for checking this out, and as always, feel free to leave some feedback. Thankee, Sai !

PRIME

So my favorite comics podcast, The Fanboy Buzz, recently devoted an entire episode to looking back at Malibu Comics' ULTRAVERSE from the 90's. That was a very special time for me, as it was the early 90's when I really started getting into comics. I was a big fan of the ULTRAVERSE and Prime was one of my favorite characters of that time.

This was done with brush & ink on 11x14 bristol board. This is not a finished product. I think at some point i will come back to this and add more detail and maybe even some color. Just thought I should share something since I haven't posted in a bit.

And if you're a comics fan, you should check out The Fanboy Buzz podcast. It's really entertaining and all of the guys on the show are really passionate and knowledgeable of the medium. Check em out here & here.

Hopefully I will post my next piece in the next couple of days. Here's a one word teaser - GUNSLINGER !

NEWMAN XENO !

One more quick post for today. Continuing my current Casanova obsession, I couldn't resist attempting to draw the incredibly insane and ridiculously hilarious super villain, Newman Xeno ! He's my favorite character in the series, so i just took a few minutes to put a quick sketch down.

This is just a Pigma brush pen on a sketch pad, and I think it looks really good ! It's definitely the best line work I've done with the brush pen so far. I may eventually turn this into a bigger piece and add a little color to it. Hope you enjoy it !

CASANOVA

So I've been reading the Casanova series by Matt Fraction, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. It's absolutely terrific and completely insane ! I'm loving it so much that I decided to whip up a quick sketch of the main character, Casanova Quinn ! I only used Copic sketch markers on this piece, and I sure am pleased with how it came out. And if you're a comic fan and haven't read Casanova, I suggest you go pick it up !

Casanova Quinn
11x14 Copic on Bristol

p.s. - Sorry for the crappy iPhone pic. My scanner isn't big enough for these larger pieces !

HAUNT - Update

Hey there ! Sorry I haven't posted in a bit. Been very busy with work and family, but I'm hoping to get a few new pieces in this week.
I went back to the Haunt piece and messed around with the background inks a bit. It's not a huge difference, but I'm a little happier with it now. This is the final version I will be submitting to the contest. I wanted to wait and make sure i was satisfied with it, so it's being sent in today ! Wish me luck !!!

HAUNT

This is a piece I did for Todd McFarlane's Haunt Fan Art Contest. I originally had something completely different planned, but at the last minute I came up with this idea and I'm pretty happy with it. I drew a rough sketch out with pencil and then went over that sketch with a 0.5 Copic Multiliner SP. I then went in with a Pigma brush pen and filled in some of the smaller black areas and then used a watercolor brush with Koh-I-Norr india ink to fill in the background. You can actually see the contrast between the 2 types of ink, which I'm not thrilled about and I may try to fix that at some point. After that I did some shading and detail with my Copic Sketch Markers. Finally, I used a white colored pencil to add just a few minor details.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the final product and feel pretty confident in my chances in this contest. There will be a fan vote on the Haunt facebook page, so when that comes around I will post all the details. Thanks again for checking out my blog, and as always I would appreciate any feedback !

Morpheus, The Sandman

This is a quick sketch I threw together late last night of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman". This is the first time I have ever used Copic Sketch Markers, and I have to say I really love them. I only used the sketching gray set so the values in the highlights and shadows look a little bit off to me, but it was a fun experiment ! I definitely will be using these markers more often for sure. Hope you like it and please feel free to leave some feedback. Thanks !

The Sandman, 11x14 Copic on Bristol

Greetings !

Hello everyone, and thanks for visiting my new art blog ! I am an aspiring artist and I will be using this page to showcase my work. I have been drawing since a very early age, but recently I have decided to really dedicate some time and effort to becoming a better artist. I'm still working on perfecting my style and trying to find what I'm most comfortable with. Traditionally I have been a pencil & paper type of guy, but I am starting to branch out and trying some different materials.I will try to post as much artwork as frequently as I can, and hopefully you will see a consistent improvement in my work through this blog.Constructive criticism and feedback is very welcome. Thanks Again !

The Batman piece above was done on 8 1/2 x 11 Bristol with Copic Multiliners and a Pigma brush pen.