Gorrila

I don't draw gorillas much, but here's one with goggles. And chains. This was a quick Photoshop sketch I did with my cintiq.

Thor, A Mummy, and Some Dude on CalTrain

What do these all have in common? They are all quick sketches I did on the train on the way home last week.

One From the Archives: "Caged" Comic.

I dug out something really old to post. This is a little comic I did, somewhere during 1998 - 2000. All of the panels were done in ink and water color, scanned in, and composed in Photoshop.

VIKINGS!

A few viking head doodles, done on the train commute home on my tablet PC.

First Post of 2009 is the last Picture of 2008

I finished this piece on Dec 31 at about 11:30 pm, just in time. This piece is titled "Madonna and Child". Its pen and ink, mainly brush, but also a healthy amount of crow quill pen, and is 23" wide x 15" tall. Since this is the second image in what is probably going to be a new body of work, I thought it might be interesting to post some images of the process I'm using. I usually don't take the time to keep records of the image in progress, but I did this time. The following images are various steps in the process, with notes for those who are interested.

1. Initial Sketches. A few months ago, I churned out a bunch of sketches on these themes. I taped them all up around my drawing desk. Here's a shot of some of the images around my desk as well as the specific image I used as the starting point for this piece.


2. Digital Layout. I decided that I wanted to do a more elaborate image than my original sketch, so I did a rough layout in Photoshop, sketched on a Wacom tablet. This allowed me to quickly experiment with combining elements from multiple sketches and refine the composition. I printed this image out when I was done and taped it on my desk for reference as I worked on the final piece. I did not want to trace the image or follow it exactly, but just use it as a reference.

3. Pencil. Next I created the pencils for the final image. I used a red colored pencil on smooth bristol paper. My intention was the for the red lines to show through in the final image, so the pencil lines were pretty dark. I also didn't use an eraser at all, as I wanted a record of all of the lines I made in the final image.

4. Final Ink. This is the same image that is at the top of the post. After finishing the pencils, I used a brush (Series 7, size 1) and a crowquill pen (hunt 102 nib) to work on top of the drawing. I did some spattering with a larger brush as well, and used a bit of white acylic at the very end to carve some shapes out of some of the bigger black areas.

ImageKind Gallery up

I've got a gallery up of most of my Fairy Tale and Pirate images up and available for sale at Imagekind. You can buy anything from a greeting card to a six foot print of a big scary fairy tale to disturb your child and parents with.

Click on the button in the upper right of this blog to be transported to my gallery.

One note about the gallery - the preview images on their website appear washed out, but the actual prints turn out great. I think this has to do with the fact that they don't respect the embedded color profile when auto-generating preview images on their web site, but they DO use the profiles when printing.

I'm still trying to sort that out.

Witches for Halloween

Some quick witch heads sketched in Photoshop for Halloween!

Gasmasks and Bobbies, oh my!

Years ago, I worked a set of drawings known collectively as "Terrorists Gone Wild". I recently had a big brain dump of new imagery based on some of the same ideas. I wanted a break from Pirates and Fairy Tales for awhile, and to get back to Pen and Ink. I realized while working on this drawing how much I missed using quill pens and ink. I also remembered my fondness for seeing blue-line underdrawings on comic pen and ink drawings. I always liked the look of the underdrawing with the ink more than the final reproduced image, where the blue line would drop out. I used red pencil for this drawing,and wanted to make sure its lines stayed around as part of the final composition.

Oh yea, and the title of this piece is "CELEBRATION".

Dinosaur

A cute dinosaur. Awww. Quick Photoshop sketch.

Double Sketch!

Its been awhile since I did any color digital sketching. Here's a demon and a humpty dumpty, both quick Photoshop sketches.