The Self Portrait

Yup - that's me. In the midst of all this retrospective stuff I thought I'd keep it fresh with a self portrait I did recently.
A mix of a little high contrast photography, photoshop and some digital lines, it took a couple hours to do.

LOOK! Up in the Sky!

This one is pretty old as well - from 1999 in fact. I'm posting it in the midst of this series of retrospective posts to illustrate a point. Despite my fairly primitive skills even up to '99, I was capable of a little jem or two. Don't get me wrong - the original of this was pretty poor because of the line quality but with some fresh inks, a few improved details and some rendering the potential of a drawing with poor lines can be seen. This still isn't great but it really isn't that bad now that it has been touched up.

* I beefed up the lines to make them pop a little better.

* I added in the shadows in the underside of Supes cape.
* I added a smidgen of detail to his torso.
* I redrew his facial features and photoshoped them in. I kept them true to the original look - I just cleaned them up a bit.
* I also digitally generated the big Superman "S" and added in the black/white/black background just 'cause I though it would look cool. Well, cooler then it was I guess.

Circa 1993

Both these images are from '93. At this point I was drawing a lot on biology paper. I'm not sure what else it's used for but I drew on it. It was a sort of heavyish kinda paper that absorbed ink really well. I started using it because an art teacher in High School had us use it in class (I can only assume as a cheap alternative to 100 lb. Bristol Board, though it was not as heavy).

The paper itself was 8.5 x 11 had three pre-punched holes so it could be placed in 3 ring binders. In retrospect this factor on top of its limited size made it difficult to do anything good with it, but at the time I loved this stuff.

This is about the time I started inking in my work with the tools I still use to this day. While I experimented with Micron and Tech-Liner graphic pens as well as a few others, the Staedtler Pigment Liners were always, and continue to be the best graphic pen I have ever used.

Anyway my lines here (among many other things - check out that wack-ass left leg on Rob Liefelds character Chapel in the lower image!) clearly need work. I really didn't have any significant understanding yet of varying line weight. When I grew as an artist I learned how to really make figures really pop from and environment or background. While experience was allowing me to learn this (and other) lesson(s) on my own I owe a lot to artist and former instructor Rick Reese for aiding me in getting these concepts and practices to really gel for me.

By the way - can you tell I clearly have a thing for bats at this point? Not unlike my (then) comic book idol Todd McFarlane...

Long Ago (but technically more recent then the previous post)...

More material from my formative years.

Spidey there is circa late 1987 to early 1988. As you can see I graduated from crayons at this point but still didnt have the sense not to draw on lined notebook paper. I apparently "inked" the drawing with a ball point pen and a felt tipped pen.

Captain America there is from about a year later (give or take as I don't remember exactly when these were done). I never inked this in because at the time I thought these were the best pencils I had ever done. I felt like if I put ink on it I would ruin it. The image itself if after Todd McFarlane from one of his Amazing Spider-Man covers where there was a cross over with the Cap.

Long Ago...

Since it's my birthday today I figured I'd add in a couple of those old drawings from my childhood I alluded to in a previous post.

The top "tiger" is from about 1982 or so. I'm not exactly sure when I did it but '82 sounds about right. As most kids do I started out drawing in crayon on that old heavy tan-ish kiddie drawing paper that used to come in those drawing packs.

The second one is from about 1984 or so and is of a spaceship called the SDF-1 from an old cartoon series called Robotech. It was easily my favorite cartoon from that era. It's also on that heavy tan-ish kiddie art paper, thought the scan kinda washed out that texture/color.

I'll be posting a few more drawings from my youth over the next week or so. Mostly because I think it's always kinda cool to look back and see what how I grew as an illustrator and artist in general.

Noms

Super Noms actually. Another piece for Erin Clarks project Just Saying I Love You. Clearly the lioness loves her some zebra.

I thought the idea was pretty funny so I went with it. I recycled the lioness from my Pride of Baghdad homage. I just had to digitally add in the tongue licking the chops in anticipation of the love fest (also know as the feeding frenzy). The zebra I did up just for this.

Something Kinda Old

This one is about five years old now (maybe five and a half) I guess... I'm doing something with my Deviant Art page where I'm going to be uploading some old, un-touched up images to show a "then and now" kinda thing and I decided to post some of those here.

I did it for a foundation 2D art class when I was in college. I ended up not using it though and went with another drawing (Stephen Hawking and Arnold Schwarzenegger) for the playing card project.

Unlike most of the older stuff I will post I've touched this one up a little bit with some fresh inks and some digital finishes.

Drawn at about 11x14 on 100 lb. Vellum Bristol board. I don't remember how long pencils and inks took...

What's Your Element

This was a drawing I did for a friend (who is a graphic designer) for a Honda Element (c) ad on which she was working.

It never got used so I posted the previous version (sans the Honda Element and wolves) somewhere on here just for fun.

Well I decided to post the whole thing as I had originally drawn/envisioned it a couple years ago.

To be honest it isn't exactly like I drew it - I removed an owl in the background I thought was pretty poorly thought out and placed by me...

Drawn on 14 x 17 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board - I don't remember how long the pencils and inks took...

Female Ruby Crowned Kinglet

This is after a photo by Sooper-Deviant (from Deviant Art) called Kinglets Garden . It can be found at his Deviant Art Page, though I don't know where. I saw it only a week or so ago buy I can't find it on his page now to link you folks over to it.

Anyway it was an excellent photo and I just got out my sketchpad and drew it up, mostly from memory...

I liked how it came out so I threw a little ink on her...