Another Day In Paradise

Another in a series. I had a story idea for these revolving around various devils and/or demons (from a variety of world religions, both past and present) interacting with random, regular people in todays world. The stories were set from the 50's all the way up to the present day.

Anyway, this little cover mock-up was fun to do.

Portrait Commission

Done for a client who wanted to present the drawing of their kids to his wife for mothers day. I also made it into a greeting card so he and his kids could sign it and present that to her as well.
He seemed to love it when I presented it to him. I'd really like to know what his wife thought of it...
11 x 14 on 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board. Pencils and inks took a little over 6 hours.

Pencils and Weirdness

Something I blue-lined out while laying in bed last night. In between some other work today I found a couple hours to throw down with some clean pencils.

I still haven't found that sweet-spot for scanning pencils where they come out looking as clean as they do on the page. Also I loose a little bit of the finer details when I scan them like this.

Priest Vamp

I saw the commercial for the Priest movie. I'm not optimistic, however the little vamp monster in the commercial was pretty cool. So this little guy is roughly based on that...

Again, because I apparently suck at scanning pencils some of his cool little details got washed out, but it was fun to do. I'll ink and color this one sometime soon...
Pencils on 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board took about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes.

Wolverine Pencils

I was thinking of doing an alphabet of personal likes; things in my life I really dig. This was done to sorta test the idea and I like how it came out.
I don't like the scan though. Every time I scan the pencils to a drawing I always loose some of the slightly lighter details...
Anyway I fiddled with Wolvies uniform a little. I gotta admit I dont know what it looks like these days but I did it this way to reflect the elements of his previous uniforms that I liked the most (moving little things around).

Alter Egos

So I got the colors for this one all done this past weekend. Getting my flats into the drawing didn't take quite as long as I thought it was gonna take.

Anyway the drawing is all about Bruce Banner and his alter ego, the Hulk. Aaaaaand the Hulk and his alter ego Bruce Banner (sorta depends on your perspective I guess).

In my humble opinion this dynamic has been (at times) the best developed concept in all of comics.

So there ya have it, but I must say this was fun to draw; especially the background/landscape which I drew separately from the characters in the foreground (for various reasons). In fact I liked how it came out so much I wanted to post it up here all by itself. So here it is.

Stargate - SG 1

It only took me forever to get to it but finally I did the colors for the Stargate: Children of the Gods poster I did waaaaaaay back here [LINK]. I ended up just calling it Stargate SG 1 even though I originally drew it as an homage to the series pilot, entitled Children of the Gods. I may go back and change that again though.

The copy took a little while because it is not a pre-fab font. I took the time to digitally recreate the copy that is used on the DVD boxed sets.

I drew this long enough ago so that I can't recall how long the pencils and inks took but the digital colors/finishes took approximately 7 and a half to 8 hours.

The Kool Aid Guy

A birthday card for a friend. I knew I wanted to do the Kool Aid Guy and I knew this was the pose I wanted to use. Unfortunately while this image is ubiquitous on the web (the original has him holding a pitcher of Kool Aid in his right hand), I could find no reference as to who the original artist was. So instead I had to credit the creator of the Kool Aid Guy, Marvin Plotts.

The drawing took about 45 minutes; about 15 minutes for the pencils and about a half hour for the inks....

The rest of it (digital colors, design elements, etc.) took about an hour or so.

The Commission

One of the commissions I did recently for one of my Deviant Art watchers. She wanted something outta this world, so I hope I delivered with this creepy little thing.
Pencils and inks on 11 x 14, 100 LB. Vellum Bristol Board. 20 bucks.

The Super-Kill Guy (Updated)

So this is an updated version of the Brock Samson image I first showed HERE. I replaced the gun with Brock's usual weapon; the ubiquitous and trusty knife. Additionally I updated the colors and some of the design elements as well.

I'm MUCH more fond of this version.
How 'bout you?

The Shadow - Prep Sketch

This was the sketchbook prep drawing I did for the commission piece located HERE.
It's a little different and I kinda like it so I decided she deserved some ink.

It's a relatively small scale drawing - about 9 x 12 or so on standard sketchbook paper where as the finished drawing was on 14 x 17 100 lb. Vellum Bristol Board. So it's details suffer a little bit from it's diminished scale.
Overall I like it. I'll probably be coloring this one in sometime relatively soon.
I should note "The Shadow" logo was added in digitally. It's the same one I digitally generated and added into the full color commission.

The Revered

The pencils and inks for an Art Nouveau-esque poster on which I am working. The imagery is all about ancient Egyptian myth and allegory.
Bastet was and ancient Egyptian goddess represented by a womans body and a cats head (cats were revered in ancient Egypt). The protector of pregnant women she also defended men from illness and demons. She was considered "...the personification of the warming rays of the sun on the Nile". (M. Bunson, The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Pg. 43)
Frequently depicted with a sistrum (a musical instrument) and an ankh (a symbol of eternal life), I included the position of her arms to be a loose representation of the Ka, "[an] ancient Egyptian term for the spiritual essence, which existed alongside human form and yet maintained individuality".(M. Bunson, The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Pg. 130)

Meet the Creeper

Another faux vintage comic cover. Based on Rob Zombies song of the same name.
As a bit of an homage to Mr. Zombie I've been doing a few different things like this (one of which can be seen HERE).
The b-movie themes and pulp commentary appeals to me.
Pencils and inks took about 3 hours or so. Digital finishes took about 5 or 6 hours.

The Devil Reflects - W.I.P.

A work in progress.

Like the title says: The devil, reflecting on his day before bed...
In the spaces between the "halo rays" are going to be things like bunnies and butterflies... and skulls.

The Justice League

First the black n whites, then the colors. I think in this case I like the black n white line art better then the full colors.

This one's right outta my sketchbook so it was drawn fairly small at about 9 x 11. This is another one I drew while laying in bed and trying to take my mind off of my day.

Pencils and inks took about 3 and a half to 4 hours. Digital colors/finishes took about 2 hours.
The Justice League of America logo was digitally generated (in photoshop). That took about twenty minutes to a half hour.

The Undisclosed Project

This is a little concept art/cover design I did a little over a year ago for a "client". I can't disclose the name or idea behind the project because it is property of the author of the work.

Basically I was approached to do the illustrations for a graphic novel but was told it would have to be a "back end deal". That means that I would get paid only if the work was published (and managed to sell significant enough quantities). Initially I was all for it but real life got in the way and I was forced to back out of the project because it would have been too much of a burden on me to not get paid up front.

I had done a few pages of story boarding and a whole lotta concept sketches (and this cover design) before I had to inform the author I would be unable to complete the project in a timely manner. It involved full pencils and inks for about one hundred (100) pages of story/art.

At the time I would have only been able to produce about 1 (maybe 2 if I was lucky) page per week. The reality of not getting paid up front meant I had to give priority to that which would, my day job. The investment of time and resources to such a project with no guarantee of being paid was too much of a risk/burden, so I politely backed out of the project.

Alter Egos - W.I.P.

A panoramic poster I am working on. Still in its rougher stages the top image shows the mix of the characters (Bruce Banner and the Hulk) and the background I drew for them.
I decided to include the background sans border and characters (below) so some of the detail can be seen a little better. It's not a super detailed background drawing but I thing it'll look pretty bitchin' once I get it colored in.
Pencils and inks for the two parts of this (in total) took about 5 and a half to 6 hours. Who knows how long the digital colors are gonna take me - I'll let you know when I get there!

From the Depths

Not just from the Depths but also from my sketchbook. I drew this the other night while laying there trying to take my mind off my days activities.

This one would look wicked colored in but I don't think I'll be able to get around to it anytime soon...

Storm - Ride the Lightning

From the sketchbook - it turned out kinda nice for a small drawing so I inked 'er in. I went with the quasi-punker version of Storm form The X-Men. She always seemed cooler to me...

I'm probably going to add the header for this one with the title I used for the post. I may add in some stylized clouds as well, but thats a big maybe...

I may or may not color this one.

Aliens and Predators - Finished

The finished piece for the previous work in progress...

Colors took forever, though by my standards/expectations 3 or 4 days is an eternity...
A lot of it was done from scratch except the top most earth like planet and the mountainy/forrestly background in the uppermost rectangle. Those two bits were recycled from other pieces when I realized they would fit just fine here in this piece.

Seriously though,there were so many layers in my file by the time I was done the .psd was 200 megs (psd temp files for a piece that size are about 800 megs to a gig in size). Every time I saved changes it took my computer at least a minute to save the file. At least a minute...

Total time spent on the digital colors/finishes (spread out over 4 days) was 14 to 15 hours. By the way, I was WAYYYYY off in my guesstimation of how long it would take (see my previous post). Granted a lot of that time was spent experimenting with different elements, looks and shading and what not, but still...