More Stains!!!

Get it? "More Stains!!!"?? Ya know, "More Brains!!!"... Ah, never mind.
This is more work in the stain series I am working on.
The stain pattern itself was used before but I completely reworked the image to make it more "real". This version of it definitely pulls off a better sense of realism.
The original can be found HERE.

This next stain pattern is relatively new. I drew it a little while back and never used it because I was not all together fond of it. But it grew on me so when I started really experimenting with the digital aspects of these pieces I threw it back into the mix.

WANTED!

This was fun - I had the little drawing of the Hulk in one of my sketch books and thought it would make a cool wanted poster.

The drawing (pencils and inks) only took about 2 hours in total. The digital finishes took quite a bit longer. There was some experimentation to get the look right so that took up some time.

In all I probably spent about 5 and a half hour on the digital part of this one.

Testament - After PusHead

The above is a band poster I was working on for the heavy metal band Testament for their album The Formation of Damnation (unofficially, of course). I'm a big fan of theirs and wanted to up this little homage.
The skull in palm bit is an homage to the artist PusHead. He's know for his rather grim images. This particular design of his recently appeared on the cover of Juxtapoz magazine. PusHead curated their October Halloween issue.
I thought it was really cool and wanted to do up a little somethin-somethin to throw a little fan-boy love his way.
This piece took FOREVER. the rendering on the skull alone took over a week of fairly regular work on it. Admittedly there was a lot of time experimenting to get the right look but all in all I probably spent over a week on the skull portion alone.

The detail of the skull is below.

Space Cruiser and Planet

More space art. Though this time I went with a more comic book style trying to avoid the photo manipulations and any sense of realism.
The planet was drawn (in a sense) digitally. Aside from that it was all done by hand. The space cruiser in this was pretty fun to draw.

With the obvious exception of the colors that is.
I like this one but I'm not wowed by my colors.
Maybe too saturated...
I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment.

Gas Giant and Moon on the Edge of a Nebula

More photo manipulation/digital space art. The gas giant is all digital while the glowing nebula edge and small moon are both photo manipulations. The star field is a Hubble space telescope shot of Messier 67.

I'm not sure I have a lot to say about this one. It was fun (as they all seem to be) and I really enjoy the colors. They are very soothing and inviting which is ironic if one considers the amount of radiation that would be pouring off this gas giant and out of this nebula would make this a quite inhospitable place to be.

Blue gas (from the "nebula") is commonly associated with hydrogen (a fundamental building block of stars) and the blue gas giant implies a bit of a failed star. Rather an accumulation of hydrogen that did not have the requisite mass to undergo nuclear fusion and ignite into a star.
In reality there would be a lot of other gases mixed in and the gas giant wouldn't really appear to be so blue. A perfect example of this is the planet Jupiter. A gas giant and the largest planet in our solar system, it is widely believed by astronomers and physicists that it is a failed star. Despite the fact that EVERY other planet in the solar system could fit inside the space Jupiter displaces it lacked the required mass (and thus internal gravitational pressure) to ignite into a star.

I guess I did have a lot to say about this after all...

Because He's Smarter Than You

This was time consuming but A LOT of fun to do.

Two of my biggest loves are for art and science so I decided to do something to combine them.

The guy started out as a little design for my pseudo comic book line Addiction Comics. I thought it would be funny to have a smoker drinking coffee on the cover.

Then I decided that wasn't really that funny after all so I changed it up. I started fiddling with it in photoshop and decided he looked rather professorial so I did this up and turned him from a punchline addict to a physicist.

All the technical looking stuff on the chalk slate behind him I got from science books of mine. I just drew the formulas and charts in one of my sketchbooks.

From pencils to inks to digital color and finishes I probably spent around 11 hours or so on this.

The Human Condition?

More personal commentary about modern man.
A dual natured beast, he's cracked and fissured while the filthy worm within fights with the humanity on which face will be shown.
To reinforce the duality the worm-man is two-toned (more or less) as is the background. Just thinking of my formal elements as I have some fun with the drawing.

Talking Heads

More commentary masquerading as vintage comic book covers.
I was thinking about the culture of the "talking head". The guy on your T.V. screen who, on the face of it, is full of pretense and bluster but
in realty is not speaking his own mind. Rather he is regurgitating what he's been told to say. Saying only what he/they think others want to hear.
This made me think of the 2004 Presidential election and how prevalent this type of b.s. was during the campaign (on BOTH sides). While this piece isn't specifically about the Presidential campaign or politics in general I dated the "cover" for 2004. A little personal laugh for myself I suppose.
I think the idea of putting this kind idea out there as a comic book cover works. Comics covers are designed to sell whats inside. However comic covers are frequently not truly representational of whats on the inside. Not all that unlike that culture of the "talking head".

Addiction Comics!

Okay, it's pretty clearly not a real comic book. The "Addiction Comics" logo is just a modified "Action Comics" logo. This one functions as Pop Art far more then any of the others I have done.

It's a bit of a "Red Scare" political statement I guess... 50 years after the fact.

"Mr. McCarthy" is of course a reference to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Note the Communist Soviet robot says "made in the U.S.A.." on the back of its head. A reference to the "red menace" and the origins of hysteria in the minds of U.S.. citizens.

This one took a bit of time to draw and put together. To be honest I lost track of the time I spent on it. The robot and the "G-Man" are separate drawings. Mr. G-Man was drawn pretty small (5 inches by 7 inches at best) and photoshoped in.

All in all I probably spent 12 0r 13 hours on this piece.

**EDIT** I re-drew the "g-man" in a slightly more appropriate size (closer to 9 x 12). I feel it works much better now with the new character inserted in. Thought I must admit is bums me out some of his cool detail is hidden behind SPUTNIKA...

More Fun From the Sketchbook

I had originally drawn this one with skyscrapers popping up over the hills and mesas in the background but I felt they were poorly placed and thought out.


I was going to call it 5 Yard Penalty (for encroachment). If you're a football fan you'd get it...

That idea had whimsy and I liked it but I believe I like this version better with the only sign of invading modernity being the rather native looking mans cigarette.

Not only is that lone smoke a sign of an ever encroaching modern world but it is also outstandingly bad for him. Not unlike modernity in my humble opinion...

Pencils and inks took about 3 and a half hours.

This one could look quite rad with the experienced hand of a top notch colorist. My
skills at digital color are alright but I've seen some guys who could light up an image like this like a roman candle...

"Vintage" Superman

I've been drawing inspiration (pardon the pun)
from the great artist of old to the modern artist who celebrate the classic Golden Age of comic books.

One artist in particular is Matt Kaufenberg who has done some absolutely beautiful work with pseudo-vintage images.

These are a TON of fun to do because they allow me to step outside of my normal way of thinking when it comes to drawing. Especially when it comes to drawing in a comic bookie way.

From pencils to inks to digital finishes this one took about 4 and a half hours to do (give or take a bit).

October - Puss

This was just a little somethin-somethin from the sketch book. It was a fun way to blow a couple of hours.

**EDIT** I threw a little love on the sketchbook drawing in some down time. It was fun and really makes the image look cool.

"Vintage" Spidey

I really enjoyed working on this one. Drawing in such a retro style was cool because it got me out of my normal mindset when it comes to the look and feel of a character and his environment.

Additionally the style of drawing fits perfectly in with the retro color half tone.

The bit about pop art was just funny to me. Not to mention it makes the whole thing function as pop art in a sense so it's also pleasantly ironic.

From lines to digital work it took about 3 and a half hours to get to this point.

Everybody Wants Some...

...But not everyone knows how to handle it.
Thanks to Erin Clark for the use of the text.
She's rad.

This is yet another commentary about my views of modern society and the way it's "members" behave within it's borders.

From line work to digital colors this took about 4 and a half hours to this stage.

More Vintage

This is more "vintage" line of images I've been working on lately. I set this one up to look like one of the old pulp style comics from the 50's; kind of in the vein of the 50's movie serials about aliens and monsters.
This one is true CMYK color half tone (converted back to RGB to be posted online). I used the black line art as a key layer. After selecting the colors in photoshop I copied and pasted them to a new file, converted it to CMYK and applied the color half-tone to it. Then I copied the key layer (the black line art) and pasted that in over the colors, lining them up as I did so. Then I modified my selection of the key layer by a 1 pixel expansion and filled it with black again (to beef up the line art darks). I went on to photoshop in the "aged" wrinkles and dings in the cover and the result is what we see here.
I REALLY like this look. I think it has a lot of potential in a more fine arts oriented area. I know this is hardly an original thought *COUGHRoyLichtensteinCOUGH* but I feel the artificial aging of modern images holds a great deal of potential.

Whats New is Old Again

So this is my first real attempt at simulating a vintage look. I've used photoshop to add a halftone screen to my image of the super kill guy Brock Samson. Admittedly I cheated a little. I'm not to swish with the process yet and every time I tried to apply a color halftone it came out looking horrible so basically I duplicated the image, gray scaled it, and applied the halftone to the that. Then I pushed the curves to make the image strictly black and white. Once there I copied and pasted the dot pattern into the original image and set the layer to "overlay".
It's rudimentary and isn't representative of what a real color halftone image can look like (which is pretty bad ass if you ask me), but this way doesn't look bad. It's not a bad way to do it while I'm still learning how to do it right.

The Expendables W.I.P.

This is a flick Stallone is making (think The Wild Geese). It features a bunch of 80's action icons as well as some more modern ones. A friend of mine told me about it and said I should take a look at the movie poster for it. He said he 'd love to see my take on it so here I am - in the midst of it...

I still have to draw the tattoo for the muscle-dudes back and of course there's the color....

UPDATED!

This is my final update of the piece originally posted HERE. I knew from the get go that it needed some work and I finally got around to fixing her up.
So the adjustments to the piece are as follows:
*by making the gas giant planet seem less flat
*adding in a little atmospheric glow to the dark side of each planet
* by making the original background photo manipulation a little more crisp and vibrant
I really dug this when I first put her together and I like her even more now with these updates. I feel this piece can now hold it's own against the THIS one.
This piece was done first and as such suffered (suffers) from my lack of positioning on the experience bell curve. But I really like how the updates benefit the work.

The Mirage Nebula with Planets

This is a mix of some line art elements and photo manipulations. The "nebula" started its life as a photograph of some smoldering coals and ashes at a coffee house/hooka bar here in Mid-Town.
The planets are manipulated photographs of textures I took.
The close star in the midst of a coronal mass ejection is the same.
The stars are an actual Hubble shot of star cluster Messier 67.

I just love space shots.

Birthday Card...

...For my bud Julie. I missed her birthday party and I know shes got an outstanding sense of the absurd with a particular love of dinosaurs. So I says to myself, self, what could be better then a space dinosaur fighting off alien ships with a ray gun? What could be better? Nothing! That's what. So I did up this little guy and had it printed.
Pencils and inks took about 2 and a half hours total.