Aliens and Predators

... And space ships, oh my!

From the sketchbook.

I'm gonna color this one soonest. When I get it looking all snazzy I'll post the results.

The three open "panels" are gonna be filled with various things, including copy on the bottom most (prolly where I'm gonna slap on the 'ol AvP logo).
Drawn relatively small at about 9 x 12-ish on standard sketchbook paper, this one took about an hour to pencil and about 2 hours to ink. Digital colors will probably take about 3 to three and a half hours.

Tyrannosaurus Tex

Again, this was an idea that just seemed really funny to me. I thought of it the other night as I lay in bed, so I grabbed my trusty sketchbook from the nightstand and doodled this up. I threw some ink on it today.
I wanted to give his "mount" a bit of a donkey-ish look so I gave her the longer ears but I don't like how the hair on the back of a donkeys head and neck looks so I gave her more of a horses kind of mane (or whatever it's called).
Full size view is a must for this one.
Drawn at about 9 x 12 on standard sketchbook paper, pencils for this took about 45 minutes. Inks took an additional one and a half to two hours.
I'll be coloring this one in very soon...

Holy Onomatopoeia Batman

Mostly because I thought it was sorta funny...

Based on an idea I got from sitting with a friend drinking coffee. The "onomatopoeia" bit was his idea. Making it batman getting punched in the face was mine...

The Silhouette W.I.P.

As the title suggests this is a work in progress. I really dig how powerful silhouettes can be. This one was actually inspired by a shot from a fairly silly movie called Into the Blue or some such thing.

I'm gonna do a little rough graphite thing for the ocean in the background and am also going to work in a sunset in the background sky...

This was actually drawn relatively small at about 9 x 12 on standard sketchbook paper. Pencils and inks took about 35 to 40 minutes. Digital colors/finishes will probably take another 2 hours.

I'll post the finished product when done.

The Dream

I mean, doesn't everyone dream about giraffes, eyeballs on stalks and giants?

An older idea from one of my sketchbooks. This particular idea came up early last year but I never did anything with it until today. I decided I wanted to throw some ink on it and see how it looked...
I'll be coloring this and posting the results sometime this week.

Symphonia De Exitium

Aaaaaand after a few more hours of work this is where I have ended up. The nuclear blast/mushroom cloud behind the kneeling demon may have to go. In that position I just dont think it is fully realized and is a bit more distracting then I like.

The Latin reads (from top to bottom): "The Plague of War" and "The Symphony of Destruction".

W.I.P. Stage Two

Where I ended up with this little thing today (after sitting and staring at it for quite some time).
I'm not sure about the individual elements in this. I'll prolly have to take a break from it and get back to it later, just to refresh my senses...

W.I.P.

A work in progress - a poster about war on which I am working.
I am a little stuck actually on where I wanna go from here. Feel free to chime in if you have any ideas...

The Empire

Done for fun. I like Star Wars (well, at least episodes 4-6) and I wanted to do this up. It took about 12 hrs in total, mostly because a lot of the individual elements were already mocked up somewhere for other projects on which I was working. Had it all been from scratch it wouldda taken wayyy longer...

The Super Kill Guy

I did this up in a sketchbook and kinda liked it.
Drawn fairly small at about 9 x 12 on standard sketchbook paper, it took only a couple hours to pencil and ink. Digital finished took quite a bit more time as I spent a lot of that time playing with different elements.
Now that I look at it I can see one thing right off the bat I wanna change. I'll repost when I do.

Ye Olde Time Stuffe

I think this is the last of the old time stuff I'm gonna post for a while. I chose these two as they are kinda on opposite ends of the spectrum of "old". The top one is a drawing from around 1983 I reckon. It's of the Space cruiser Yamato from the old cartoon Battle of the Planets.

The second image is a gorilla from 1992 or 93. It was a project in a art class I took at a junior college; we were supposed to draw something using a technique known as stippling. Basically it is an image made out of a whole lotta little dots. I don't remember now what I used as reference but it was probably something that was handed out to me in the class. I thought the oversized head on the tiny body was pretty funny at the time, so I went with it.

Dear Ma...

"... A funny thing happened..."

Another image done for the fine Blog Just Saying I Love You.
The details of this one escape me. I just remember it was fun to work on.

Those Damn Beats

Just because - it was in my sketchbook and I kinda liked it so I inked it in and threw some color on. The drawings scale makes the detail suffer but over all it's not bad.

Drawn at 9 x 12 on standard sketchbook paper, pencils and inks took about 2 and a half hours (give or take). Digital finishes/colors took roughly another 2 and a half hours.

The Macabre

This was something I did LATE last night. I got home around 11 pm and began doodling in one of my sketchbooks. Well I liked what came out (much less detailed then this) so I decided to stay up an ink it in.
At 4:30 am (give or take a little) this is where I ended up. For a drawing that is no bigger then 9x11 I (mostly) like how it turned out.

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.