Free Comic-Book Day Drawings...

 

 

 

 Free Comic Book Day was back on May 3rd.  And here's a bunch of artwork I did that day (or... week...).  I had wanted to do SOMETHING for FCBD, but I couldn't figure out what.  My local comic shops already booked their resident artists, and I'm not popular enough to be "requested" by an out-of-town shop, so... I was like "What should I do?"

I decided I'd open myself up to some free comissions from my Facebook friends.  I posted a status, that said if they LIKED or COMMENTED on the status, I'd do them up a drawing.  Originally I was planning on keeping it quick and simple like a Con sketch, or if I had landed a comic-book store post for the day.  But, as i started doing them, I decided to fall more and more on my traditional style of coloring and what-not in Photoshop.  I still tried to keep the actual drawings themselves quick and free flowing... but... yeah, didn't quite happen on all of them.

Some of them turned out really well, others... not so much.  My idea was to do it as a "test run" for if I got an Artist Alley table at SDCC this year (Update: I did NOT get a table).  TO see how quickly I could draw "on demand".  I learned a ton going through the process... and even surprised myself a couple times.  So despite some major flaws on some of them, the things I learned will be of great help!

Sketchy - Joker and the Cat

Was kinda burned out today, and just wasn't "feeling" the urge to be creative... so procrastinated a couple commissions a little longer (a habit, I really need to break).

However, I insisted that I do... SOMETHING.  So amongst a lot of sketching (and trying to emulate styles of my betters), I did the above drawing of Joker and Catwoman.  Joker is whatevers... But I kinda dug my take on Catwoman.  She's a bit younger than what I picture Catwoman in the books, but I like the spunkyness I was able to capture with her.  This is a girl who knows how to play... and she plays hard.

Anyway, hope you like.

I'm also stewing about a "perception of art", that I got involved with the other day... I might go off on a rant about it later.  Or not, haven't decided if I want to vocalize it or not, as it deals with "friends".

Argh... zombie...

Argh... zombie... run!

WALKING DEAD IN TWO WEEKS!!!! OMG!!!!!

Batman "Teaser" Sketch

So... I've been following the New 52's Batman... Cuz Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are fucking GODS!

For those of you not up to speed, the current storyline in the Bat-Books is "Death of the Family".  It deals with the return of the Joker and all sorts of shit hitting the fan...  The chaos spins off into the other bat-books and is building towards a climax in Batman #17, which will be out on February 13th.  Every issue of the story is out except for the finale.

Many people have theories for what will happen at the end... the above pic is a commentary of sorts if the storyline ends the way a lot of people are thinking it will end.  I personally don't subscribe to the "popular theory" cuz it just seems too obvious.  And I think Scott Snyder is a fucking genius, and wouldn't give us the "obvious" ending.  I think it will be something else.  But we got 2 weeks to find out.

Anyway, I'm gonna finish the above and post it on the 13th (maybe the 14th) after the story is out in the world (it should be spoiler free, so don't worry if you haven't read it yet).  And even if the "popular theory" doesn't pan out, the above drawing will still be amusing/entertaining.  Just holding off its publication until Snyder/Capullo tells us what's what.

Crappy sketches of superheroes and whatnot...

So a slight delay in posting... mainly because...

I GOT A NEW COMUTER!!!  WooT!

But yeah, it took a while to get everything set up, installing new software, upgrading to newer versions of some programs.  Figuring out some of the changes to said upgrades, and just getting situated.  So that took some time.

After it was all done, I said... BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!  And thought I'd draw some epic superhero type action... but it was just frustrating sketch after sketch... all of them kinda crappy and just frustrating.  So, I scanned all the crappy sketches (mostly Spidey) and slapped some color on the sketches in Photoshop... and wah-la.  Today's post!  Yay!

Dino-Doodle... and my 100th post apparently?

When I logged into Blogger to post this, it said that I had 99 posts.  So this would be my 100th post.  Not the 100th drawing, cuz some of those posts had multiple drawings in them... so... yeah...

Happy 100th post to me!!!

Above is a doodle that again, I may or may not have drawn at work...  But I kinda dugged it and thought it'd be fun to photoshop some color on... so that's what I did.  I like the looseness and the scribbly feel to it.  Just kinda of a "fun" piece.  No real meaning or message behind it... just having some fun....

Sexy ladies...

I took a couple life drawing/painting classes in college.  I highly recommend that any artist do that.  Take as many as you can!  It's one of the most important classes you can take!

Anywho, as a person who LOVES comics, a lot of the ladies I drew at the time were "sexy".  Then I fell in love, and became all gentleman like, and kinda stopped drawing "sexy" ladies.  A commission I'm currently working on, involves a little bit of sex appeal.  And as I was trying to draw concept sketches for it... I realised...

I had gotten rusty at drawing "sexy".

So I busted open the internet and used random swimsuit models for a substitute life drawing class.  The above is some of those sketches.  Yes, i know a few them have some really bad proportions (tiny heads!), but really I was studying the hip/shoulder angles, and the way curves work, etc.

Little Green Martian...

Has it really been almost TWO weeks since my last post?  I need to step on it.  And step on it, I shall!

Anywho, the above is a doodle of a little green martian...  Fairly stereotypical alien looking dude.  Green skin, the big vacant eyes, antennae, etc.  Mars'esque background.

Really just a doodle I may (or may not) have done during a slow work day that was Photoshop'd in some color.

More random doodles in the future, and some commissions down the road.  I'd show them now (or their progress), but as a lot of my commissions are usually gifts for people, I don't like to post the progression of work until the recipient of the commission has seen it first.  So, alas, no sneaky-peeky!  But one day.

Random doodle...

Not technically a "new" drawing, I meant to post this months ago, but it never made it to my scanner until now.

One night I was watching television with the future Mrs., and was just kinda randomly doodling... And I was playing with the "Sharpie Pen", and was getting kinda detail oriented, cuz of the very fine point that Sharpie pens provide... and I just let my mind wander.  Above is what came out.  Enjoy.

HULK-du-ken!

So I started doodling this Hulk drawing...  and right before I started drawing it, I realised he was trying to summon up a fireball like Ryu in Street Fighter.  *shrug*  Weird...

APE-ril: Bubbles

I'm not sure why Bubbles looks confused...  I always give "unintentional" expressions to animals when I draw them, it's weird.   So yeah, Bubbles is confused.

This drawing was kinda interesting how it came about.  Originally I was gonna do full color like I have done many times in the past, but I got to thinking that something more "sketchy" would be cool.  So I opted to go that road, and started sketching with graphite.  After I had sketched about as much as I thought I could, I scanned the picture.  My scanner hates sketches for some reason, they always come out looking weird.  So I took to Photoshop, and did some more shading in the digital realm, which was kinda nifty.  I really enjoyed the back and forth between hand drawn and digital shading... it was interesting  Might experiment with it more in future Drawsiness.

Abu and "Ape" Welcome you to APE-ril

My buddy and art-peer, Stephen Wittmaak (whose work can be found at PORTCITY UNDERGROUND) is doing an "Ape a day" drawing challenge for the month of April, thus making it "APE-ril" (get it?).  Anywho, I was thinking about it and thought, that's not a bad idea... so... in the words of Barney Stinson, "Challenge Accepted!"  I sat down for about 2 hours and made a list of apes (and monkeys, PLEASE don't debate me on the difference of monkeys and Apes, let's just let bygones be bygones) that I wanted to draw.  That list goes to 30 (one for each day).  As I was at Disneyland all day yesterday, I did not have time to doodle an ape yesterday, so today is TWO apes.  I really want to do all 30 in the month of APE-ril.

First up is Abu, everybody's favorite little rascal monkey from Disney's Aladdin.  See the connection to yesterday's Disneyland trip?  Or is it just cuz his name comes first on the list of monkeys?  It's technically, both!  Ha-HA!

Second up is, "Ape Named Ape" from the ORIGINAL (not the lame animated remake or the gawd-awful Brendan Fraser film) George of the Jungle.  My mental image of Ape differs a lot from what I found when I was looking up reference material for this drawing.  I really don't remember him looking anything like this at all.  But apparently he did.  Kinda weird how my mind remembers something else.  But I'll take it.

A look back at March...

Well, March certainly did not go as planned at all.  I think that's because I was trying to hard to control it.  I wanted a "theme" for the month (can you tell what it was?), and I wanted to keep all the pictures the exact same size.  This resulted in creative frustration and a severe lack of productivity.  This blog was started to just draw stuff and post "whatever"  and here I was saying "No, this month, the drawings must be this, this, and that!"  So it resulted in a hindered about of art.

Also, my webcomic, Waste of Time, started back up and I think I was taking the "creative" edge that I had pulled from this, out on the comic.  I was getting very ambitious with the art there, and not using it in the experimentation realm of this blog.

So only 8 pictures for an entire month, not  a good month at all.  Will aim to be more loose and fluid in April, even though a friend of mine had a sweet idea for a theme.  But I think I'll step back from themes for a bit... and just, draw!

In a side note, I'd love to have that monitor setup.

Happy Belated Birthday, Theodor Geisel!

Yesterday was Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel's birthday.  I had intended to draw up this lil tiny tribute to the man yesterday, but life got int he way.  So here it is today.  WooT!

I grew up reading the works of Mr. Geisel, and I hope to share them with my children.  I also recall my senior year of high school English.  The final.  The LAST grade in the subject for my high school career...  the assignment?  READ a children's book to the class.  Not a report.  Not try to write one yourself.  Nope.  The assignment was to pick a children's book and READ IT TO THE CLASS!   That still stands out in my head the weirdest Final EVER! Especially since the teacher was VERY hard for the majority of the year, it seemed odd that the FINAL would be so easy.

Still, I picked my favorite "Green Eggs and Ham", and read it to the class.  I got an A.

Mighty Morphin Power... squirrel?

So I wanted to draw the Green Power Ranger this morning, throwback to my child hood.  But realized I wouldn't have enough time before my "day job" to get it to the level of awesome I'd like it.  Maybe Thursday or Friday...  we'll see.  But I still had to get the "martial artist" out of me.  So while Googl'ing martial artist poses for reference, there was a random image of a squirrel in the mix.  My brain put them together... and whala... a squirrel wanting to kick ass and take names.

When coloring it digitally, I really wanted to recreate a watercolor feel to it... I think it came out well, and I didn't use the Burn/Dodge tools of Photoshop, just layering of color for the watercolor feel.  Think it came out well.

A look back at February...

The 2nd month of the year has drawn to a close, as has the second month of Drawsiness.

February was flying off the heals of January, and started kinda strong, but mid-month kinda sputtered.  But last month I did a collage pic (and wallpaper) of the month, and liked it.  So here's the one for February.  A few less posts, but I like the "art gallery" approach to displaying them.  It look cool and professional.

Not everything I draw makes it to Drawsiness, some projects remain unseen while I work on them, some are potentially professional, so must remain under wraps for now.  Some just aren't done enough for the world to see.

But I hope to bring it in March!  Viva la Drawsiness!

Watchin American Idol...

So was watching American Idol last night, as they narrowed in on the Top 24 contestants... and opted to start some doodling for today's Drawsiness... and this is what I got.

If I have a "style" this is probably a good example of it.  This is just me letting my mind wander and let the hand kinda do whatever it wants.  Final projects and what not, or something that needs a particular look, I get hung up on proportions and way things look.  This is me just not really carrying and letting stuff come naturally.  Not worrying about proportions, or perspective or any other "art" rule.  Just freedom to draw whatever.

America better vote off that Pauly Shore lookin' mofo, he annoys me!

The Dayjob Doodling Debacle

I apologize upfront for the poor image quality, it was taken with my cell phone under less than ideal conditions.

On to the story!  I work in the Photo Lab for a major retail chain.  To motivate the work force to do tasks that the work force is otherwise apathetic towards, they create cheesy little games to aid in carrying out these tasks, and rewards the grunts with cheap prizes.  As I'm a creative fellow I get hauled into draw things on poster boards to liven up these cheezy games.  So the above drawing is for the upcoming game, which apparently will have a St. Paddy's theme.  NOTE: This is not my Drawsiness for St. Pat's.  That will be up on March 17th!

So I was coloring this the other day in the Photo Lab, when a rather snooty mother and her rag-tag brats came into get some photos done.  One of the children apparently had a "family tree" project for homework, and that's why they needed the photos.  They wander off to do some shopping while their photos are getting done.  They come back and the mother asks "Who drew that?"  I rather humbly say it was me, and she asked if I traced or used a stencil.  I said no, straight from my head to the poster board.  I do inform her I used a lamp shade to get the circle of the pot just right (cuz drawing a perfect circle is hard!).  She plops another poster board on the counter and some markers, and asks if I could draw her a tree on the poster board.  (Note: This is before I find out it's for one of her brat's school projects).  I hesitate at first cuz I'm working... and it's an odd request.  But she talks up my ego enough, and I knew I could scribble out a tree in about 5 minutes or less.  It takes closer to 10 minutes in between helping other people with their photos.  She says "That's great!" pays for her photos, poster board, et. al and leaves the store with her brats.

I'm forbidden to accept tips at my day job.  I can actually be fired for it.  So I wasn't expecting to get any sort of monetary compensation out of the tree scribble.  But it would have been nice if she at least made the motion to tip.  Or even acted like she would and begin digging through her purse.  But no.  Didn't even appear to be a thought on her mind.  Had she, I would of declined.  Maybe slide her my "artist" business card and maybe have her offer me a better art project in the future, to which I could get paid for?  But nope.  Didn't happen.  But the thing that really irked me was she didn't even say "Thank You!"   That would have been enough, a simple "Thank you!"  Especially since I just did a HUGE junk of her brat's homework for them/her. Nope.  Just took the tree, and photos and left.  Felt so used.

The Doctor will see you now...

Just a quick little doodle today of everybody's favorite criminal villian... Dr. Horrible!

Quite possibly the best thing to come out of the Writer's Guild strike was Dr. Horrible.  I really hope they get around to the sequel, or perhaps even a Broadway play would be sweet?

Harry Potter and the Lack of Productivity

What is up with February being so artistically draining?  For the past week, it's been like pulling teeth to get some art down on paper... and a majority of it is not living up to time spent on it.

Anywho, I had a quirky idea to draw everybody's favorite magical children in a Charlie's Angels'esque pose.  Actually, I had the idea to do the Charlie's Angels pose for "Chuck", but I'll tackle that one at a later date, so I opted to go with Harry Potter, as it's a trio of people who could pull off that pose.  Also, I wanted to steer away from drawing Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.  I wanted to draw Harry, Hermione, and Ron.  There is a difference.  I think Harry came out pretty close, but the other 2 could have used some work.  But this was supposed to be a "warm up" drawing, and it turned into an all-day project.  Weird how that happens sometimes.