Boning up on ink

Did these real quick the other day when I was trying out a new brush and re familiarizing myself with F&W acrylic ink. I really like the way this ink works when doing line work. But when it comes to doing fills of larger areas I think I would rather stay with the W/N 951 Black India. It may be harder to clean out of my brushes, but the color is always stronger and has the finished shine I like. If any of you use ink out there let me know what types you like and I'll give them a try. Hope you like these scurvy dogs. They are a fierce lot!

Day of the Undead

My friend here wanted to give his greetings on his favorite holiday. They say the freaks come out at night, and they are coming out tonight in droves. So I hope you all have a safe and very Happy Halloween!

Here today...Goon tomorrow!

If your not really that familiar with Eric Powell and The Goon, you should check it out. I really like Powell's work and his sketchbooks are a great source of motivation for me. It also helps that he draws a damn fine zombie too. The ink wash he adds to the sketches are fantastic and if I had a little more time, I would try my hand at doing some of those. But for now... I'll stick with my zip-a-tone process.

It's a Mad Mad Madman world!

Continuing my stream of head shots, I give you Madman. I just love the simple design and clean way that this character is done. Even when I have seen other artists take on him, the style of the character always seems to remain clean and easily identified. I guess that goes a long way in saying how well Mike Allred created him. So in that vein... I happily throw my hat into the ring.

Dead head

I decided to switch gears here and do a DC character. Deadman has been on of my favorites for a while now. So I decided that if I was going to do a DC character it had to be him. I know I should go with one of the big heroes at DC, but I just have a love for the more obscure or D-list heroes. Maybe that is just me always rooting for the underdog.

Not a "nuff said".

Another head shot. I did this one at the same time as the last post. I am not really a fan of Wolverine, but I figured I would give it a shot. A bit of trivia about Wolverine is that I didn't start drawing, well...anything, until I saw my older brother doing a large poster of him when I was a kid. That's when it dawned on me that people actually draw comics and that it was possible for me to do that one day. So I immediately ran to my room and got a pencil and some paper and never stopped drawing. I owe him a lot for that. Thanks Steve.

Henchmen at work

Ladies and gentlemen I give you a sketch of the obscure. This is a head shot of a henchman from The Hellfire Club, villains of the X-men. I know it is completely random, but I always loved the simplistic look of these guys. They had a very BDSM look to them (no wonder if you saw what the rest of the Hellfire Club were wearing) and yet they were kind of weak and lame. I was looking through a collection of John Byrne X-men comics and they caught my eye. So in the interest of using that spark of inspiration, I did a quick sketch and inked it in. Add that zip-a-tone I have been really loving as of late and... voila!

The Mean Greens

Another headshot. This time I figured I would add the reason for spidey's senses to be tingling. Not too much to say here, more with the brush and zip-a-tone on Greenies cap and cowl. Working on a couple more of these. But I think I want to get back to more figure drawing. Maybe even use my ink brush work on some of those? Hmmm...now there is an idea....

(Web)headshot

I started doing a few headshots of some comic characters to practice my inking at work. I tried to use a brush pen to aid me in the transition from tech pens over to a mostly brush style. This is one of the products of those efforts. Then I added in some tone to give it a little shadow. I really miss the old zip-a-tone look in comics. I think we should bring that back, even if it's on a independant level. Eh, maybe that's just me. More to come!

Sample minded

Here are the final pieces I can show of my SDCC ink samples. I had another set of samples I took of Wonderdog inc. But seeing as how that has had it's release date pushed back, I doubt (legally) I can show those interior pages. But as soon as I hear that it's a go, I will let you all know. These two covers are from Dustin Nguyen and Ed McGinnis. Again I chose them because of each of their complexity. I wanted the edgy lines in the Superman/Batman cover to contrast with the soft smooth lines of the Robin cover. The contrast of the heavy blacks in the Robin piece also contrasted with the heavy negative space of SM/BM. I don't think I will go about the next portfolio quite the same way. I will probably still try and add in a range of styles, but keep them in the same over all feel. The process of redefining and refining my inking portfolio will probably never cease. But at least I will have fun doing it. And I will learn alot along the way.

GO! Baby,GO!

Here are more samples I promised to show you all. These are on the more cartoony side of my inking samples. These are from Todd Naucks run on Teen Titans Go! Like I had stated before, I wanted a range of ink samples to show my flexability. Believe it or not these almost caused more stress than the more complexed comic pages. To properly and cleanly ink cartoon work it really takes a strong concentrated effort. The lines have to add more to the characters in the absence of value and heavy blacks. I will probably continue to try and ink a wider range of samples to excercise my abilities. And when I do I will be sure to post up what I have here. But I do have even more samples that I will post up soon. Those will be more in the line of covers. Plus I have a couple of sketches waiting in the wings to post as well. Until then hope you all enoy!

SDCC ink samples '08

Here are a couple of ink samples from this years portfolio. This first set is from Amazing Spiderman penciled by Mike Deodato. The other sets will follow in progression through the next couple of weeks. I tried to choose a range of pencil samples to ink for this year. I figured with a nice array of samples I could appeal to a larger list of companies, and there for might get a better response. Well I don't think it worked. But I am not too worried about it. I do have a number of projects waiting in the wings for me after I finish up this second book for Viper. So here are the first set. Hope you all like them. If there is any critiques, I would love to hear from you all.
Thanks again.

Sketch cards

In the last post I showed pics of Matt and I doing sketch cards for people at SDCC. Well here is a small sampling of some of the cards. It was a lot of fun to work on these together. Although Matt could hammer out two for every one I did, it made for some great quick inking practice. Most of theses images are characters from Wonderdog inc. But the one in the bottom row is clearly the top of the Human Torch's head. Matt had a great time doing some extreme close ups of some of his favorite Marvel characters. We did have requests for a couple of DC characters, but they tended to be full head shots. Unfortunately we didn't get pics of any of those. These turned out to be a great way to promote the book and get our names out a little more. Plus the chance to meet and talk with comic book fans was incredible. I wanna make sure to say thanks to Scott for putting them together for us and getting them printed. They made our signing times alot more entertaining.

Post Con report

Well, the SD Comic Con has come and gone. And boy was it great! This was my first year where I was at a booth signing my own book. Matt, Tracy, Scott and I were on hand to sign the preview editions of the book. We managed to sell out of all the copies of the book with no advertising. That means that the only people who were buying the books were fans of Viper comics. My hope is that this book will do as well with fans when it hits the shelves later this year. Matt and I were also on hand to do some sketch cards for people. This was a lot of fun to actually work right along side of Matt rather than doing it via the internet like we normally do. Matts quick wit and humor were evident with all the close ups of some of the more notable super heroes in the business.
There was also a good bit of scouting by movie and television types at the con. So who knows if something like that will take place. But all in all, the con this year was really something to remember. I look forward to getting back to work and inking up even more pages for Matt and the Viper crew. I also managed to drop off some sample ink packets with a couple of companies. Some rejections and some are still out. But no worries, I have plenty to do in the mean time. Well more to show and tell in the coming days and weeks.

Comic Con '08

Well it's time to go on my yearly trip to the holy ground that is the SDCC. This year the Wonderdog bunch will be signing at the Viper comics booth. So, if you wall want to come by you could possibly score a limited edition of the graphic novel before it's late Winter release. Matt, Scott, Tracy, and I will be on hand to sign the book and do some sketches as well. Plus all the amazing stuff to see this year at the con. Looks to be pretty crazy. Well hope to see you all there!

Fun with pen and stencil!

So a little while ago I got an art book of a graph artist named Banksy. If I can say anything about it I would say that you all should check it out! Now I know some of you are not into the whole graffiti culture thing. But do me a favor and look at it anyway. The unique way of how he thinks of the enviroments and how he can apply his piece in them was simply amazing. Page after page I was very impressed to say the least. So much that I wanted to do a stencil piece for myself. So, coasting on the high that is Banksy's art, I did a couple of designs. For this one I grabbed an image of Lon Chaney from London After Midnight and did a little graphic interpretation. I did this in a three fold process. I started with the sketch. Then took tracing paper and inked over that. Then took another piece of tracing paper and layed in the gray tones over that. I tried to think of it much as I would with doing an actual stencil. I had a lot of fun playing around with the shapes.
But sadly, it will probably never make it up somewhere.
Well...not by me....

On your mark...

Finally got around to posting this one. I found sometime to get in another sketch and soon lost time as I am getting ready for the con. I will have more on that soon, I hope. We are trying to nail down some things for the book release. So as soon as I hear about them I will let you all know. Now lets see if I can manage to get another post some time in the next month.

32 hands of Lohan

Finally we have finished the graphic novel! I am really excited to see it when it is all published. I think it will be a relief to hold a copy of the finished product in my hands. I can hardly wait! But now that it's done, I got to get back into drawing shape. I have been inking for so long it has almost escaped me how to actually put pencil to paper. So this is what all these hands are about. I have been practicing doing quick studies of my hand with a pen. One or two minute studies. This will hopefully build confidence in my line and quick decision making. I decided to do them in pen so that I can't stop and erase my lines. This way as soon as that pen tip hits the paper, I am fully commited to it. Good or bad. Sometimes very bad! I also decided to start with hands because they have really been a pain to draw lately. I will keep on doing some more studies and hopefully have a sketch to put up in the not too distant future.
But first I got to put some pencil/pen mileage in!

Sticker fun!

As I said before I sketch a lot of things that you don't normally see here. Few people know I have a thing for nice vinyl stickers. The nicer the design and ink, the more I love them. To keep myself artistically busy at work I randomly come up with assignments for myself. This is just one of those. A girl I used to work with was part of the roller derby here in AZ. And I guess in my conversations with her the idea came up that doing a sticker line for the different teams would be a nice challenge. So here are just a couple of the designs I came up with when sketching. True to form my sketches tend to be more fully developed. But I always like to see exactly how it would be layed out before taking them into Illustrator.
Well, hope you enjoy.

Haven't turned my back on you.

I would first like to thank all of you for coming back time and time again to this blog and checking it out. I know I don't update as often as I should. I should be able to load up ten times the work that I do here. Perhaps I should. But a lot of what I do is either not permitted (via contracts and such) or is kind of not good enough in my eyes to force on you all. But yet you still check up on me. For that I thank you so much. You all are truely great to me.
I do sketch a lot more than I post. I mean a lot more. I wonder if you want to see the random stuff I sketch. Some of it is graphic design oriented and some of it is illustrative. But I always think that because it isn't clean or good necessarily, that you don't want to see it. Would you only want to see the stuff I think is good? Or would you rather have more stuff and see a nugget of art wash up as it does sometimes? I post my doodles of characters from time to time, but I wonder if anyone wants to see those? If any of you have any feeling on this matter, please, let me know. Then I will take everything into consideration and see what I can do about all this.Thank you again for checking in.