BROADS_90 minutes

Okay, so I had 'Forrest Gump' looping all day and I don't know how much fun it would be to draw 90 minutes worth of "Life is like a box of chocolates...", so I decided to draw three women instead. My goal was to try and give them varying features - you know, don't just give them different hair styles/color and think that's enough to give them personality.

I threw Mr. Miracle behind Barda because at one point it just got way too cheesecake. More tomorrow.

GANJIFA

OBELISK_update

A week and a day and no new posts? Bad, bad, bad.

As promised, here are a few preview pages of the book I'm working on. It's a 150+ page graphic novel of which these are pages 1-6, then pages 10&11. The initial idea was to set the whole thing in a snow storm so that I wouldn't have to draw any of those annoying backgrounds. Unfortunately, it didn't end up that way - stupid establishing shots.

I've finished 60 some-odd pages so far (and it all depends on your definition of 'finished') but I've had to slow down considerably - work-work is in full swing now, truncating the time I've had in the past to do either those nifty 90 minute sketches or the work I'm doing on the GN. Hopefully that'll change soon. Dig it.

FLASH_90 minutes

It's been a while since a new post - nothing but work these days. Next week should be better. 'Til then...

DARK PHOENIX_color

Obviously, the color palette is taken from the original - I'm sorry for butchering your masterpiece, Mr. Seinkeiwicz . I tried to get close to the techniques he was employing, but then it became more about copying and less of an homage - which made it less fun. So I went off on my own in spots. Right below is the blue pencil rough before I went to ink. Yeah.

MEK_comic pages

This was a few years back - in my time in comics when I finally had the opportunity to work with the incomparable writer Warren Ellis (The Authority, Ultimate Extinction/Annihilation, Next Wave). It never came to be. I was so very much slower in my output back then and the idea of 90 minute sketch was laughable.

I managed to produce six pages (of which these are the first five) before I had to step away from comics all together. And even through the good graces of my bosses Jim Lee and Scott Dunbier the project just didn't materialize with my participation. It eventually *did* get made with Steve Rolston (Queen and Country, Pounded, The Escapist) handling the art chores (with Warren's writing) and from my understanding it's been collected in TPB form. It went in a different direction than what I had started visually and that's just the nature of things. It's another one of those '...almost did that' projects that never came to pass. Oh, well...

*On a small side note: Look at all that damn detail! I could never do this again even if I tried! The guy who drew this was young, full of life, and could stay up for hours on end. I'm an old man with brittle bones and the bedtime of 6PM. I could never draw this again.

DARK PHOENIX_90 minutes

I don't know why 'Phoenix' is pronounced 'fee-nicks' considering we don't say 'basketball shees'. The English sometimes - it's confusing.

If anyone knows Bill Seinkeiwicz's cover for the 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga' then you'll easily recognize where I swiped this thing from. When I first saw that image as a teen I was immediately struck by how awesome it was and that comics can be elevated beyond it's orginal presentation of being a desposable medium - it really, really, REALLY resonated with me. So much so that I'm trying to redraw it now! Hah! I'll color this up this weekend and see how it goes - but I'm telling you, it'll never be as good as the original.

WONDERLAND_90 minutes

Same as before - 90 minutes for the B&W, a little bit longer for the colored version. I kept it monochromatic so I can wrap my head around how to color it. My coloring skills aren't developed enough so anything I can do to make it easier on myself really helps.

FOOD POISON_90 minutes

Saturday night, shrimp enchiladas at a Mexican food place, and three hours of body contractions and god-knows-what coming out of my stomach 'til 2AM. Man, I never want to go through that again.

Okay, so here's one of them pain in the ass reference images. I thought I knew 'Judge Dredd' - I mean, I saw the Stallone movie (the shame!), but man, was I ever wrong. So I took 30 some-odd minutes just to look up images of him drawn by different artists. From Bolland, to Bisley, to you name it...and I still coudln't find ref for the boots. Whatever. So the blue pencil version is what it looked like at the end of my 90 minute session from about three weeks ago and the inked version is what I did today in between trying keep food down since the incident. It took about 25 minutes.

Oh, and I didn't leave room for that gun again.

CROFT_90 minutes

This woman must pay a fortune in chiropractic back adjustments.

The B&W took 90 minutes, the color version took longer. I plugged it into Painter IX and I guess until I get a better/faster computer where the lag isn't as obvious, I'm going to be using PS/CS in the forseeable future. But I haven't given up on it all together - I just wanted to get this image colored and I didn't have the time to experiment. Enjoy.

PIRATES_90 minutes

Inspired by Marcos Mateu, Marcelo Vignali, and Armand Serrano's blog 'El Pacifico' (el-pacifico.blogspot.com), I decided to draw these pirates. Check out their page if you've got a free minute - it's extremely humbling. At first they started doing only a couple of tiers at a time, but now they've upped the ante by doing full-on pages. The images are sick.

Finding referrence materials on Google Images is a time burner. Fifteen, twenty minutes at the computer looking for something that'll help with drawing convincing rigging on a ship is a pain in the butt. And the next thing you know, I've only got an hour left to draw. It really is a pain. So I just referenced the rigging and some of the ships then left the guns, knives and costumes to my imagination.

JURASSIC PARK_90 minutes

This was my second pass at this image (the original I had started a while back, about 10-15 minutes in) and I decided to start over because I felt that I was struggling too much with the previous version. Normally I work on an image and the process is very organic. The moment I have to start working then re-working an aspect I just *know* that I'm trying too hard to make it flow. When that happens, I usually abandon the image all together or sometimes I just start over. Damn dinosaurs.

Teen Titans producer Glenn Murakami (lookit' me - name droppin', beeyotch!) saw the original and said I lost the intitial drawing's depth; that I had pulled off foreground, middleground, and background elements in the old version better. I compared the two and I believe that he's right. But hey - that was 90 minutes ago, I've moved on to the next mistake, yeah?

SONJA_90 minutes

Went to the Los Angeles Science Fiction and Comicbook Convention at the Shrine Convention Center this weekend. I laugh because it seems that everything goes back to the beginning eventually. It's been years since the studio had done a show at that venue and spending a Sunday there really brought back memories. Making cheap ashcans (remember 'ashcans'? - jeezus) at Kinkos the night before, coming up with cheap table banners that'll pass for professional looking, and putting on sweatshirts that had the studio's logos on them - man, thems were the good ol' days. We did *none* of that this time around, thank goodness. I mean, were supposed to be professionals now, aren't we? We shouldn't have to wait until the last second to put together product, right? Yeah, right. But you kind of get what I'm getting at; it's nice to remember where you came from. We ran into old friends, looked at old Godzilla bootlegs, and shook hands with fans who still remembered us. It was a fine time.

Stop motion innovator Ray Harryhausen was the featured guest of the convention and that's what inspired the skeleton warriors attacking Sonja. If you've never seen his work on classics such as 'Jason and the Argonauts', 'The Valley of Gwangi', or 'Clash of the Titans' then you're missing out. Awesome stuff.