~ More sketches, robots, regrets, etc... ~

Full color sketch, for whatever reason. As you can see, even with the drawing taking up more than half the page, I ran out of room for the poses. Probably shouldn't worry about that and just draw outside of the frame rather than trying to get everything to "fit"...

I'm finding more and more that Winsor McCay's stuff is working its way into how I'm hitting the color schemes. Which is a good thing, I think. Now if I can actually use intensity properly to bring some kind of balance or focus to the pic...

I think I did these two thumbnails after I finished the color one. Which is pretty basakwards - in hindsight, the poses on these turned out better.

At the chalkboard, figuring out eye biochemistry. Liked how the characters' shape and form came together with fewer lines, although the hand holding the book should look more weighted from holding an object. Again, hindsight is 20/20. (Ha, get it? 20/20? With the... eye biochem... on the... chalkboard... Ah, whatever.)

And finally, the comic sketch page. High quality here, hence the sketchpad ring binding still at the top of the page....

I'm actually kind of happy that dialog is getting a bit easier for me to do - not alot of verbage, and not spending alot of time on scratch writing (typing until I get something I like). The characters are starting to have their own conversations with eachother, so to speak, without a whole lotta me getting in the way. Having a Spielberg movie on in the background helped with that I think.

~ Birthday card ... ~

A little something from a few weeks ago, given to a special someone. Hope she doesn't mind me posting it here and showing her off - supermodels tend to be shy creatures.

Inspired from one of her previous comics here. (The model owl on her table ended up becoming this after she got her talented hands on it. Full work-up and progress can be viewed here. )

Micron pens, Prismacolor pencils and markers. Did a little bit of level readjusting in PS, since the scan wasn't quite catching the original colors.

~ Roboty Sketches ~ ...


...With quick color pass. One's a nautical pressure suit (knock-off from the Alien design) and another's a deep sea explorer, but hey - roboty enough.

~ Sketches, various and sundry... ~

So, that backlog of sketches I keep talking about - figured it was time to scan some of them for the sake of not looking like a liar.

...And yes, still hating sci-fi. Some random idea pages:



This one's from about a year or more ago. I like how some of the faces turned out (I think I approach facial construction a little differently now), as well as the patterning on some of the clothing. Not liking the fish oil stain that somehow got onto the middle of the paper. Must've been an awesome dinner.

............

Saw some guys hanging out behind the grocery store having a Colt 45 picnic. I like the contrast between the foreground scenario and the cars/freeway in the background, not so much how I drew it (I could've made it clearer) but because for me, is kind of a sign of the times for this country at the moment. Eat your heart out, Dorothea Lange. Drawn from memory.

Some License Plate/ State Union workers having a conversation over a smoke break:

Random watermaid:

Even more random sequential. Probably was a warm-up for something else:

Some Ayin character studies. I try not to use reference when drawing these, so these are (hopefully) several years worth of lifedrawing sessions paying off:

Still don't think I've codified her look completely. Getting there though:

Like how this one turned out; will probably do a color pass on this soon. Loosely modeled the background after the boardwalk/movie theater plaza in Century City. I'm sure the straps on her gun holster aren't correct, but that's what happens when you don't have proper reference for weaponry.

~ Take Two ... ~

As per usual, I post something that I'm not happy with 5 minutes later. So, another handful of hair pulled and yet another redraw - on one single piece of paper this time:



And some attempt to make amends for my lack of proper shape and silhouette last post:


I realized that - other than using two pieces of paper taped together, and not drawing fluidly or quickly enough - I hit the first Soldat illustration right after I had read some dated obituaries for Hunter Thompson. I figure that one (or several) of the images from the article - consciously or otherwise - stuck in my head when I started drawing; hence another awesome excuse for why the pose came out the way it did.

.....

Speaking of which: Something cool I noticed while browsing through my laptop archive of pictures - every so often there'd be a random pairing of images together, one after the other, that would look pretty cool: They'd either mirror-image eachother in some way (faces, elements, pose, theme), or else they'd be complete contradictions. Fairly random placing to boot...

Sound boring and convoluted? You bet it is! Here are some examples:


-Akashi Gidayu writing his death poem just before committing seppuku... and Hunter Thompson.

-Operation Ivy (S.F.) and The Faith (D.C.), one apparently channeling the energy of the other.


-Because Ukrainian car models and English punks... tend to be white. And like to pose.


-I'll venture a guess the Google search that day was for something blue.


-About as opposite as you can get. War and Peace, anybody?


-Ok, so these two images weren't exactly side by side - but I couldn't resist. Bill Shatner shamelessly doing a plug for Commodore "computer-and-game" system, and a Soviet poster - which (I think) reads: "With Capitalism: Millions of unemployed workers".

~ Artwork on the Sly... ~

...Because I'm literally writing this while the car's parked and idling near a streetlamp.

Some color once again:


Alternate/original take with the trio in the bg. I think the head honcho's design in this one is a little closer to what I originally intended, although I liked how the other two turned out in the retake (color).

...Very first take, w/ DNA and notes.

And I realized that the lady-characters-with-whistling-mouth was pretty popular last few posts - so here's a page with other mouth shapes:


And of course, boy meets girl. Or... wait... Chernobyl employee meets chimeric supermodel.... Something like that.

...........

And because I got permission to post this, courtesy of Miss May Ann: A lovely Ainu couple (and their Siberian tiger/butler) :

(Remember guys, a drawing for the lady's always a good idea. Better than roses even.)

(Well, maybe on-par with roses...)

Merry Chimerasmas...


...Because I realized I had the Halloween post up until December.

That, and I wanted to post this for the folks who I couldn't email it to (i.e., those that I don't have an email address for. *cough* Steve! Hwang! Sah! *cough*...)

Anyhow, seasons' tidings and all that.

.............

"Arisaka gozaimasu!"

Had a good time the other day letting rip some bullets. Drove out to the middle of nowhere with the pops, found a good spot, and tested out the new toy: an Arisaka 99. (That's a WWII bit of weaponry from Hirohito's Imperial Army.)

Thing with Arisakas - many of them were decommissioned after the war, meaning that some were intentionally disabled by various authorities so that the rifle couldn't fire again. The way this was done - a little sawing into a nicely hidden area, in and near the breachblock/action. Thus, the end result is a time bomb if you try to fire it.

We had to do a test fire first: A parachute string on the trigger while standing 10 paces back, in case the thing remembered it's Bushido obligations and decided to blow up in our hands. But it worked great, and I have to admit: 'Twas fun to play Eastwood for half an hour on Christmas Weekend in the backwoods of a NorCal National Park.

............

Bambooty...

And in keeping with the Japanese theme: Some bamboo mats.

The first two are old news for some of you folks out there. These ones are 42 x 21 cm.


The work up sketches for the two.
I kind of wish I could've gotten the little action thumbnails into the painting. Maybe larger stand-alone's with those would be better.

And, needless to say, translating a drawing from sketch to bamboo accurately is something else that I'ma need to work on...

This last one was a test run on a larger canvas (19 x 13 in).

Some tangent issues with a couple of the characters overlapping one another, and some emphasis issues with color saturation and line weight. But is a good start, and I have plenty of blank mats to cut my teeth on til I get this right. (That's the nice thing about this kind of medium: It's cheap. Not necessarily easy, though...)

-Character moments, plus more Kikuchiyo -

































Second pass on the drunk take. No reference for Kikuchiyo this time. (And maybe it shows for the worse? Eh....)

Animation paper, Colerase, Micron pens. Yosh^2.