12-15-09 life drawings

all 20 min

CATFISH!!

It was too cold to walk at break today so I drew this. I am planning on doing a 24 hour comic soon and i want to draw it all in Sharpies, so I'm practicing drawing quick with a Sharpie. This was drawn in my 10 minute break.



Catfish is based on a story someone told me as a kid. i don't remember the story, just that it really scared me. Catfish is a basically bigfoot crossed with a fish. Like I said this story gave me nightmares for weeks!!

life drawings

5 min pose

20 min pose

20 min pose

Figure Drawing Workshop

This weekend I attended the Figure Drawing Crash Course at The Society of Figurative Art (TSOFA) in Dallas.
http://www.tsofa.com/


It started Saturday at 9:30, so I left early.



Some people questioned why I would drive to dallas to go to a class, but when I got there I was suprised to find, of the people not from the Dallas area, I drove the shortest distance! One guy flew in from California!



I was glad to finally see the sun.



The studio was a really nice setup.



The day consisted of a morning of Miceal Mentler lecturing, then we spent the afternoon drawing. Micheal would look over our drawing and make corrections and suggestions. Here he is lecturing on interlocking the forms of the figure.



Part of the lecture on Micheal's system for drawing the head.





Using shapes to build the figure.




Creating the figure using line, shape or tone.



In the afternoon, we drew from a model, Laura Garabedian . She's an athletic girl into rock climbing and dance. Also, she's a pretty good artist. You can check out her work at http://lauragarabedian.com/ She had a great attitude and that makes a big difference in a model.

Here are some of Micheal's figure drawings.


And here are some of mine. Over the course of the weekend, I drew about 30 drawing like these. I was very happy with what I learned and I would recommend TSOFA to anyone who wanted to learn to draw the figure better. I will go back as soon as possible.

Sketches

Here's some stuff from my sketchbook.

I have been attending figure drawing sessions at the art guild so when I look at these pages all I see are problems.

Plus on the drive to Colorado it was too bumpy to draw so I spent a lot of time studying Bridgeman.

These sketches are full of proportion problems and I seem to be consistently drawing my necks too thin.

However, I know the only way to get better is to keep drawing and I am encouraged by the fact that I find it easier and easier to spot flaws in my own work.

Big Texan!

My wife and I had to travel to Colorado the weekend for her Grandmother's funeral. Always trying to turn lemons into lemonade, we decided to stop at the Big Texan on the way.

The Big Texan is hard to miss. If you don't see the big sign or the yellow building, you can't miss the big cow!

It's off I-40, right outside Amarillo, Texas. Michelle grew up in Amarillo, but she'd never been to the Big Texan. I've always wanted to go, but everytime we go to Amarillo it always on somebody elses time.

When we told her family we had stopped there, they kind of scoffed about stopping at a tourist trap, but to be honest I thought it was kind of cool.

The Big Texan's claim to fame is a FREE 72 oz steak. IF you eat it in an hour, with all the sides. While we were there these two brave souls were giving it a shot.

I had a much more modest 8oz strip steak. It was still pretty good.

Plus, it came with chili as a side! Only in Texas!

However for me, the really cool thing about The Big Texan was the atmosphere. It was done in kind of a '60s cowboy decor, with lots of animal heads and kitsch. If you are ever traveling thru the Texas panhandle, I highly recommend you give a try. And if you have an appetite, you might even try you hand at the 72 oz challenge!

New Pages

These were drawn as a sample for Marvel Comics. The script is from Uncanny X-Men 500. My friend sent me bunch of scripts and I couldn't resist drawing the X-Men because I have been a fan since the Claremont/Byrne days.

Cover

Here's my cover for Iron Tiger. In reality, I am going to clean it up a little bit. I think there's too much wording, but this is the basic layout and as close as I can get online to the paper color.

I'm planning on removing the cover blurb and price on front and the bio and some of the text on the back. I'll have to play with it to see how it looks, but that's the advantage of doing art in the computer.

The problem is when you are tempted to fiddle with it too much!

New Car

I've been busy finishing up Iron Tiger, but I still managed to sell my '03 Honda Civic Si and pick up a new Honda Si sedan. A lot of people wondered why I got the same car again, but I really liked my old car and this one is better in every way.

The new ride.

Well, there are a few things I liked better about my old car. The '09 has a digital speedometer, I prefer a more traditional dash, but I'll get used to that. Also my old dash had a shelf above the glove box I kinda liked, plus an extra cup holder by the driver's door. And it's coin holder was felt lined to prevent rattles.

Still this is all minor stuff, I'm sure I'll get used to the new stuff pretty quickly and the new car is so much cooler!

IRON TIGER !!!!

This is the first official page for Iron Tiger. Everything before was a test.

Sketches from my trip

Here are a few sketches I drew while on my trip this weekend.






Here are a few sketches I drew while on my trip this weekend.

Iron Tiger Test redeux

Iron Tiger pencils

Here some of my favorite pencils for Iron Tiger. Since I'm inking these myself, I kept the pencils loose. But these should give you and idea where I'm going.

Iron tiger

This is the first page of my comic I am going to take to SDCC. The look is very experimental and so I wanted to finish one page just to get a feel for how the finished book will look.

Like I said in my last post, I'm going for an old school zip-a-tone look. I was very inspired by the FCBD Teenage Mutant Nina Turtle book, both for the look and for the essays in the front of the book.

UPDATE: Okay, I've changed my mind. This is not going to be part of Iron Tiger. After I posted this I decided I do not like that and will be changing it!

Half-toned

After hanging out with CB, I've been inspired to produce my own comic this summer. This is the look I am going for, kind of an old school zip-a-tone effect.


The drawing was done with some pens I bought in NYC last week in my sketchbook. The zip-a-tone was done by a secret method I've developed.

Talking to CB was very inspiring, like I said, he urged me to produce a comic. I am planning on doing Iron Tiger, an old school kung-fu comic. The look is going to be similar to this drawing, but not quite as loose.

Right now the plan is to draw the entire comic in my sketchbook, so if you see me in San Diego and ask nicely, you should ba able to read my entire comic in my sketchbook.

I'm not 100% sure how many pages Iron tiger is going to be, but right now it looks like it'll be 32.

Me and CB

One of the fun bits of our trip to New York was I got to spend an evening with Marvel Comics talent scout, C. B. Cebulski.

The details are too sorted to go into here, but the evening started with us meeting at the "Marvel Bar", there was a terrifying high speed cab ride through central park in the pouring rain (at one point CB leaned out the window giving another cab the finger!) and ended with us at an illegal basment bar owned by a superstar comicbook artist!

Needless to say, I had a ball!

(Just for the record, I do not drink, the strongest thing I drank all night was a sprite.)

I wanted to get a photo of the evening for the blog, but it took three attempts!

First try: Steve the bartender manged to hold my phone backwards, taking his own picture!

Second Attempt: A little dark, but at least it's the right direction!

Final Shot: Steve truned on the lights, but it's still a little fuzzy. Given the time, I went with this attempt!

NYC

We're leaving for NYC this weekend and I am so excited!