The Big Easy Score pages

First three pages of The Big Easy Score. I'm inking the book myself, so the pencils are loose to help keep the final inks loose. The 'pencils' are red because I drew the book with a red Col-erase pencil.

Ink Test

One thing I want to do on The Big Easy Score, is to do all the inks with traditional tools, ie nib pens and brush. I feel the tactile feeling of dragging a nib across the page will add to the 'earthy' feeling of the art and convey the grittyness of New Orleans.


Since I haven't inked anything with traditional tools in years I decided i better break out some ink and brushes and practice.

I'm glad I did as most of my tools were dried up or rusted. Still I had enough to ink this panel. My hatching is rusty (each corner is different) but for the most part I like this and cannot wait to get started inking on the real pages!

Drawing in Photoshop

I've been reading a book about drawing in Photoshop and thought I'd give it a try.

It's far from perfect, but I liked the look. A friend commented how he could tell I drew it despite being an experiment in a completely new medium.

Final design for my soccer logo.

Lady Cockroaches

A friend of mine did some charity work in Honduras. one thing he is involved with is a women's soccer team. They built a stadium in this village and formed a soccer team. People will come from miles around to watch the games and the locals can sell them stuff and make money.

My friend asked me if I would draw a logo for the team, The Lady Cockroaches. Thic is my rough.

Avengers sample

New Avengers Sample

Here is the double page spead I mentioned below. I scanned it early to show a friend and will tweak a few things before i send it in. This is a total of 6 scans pieced together, so when I re-scan the final I may do it a little different.

I need (okay want) a bigger scanner!

New Avengers preview

Reaction to my Wolverine sample was okay, so now I'm drawing a New Avengers sample based off #56. I decided to draw this script when I read it and saw it all toook place in Times Square.

This is my first panel, HOWEVER after speaking to my contact at Marvel he suggested I draw the double page spread on the two pages before this. Only problem is some stuff in the spread dosen't match this panel.

So I have to pitch this panel. Which is too bad because I really liked the way the panel came out (except the background was a little too busy) I was happy with the 'style' of this sample, a slight change from my wolverine sample.

Marvel had commented that I needed more detail in my backgrounds so I went crazy!

I've really tried to experiment with my style and find something I liked and I think this may be something close. I think a drawing style is something an artist shouldn't examine to closely out loud or like knowing a magic trick, it will lose some of it's power.

Test

This is a test of a blog app for my iPod.

Wolverine Sample

Here is a sample I drew to submit to Marvel Comics from a script sent to me by the their talent scout. (I think I tricked him into it!)

The Great Blizzard of Christmas '09

Obviously we got a lot of snow on December 24th. I think the photos speak for themselves.

Looking south towards D. L. Nelson's house.

Looking to my west.

Out my back door. Notice the neglected grill.

Luckily, I was well equiped for this weather.

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!