AMERICAN VAMPIRE

Felt like working on something fast and fun this morning to loosen up. Chose American Vampire (Pearl in particular) as a subject because it's an amazing comic book series & Rafael Albuquerque's work on the series is incredible and inspiring. If you haven't read it, do it.

Started out with a quick sketch to get my overall image, trying to get everything in as fast as possible at this stage with as much energy & expression as possible.

Initial rough

With inks i'm refining the details/lighting/proportion etc. but always trying to maintain as much of that energy that was in the initial sketch as possible. It's always easy to get caught up in rendering & detail so much so that the image starts to look static & lifeless.

Inks

Then i'll experiment with colours and textures/brushes (that i've created with traditional mediums) to drive home the overall mood & feel i'm going for with the illustration.

Final illustration

SAGA PROCESS

Every so often as an exercise i sit down and thumbnail as many image concepts and compositions as i possibly can. Anything and everything that comes into my head. It's a nice way to loosen up my hand before a big days work, and a good resource to look back on when i'm looking for inspiration or ideas (that is, if i can decipher the scribbles). So when i was thinking of something to draw for the OzComics Saga draw-off a few weeks back i remembered this little rough i'd done and thought it'd be the perfect fit. And it was! Having that third element (Hazel, the baby), added something that was missing from the original composition, that really sets off the image nicely.

I'm a big fan of this series and these characters, so this was a pleasure to draw. Everyone should be reading Saga!

Initial composition sketch

Saga Inks

Saga Colours

100 BULLETS PROCESS

OzComics has reached it's 100th challenge! 100 Bullets, one of my favourite comic series, which artistically has an incredible standard. Eduardo Risso and Dave Johnson? Hard to find artists better at their job than these guys.

I chose Dizzy to work with because, y'know, she's Dizzy, and a simpler composition because i didn't have a huge amount of time to spend on this one.

Pencils

Inks

As you can see i originally had a reflection of Graves in the attache but decided to scrap this as it was too busy and taking attention away from the top of the image too much. Replaced instead with a more subtle typographic element.

Final version

I think i started contributing to OzComics somewhere around the 20th, in the Spider-Man Challenge and I've been pretty consistent in entering since then. Basically because i always have a great time doing it. It's a great excuse to do something more on the fun side, experiment if you want, maybe test out some new techniques or flex some older creative muscles. Anything from a quick sketch to fully finished illustration. So if you're looking for an excuse to do something like that, check it out. Also there's heaps of other great artists contributing each week so plenty of pretty pictures to look at :)

THE SHINING PROCESS

The theme for OzComics over the last week has been The Shining, which is really a great theme. Very visually stimulating and just a fantastic movie, full of iconic moments to draw inspiration from.

I knew straight away i wanted to draw Shelley Duvall cause she's got a great "terror" face and i always remember that scene where she's backing up the stairs with the baseball bat, and says she's "very confused right now" (which always makes me chuckle a bit, i'd be confused too). Looking through some images of the film, i had the idea of including the type into the axe and went from there.

I did the pencils, especially around her face,  really quickly and loosely which helped capture the emotion and likeness quite well i think.

Pencils

Inks

Wanted to use a very simple colour scheme to guide the eye through the image. Really drive home that terror on her face.

Colours

Overall quite happy with how this one came out :)
Check out the other entries here. It's a great group this week.

KALI

This is a piece i illustrated based on the Hindu Goddess Kali. Originally conceived as a book jacket design, the original artwork was exhibited at the Eleven Illustration Exhibition late last year.

Pencilled and inked on paper, coloured in photoshop. I worked about A2 size so it was pretty big, and that hair took me freakin' ages! But it was worth it in the end.

Click for bigger view.

Inks

Process

Initial roughs, book cover mockup.

STARES

This is another of the works i had in the Eleven Exhibition, and one of the ones in which i was exploring panels and one page comic book stories. Check the others out here and here.

Took me a fair while to draw all those people, but in the end it was worth it as this is probably the strongest piece i had in the show.

Oh, and i've updated my store with a bunch of new prints for sale, this being one of them. Check it out here! They'd make a great present. ;)

Ink, Digital.

Original drawing.

SPACEMAN

I think drawing space suits and old school underwater diving suits are some of my favourite things to draw! This is a poster design i did for the International Day of Human Spaceflight.

 And a process shot from my instagram.

 

This was part of a project where i had to create 3 poster designs for different UN World days, of my choice. I poster another last week, the posted for the International Day of Rural Women. Click here to check it out. I'll post up the final one next week.