Just to see if i can

I decided due the economy that I will be spending some time to put together some professional comic art submission samples this winter and send out some some of the comic companies-I talked to my mentor Arvell Jones and he made a profound statement that I will have to try to reach as my goal- "not only do you need to draw well- you need to build up your speed.... which I image I am as slow as Christmas-( it only comes once a year)... even if my goals are too lofty- by the end of this journey I will be better than i am now- which is what i can hope for- so the next several posts I will try to post here as well as on deviant art, concept art.org and CGSociety... ( got to get use to marketing myself better--- here is a image I created in photoshop- I know its rough but it does have some style to it- it is my attempt to recreate Boris Vallejo's Conan- the pose (granted not as dynamic as Vallejo's) is a rendition of book cover from Conan the Magnificent- written by Robert Jordan-- one of my goals is to keep advancing in digital media for comics as well as traditional- less paper us- the economy is forcing my hand....please comment

cartoon faces

just creating some cartoon and anime faces.

I created the brown colored in sketchbook pro and the black and white version in photoshop

working with copying and rendering anatomy

Here is a picture I tried to copy a drawing of- I wanted to add contour and rendering to cover both challenges I have with my art- as one could see, I did not plan this drawing out well. I tried to eye-ball proportions and placement instead of measuring or grid-ing my image; so my character looks shorter and more squat that the image- I also only followed the face to a point. It's not an identical copy- rather my interpretation of the image and form... I used Sketchbook pro and layers. One layer for the sketch-line and a second for the rendered shadows- I used the pencil tool for the line and the brush tool on large brush low opacity for the rendered skin look- my main challenge is properly describing shadow ( cast and core)- so the image was necessary. I can at least see how it should look. If I were to do an image from memory; I would have to identify the location of the light source. When I truly master my imagination and skill; I should be able to draw and render this character in different poses and light directions- realistically- so studying light and shadow and anatomy is still an ongoing effort- peace....

trying to upgrade my anatomy skills-online

I will start to scan the net looking to upgrade my anatomy skills- I will report on what i find- here is my day 1 exercise- I just put this together in sketchbook pro- step one- I scribbled form starting with a peanut shape- identifying the torso- I muddled around to first identify the limbs and then next identify the perspective of the pose- this should have been done in reverse- but you can see my mistakes. My next step is to identify the scaling of the limbs. Then I would identify the contours of the muscles in perspective- accounting for overlap and scaling size--- as you can see i still need a little practice- but I will do some reading either with books I have or on the net before my next post--- note this image was done on two layers- one sketching loosely- the second cleanup.... peace

still trying to upgrade skin rendering skills- face- test

I decided this time to start with a cleaner line drawing using sketchbook pro and then bring it into photoshop to render in layers- layer top- line drawing- bottom layer solid color- layer in between a render layer- rendering was done in line color using a soft brush (hardness at 0) then bringing opacity down to 35% and flow to about 25% and just stroking into place-my goal is to follow contours of the face- establish a core shadow- darker shades are used for cast shadow regions- I will do some reading on texturing and rendering in pencil before i put in another entry- any critique is appreciated- my next steps will be how to identify edges even more cleaning during coloring process.....

trying to upgrade rendering skills- need critique

Still trying to use digital tools to color work as solidly as possible- so here is a test trying to render skin- as one can tell i did not spend any time for the hair- my next test- i used photoshop to draw-color and render this image of a muscle dude. I noted that the line is still not clean enough- my next try is to do the line in sketchbook-pro then render and color in photoshop...

watching anime

I am just checking out DVD's I bought for my niece called Gunslinger Girls- a neat anime tv OVA series about intrigue and pre-teen female assassins- based in European settings- the girls are part cyborg as well so its a pretty cool series and my niece ate them up. But I was thinking about a Manga French Connection while watching and sketched up this image- anime is good inspiration- it will work well for finishing my FX Mulrooney series