taking a sketch break

I am trying to work on a 10 page comic entry for Anthology for Detroit Tradecraft . I am sitting up an watching one of my favorite anime series- High School of The Dead... and wanted to do a quick color anime head sketch.  I did this in sketchbook pro 6- hope you like it- back to the grind...

Learning to really see again,

I tried to do a likeness of a gorgeous hip hop model (Tomika Skanes) as a test to see if I have problems with my skill or my eye.  What I found out is that I really do not take the time to really see what I am looking at.  As an comic artist we are told to accentuate, spin and revise on what we know.  But our first step should be to see then do the rest. So, I decided to cheat by just tracing the hard lines and place the image side by side to my drawing and see if I could copy the rendering of tones.  My first realization is that it is not line that defines the face.  It is tone and the direction of shading flow and placement of darks that drives the form.  I learned I am getting better with my rendering but have a long way to go to identify placement of high lights and shadow to render form and ultimately catch character.  I found out that painters figured it out that layers of various tones  builds a face up- even in monochromatic fashion.  As an artist I tend to see in toon-shading with 2-4 variations of tone and the human face has at least 8 if not more combinations to achieve form- Ie I need to re-assess how I look at things and not be so lazy to capture....My big future challenge now is to accurately render shapes in proper proportion and angle.. I had to keep tweeking the eyes to make them stare into the camera and even now it looks funny- oh well- have to keep working

happy holiday greetings

I sent this out today as my poor man's holiday greetings- I did it in photoshop of a smart element made in illustrator from a photo- since the true work is in the rendering not the proportions- it was good practice on spotting colors and blending them- still have a lot of work to do but its a start- maybe after a hundred of these I will be comfortable about rendering... oh well- here it is

sketchbook bro 6 (um pro)

just got sketchbook pro 6- wanted to see if it has some real upgrade- WOW- its cool to me- i especially like the zoom in feature with the pencil lines not getting too blurry as on sketchbook pro 2011-makes smooth clean lines simpler and the add of coptic colors and more brushes is a needed add- I noticed the added french curves and the control curve feature will make vehicles and smooth curve features easier- even my loose style is enhanced with this tool- cool beans

just a test- need more practice with hair

I did this for a test style sample for a writer in our comics group to see if I can agree for a look of her character for her story- i also did this to test my self at inking brunette hair- still have some work to do but its not a bad start- I modeled the features from Terry Moore's characters in Strangers in Paradise- if she likes it maybe it will be seen in print.....

playing with screen-like-tones

I have been looking at a lot of anime and may have to do 8 pages of a story that should have a manga feel- I wanted to play with screen tones as a substitute for  gray-shading black and white images- I started playing around with filters in photoshop- specifically the halftone filter. I created a couple of versions of this in a file and place the file into my image.... I then scaled down the file and duplicated it several times and tiled the images, then reduced those down to one layer... if the screen was too opaque - I reduced transparency to 45%- I did a quick and dirty selection then cut away the inverse of the selection to get a sort of friskette... I wanted to treat this layer similar to a graytone layer so I cold either blur the edges of the frisketts or erase edges with low opacity soft eraser--- I still need more work before I can put this into production...here the image

nostalgia

hey- wanted to put something up- in such a big chaotic rush trying to make this art thing work- so I was looking thru my hard-drive to piece together what motivated me into this this idea that I could think about drawing for a living- I found some epic failures and some cute first baby steps- I found this bear sketch- probably  modeled after the The Open Season Character- Boog- one of my first attempts at digital painting- animal hair no less- wow what was I thinking- I hate rendering hair- this is one of my stumbling points to this day- I suppose on that day I thought I was Boris Vallejo- anyway- here is the Pic I created- ciao