Portraits

I was helping out some friends two weeks ago with a church fundraiser by doing portraits. My original sample portraits were completely watercolor but they took way too long to paint and I over-rendered them. One of the samples was of the Pope, who promptly announced his resignation less than two weeks later. I think it was the shock of me doing a religious painting that got to him. :)

So I went back to my more comic book style to speed things up. And I managed to wrangle four commissions out of the gig, which I finally finished tonight. Above is my portrait of "Tala". I went heavier and darker on this first one compared to the ones below, "Mary" and two kids. I've also included the pencils and the inked/pre-wash versions. I've always been a bit nervous about nailing a likeness, especially with these where you try not to exaggerate the features too much, and I'm proud that I was able to draw them from looking at a photo rather than tracing.

Ishi Pencils and Inks

Work on ISHI #1 continues......

What the....?

I'm not sure what it all means. Just random stuff but I really wanted to test this new Rendr sketchbook with my inks. I'm liking it. The thicker paper holds up against those thick Sharpies and I miss the brighter shade of paper that you don't get with the Moleskines.

Calendar Girls

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had some good holidays. It always goes quick for me, especially that time from Halloween to New Years Day, and it is tough to get any artwork in with all the busy work with cleaning for company and shopping for relatives and friends.

I have some aggressive art goals for 2013. I'm looking to publish a couple comic books, one including the ISHI storyline, which I gave a sample of last month. That is really just a sampler zine that is part of a larger story along with some other Northern California historical themes I hope to get to. 

But between all of that sequential work, I wanted to get back to doing more sketching. I have a sketchbook that I set aside for months that I finally did some damage in. The goal of this sketchbook is to study more artists in the industry that I like and copy their works to learn from. I feel I really haven't done enough of that over the years.

 

So I printed out a bunch of drawings I liked from some of my favorite artists in Terry Dodson, Steve Rude, Mark Schultz, and Adam Hughes and started sketching. Other that the opening image at the very top, all of these were sketched at a small BASA gathering at the end of December.

I didn't want to limit it to copying other artwork either so I had some photographs to study from. All of those drawings are below.

While there are a few male figures in the bunch here, I noticed most of them being women. Being the end of the calendar year and the start of a new one, I'm calling these my calendar girls.

The first three months of a new year tend to be the most productive for me so I was anxious to get back to my art once the holidays were in the rear window. But, as luck would have it, I rang in the new year getting sick with a cold and have been nursing it for a week and a half. But the image at the very top is the start of yet another sketchbook and the first drawing of the year as I try out this new RENDR sketchbook.

And so, 2013 begins! A year of Arting it up!!

Ishi: The Sampler Zine