Ottawa 2013

Had a blast last weekend at the Ottawa Comic Con last weekend.  Here's a few sketches from the show.  The new smart phone takes pretty good pictures. Actually started a commission just before the show ended, got home, decided I can do better and restarted it. I'll share that later on.

Did get a delayed bout of con crud/flu, though I seem to be recovering already.  Steve Niles's post-con cough turned out to be bronchitis, so send him good vibes for a speedy recovery.

Particularly enjoyed the company of Dale Keown, George Perez, Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith (who gave me a wicked Lovecraft print!), Arthur Suydam, and the great folks from Paradise Comics of Toronto (who treated me to a most excellent steak dinner Saturday night).

Would certain say yes to a return visit to this convention!

~Richard

Conan Sketch

Working on a personal Conan piece when I can.  Finally happy with the main figure.

~R

Batman Sketch Cover

So, I have a few blank cover books laying around the studio and I decided to do one as a quick warm-up.

I got a little carried away.

~R

Hulk Commission

Private commission. 10x15. pen and ink on bristol.

Dracula: Son of the Dragon

My amazing artist pal Max Douglas/Salgood Sam has a Kickstarter under way with writer Mark Sable for their historical horror series, Dracula, Son of the Dragon here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/78669939/dracula-son-of-the-dragon/posts

As I'm putting this up there are just 66 hours left and it's very close to hitting it's goal. I really recommend checking it out!

Figure Drawing March 28

A sampling from this week's Open Studio Figure Drawing session.  Used some willow charcoal in addition to regular charcoal for the first time in ages;  forgot how much versatility it had (and I also forgot how much of it will literally fall off the paper if you roll it it up to pop into a tube).  Just a gesture and a pair of longer studies.  Next week is the last of the sessions -- already going to miss the weekly life drawing.  There's so little of it available out in my area.

~R

Sketching a Head

Made this for my class and a friend suggested I might want to share it online.  It starts with the premise you have to learn the facial/skull anatomy no matter what construction method you use, so it's likely better to start with the shape of the head you want to draw rather than force a circle, block or cylinder into that shape.

There was a whole lot of talking and demonstrations that went along with this handout, but I'm not too keen to type all that up right now.  If you've any specific questions, feel free to ask in a comment.

~R

Stark Truth About Gay Marriage

~R

Figure Drawing march 21

Longer studies (5-20 minutes) from last week. Charcoal on paper.

~R

Gestures - March 21

Still catching up on posting some pics of the work from the Open Studio Figure Drawing sessions.  Above is a sampling of the 1-minute gestures with Kiera-Arielle.

~R

Figure Drawing March 14

Catching up on a few things -- including posting a few pics from the open figure drawing session two weeks back.  Some of the rust in my life drawing is shaking loose, but it's still rough.

Caught some interesting shadows from a studio window and liked the cool blue light colliding with the warm golden light inside the studio so I kept clicking them despite the potential for distraction.

The model, Andrae, was spectacular and will be returning for the next session at Durham College on the 28th.

~R

Nightmare - Outland Collective

I little while ago I joined an artist group called The Outland Collective.  Every month they do a sketch challenge and the above is a portion of my first entry there.  This month the subject is 'nightmare'.

I'd love it if you all would click on over and see the fine bunch of people producing some amazing artwork there and, perhaps, take a peek at the whole sketch I did! http://outlandcollective.outlandentertainment.com/

~Richard

Figure Drawing 7 March 2013

Organised a series of five open studio figure drawing sessions at Durham College for Thursday evenings.  Open studio means anyone can drop in to draw (after paying the $10 model fee) and it isn't an instructed class.  Last week was the first session. . . 

Gestures

5-minutes

10 minutes

15 minutes

 All are charcoal on cartridge paper.

If you're in the Oshawa area Thursday night, I can't think of a better thing you could be doing!

~R

Toronto Comicon Day Two Sketches

I added some black linework on the Thor with a Copic after the black pencil crayon could only go as dark as a pencil on the stock used for the cover, but that was after the pic was taken.

And another Wolverine.

Toronto Comicon 2013 Day One

Sketches!!!
First day of the 2013 Toronto Comicon has wrapped and I'm off for the second in a few hours.

~R

Back Drawing

Today's warm-up.  Prismacolor art stick and Derwent colored pencil on paper.

Most of my warm-ups are from places like http://figuresfordrawing.tumblr.com/ , http://www.quickposes.com/pages/gesture , or various picture from deviantART.
~R

Figure Drawing

Scanned one of my warm-ups to use in a poster to promote a series of open figure drawing sessions I'm wrangling at the college and thought I might as well share it.

~R

Cat Sorcery

You ever do a piece of work then completely forget about it?

I've been doing it a good deal lately.  Artistic alzheimers, maybe?

Here's the line art.

~R

Pencil Drawing to Non-photo Blue

There are a number of ways to convert pencil drawings to a non-photo blue colour in Photoshop but I thought I'd share my method.

Here's a snap of my desktop.  I have a two monitor set-up, which is why the screencap is so wide.  I'm also running Photoshop CS5 in Windows (so all my commands are Windows based).  I just scanned a sketch that had some stuff I liked and a bunch of stuff that bothered me.  I scanned it at 600dpi in colour, though this would work just as well starting with a lower resolution greyscale scan.

(click to enlarge as needed)

After monkeying about with the image a bit I'm ready to start drawing again.  As much as I like to use PS in my work flow, I still prefer to do the drawing on paper instead of on my tablet, so I'll continue working up this drawing with pencil on paper, but with this modified sketch printed in non-photo blue.  When I'm happy with the final drawing, that will be scanned and converted to non-photo blue, printed on 2-ply Bristol then inked.

I'll select all (ctrl+a), copy (ctrl_c), and then cut (ctrl+x), leaving an empty white image.

I think go into Image/Mode and select CMYK Color.

I then click on the Channels window, select the Cyan tab and paste the image within (ctrl+v)

Then I select the CMYK tab (which makes all the tabs blue).  I dropped the Channels window on the image as it now appears on the screen -- it's at 100% cyan, which isn't quite where we need it.  There should be nothing showing up in the Yellow, Magenta or Black tabs.  I then select all (ctrl+a), copy (ctrl_c), and then cut (ctrl+x), leaving an empty white image again.

I click on the Layers tab and paste (ctrl+v).  The 100% cyan image is on the new layer and the active tab.

I click on the opacity arrow in the Layers window and reduce it down to 23%.  I will go as low at 20%, but below that my eyes aren't proving to be up to the task. You can go as light or stay as dark as you feel comfortable, but you'll only find out what you like after trying it a few times.  Initially I printed out in the 25%+ range and found the blue showed too strongly under inks and became a distraction when looking at the original artwork.  Some of this will also be dependant on your printer output.  Experiment!

 I try to strike a balance between ease of seeing the drawing while inking (or drawing over the blue sketch like I'm doing here) and having the blue essentially disappear when viewed from arm length after being inked.

I no longer do traditional pencils, so I still end up with a single piece of original art as the pencils are often very loose and on multiple pieces of bond paper.

If I decide to go further with this drawing, I'll do another post showing what I do the eliminate the blue and get the sharpest file of my inks for colouring.

~R

Hope Summers

Hope Summers from the X-Men

Commission
11x17" on Bristol

~R