Vampirella Sketch Card 01

San Diego is over and I'm pretty sure Breygent has doled out all their exclusive Vampirella cards, so i should be in the free and clear to share the rest of them now.

Planning to drop these one-a-day as I can as I usually do, so look forward to a few weeks of red bathing suited cheesecake.

~R

Thor and Marvel Beginnings Artist Proofs

As with every other set, Upper Deck provides a number of limited Artist Proof sketch cards to those contributing to a new set.  I've got nine each from the Thor and Marvel Beginnings set; five portrait and four landscape format, each with a foil-stamped AP in the bottom right corner.

I'm offering these as commissions these full colour limited edition cards for 75.00 each with the Marvel Universe character of your choice.  These cards do have to be approved by Marvel; no smoking, drinking, gore, nudity, Nazis, zombie versions of the characters, or characters only licensed by Marvel.


~R

Sketch Card for May 7 - Vampirella 5/5

And with that Vampirella week ends. I really, really enjoyed drawing these and, based on the hits my blog received this week I think it's safe to say a number of people enjoyed looking at them.

All of these cards were created on 2.5x3.5" on Strathmore bristol plate with Copic markers.

Since I started these sketch cards I've had a number of requests to sell them, either individually or as a group. Deciding on a price is always somewhat stressful for me, so I've decided to let the cards determine their own value at eBay. I've listed three of the more popular sets today and I hope they find fine new places to live. You can click on the set names to go directly to the auctions

Batman set:

Buffy

And this week's Vampirella cards

See you all next week.

~Richard

Sketch Card for May 4- Vampirella 2/5

I like the idea of Vampirella being more mysterious and a little alien rather than many of the alternate takes on her that've been floating around over the years. My visual touchstone is still that first Frazetta painting.

Love to hear everyone's favourite version of her.

Sketch Card for April 20- Buffy Week 2/5

Angel! Ended up overworking the shadows, in my opinion.

Sketch Card for April 19 - Buffy Week 1/5

Since I'm re-watching Buffy while showing it to my son for the first time, I decided I'd do sketchcards of the cast from the first season. As much as I liked the character, I never found him believable as a high-school kid - considering he's only three years my junior and was around 28 when he started playing the 16-year old kinda stacked the deck against him.

I started another version of the card while still rather ill last week, couldn't get the mouth right and gave up in frustration, as you can see:

See ya tomorrow!

Sketch Card for April 6 - Beatles 1/4

Love the Beatles.

Love Richard Avedon's B&W photos of them.

With this week only getting four days for sketch cards, the Fab Four seemed like a natural.

Copying the photos in this manner is akin to a master study in many ways; I'm not trying to make new art or interpret as much as study the values and try for a likeness on a very small scale.

The original photographs for this week's cards are the property of Richard Avedon, of course.

Sketch Card for March 30- Alien 2/5

Brett. This character has one of the most memorable death scenes in film history. Great actor, too.

Heck, they're all great actors.

Pitt

Heya -- two things:

First, my copics ran dry and my local art supply didn't have refills, so my sketchcards for Wednesday, yesterday and today are sitting unfinished beside my table. I might be able to grab some while in Toronto this weekend and catch up with a massive post on Monday.

Second, I'll be at Wizardworld Toronto this weekend, sitting next to my pal, the insanely talented Dale Keown, so I decided to make a print for the event.

Say 'hi' if ya see me!

~R

Sketch Card for March 22- Invincible

New week, new sketch card theme! Today it's Robert Kirkman's Invincible!

Sketch Card for March 17 - Hellboy 3/5

Brush and ink on tiny, tiny illustration board.

Sketch Card for March 15 - Hellboy 1/5

Opted for a batch of Hellboy sketch cards this week. I'm still using up the last of the Strathmore sampler pack and so I decided to stick with pen & brush & ink for the first 3.

~R

Sketch Card for March 12 - Bearfield Elston

Just read a really cool Bearfield Elston story in advance of a pair of upcoming illustrations. In the story he narrates he's pretty busy causing more trouble than could be believed. I suspect, when regaling his drinking buddies about the events, I suspect he'd have reason to look as bemused over the plain stupidity and lack of proper manners as he does here.

Sketch Card March 11 -- Thoth Amon

Pen & ink.

I kinda like the current interpretation of Thoth wearing an Egyptian hat rather than the Loki-like horns he used to be depicted wearing.

Sketch Card March 10 -- Skull-Face

Brush and ink on a watercolour paper sketch card. Used Liquitex acrylic ink as the Higgins Eternal sits on my shelf slowly evaporating down to something worthwhile.

In retrospect, I'm thinking I should have pushed the skull-look a bit more, but I didn't want him to end up looking too much like a zombie.

Sketch Card March 9 -- Solomon Kane

So, I complained a fair bit about the rough paper in the sample pack yesterday and here's the first card I did on one of the pieces. I believe this one is supposedly a canvas texture on a very thin sheet. I was initially looking forward to working with this as it reminded me of some rough textured DC paper I was able to play with back in the early 90s. That paper took dip pen very well.

This not so much. I ended up finishing it with a brush and some un-thickened Higgins Eternal ink. I don't think I've ever experienced such a thin ink out of the bottle. It's now sitting, open, on a shelf in my studio and will likely do so for many weeks before I consider using it again.

I let the paper get to me while working and I think it shows. I "lost" the other sheet of canvas textured paper. While the other REH characters this week are also on rough surfaces, all turned better in my opinion.