Green Lantern and Sinestro Sketch

Sketch from Wizard World Toronto Saturday.
Penciled it at the show and finished it at home -- so much calmer in the studio even though I'm really enjoying being at the show sitting with the likes of Dale Keown, Agnes Grabowska and Andy Belanger.

Copics on 11x14" Bristol

~R

Devil Reef, Innsmouth

I've finished the first piece of promotional artwork for my adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I'll have prints of this available at Wizard World Toronto this weekend.

~R

New Blog Header

Finally got around to finishing up a new header for the blog.  This is only the third one since I started it a few years back and, considering the idea was to do a new header every month or so, I'm only around 33 headers behind schedule.

I've actually got an idea file for headers, just not enough time to execute them.  The above is based on a crocodile, but as I didn't bother digging up any reference and made some odd choices here and there, I think it would be unfair to crocodiles to consider this monster among them.

Wish I was able to finish it a few weeks earlier as I've a mind to use this as the basis for a business card (which I never seem to get round to printing).

This weekend I'll be a guest at Wizard World Toronto along with fine folks like Dale Keown, Ty Templeton, Keiren Smith, Sam Agro, Ken Lashley and host of other awesome people.

I've been asked to bring along prints of the recent Transmetropolitan piece I did (which I will) and maybe a few other things.

Hope to see you there!

~R

Massive Marvel Beginnings: X-Women 8-card puzzle

Rogue, Storm, Kitty, and Emma.

I did a large number of puzzle-sets for Upper Deck's Marvel Beginnings and I was torn between putting them up a piece a day or all at once.  Since I'm rotating in Thor sketch cards as well, some of these puzzle sets could end up being strung out for weeks, so I decided I'd pop up a complete puzzle set every Monday until I run out.

I'm  saving the big 16-card puzzle for the last Monday I'll do this.

~R

Transmetropolitan Art Book - Colours

And this is how I coloured the piece.

Hope it's to your liking and all of you grab a copy of the book when it's available.

~Richard

Transmetropolitan Art Book -- Inks

Ink on 2-ply Strathmore Plate Bristol.

I still don't do enough of the "traditional" colours under inks so I always end up trying to paint where most everything was already handled by the rendering.  Need more practice!

Also - -didn't like the signature on this one do I deleted it and redid it digitally.

Transmetropolitan Art Book -- pencils

Just got the go ahead to post my contribution for the Transmetropolitan Art Book.

There was a moratorium on posting finished art prior to the fundraising ending, so I was good to post everything earlier.  No biggie.

I've decided to stretch it out a bit anyway.  Above are the pencils for the piece.  I reread all my Transmet issues prior to starting and the issue that really stuck with me was #9 with Spider (literally) stomping around a series of Reservations that not only preserve culture but history as well.  I scribbled off a list of different historical periods and places and decided on Classical Rome.  While digging up reference Frank Frazetta's great Seven Romans painting showed up and that was that.

I drew the pencils on 14x17" bond paper -- they're looser that my usual pencils as I'm trying to draw more while inking to make things more spontaneous and energetic.

Transmetropolitan Art Book Sneak Peek - Colours

It's all done -- nearly had to pull two all-nighters.

Soon as I get the word that it's okay I'll post the whole thing.

Transmetropolitan Art Book Sneak Peek - Inks

Just have colours to wrap later today and she's done!

~R

Transmetropolitan Art Book Sneak Peek

Here's a peek at a small portion of the piece on my table I'm working on for the TRANSMETROPOLITAN art book.  Actually -- it's a pic from quite a bit earlier in the process from where I'm at now.

It's turned into a bit of a Frank Frazetta tribute as well as a bit of a tip on which was one of my favourite issues of the series.

It's all for a good cause(s) -- read more about it here.

Not sure when it would be best to show the whole finished piece, so i might string along a few more in progress shots well after it's all done.

~R

Alterna-Thor

I'm certain everyone reading this blog knows there's a Thor movie coming.  Heck, the reason Upperdeck (the company I've done all those sketch cards for) is even doing a card set is merchandising for the film.  Thor will look like this in the movie:

Damn -- this boy's pretty!

I really doubt the Vikings saw Thor like that.  In the stories he was a furious brawler and drinker.  He championed the stuff that people in polite society would tut-tut over and decry as the habits of the lower classes.

I dunno that a real Viking would have been impressed if Thor showed up and looked like Chris Hemsworth.  In fact, I think he'd be downright disappointed.

To paraphrase Mickey from ROCKY, they'd want a guy who looks like he could eat lightning and crap thunder, drink a whole village under the table and lay the smack down on a swarm of frost giants.  All at the same time.

Badass.

A little more like the warm-up drawing I did earlier -- but taller and smells more like goats.

Drawing The 12-point Ellipse

Below is one of the sets of handouts I gave my games students yesterday as a supplement to the perspective they learned in another class last semester.  Like the line-weight documents I shared last week, I'm presenting these without the attendant lecture and white board demonstration so it's best for people who already know enough about 1,2 and 3-perspective to draw a square on any plane.

I know several people who can easily freehand ellipses while sketching and that's often good enough, but this method has served me well when the ellipses have to be accurate or freehand drawing isn't working well.

Warren Ellis is. . . .

. . .older today.

Celebratory speed painting to start my workday.
Photoshop/Painter around 1 hour.
~R

Simplified Line Weight for Drawing

I made the following handout for my 1st year students.  It supplements a lecture and white board demonstration of a few elements, but I thought there's enough info on its own to make it worth sharing as is.  In many ways it's LINE WEIGHT FOR DUMMIES as it doesn't come with the full theory and explanation behind it.  It's kind of a Mister Miyagi approach;  do this and eventually you'll know Karate.  Or something like that.

Cthulhu Commission

Private commission.

Cthulhu

ink on 11x14" 2-ply Bristol

Detail

Not Thor, but still a god.

I was going to render this in Copics, but decided pen and ink were more appropriate to the subject.

 "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

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

99 Thor Heads 02

I drew all of these with a .7 HB mechanical pencil, inked with a .7 V7 Pilot pen and the grey was a C5 Copic Ciao marker.  Occasionally a broader tip black marker or a C3 Ciao Copic would get picked up and used.
With so little time to get these done I ended up with a real pressure to get at least 6 of these done every time I had a spare hour, which meant things like erasing had to go unless really needed. Or kneaded -- I used a kneaded eraser to lighten the pencil lines a few times as well.

Bad pun, there -- sorry.

~Richard

Alan Moore is Smarter Than You Are

Another batch of useless whining has erupted over something Alan Moore said over here.  In the likely unintentionally funny title Jason Aaron states that 2010 was "THE YEAR I STOPPED CARING ABOUT ALAN MOORE" and demonstrated just how much he still cares about what Alan Moore thinks and says.

He still cares enough to the degree of dedicating a whole opinion piece about it three months after the interview with Moore that ended his caring was first published.  That's a serious demonstration of his lack of care.

To be fair, Aaron's piece is more likely wishful thinking.  He feels disparaged and dismissed by Moore by a few things he said here.  While Aaron's feelings are his own and he's free to express them in his forum, it's quite shocking that a professional writer would so poorly understand what Moore actually was saying on top of a self-described Alan Moore fan to wholly miss the inherent humour.  It's been said before that the internet is tone deaf, so perhaps that latter part isn't so shocking.

It's clear Aaron is essentially having "daddy-issues" and is upset over his primary influence not noticing or offering approval of his efforts in comics to date (for those not in the know I'm referring to the excellent THE OTHER SIDE and  SCALPED at Vertigo as well as some uneven comics at Marvel).  Aaron's comics haven't (apparently) risen to the level of being noticeable by the circle of friends Moore gets his current comics recommendations from. Nor has the current output of Marvel and DC.  I'm not sure there's a argument to made where a 58-year old Brit should be expected to find the current slate of books Marvel and DC super-hero writers interesting let alone spend his time pouring over the huge pile of self-involved nonsense for hidden gems.

On top of that, the vast majority of the comics DC and Marvel publish are utter garbage. How can you say a comic is a good read if you have to aware of what happened in the last few line-wide crossovers to follow the story?

On top of that, Alan Moore is widely regarded as one of most influential writers today and likely the best writer the comics industry has yet seen.  Do we really think he'd spend his time reading  THE RISE OF ARSENAL in pursuit of a good story?  He's clearly operating on a different critical level and probably looks for things quite different than the typical fan, or even writer of comics when he sits down to read.

And he does read comics still. Despite other writers claiming he's out of touch, Moore has recommended other recent works as well as written forwards to various collections and graphic novels.  Dismissing what Alan says because you want to believe he doesn't read modern comics is just admitting that you haven't written anything that could interest him.  Most writers could say that, especially if you're typing for Marvel or DC, so there's no inherent shame there.  You're a part of the herd and some people like being in the herd.  Sadly, herd animals don't have a reputation for being particularly bright.

However, Alan Moore does a number of things we don't read in comics very often and I'm increasingly certain it's because most writers aren't smart enough to see the value of it or perhaps even see it at all.

Most comics writers understand the idea of words and picture combining on a most base level and take what can be described as a TV writing approach to comics.  they generally know enough to show and not tell and generally get plot, character and pacing.  That's usually it.  The vast majority of comics are sequential action leading to events and (maybe) character moments and little more.  The writing generally ends where the artwork takes over and not just in the visual narrative or storytelling, but the writing usually serves as set-up for the artwork.  The better writers bring other stuff you were taught in high school English (but have since forgotten), but they're usually for the UK and we expect that of them.

One of the things that made it clear Moore wasn't a part of the herd was his ability to spin the wondrous or terrifying interpretations out of some of the most banal properties.  A number of writers and fans complain that many of Moore's biggest successes were derivative of what came before when they feel the need to bring themselves up by trying to drag him down, but fail to see the heightened creativity in transforming a Captain Marvel knock-off into a multi-dimensional demi-god or a lifeless Randian vigilante into a real sociopath with enough depth that we could understand him if not care.  These weren't obvious steps waiting to be taken -- unlike the path many current writers are wearing in Moore's footsteps.  Alan Moore writes an eight-page story and, decades later,  another writer spends years pilfering bits of it is as much an example of how little there was to work with before Moore as how little innovation and real creation went of after he left.

Beyond that, Moore does something more and it's something I haven't seen anyone pull off as consistently as he does;  he writes with the whole page.  That may not sound like much to some of you, but trust me, it's huge.  From understanding that storytelling can be equated with musical notes while using the structure of the 9-panel grid with THE WATCHMEN to using the actual nature of how a comic is read to deepen the horror in NEONOMICON.  His grammar includes the panel border, the gutter, the placement of the word balloons and captions.  Moore continues to craft the story well beyond the point most writers can conceive.

Alan Moore is smarter than you and he's not impressed with what you've done so far.  You can choose to whine or ignore him or you can do better.

I'm hoping for better.

~R

(This went on far longer than I intended and is likely rife with errors, I apologize for both, but wanted to type while the thoughts were there instead of waiting three months.)

New Year Zombie 2011

Here's hoping 2011 brings a smile to your face too!

~Richard

Rough and Unready

Jeez -- feels like I blinked and a month passed! I got knocked on my ass by a heavy-duty cold earlier and have been playing catch up since.

I was tidying the studio this past weekend and an envelope of old sketches turned up, so I thought I'd share them since everything else I'm working on is bound by NDAs at the moment.

I think I shared a scan of the Rune cover rough before, but not the rough adjacent to it. I drew 'em on tracing paper for some reason and the paper has been through a bit.

The rough and a photocopy of the finished (unused) solicitation art for my Pitt one-shot.

I did a cover for an Arthurian novel years back. Was pretty proud of it at the time, but it was based on a rough I was less than enthused about (top left guy with sword). I really wanted to do the portrait of the lady with the freaky hands holding the roses in front of a rose hedge.

I think I would have been happy painting the weird court tableau as well. I am rightly embarrassed over the horse in the other sketch..

Two roughs for another cover -- the one used wasn't included in the envelope. It was an in your face painting that was the last acrylic painting I ever completed. I preferred the two roughs here to the one used -- seems to be a common event in most freelancers' lives.

I really grew to hate acrylics over the years and it was having a negative effect on me and the work. I think i started another painting for the same company shortly after and ended up quitting in disgust and self-loathing over the progress.

Not sure what this was for - -perhaps an abandoned idea for an Unknown Armies RPG cover I like the basic idea here, but the drawing and gesture is atrocious.

The semester is winding down and I have a very light course load for the next, so I believe i can start producing more regular updates within a week or so -- perhaps a return to sketch-cards.

~R