update!

After I get the shapes correct, I start working on details. The left arm was bothering me.  

So I put some armor on him. and pants.

After the drawing is done I start coloring it. This is the quick and dirty way of coloring in photoshop, not my preferred way, but it works. Using adjustment layers and overlays.

 

And there you have it, the done drawing, I hope you enjoyed it. I'll do more of these. 

Hellboy Progess shots

Happy Monday Friends,

Here's Some progess shots of The Hellboy image I uploaded last week.

First off, I'm a huge fan of Mike Mignola. It's always a treat seeing his interpretation of forms and his characters.

 This piece was also inspired by Jack Pierce and his Frankenstein makeup on the great Boris Karloff.

 First off, I did a quick sketch in pencil,  5h. I had a gun vs beer bottle debate at this point, beer bottle won. (sorry good samaritan) After that I put a wash of burnt sienna.

 Fleshing out the shapes, and putting in more colors. It's coming along. Because of the paper I'm using I can easily pick up colors if I screwed something up, which I did, in a lot of areas...
the paper is the discontinued 5 ply plate surface bristol paper. (4 is fine, but I still have some 5)

I think that's a di vinci watercolor brush? #5 kolinsky. And a cheapy Utrecht bright synthetic to pick up the paint. 

And here's the final, with some cleanups in photoshop.

Thanks for reading, got questions? comment.

Lion king mask update

Hey friends here are some pictures from the latest update. Its going slowly but coming along. The first two layers of paper are dry and now i am putting some hemp string over the top layer for support. I will then put more layers of paper  over that. When that is dry i will then coat the back side of the mask in acrylic for more strength . The front side (with the string) should be strong enough for the clay. 
A more detailed  post will be made when i am done. Its pretty difficult  to type on my fone for this update.

sketch process 2 of 2

part 2, I'm using a brush pen. It's a great tool for the lazy clean up artist.

I enjoy watching these demo videos if you enjoy them too I'll make more with better production value.

4 horsemen part 2

Part 2.

Here comes some adjustment curves and color layers. And some more rendering. Usually this is when I start playing the Beatles songs. Most of the brushes and shapes I used in photoshop are default brushes with maybe 2 or 3 custom ones.


At this point I wanted to make that cape really be a focus to the viewer so I went to town on it.



And here's the Final image, I wanted to add a few more 2d design elements just to bring the image together a little better. I was going for creepy and but don't look away creepy.


I hope that was helpful!

4 horsemen part 1

While cleaning up my hard drive I found these. This was done for an art forum. The topic was the Four horsemen.

Here are the sketches from the book. I keep things loose and usually these sketches are just a starting point, I will almost certainly change things.

This is is a color sketch. After scanning the figures and just doing quick color. Seeing what might work and what might look interesting.

Still working on the characters, but now in much higher resolution.

Let the rendering begin! Well not rendering, just adding some depth.


Just more coloring and painting. Still trying to find the painting. I like to lose the painting and then find it back as I paint.
You can see how I've changed some elements and designs from the beginning to this point.
Stay tuned to part 2!

Process.

Ok, get ready to read, no seriously.
Two years ago I did a little comic called Team Kat-O. It was a fun little learning experience. Here is how I usually approach drawing characters for a book. First I try to do as many sketches as I can in pencil (some of these drawings are on newspapers, tracing paper backs of pizza boxes). Mixing and matching which features look best for the characters. Depending on how much time I have, I would then sculpt the character. If I had a lot of time I would use clay, either Super Sculpy or Paper clay ( I like paper clay because I don't have to bake it, I hate baking when i can't eat it at the end)

These are typical paper clay sculpts, not much detail, but enough for reference. The middle one is just acrylic gesso with a grey tone, the one on the left is partially colored and the monarch is fully colored.

Now if I don't have much time to work on a project, I would skip the clay all together. This is the main villian, 100 percent zbrush. I love using zbrush for these quick character sketches, where as clay can take 3 or 4 hours for something usable, this zbrush model probably took me about 30 minutes. The cat model took about 1 hour tops, maybe less.
Using these models I would refer back to the sketches and pose them accordingly. Photograph the clay, screen cap the zbrush model. And that's pretty much all I need to maintain the continuity of a character.

Noodles!

egg sculpt!

Hey guys, this is part of the egg project on apedogs.com hopefully i can finish this in time and have something cool to show.

Halloween costume! process

Click to enlarge




enjoy!