Steed and Peel

[Click on picture to view full-size- no really, half the post doesn't make sense unless you look at it full-size]

Based on a 1960's BBC program, The Avengers was a critical and commercial disaster when it was released back in 1998- doing so poorly, even cable tv is afraid to play it. 

I kind of really enjoyed it.  It's completely insane, makes about no sense, and some of the criminals are dressed as giant teddy bears.  Giant.  Teddy.  Bears.  But I still enjoyed it a lot.  One, it has style to spare.  It's a pretty slick and stylish production.  Two, and probably the real reason I enjoyed it so much, it has Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes in it.  They have a great chemistry together, and the characters are very much like the original iterations of them (plenty of flirting, almost nothing physical)- I really enjoyed that old-school romantic tension.  Don't get me wrong, though- I'm not recommending you watch it.  I'm just saying I enjoyed it. 

Which leads me to the picture.  I originally drew this shortly after watching the movie- about 3 months ago, maybe- and was pretty pleased with how it turned out.  No, it doesn't look like the actors, but I was't really looking for that.  I just enjoyed how the poses and such came out.  And then it sat in my sketchbook, waiting for me to scan it.  And then, once scanned, it sat on the hard drive.  I haven't been very interested in drawing much recently, so everything was on hold- no motivation makes it tough to get started.  A couple days ago, I finally decided I should start on posting something.  I figured I could clean up a sketch, then post it.  Good enough.  Then I came across this- I'd already cleaned it up, and figured I could color it pretty fast and post it.  As I was getting ready to start shading it as I usually do (different layer, apply shades, repeat), I realized I should do something with the background, too.  A second later, I thought I could do something as an homage to the Warhol/Steranko/Pop Art style of the late 60's- the era The Avengers originally appeared in.  So, a few hours later, I came up with the background you see above (the simple stuff in PS is always the hardest to figure out).  And then today, I realized the perfect compliment to the background, which went nicely with the fact that I never did shade the pic:  zip-a-tone.  [For those not in the know (non-art-nerds) zip-a-tone is an adhesive paper composed of a pattern of dots of varying size and spacing material artists (especially comic artists) used to create shades and tones.  It's mostly fallen by the wayside with the advent of digital coloring, but still appears from time to time- in American comics, I should say.  In manga, where black and white is the norm, zip-a-tone is as popular as ever.]    I figured I could just find an easy pattern already in the computer, highlight a bunch of stuff, press a button, and be done.

Cue three hours later. 

Not a long three hours- figuring out new ways of doing things in Photoshop is one of the things I find most creative about art.  It's such a deep program- there are always several ways to achieve the same result- that it's always fun to discover something new to me. It also makes me want to do more with it.  So, after learning how to make the zip-a-tone, it was a matter of painting it in.  Using the zip was really fun for me- even though I had trouble figuring out if I wanted the zip on their faces.  Not sure how often it'll be appropriate to use in a picture, but it's another tool in the toolbox.  

Hope you liked it.

In other news, I've added some widgets to the site, over to your right.  I found this great website, Goodreads.com, that lets you see what I'm reading, and what I think about it.  Essentially, it's my review site, but much easier to maintain.  It lets me do a starred review, as well as post more in-depth (but still rambling) reviews when I can get my thoughts together enough to write.  It's a great way to see not only what I'm reading, but what others are into as well- I'm hoping it'll maybe lead to some online book clubs, perhaps (anyone, anyone?).  Also, I've added Pandora.com over there.  Think of it as my virtual playlist.  A lot of the music I mention in my posts has some kind of meaning to me, or is just something I really love, and this is a great way to share that. The more I work with it, the better it will get. Click on 'Karloff's Muse' for my station. 

Okay, that's it for now.  I'll be back soonish, okay?

Music: "Maybe" -Ingrid Michaelson

(edit- reposted with slightly tweaked picture 2/21/10)

Sketchbook Am

What the hell- something new(ish). When it comes to drawing, I really don't have a 'style' per se (some might argue I have no style, let alone 'a' style). I find that I tend to draw according to what the idea or drawing dictates. If I have a very firm idea of what the picture or character should look like, I tend to draw in a somewhat cartoony fashion- or at least pretty stylized.  A lot of that comes from me visualizing characters as shapes rather than as people- which is why I can sometimes draw a pretty good rendition of a person, but other times, not so much.  I can see the figure as a whole, as shapes, but not how the anatomy actually works together.  If I don't have a good idea, or I'm trying to find the image I want to draw, I tend to draw very loose, sketchy forms- far too many lines for a cartoon.  A lot of that leads to me 'finding' the drawing in those lines- I will see the finished form somewhere in all those lines. And often, I don't try to bring that out in the final picture; I kind of like the looseness of the figures. 

As an indicator of why I draw like this, two of my favorite artists are Sean Phillips and Mike Wieringo.  Pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum, Phillips uses a loose, naturalistic style with liberal inks- and no worries if every line matches up just so.  Wieringo, on the other hand, drew in a very cartoony, animated style- lots of clean lines, suggesting rather than actively rendering a lot of detail.  However, I love both their styles.

So I wondered, can I draw in a cartoony, yet sketchy/scratchy/realistic(ish) style?  I've pondered this for quite some time, and in the interim, a number of artists have come along who do just that- chief among them Skottie Young.  To me, he's the very definition of the style I'm trying for.  For a long time, his art was so clean it could've been animated- now he's taken that exaggerated style and bent and stretched it into this loose, scratchy, yet still cartoony style.  It's just amazing to see.  Well here- go look for yourself.

Anyway, one night this popped into my head, pretty much as you see it.  It's more along the lines of what I've been thinking of- a bit cartoony, a bit sketchy.  It'll never be mistaken for Young's or Phillips' art, but I kind of like it.  I like the exaggerated, cartoony faces and heads, but I'll always tend towards drawing a more 'realistic' body- so trying to drag the two together is something I struggle with a lot.  This wasn't much more than an exercise to see how the picture in my head would turn out, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.  Just for kicks, I gave it a bit of color, also in a mostly 'sketchy' fashion.  If I were to take a more serious stab at drawing a picture in this fashion, I would approach the colors in a very different fashion- much more like my holidays post (here) than this. 

So, hope you liked this bit of newness and look into what I'm trying to achieve when I draw.

Music:  "Brick by Boring Brick" - Paramore

ReVision and Milestone

10/4/09.

This marks my 200th post. Since Joey's been telling me to revisit my old work in order to try and jumpstart my mostly stalled creative inclinations, and since I knew this 'milestone' was coming up, I thought I'd combine those two ideas and went back to my first 'retro' post, which is also the one of the oldest pieces of 'modern' art I can find (I have older stuff, but I won't punish you like that; and I have larger art from high school, but it won't scan). In case you've forgotten, that original post was the start of a design for a banner meant to be presented at the Pittsburgh Arts Festival (or whatever it's called). My idea was to do a banner with an angel and demon, as gargoyles/statues, over the Pittsburgh skyline. Really, that was the plan. If you look back to it , it's kind of hard to see any of that. Ah well, I was young and lazy, not to mention I just didn't have the skill to draw it back then.

Cut to 15 years later. Okay, I'm still lazy, and my skills are sometimes questionable, but I've had 15 years of experience figuring out how to draw things (and finding the reference to allow me to draw things)- not to mention the fact that my imagination works differently now. The biggest difference, strangely enough, is the simplest difference: I bought a drafting table. So, I have a dedicated workspace now- no more drawing on the TV tray (well, until there's something good on). But, by buying that table, it gave me a focus and motivation to actually work on drawing again. Damned if it didn't work. I'm hoping it will continue; but if it doesn't, it won't be for lack of trying.

To those of you who've kept coming back post after post, either quickly cruising through or reading every single rambling, over-punctuated sentence, I thank you. This has been a pleasure, a burden, a pressure, and a reward, and I'm glad to have shared it with you. I plan on posting here for as long as I feel like I've got something to post... and even when I don't feel like it, I'll try to keep on going. It'll be back to the old school with the next post (next week; Chinco is this week!), but I plan on following it up with more new work.

The process is not yet finished
But it is going on;
This is not the end,
But it is the road
-Martin Luther

Cheers!

(oh, by the way, the 'hint' from last week referred to the song 'Double Agent' and the line "my angels and my demons at war"- obscure even for me, but it's my blog so there)

Music: "Doomsday" - Murray Gold

Moonlight Madness

One more Dracula picture. I originally sketched this late one night at Mom's place, when I had a hankering to sketch something, but not really go into much detail. I found an old card left over from the 'Dracula' trading card series back for this movie. The original card was painted by Mark Chiarello, a fantastic painter who does most of his work behind the scenes at DC Comics nowadays. I best know him for painting a team-up book of Batman and Harry Houdini, of all people.

My favorite part of drawing this was using a heavy leaded pencil- you get such thick, black lines out of it, it gives whatever you're drawing a lot of weight and power. It also leaves less room for goofing around with the pencil, thus making the work itself a little more deliberate. It gives me the feeling of almost working in ink, as it doesn't take much extra work to make a fully-rendered picture.

Then I put it in Photoshop and hid all the lines. I was originally going with a more watercolor, faded look, but then I saw how good it looked with solid black in lieu of the pencils, I decided to mess around with the colors and textures more. I'm very pleased with it, as it's a solid picture, but I colored it in a much looser fashion. Sure, it's mostly inside the lines, but there's a bit more going on in the face than just one tone. I had a lot of fun with this one, not least because it's the first really creative work I've done in PS in a while. Hopefully this'll continue.

And no, it's not secretly Alan Moore.

Music: "Panic Switch" - Silversun Pickups

America's Artist, and The Habah

This past weekend, Kelly and I took a long weekend and drove up to Massachusetts so I could finally fulfill a wish of mine: to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. We filled out the trip (going to the NRM was absolutely my only goal for the weekend. I could've turned around and driven back that day and been happy). It was a pretty amazing time all around- there's nothing quite like going on vacation with only a vague idea of what you want to do. Then when you're headed back home, thinking about how fantastic the trip was, the realization that most of those great moments came about through no planning, hits you and makes you see how wonderful spontaneity can be. Yeah, it was a good time.

I've been a fan of Norman Rockwell for a long time, but mostly without realizing it. I'd seen his paintings all over the place for years: old magazines, pictures in doctors' offices, books, and the like. I'd always admired them- there's no denying the... reality of the pictures. But my obsession with comic books and comic book art sort of kept Rockwell out of the spotlight for me throughout most of my 20's, or came in behind the ever-popular fraternal twins of Arts Nouveau and Deco. However, as I left the 20's and crashed into the 30's, my tastes and appreciations broadened considerably, and I began to pay closer attention to those artists I've always known, but never paid close attention to (Maxfield Parrish, Andrew Wyeth, and Edward Hopper also fall into this category). It certainly didn't hurt that Joey and Sean were branching out as well, or at least cluing me in to their own favorites.

I found a few Rockwell books in the used bookstores down around Frederick, and it was through those I began to really understand the power and depth of Rockwell's ability. Norman Rockwell's covers to The Saturday Evening Post told stories; simple stories, stories familiar to anyone, but with such skill and thought and life, it's impossible not to feel something when viewing them. The people populating his pictures nearly seem to live and breathe, and it's impossible not to know exactly what's happening to each person in the painting. You can practically read their thoughts written on their faces. Regardless of the setting of the painting, you can't help but feel understanding for the subjects. You will laugh, or sigh, or nod in agreement to the painting in front of you. You will feel something.

I thought I'd grasped his mastery of understanding both people and paint, but I really had no understanding of his ability until we went to the museum. The first one I saw, Strictly a Sharpshooter, left me a bit dazed. I'd only seen this in one book in the past, and compared to the real thing, the print was a pale, pale imitator. What in print looks nearly like a gray tonal painting, in real life was rich with shades and hints of color- just look at the woman. The red of her flower draws you to her- then you take a closer look, and you think she's more photo than painting. You can see how upset she is, while the ragged boxer is shouting at her, most likely in disbelief. Apparently she's drawn a crowd- look how she's gotten the attention of the other boxing fans?

Then, of course, there are The Four Freedoms. I've seen these before, probably a lot of folks have. Norman Rockwell painted them in response to FDR's 1941 speech outlining the Four Freedoms: Freedom to Worship, Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Four basic yet fundamental freedoms all people want and should strive towards. The four paintings were printed in the Post, and then again and again by the government. I'd seen them in so many books myself, I'd mostly forgotten what they meant.

Until I saw them with my own eyes.

They're situated in a gallery of their own in the center of the building, across from each other in each corner of the room, rather than on the walls. It was a good time to be there; there was no one in the gallery when I walked in, so I could have a minute to take it in on my own. Without realizing it, I was taking deeper and deeper breaths, nearly gasping. Goosebumps ran along my arms, and I actually felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I was nearly in tears, and I'd only just walked into the room. What was it about those paintings that had such an effect on me? A thought flashed through my mind as I stood there: This must be what they mean by 'religious experience', though it went beyond the idea of religion. I think it was just the idea of these simple ideas, - such amazing ideas pared down to their essence and so exactly and perfectly rendered into these paintings- I think that's what struck me so deeply. That's really the only way I can put it to words.

It was just amazing to see with my own eyes so many of his paintings, which I'd only seen previously in books and magazines. As I told Kelly later, I almost didn't want to bother looking at the prints they had for sale, since having seen the originals, they couldn't hope to compare. But I bought some anyway.

So that was my pilgrimage to the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Boston was wicked good, by the way.

Bat from the Black Lagoon

For whatever reason, the only two things I could seem to even attempt to sketch last weekend were Batman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. No idea why... well, that's not true. I'd seen The Dark Knight the week prior, and I was reading a book that involved amphibious bipeds in the Amazon (even less good a book than it sounds (and yes, that's indeed saying something)). So I sat and sketched a bit, but little came of it. Only one of the pictures made it beyond non-photo blue, and this ain't it. (aside- my spell checker does not recognize "ain't" as a misspelling... sigh...) This pic really didn't go where I envisioned it, So I set it aside until I came back with a better idea of what I wanted to do. However, I did kind of like it, and so it got scanned in.

Cut to Thursday. I let my mind wander sometimes when I'm at work (less than you'd think, really) while I'm doing tasks that don't require a ton of focus on my part. Kind of like running a program minimized in the background. I like to take pictures I've scanned in and run through them with various ideas of how to do something interesting, or at least different, with them in Photoshop. I ran through this one, and came up with something marginally like what you see before you (I have an idea for one of the Batman pictures as well from this method). It was a fun and short exercise, basically duplicating the pencils, changing the colors, then "painting" underneath the pencils. With a quick and crappy background thrown in. The original picture is somewhat larger than this; I realized by cropping it, I could make it a little more interesting looking. You'd think for all the movies I've watched in my day, I'd've realized the effect of framing a visual...

Anyway, there you go. I still have to finish the other Creature picture (pencils before PS) as well as the Batmans (Batmen?). Two posts in one week! Crazy!

Have a good weekend, suckers!

Music: "I've Got to Break Free" - Queen

Grindhouse

I'm going to step away from the previous few posts(don't worry; the R/evolutionaries will return) and step back in with the results of a recent artistic adventure...

Thanks to the urgings of a couple of friends (Thanks, Kelly! Thanks, Dave!), I decided to try to spark some spontaneity and creativity by going somewhere to sit and watch people and hopefully do some drawing. So, where should I go? where else but a coffee shop! (Go back and read the title; it's okay to groan.)

Luckily for me, Dave had previously found this sweet coffee shop in the middle of Westminster that wasn't called $tarbuck$, and it seemed like a great location: plenty of seating, wide open spaces, and tasty coffee (or in my case, tea). So, one night after work, I stopped in with the intent to watch people, and do some drawing. It was perfect.

Well, almost perfect, except for three things.

1) there were about 6 people in the shop, 2 of whom were the help, hiding behind their counter, and 1 was me.

2) I picked a seat that was so low to the ground that everything in my line of sight was a friggin' chair.

3) I couldn't think of a damned thing to draw.

I decided to give it a go anyway. I pulled out the tools of the trade (sketchpad, pencil case (actually eyeglass case, co-opted for this), and mp3 player), set the player to 'random', and just started to see what I would draw. I was kind of nervous; I wanted this to be successful; I wanted to be creative, to keep the juices flowing; I wanted to look cool, and have hot coffee shop girls come up and start talking to me about drawing. You know, the important things.

So luckily, 2 of the occupants of the shop were working on homework or a project of some sort, and relatively stationary, so I tried to do my best to sketch them in action (or inaction, as it were). I quickly realized that 1)sitting down does not equate to sitting still and 2)I'm rubbish at drawing quickly. So I was left with a lot of half-started people, and ill-drawn ones at that. I gave up and moved on to the other target, a woman who, though alone, was evidently nursing 2 cups of coffee. But she was lost in thought, and thus mostly still. I tried to approach the drawing a little differently from the other attempts, and instead of building the drawing from the inside out, tried to get down the outside first, and hope to have it all make sense and look like a person. (most of the time, an artist drawing a person will build the frame first, then layer on basic shapes, and refine those into a physical person. In artistic circles, this is known as "the Marvel Way".) This went reasonably well, in that she looks like a person nursing two cups of something which may be coffee.

having conquered living subjects (read: gave up cause they kept moving), I tried my hand at still life. Or a plaster face up on the wall. The less said about it, the better.

I did some other drawings after that, but I'm mil- saving those for other posts.

The picture above was scanned in, adjusted for visibility, and kellered over in PS.

In other news, which is really about this anyway, the creative center of my mind is evidently working; I've a few ideas for things to draw here. Hopefully the 'get off your lazy ass and do something about it' center of my mind doesn't malfunction before I can realize those drawrings.

Have a good weekend, and I'll see you next week.

Music: "Ordinary" - The Alternate Routes

Mayhem and Milestones

This is Mistress Mayhem... or Mayhem, as she'll be better known (reporters can be lazy, and the full name distressed concerned parents...). Mayhem is a natural fighter, brilliant tactician, and the emotional heart of the group (which is easy when The Knight's Blade can be too intense and the Captain apparently has no emotions).

Since you're here, let me tell you- this drawing was cake. I mean it. It's kinda scary how easily this came together. Up until about 8:30 or so, I had no idea what was getting posted tonight. I was completely expecting to half-ass a sketch or something, or dig out a scrap of something I scanned in a while ago. But no. I'd been thinking about this character for a while now, in terms of pose and such- I was completely stuck on what to do. I had all kinds of reference poses, but none of them really worked. Then 8:30 rolls around. Pencil, check. Paper, check. Inspiration via bolt from the blue, check. It took me about 30 minutes or so to go from first non-photo blue layout to finished pencils, then another 15 to ink. Went beautifully. I was a little scared, it all worked out so well. Then I started erasing. That's when the friggin' erasers started smearing the non-photo blue lead and pulling up the ink! sonofa... So instead of getting all pissed and dejected, I stopped, re-inked it, and carefully erased random pencil lines (luckily, since the drawing came freakishly easy, there weren't lots of linebits to clean up). Scanned it in, and colored it. I opted not to do anything too funky with it in terms of the coloring, mostly because the really clean lines lend themselves to the simple colors and lack of textures. So yeah, I'm very pleased by how well it turned out.

Also of note: this marks my official 100th post to this blog. I knew it was coming up for a little while now, and I had all kinds of plans to put up some crazy-complicated picture I spent days working on, that would melt your eyes with the complete coolness of it. However, life (and the other posts) got in the way. And I'm glad. I was able to put more into the regular posts, and as a result, got more out of them. And, with how much I enjoyed this sketch, it seems like a wholly appropriate post.

It's pretty hard to believe that I've actually posted to this thing 100 times. When I started posting, I was about overflowing with sketches, and ideas for sketches, and ideas for posts and writing, I thought I'd never be able to get them all down. Well, it's been quite a roller coaster ride for me since those first posts. I've run completely out of drawings, out of time, out of ideas, out of patience. And, I've since drawn more drawings, made more time, found more ideas, and taught myself more patience. This site has really been the kick in the metaphorical ass that I've needed. It's been so much fun to re-discover this long-buried passion for art and creation, and it's been a complete joy to be able to share it with you. I plan on sticking around on here for as long as I can, and I hope this blog continues to be a pleasant stop on your travels through the web. Thanks for stopping by to visit, whether it's your first time, or your hundredth time.

-Steve

Music: "Dreamline" - Rush

...and the road goes ever on...

The Age of Bronze

For those of you looking for a discourse on Eric Shanower's epic comic book, sorry, wrong place. However, if you're looking for a picture of the Man of Bronze, then you've come to the right place... though I'm no James Bama.

If you've just read the above paragraph going "wha huh?!?", don't worry about it. "The Man of Bronze" is no comic character. That's a reference to one of the most famous pulp fiction characters in America, Doc Savage. Don't worry, I'll explain a little below.

Pulp Fiction is the name given to a series of stories written back in the early decades of the 20th century, most of which appeared in cheap nickel and dime magazines printed on cheap, or 'pulpy' paper. They covered all genres of fiction, but the most popular were the action-adventure/mystery ones. Characters such as The Shadow, Buck Rogers, and The Spider either made their debuts in the pulps or became best-known for appearing in the pulps. Doc Savage was one of those characters. He was kind of a "renaissance man of action", if you will. He was trained to the peak of physical perfection from childhood, with a finely-honed genius, and a group of assistants to cover all manner of expertise. Imagine Batman with guns and a special forces team, and you kind of get the idea. All filtered through the 30's mindset, of course, so you can imagine the kinds of stories and characterizations you'd get. Oh- he's called "the Man of Bronze" because his skin is supposed to be a deep bronze. Like George Hamilton, but bigger. Also- James Bama was the artist who painted the book covers of Doc Savage back in the 70's- he gave doc a crazy deep widow's peak, which is the image most folks think of when they think of Doc.

The pulps are long since gone, but the characters still live on, both in their own adventures (either reprints of the pulps, or movies, or TV shows) and in their intellectual offspring -comic books owe a huge debt to the pulps, as do the larger-than-life action heroes of the movies. Indiana Jones is a Pulp Hero.

I discovered Doc Savage books quite a while ago, entirely accidentally. I picked up a couple of them at a used book fair, thinking they were about a completely different character (Savage? Samson? Who can tell the difference at age 11?). I read them anyway, and was pretty much hooked. The stories are filled with great action, fun characters, and crazy cliffhangers with narrow escapes. Completely politically incorrect, but that's half the fun. Anyway, there you go. Go to Wikipedia to read up on Pulp Fiction and Doc Savage.

Oh yeah- the picture... This actually was never intended to be a Doc Savage pic. I originally drew it after watching an animated movie that featured Superman, among others, drawn in a very clean, distinctive style. Wanting to get the feel for that style, but not draw superman, I decided to make a retro-style superhero. It was a pretty quick sketch- he looked more like a wrestler than a superhero. But, when I started working on the coloring, I ended up going with a deeper skin tone than I normally use. I took a look at it, and the general look of the character, and decided it was going to be Doc Savage. So, the skin got properly colored, gave him blondish hair, and made his outfit a little more doc-like. Then, once it was all colored, I decided to make it look like it were an old photo (thinking on it now, I could've gone really crazy and given it fake distressing. But I didn't). I don't know how well the web-based jpeg reproduces the image, but I'm terribly pleased with the results of the coloring. I'm finding I'm getting as much pleasure out of coloring the pictures as I am drawing them- sometimes moreso. Figures- 30 years later, and I'm back to playing with crayons...

Anyway, there you go. A little something to make up for the lack of an update Friday and Monday's pseudo-update.

Cheers!

Music: "Gladiator Waltz" - Hans Zimmer

Digital Dreaming

I was about to head to bed last night after a frustrating night of bad drawing- ideas would come and go, nothing was feeling right to draw, and what did make it to the page was hardly worth mentioning- and an hour or so of surfing the net, checking out www.deviantart.com, which is normally always good to get me excited about drawing. Not last night; nope, last night was all about making me feel like nothing I was drawing was worth the paper it was printed on. Let me tell you, times like that really make me want to pick up the pencil again. And break it.

So yeah, I was still frustrating myself by looking through these artists' pages, and my internet radio was playing on- it's a channel called 'Coffeehouse', which I guess is meant to be a mix of new music and classic rock- all the cool stuff that gets played in a coffeehouse, I should imagine. So I'm looking at this art, and thinking yeah, that's pretty cool, I'll never be doing anything like that, when the radio starts playing some different music. I'm not even sure what it started out playing, but it was good- really good. Nothing up-tempo, or 'feel-good' or whatever, but just good music. Another song comes on, and I'm turning on Photoshop, bringing up a blank page, and taking out the stylus, and drawing the above.

I know it doesn't look like much- hell, it really isn't much- but it's something new for me. The above is the first picture I've worked, start to finish, in Photoshop. No big thing for these folks on Deviantart, mind you, but pretty big for me. I've really been hesitant to look at digital art as art- The fact that someone could conceivably create the Mona Lisa entirely in a computer, without ever touching a tube of paint, never sat well with me. However, as I've come to use tools like Photoshop and the Wacom tablet more and more, I've finally realized that they're just tools- they are all there to help the artist convey whatever is inside his or her mind to the rest of the world. Whether it's via pencil, paint, or pixel, it's all art. And alliterative, evidently.

One thing I've learned about this experience is I still think analog- I sketched out the figure just as I would on paper, moving in just the same fashion- hence all the jagged little lines. It feels a lot like when I first started putting these pictures up on the web for folks to peruse- I know there's so much I can do with these programs, but I'll only learn through practice.

Oh- the music I was listening to led me to the picture above. Music is great for helping me find out what I'm supposed to draw.

That's all for now.

Music: "Girl in the War" - Josh Ritter

The Future of Art Enforcement

Robocop

was one of those quintessential childhood movies (now THERE'S something to make parents everywhere squirm). It came out in 1987, so I was 13 years old. It had all kinds of things in it that are perfect for a 13 year old boy to see: guns, action, robots, and breasts. Or at least hookers, and they had breasts, so that was close. It was the first R-rated movie my mom let me and my friends watch (then, as now, violence was okay, but not nudity). What a great movie! I loved it- it was like a big comic-book brought to life. And as far as I know, other than leaving me with a tendency to say "I'd buy that for a dollar!" and randomly ask "Can you fly, Bobby?", it's had no long-term negative effect on me. Your results may vary.

Cut to 20 years later. It's been ages since I've seen it on TV, and I never picked it up on DVD. Whatever company currently owns the rights decided to release a twentieth-anniversary edition of it. I found a pretty cheap copy online, and figured I'd give it a go, even though I've been burned by trying to relive the past by watching TV I loved as a child (I'm sorry, there were no good episodes of "A-Team" or "Knight Rider". We all had terrible taste in television in the '80's.). So, for the 2nd annual New Year's Day watchathon, I queued up Robocop and crossed my fingers.

You know what? It's still pretty good. The effects are a little dated, but the story itself is solid. The jokes are still funny, the lines good, but now there's a bit more to take in than the first time around. It's a lot easier to sympathize with Murphy, forcibly taken from his family and made to give up the life he knew (well, he was dead, so it's to be expected). It's certainly easy to imagine the big corporations taking over more and more of our lives as the government fails all around us. Though it'll probably be Microsoft who takes control of everything. Anyway, still a good movie, and worth a watch.

Okay, finally, the picture. I pretty much cranked this out shortly after watching the movie. I started with a soft-leaded pencil for dark, heavy marks- I didn't want to finesse the picture. I wanted it angular and solid. I was really pretty pleased with it- other than the gun (I've GOT to learn how to place my drawings better), I really liked it.

Then I dropped it into photoshop. This was originally to be posted when the Batman picture was, but as I started messing with the picture, I realized I wanted to try something specific with it. So I switched to the Batman, and then came back to this last night (which is unusual; i almost always work on the coloring the night before a post is due). Anyway, what you see is mostly what I wanted to do. Basically, a layer of a few shades of gray, with lots and lots of 'brush'strokes of different shades of gray. I REALLY like how it turned out (again, except for the gun). It's a 'painterly' style I'm really looking forward to trying some more. In fact, I think I have another picture this will work well with...

But we'll see.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you again soon. Have a great weekend!

Music: "Acrobat" - U2

Another Day, Another Sunset

Welcome back everyone. I'm still sick, and still tired, so this will probably be brief. You can stop cheering now...

This was painted early last year. I took a watercolor painting class at the local community college. Watercolor was something I really loved doing back in high school, but hadn't really touched in the intervening years. So, in an attempt to do something social, and something I enjoyed, I took this class. It went pretty well- the class was fun, the folks nice, and it was a good chance to learn some of the fundamentals of watercolor. Learning the process of creating art is always both a pleasure and a pain for me. So much of it is pretty intuitive to me- most everything I've drawn, and certainly everything you've seen posted on here- is the result of what I've taught myself or what I've picked up from looking at other artists. As a result, though I know how to do certain things, I'm lacking what's known as 'fundamentals'. So whenever I'm given the chance to learn the 'proper' way to do something, it makes a huge difference in everything I attempt from there on out. However, it's also very difficult for me to try to learn something new since I've always just done well enough with what I've learned on my own. Anyway, learning's great, but tough.

So here's this picture- one of the last ones I painted, and one that I really like and really dislike. It's a sunset at the edge of some cliffs. No worries there- the original photo was very nice- lots of contrast between the stark black foreground and brilliant sunset, all overlooking the sea. HOWEVER, painting that friggin' sea nearly killed me. I ended up completely re-doing the water three times, just to get it to this state. And it's not easy to re-do watercolor. It involves lots of water and dry brushes. Also, I learned that my paints, while nice, are not that nice. The black and dark blue were both prone to clumping and so on, so the picture isn't as highly contrasted as I'd like. I do really like the sky, though. Unfortunately, the scanner doesn't handle painted pictures really well. I'd probably be better off having Dave take photos of the paintings and posting those. But I didn't, so here you go.

So much for a short post. Suckers.

Music: "Save Me" - Queen

Now THOSE are some colors...

Driving home from work, January 9, 2008.

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous." -Aristotle

More High-Falutin' Real Life

Welcome back from the holiday- hopefully it went well for all y'all. I'm actually sick, so this will be relatively short (I can hear the rejoicing now). This is another page from my fancy sketchbook- you know, the one that's supposed to have the important work in it. This picture is actually drawn from a photo taken from an issue of National Geographic. NG is well-known for the quality of its photographs, so I figured if you're going to steal, steal from the best. I thought the image itself was very striking- the woman's face is cropped out of the photo- almost as if her entire identity were to be found in this passport.

That's it, nothing more to say. I'm going to bed.

Music: "Across the River" - Peter Gabriel

Posts of Halloween, Five

This is Frankenstein Superstar. Or, if you like, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Though the street is actually Rodeo Drive. I've had this idea in my head for months now, long before I got it into my head to do Halloween posts. As you may or may not know, I'm a huge fan of the Universal Monsters, so they were long on my "to do" list of things to draw. For whatever reason, 'Frankenstein Superstar' popped into my head, though I had no idea of what it would look like,other than a vague Andy Warhol homage. Cut to a few weeks ago, when I laid out the original sketch for what might or might not lead to FS. It turned out very well, especially given that it really was just a sketch. It managed to hit just the right notes for the look I wanted. About then I figured out approximately what I wanted to do with the overall picture. What you see above is more or less that, minus the supermodels and paparazzi standing behind him... maybe next time. I'll most like post the original sketch later on down the line, as I like it a lot. I like this one too- something different, and fun. I tried to stick to my original idea of the color being more representational than actually trying to color it "realistically", but as I look at it, it does a pretty good job of looking like shading. For kicks, I might try to recolor it as a straight-up picture, like the others before it.

I have three or four further Halloween pictures, so there will most likely be an additional post Tuesday.

That's it for this week. Hope everyone has a good weekend- anyone going to Halloween parties this weekend make sure to have a good time, and think twice before necking with any vampires.

Yeah, I said it.

Music: "In the Hall of the Mountain King" - Edvard Grieg