181 Days of Jack Kirby Characters

Last year I challenged myself to doing a sketch card daily and posting it to twitter, and I chose to do characters created by Jack Kirby because I knew there were hundreds and it would keep me busy and motivated. Oh yeah, and because Kirby created some of the greatest comic book characters and designs ever and I knew they'd be fun. Towards the end they weren't "daily" so much as "when I had the time", but I managed to finish the set anyway.

Starting today, these cards are up for grabs if you'd like to own one. The average price per card is 25-35, with some higher and some lower. There are too many for me to make a full price list, so contact me via email (csmitharts@gmail.com) for more details. This will be first come, first serve.

They're all being sold as individuals except for the Celestials, the Fantastic Four, and Bucky/Winter Soldier, which will be sold as sets. There are 3 that are already sold (Darkseid, Doctor Doom and Juggernaut) and 2 are not for sale (Galactus and Karnilla). Here's the entire set in chronological order:

Here it is ENLARGED.
And here's a link to the Twitpic Gallery.

I also want to really thank everyone who retweeted these cards and helped me spread them around the internet. You guys rule. I hope you enjoyed checking them out as much as I did making them.

THE PRIDE #3 -Cover Process

Here's another cover I did for Joe Glass's comic The Pride. Roughs, pencils, inks. Joe left it pretty much up to me to figure out what to draw here, so I went with a big fight scene (it happens in the issue). 

It might seem like a lot of work for one image, but it got kind of complicated with all the different characters and how they interacted. I even sent Joe this color comp early on to make sense of my messy drawing:

Logan

Angry, bub. Angry.

Fathom #5 In Stores Today

I drew ten pages in this week's Fathom #5. That's 25% more pages than I drew in issue #4, for you statistic enthusiasts. Here's a panel mash-up from the issue:

Inking warmup: Gateway

It's been a few weeks since I've inked anything so I did this little thing on a piece of scrap bristol to get comfortable again.

3x9 bristol, india ink, white paint, brushes, 60 mins

FATHOM #4 In Stores Today

Fathom #4 is available today in stores, and I drew eight pages in it. Go get yourself a copy!!!

Here's a sneak peak at my pencils for a few pages from the issue:

Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive

I've always liked the Black Panther, but the current "urban vigilante" era at the hands of David Liss, Francesco Francavilla and others is one of my favorites. This Panther is just really cool looking. I know he's supposed to be some kind of genius, but he's always been a hand-to-hand combatant to me, so putting him in this SWAT-inspired combat gear is a no-brainer.

Brush, ink, technical pens, inkwash, white paint, bristol board.

Some process shots:

Uncanny X-Men

This is a piece I did for Pat Loika after he was nice enough to give his artist alley table at NYCC to me and Ben Christian. The X-Men are among my favorite things to draw, so when Pat asked for these characters I was psyched. Pat also does an excellent podcast that you can listen to here.

Blindside: now with color!

Marat Mychaels' Blindside. B & W art by me, colors by Frank Cuonzo.

THIS is why I leave the colors up to more capable artists. I love what Frank did with this.

A big ol' art dump

Some of the work I've done over the last few months:

 

Feels like forever since I've posted new art. These are as follows:

1.) The Pride cover (& rough pencils)- done for Joe Glass and Gavin Mitchell's comic series The Pride. I had a lot of fun doing this one-love doing these kinds of design-heavy compositions. I think it will appear on issue #2.

2.) Blindside pin-up (&rough pencils). Soon to be in glorious color by Frank Cuonzo. We're showing this to Marat Michaels for the launch of his comic Blindside.

3.)Thundercats- just for fun, really. The new cartoon got me thinking about how much I loved these characters in the 80's. I had colors in mind when I drew this, but I never got around to actually doing them. Something like this with a strong light source would be a good challenge/exercise. One of these days...

4.)Youngblood's Shaft. Did this to be part of a jam piece with some other artists, but it never really came together. Again, I thought of this with colors in mind. Again, one of these days...

5.)The Independents cover- inks & colors- This is going to be part of our pitch for for The Independents. The pitch is still being worked on, but we used this image as the cover for our 12 page comic that we had copies of at NYCC this year. Some of you lucky devils might even own one. I needed a lot of help with the colors on this, and I got it from our series colorist Steve Talaba and the awesome Dean White!

6.) Some Gladstones School for World Conquerors art I did as a warm-up one day. More on this soon...

Come on give me some of that vampire money (c'mon)

This is a drawing of The Independents from back in January that I colored up this weekend. Ben Christian and I are preparing a comprehensive pitch for the series that includes scripts, a series outline, pages of roughs, character bios, a 4 page teaser/trailer comic, ideas for an ad campaign, a finished cover, and lots more. Is it too much? Probably. But we've spent the last year pouring ourselves into the project and re-tooling and re-evaluating and re-thinking how to make ANOTHER superhero comic appealing to publishers. We've gotten invaluable input and advice from several generous pros and friends. We've learned a ton, and The Independents have come out the other side 100% better for it. At this point, to put anything but our best foot forward with it wouldn't make sense.

I'm not great using color as a medium, but each time I try to use it I end up a little more comfortable with it. Yeah, I know that's how it's supposed to go. Duh. But I have such a lack of confidence in my understanding of color that I get excited when I know enough to make the sky blue and the grass green. I'm jinxing myself saying this, but I feel like I'm starting to turn a corner with my coloring skills. I'm turning it slowly, with my hand out the window to signal.

Also, this is the beginnings of my attempt to update this blog with new art more regularly. Sorry that this place currently looks like garbage. I'm in the process of developing a new look for this site which includes a new logo/header. I'm still about a week away from completing it, but last night I started playing around with the new features/templates on blogger to see what my options were and just ended up leaving the place a mess. If anything, it'll motivate me to get it all done sooner rather than later. So please bear with this eyesore until the all-new, all-different (but not really) CSMITHART.BLOGSPOT.COM goes up.

Muscle Mary page

This is a page I did for Joseph Glass, Gavin Mitchell, and Kris Carter's comic The Pride. Gavin is the regular series artist, but Joe has been having guest artists do back-up material for the book in the form of these 1-page origin stories for each of the characters.

I had a lot of fun doing it and got to try some new inking techniques in the process. I'm gonna have to try and incorporate that inkwash into some other things.

The guys have a page on Indiegogo.com and are currently accepting donations for the project, so go support them HERE. They're pretty close to their target, so help push them over the edge, why don't ya? Take it to the limit, if you will. Aw shit, now it's montage time.

My roughs and a warm-up sketch of Mary:

Sketch Card Sheet

I just wanted to see what this would look like. I'll probably make prints out of groups like these at some point. Or maybe even make a giant poster-type-thing out of all 200+ of them once they're done, but they might end up too small for it to work. Split it into 2 posters?
Decisions, decisions...

Guess what I drew? A Turtle. Again.

Brush and ink on watercolor paper, colors in PS4.

And some process:

If you follow me on Twitter (you probably don't, apology accepted) you might have seen me posting this bit by bit yesterday. If I had thought about this as a blog post from the start, instead of just a fun warm-up on twitter, then I would have taken better scans and more of them during the process. Thinking I'll try some more step-by-step stuff like this in the future, and maybe do a full write-up to accompany it for you process junkies. Cool? Cool.

Doktor Zomax

This is something I've been tinkering with all week and I finally got the chance to finish it today. It's for the Remake/Remodel activity over on the Whitechapel message boards. I've been checking out those boards for a while as a few artists I like post their work up there, and I can never resist the urge to redesign something so I decided to take a crack at this week's subject: Professor Zomax.

It also gave me the opportunity to play around with Photoshop a bit before I jump into some more color-intense projects. Bring on the stress headaches.

Darkseid hearts Twitter

I found these bristol sketch cards at the art store the other day and thought they'd be an awesome way to do a daily sketch exercise. It's something I try to do anyway, but the drawing usually ends up getting carried away becoming an all day thing. At 2.5" x 3.5" these are perfect for quick 30-60 min things like ol' Darkseid here.

I've always been a huge Jack Kirby fan, one of his greatest skills, I think, was in character design. He created the looks of many characters (including half of the Marvel Universe) that still endure today. Doctor Doom. Captain America. The New Gods. The Inhumans. Juggernaut. And Galactus, my vote for best character design EVER. Most of his costume designs were incredibly simple, using basic shapes and vibrant color schemes to create a visual language that was unmistakably him, even when seen in today's comics. So I'm going to be doing a different Kirby character for every sketch card until I run out. It'll be a while, though. I found a list of characters online.... there are hundreds.

Also, I have a Twitter account now and I'm going to be posting one of these up every day over there. Come follow me and it won't suck all the time. Promise.

....there's a bunch of ninjas behind me, isn't there?

Oroku Saki, the Shredder. A true O.G.

Inked with a brush and rapidograph tech pens on bristol vellum and colored in PhotoshopCS4.

what I've been up to...

Playing around with my new COPIC markers, mostly. I haven't really figured out how to properly use them yet, but I already love 'em.

For a while I've been seeing the ridiculously talented Eric Canete use COPICS to some amazing effects and I got inspired (jealous) enough to try my hand at them. Check out some of Canete's amazing color pieces like this, this, and this.

I sketched out these two things quickly at 2.5" x 2.5" on a piece of bristol vellum with a very light pencil, then the markers and some brushpen. Using the markers is a good way to learn more about colors and color relationships, something I think I could always be better at. Even though it didn't go at all according to plan and I kind of hate how they turned out, I decided to post them anyway. If anything, it will motivate me to get something better posted up here by the end of the week.

havok

I always liked this look for the character. The simpler character designs usually end up being the strongest.

New Avengers pages