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

 

an inking experiment

This was just supposed to be a warm-up drawing of Deadpool (still haven't gotten him out of my system apparently), but it ended up taking most of the day.

I've been wanting to play around with different inking styles lately, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I took some inspiration and techniques from really great artists like SEAN MURPHY, DECLAN SHALVEY (big ups to Ireland), and RAPHAEL ALBUQUERQUE. Even though ink is a more permanent medium than pencils, it's somehow more liberating and relaxing. I got comfortable pretty quickly, which is great because I wanna start doing this more often.

Inked with brushes, brush pens, crow quill pens, and some white paint. I'm learning to love the white paint. Halftones applied in Photoshop.

Warped! The Adventures of Sandy and Angus (now with 100% more updates!)

This is a pin-up I did for my friend Fernando Pinto's comic Warped!. It's kinda like a buddy cop movie, but it's in space, and they're bounty hunters (not cops), and the one-liners are waaaay better. And there's no shortage of quirky, inventive concepts and characters. Fernando's a great storyteller and it's nice to see him really cutting loose in this book. It's a really great, fun read and you can check it out for FREE! on Graphic.ly. Issue 4 was released this week and it's just as awesome as the other three, so go read it now!

Pencils and inks:

UPDATE

This was my first try at the thing. I still kinda like it, but the guns in the top left corner were making a weird shape and it was too dynamic just for no reason and it needed more breathing room overall. I don't know.. maybe I'll do something with it in the future that's more gooder.

And the gun Angus is holding is supposed to be a blunderbuss with a goldfish bowl attached as a clip. Yeah. When you draw all day, you're mind wanders. Sometimes you get weird ideas. Sometimes those ideas involve old world-style weaponry and innocent fish. Angus doesn't even use a gun like this. Ever. So I don't really know what I was thinking.

deadpool & charlie sheen: bffs

 

Wow. This thing kinda took off like gangbusters. That's right, I said gangbusters. Sorry, middle America. 

Last week Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso tweeted "Show of hands for a Deadpool/Charlie Sheen team-up?" and Ben Christian texted me with a crazy idea. My first thought was "You're nuts. Lose this number." My second thought was " Yeah, why not?" I'm fickle like that.

A few days (and sleepless nights) later we had a pretty cool one page comic that we figured would, at the very least, get us on Axel's radar. We had no idea it would end up being seen by so many people in so many places. You hope for these kinda things, but this was way beyond expectations.

Axel himself retweeted it, which was pretty awesome by itself. Then it showed up on bleedingcool.com, comicsalliance.com, blog@newsarama.com, and eventually landed on io9.com, not to mention everybody who reposted and retweeted it on various social networks, OR the long list of message boards that Ben posted it on. Straight up hustler, that guy.

So, I'd like to thank everyone who saw it, supported it and helped spread it around today. I am eternally grateful. This has been a pretty crazy day. And I can't forget to thank the internet in general (for existing), the slow news day, and of course, Charlie Sheen. You magical man, you.

Pencils and inks below:

new avengers sketch

it's like that, y'all

The Independents. Kickin' out the jams since 2010. 

Come check our bomb-ass Independents facebook page here.

Does outdated hip hop slang make blogging more fun? You bet it does.

tmnt

donnie versus krang

World of Warcraft pitch

A few months ago at work, we got to draw some World of Warcraft illos in varying styles as part of a pitch for a proposed trading card series. This fight scene was my contribution. I decided to ink it as practice for The Independents even though the job only required pencils. I didn't spot too many blacks because I knew it was going to be painted by my friend Jerry Wilson. I knew Jerry would figure out his own light sources and I didn't want to get in the way of that.

And I'm glad I didn't because he made the goblin's sword a glowing light source. I never would've thought to do that. Go check out Jerry's site to see some more cool stuff.

Independents sketch covers (& post-NYCC wrap-up)

NYCC went really well. We made a lot of good connections and met a lot of great people all weekend long. Now comes the follow-up process, which means a lot of editors are gonna be receiving these bad boys in the mail wether they like it or not. Our plan was to just get some eyes on the books at the con and offer to send a copy to anyone who was interested, but some people were so receptive they wanted to take a copy right there! It was an awesome feeling and I'm just grateful to everyone who gave us the time of day.

Anyway, this is the first batch of sketch covers I did before the convention. I spent about 15-20 mins on each, and I got better and faster with each one, though some I wish I could take back. This kind of sketching is an art form unto itself just like the inking process. I used pretty much the same materials I did to ink the pages, but I threw in a gray marker for some half-tones. It didn't show up too well in the scans, but they look pretty cool in person.

The Independents- inks

 

And now here are some inks!

Inking is a real pain when you don't do it all the time. I kinda got my bearings around page 5 or 6. Everything before that needed a ridiculous amount of cleanup in Photoshop before I was ready to show them to anyone. It was a pretty cool learning experience, all in all.

I did these mostly with microns and tech pens, but I threw in a little brush work when I was confident enough not to ruin them. Many, many lessons learned.

Check out declareindependents.com for the full colored, lettered story in the coming months. That will be home base for everything Independents from here on out, and we have plans. BIG plans.

Stay tuned. 

Also, I swear I'm gonna try to update this thing more frequently. Promise.

The Independents- pencils

Here are the pencils for The Independents short story "Burn, Hollywood, Burn" that myself and Mr. Ben Christian will be pitching to just about anyone with eyes and ears this weekend at NYCC.

This is the biggest project I've ever tackled and it was a great experience throughout. I literally had the time of my life working on these pages and I think I've proved a lot to myself in the process. Drawing comics rules.
Ben has been a phenomenal collaborator and I think it's safe to say that this is just the beginning for us as a team and the Independents as a property.

(fingers crossed!)

Tomorrow: Inks!

The Independents is copyright 2010 Ben Christian and Cory Smith