It came from outer space!

I had it on good authority that I needed to watch "The Iron Giant"...also that it would most likely make me cry like a baby. I managed to keep it together, but I REALLY liked the story. For anyone that hasn't seen it, it's about a giant metal-eating robot from space who lands near a small town. He befriends a boy named Hogarth and then of course the ever-paraniod U.S. Government has to get involved and screw things up for everyone ;). I loved the part where Hogarth is hiding the Iron Giant in his barn and shows him a stack of comics that he reads (I spied Action Comics & The Spirit..very cool Hogarth). However, it was the main lesson of the story that I loved the most.."You are what you choose to be". In this case the choice between being a deadly giant robot or "Superman". Overall...Cute story.

I have never been nothing, I am the blood of the dragon...

I LOVE Game of Thrones! Today I was dreaming about the 3rd season and saw that it won't be airing until March 31st :( So I thought I'd pass the time by doing some "Song of Fire & Ice" inspired art. I wanted to start with one of my favorite characters..the "Mother of Dragons" Daenerys Targaryen. Originally I wanted to put a lot of detail into her dragon. Only I thought it might be too easy to get carried away with it and I wanted to keep the overall look pretty simple. Plus I knew I'd be spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to create her hair without over doing it. It's in a braid AND her hair is white...Yikes! Like the Supernatural drawing I did, I used a photograph for reference. Or in this case a screen shot from the show. I also changed her eye color to purple (Targaryens are known for having purple eyes) instead of going with the hazel color the actress portraying Daenerys has. I'm a sucker for accuracy ;) I had a lot of fun creating this and I'm thinking about doing a few more characters...perhaps Jon Snow?

Driver picks the music, Shotgun shuts his cake hole...

This is the first thing I've worked on where I stopped for a minute, zoomed out, and for the first time REALLY impressed myself. I took a promo photo of everyone's favorite "Hunters" Sam and Dean Winchester and used it as a reference. I've also noticed that I have a really bad habit of tweaking drawings to death. I have to know when to stop myself otherwise I'll never complete it. Is it the greatest drawing ever? No. Is it progressively better than the last thing I did? Yes and that's all I care about. I'll get there one day ;)

                                                    (My "Hey..this is actually pretty good!" Moment)

Technical Difficulties

Now before you get all excited about this drawing...let me explain. I started off just wanting to color something, but I was feeling too lazy to draw something up. So I decided I'd just find a b&w picture on the Internet and color that. So I found this Superman drawing and I start to go to town... Only I can't quite get my layers right. Every time I try to bring the line work to the top, it prevents the layers underneath it from being "colorable". At this point I say screw it and decide since it's a pretty basic drawing, I'll just re-draw it really quickly and then I'm good to go! WRONG! It took a LOT longer than I expected and by the time I finished I almost didn't feel like coloring anymore..but I got over it and finished it anyway. I definitely need to figure out where I went wrong before I attempt that again. So we'll just chalk this one up to gaining more "experience" :)

Street Cred

Rob Liefeld created Deadpool...no big deal. (Totally geeking out right now)

Movin' on up!

So I recently upgraded from a Bamboo Pen & Touch tablet to an Intuos Large tablet...why? Because I deserve it! At least that's what I'm telling myself. Going from a 5.8"x3.6" active pen area to a 12.8"x8" active pen area...is AMAZING! Ugh, I think I just turned myself on a little... ;)

Got bit, Fever hit, world gone to...

Daryl Dixon is my FAVORITE character on The Walking Dead! A bad ass crossbow-shooting-Redneck with a southern twang?? Ugh..Sign. Me. Up. I pretty much BEGGED Joey to draw Daryl :) This picture took me the longest to color and shade out of the Walking Dead series. Mainly because I kept tweaking it. I finally decided that if I didn't just post this as is...I'd probably NEVER stop.

You've got a pretty mouth!

As part of the Walking Dead series Joey and I have been working on...of course we had to do a Zombie! This was illustrated by Joey and I laid down the original flat colors. A lot of those colors had to be changed (he wanted to try painting the entire thing by hand), but I still wanted to share this illustration and a little story behind it. When I originally opened this file up...it scared the shit out of me. So much so that when I was coloring it, I literally kept it zoomed in as far as possible so I didn't have to constantly look at his entire face! At one point my sister came into my office to talk to me and after about two minutes asked me to "please turn the computer off" because the zombie was "going to give her nightmares"! It really IS an impressive zombie and it's a real credit to Joey that a drawing legitimately scared the shit out of two people. Maybe I'm just a baby, but it's still pretty awesome. Click here for his interpretation.

Street Cred

A comparison to an INCREDIBLE comic book artist like Tim Bradstreet?!? Yeah...we'll take that. This my current inspiration to keep it up :)

You're staying? This isn't a democracy anymore.

OMG!! Rick Grimes is not messing around anymore! The season 2 finale and the season 3 premier show an all new Rick..and I LOVE it! So of course my friend Joey and I had to create something to pay homage to Rick Grimes. Joey drew him, and again I shaded and laid down the flat colors. I love the cityscape in the background! I think this may be my favorite collaboration so far..

Street Cred

What's cooler than drawing an awesome picture of Michonne? Getting props from the actress who PLAYS Michonne! Amazing :) Gotta love the power of Twitter!

Michonne

Meet Michonne...the biggest bad-ass in The Walking Dead series. This chick wields a katana & drags around her jawless/limbless ex-boyfriend and his friend using their stench to disguise them from other walkers. This chick is resourceful to say the least. This illustration was done by my friend Joey as part of a Walking Dead series. I did the shading and laid down the flat colors. This was my first attempt at shading and I'm pretty proud of myself. Even though Michonne's zombie companions are basically harmless...I don't think I could have walkers chained to me at all times..it would freak me out.

These aren't the droids we're looking for..

This is my second illustration ever. I'm a HUGE Star Wars fan so it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at a Sandtrooper and I was REALLY excited to draw this! I used a photograph of a 501st Member (Love those guys!) as a reference. For the helmet detail I used my Stormtrooper EFX Helmet as a reference:). I inked, laid down the flat colors. My friend Joey helped me out with shading to give him that dirty from wandering-around-Tatooine-looking-for-droids look. Like Deadpool, this is also done using a mouse. I changed to a different brush on this drawing and turned down the ink load. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

We're not a team, we're a time bomb!

This is my second project using Sketchbook. The Hulk was drawn by Joey of Average Joe Art. I laid down the flat colors and then he shaded it. Both of us are HUGE comic fans, so when he decided to do a bunch of Avengers themed art I was all for it! I didn't know how to shade when I drew Deadpool. So I learned a little about shading and changing the opacity on certain areas with the Hulk. Not a bad team effort eh?

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I just started using the Sketchbook program and this is my first attempt with it. So I chose to draw everyone's favorite "Merc with a mouth". I actually didn't know much about the program initially. So I only used one type of brush and then adjusted the line width from time to time to create different effects. On top of that I didn't have a tablet/stylus yet, so this was all done using a mouse (I know, old school). I utilized alot of the "line" tools in the program. Which really came in handy with things like the details on the gun. Prior to this, the only "illustrating" program I had ever used was MS Paint! Which I actually still use on a regular basis. That's probably why I'm soo good with a mouse ;)