I admit, we knew we’d get in trouble. That part’s true...

..We knew people would be worried, and we still ran away, anyway. But something also happened, which we didn’t do on purpose. When we first met each other, something happened..to us." -Sam Shakusky

Sam is one the of two main characters in the film Moonrise Kingdom. As an avid Wes Anderson fan, I felt it was time to do some inspired art. The best way I've heard someone describe this film is: "It takes as it's primary subject matter, odd, precocious children. Rather than the damaged and dissatisfied adults they will one day become." For those of you who haven't seen it. The film is about two offbeat kids who fall in love and run away together. The main theme in ALL of Wes's films is...Dysfunction. Which I, for one can completely relate to. ;) Maybe that's why I love these films soo much. His characters all manage to eventually function in their own unique way however. Like the Borderlands picture, I tried to experiment a little more with my shading technique. Sam was a lot of fun to draw, I might continue on with a few more characters from Moonrise Kingdom or another film of Wes's. I really love the characters he creates.

Strip the flesh, salt the wound...

I always feel a little guilty when recreating something that's already a "drawing". However I REALLY wanted to draw a Psycho from Borderlands because they're my favorite character in the game. Mainly because they manage to freak me out everytime I have to fight one. (I mean, a guy in a crazy mask running at you while wielding a cleaver AND laughing? Who WOULDN'T get freaked out?) To be honest one of my favorite things about Borderlands is the style of artwork. I LOVE that they mix cartoonish looking characters with a realistic/detailed landscape. But mostly I wanted to experiment with a different shading technique today and this was the guy to try that with. Overall I feel pretty good about it, he looks kind of gross and dirty...as he should. Mission accomplished! :)

Have you seen a girl with hair like this?

No joke, I probably watch "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" at LEAST once a week. I'm a HUGE fan. I believe it's one of the most incredible comic-to-film adaptations around. For one..the movie is almost word for word accurate with the comics. Two..the way they incorporated Bryan Lee O'Malley's original illustrations for all the "flashback" scenes is great. Also any movie that gratuitously utilizes video game noises/references is always appreciated. The soundtrack is phenomenal! All of Sex Bob-omb's music was composed by Beck (who I LOVE). If you can't tell, I could literally go on and on about this flick. I've been on a somewhat brief hiatus from drawing lately and a simple sketch like this was perfect to get me back into the swing of things. I wanted to do something that wasn't as simple looking as the original comic, but not as detailed/realistic as a screenshot. I think I found a happy medium.

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" :)