John Buscema copies

I'm not trying to copy every line and I take liberties anywhere I feel like but still Very Humbling. Try to capture the gesture and power a master like JB can deliver. I'd highly recommend any aspiring comic artists copy artists like JB, Neal Adams, Mike Mignola, Rick Leonardi, Gil Kane, Walt Simonson, Jose Gonzalez, Alex Nino, lots of others I can't think of. Anyone who gives life to the art with the gesture and underlying forms, not with the flashy caligraphy and inking. I'm a big fan of good line work but it doesn't help as much to study that as it does to study composition, gesture and structure. You'll do cool line work naturally as your 'style' developes. I still do copies of John Byrne's comics because he draws a perfect manniquin without much interesting or distracting line work.

Photoshop Brush

This is one way of making a rough random textured brush in Photoshop. edit: blogger seems to be shrinking the image, maybe there is a pixel length limit...

Sketch from a photo

shameless promo

Just need to link this for my own evil purposes

Painter Pencil

Using the Painter 11 trial and liking the 6b pencil. It has Tilt to size but the best feature of the new brushes is a tip shape that is offset so you can get a value across the stroke. Like the Photoshop brush in my last post but a little better because you can get a real small point also. This is a little spotty but I didn't bother changing brush tracking, which might have helped.

PS brushes

I'm posting these brushes on this thread if anyone's interested:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82641&page=3

more realistic

Gorilla

someting new!

Painter Sketch Pad

Trying another demo. I'm liking the pencil tool again but still no customization. The pencil uses tilt for size which is awesome. Brush sensitivity is still horrible just like Painter. They can keep saying "our brush engine is so much more versatile then Photoshops" all they want, it still sucks. Some brushes you have to go below 10% opacity to have any opacity control. And the "Oil Brush" is terrible, more like an oil-textured blender.
Still, nice and fast and the limits are probably more of a boon then a negative for an idiot that can't stop tinkering like me. I should install one art program on my laptop and leave the house for a day and see what I get done with no distractions.

sketchbook pro

I downloaded the trial and I'm trying to like the program but it's so limited compared to PS or Painter. I do like the speed and accuracy of the brush engine. It feels silky smooth compared to PS. But the stupid pencil only goes up to 4 pixels wide and making your own brush in a bigger size I don't see any texture at all to make the 'pencil' any different from any other brush.

Anyone know of any info about the program online?

Done

Made some changes, breath, R arm, thicker legs, less fake-looking boob...

Annoying

I'm clicking on links in other artists sites to find new artists I might like and I'm constantly running into what I call "click-offs". I think I heard the term used referring to TV and things that make viewers change the channel. It can be anything like a big pretentious "The Art of...." loading screen or the brilliant designer who wants every one of their images to open in a separate window. What I despise most though is the tiny little thumbnails that show a tiny little cropped portion of the image that you have to click on to see the image. If I even click on one thumbnail the art better be awesome or I'm done with the site and the stupid artist who thinks it's a good idea to make the viewer work to see his art.

Can't believe I forgot this

A favorite line from the movie

The DVD is now on sale on Amazon

Jim Carrey

Fairly quick, about 30 minutes. And I never erased until the last 5. Both because I was working on my caricature easel. I tend to draw fast and never think about erasing when drawing at my caricature easel. A good thing in my opinion although some would disagree. Likeness is a bit lacking.

Jade Raymond

The most attractive woman in games. Smart, beautiful, can swear in french, produced a kick-@$$ game...

More art

I'm trying to get some new art ready to update my portfolio with and thought I'd throw it up here as well.

Kinda WIP, possibly done

This is another piece of fan art done because I'm geeking out about Diablo III. I got to play it at Blizzcon and it was awesome. I'm sick of working on it although it needs lots of edge refinement and other tweaks, so I'm posting it before I forget.

Gouache

Too many vowels in that word. This is in my sketchbook on crappy paper. I have to stop and wait for it to dry several times so I can close the book and flatten the warped paper. It's real frustrating when the brush hits the raised paper where you don't want it to. Also this is a bit small for me to get a good likeness, the heads are about an inch high. I wanted to do a picture of both of them together with him in his red outfit and since---SPOILER!!!!!--DON'T READ IF YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH THE MOVIE!!!----- since she died, I had to bring her back as undead. And I call her "Bad Penny" now because she's switched her ways and helps the Dr. He's not too sure he likes her anymore being dead and all.

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog

New version of an old pic

Sketch

Another old sketch

messing around

Trying to do caricatures digitally. Not as quick or good as marker and paper but more colorful.

Sketchbook stuff

This is some watercolor practice from an old sketchbook. I'm not getting much new art done at the moment...


Chopped half a fingernail off with a kitchen knife. That saying "You're more likely to hurt yourself with a dull knife then with a sharp one." is bullshit

Very nice sketch by Eric Canete

Eric did this in his auction catalog I bought from him at the SD Con. I bought the book and was gonna walk away but Eric was nice enough to remind me he promised his blog readers a sketch in it. Super nice guy and a kick ass artist.

Finally some art

Just caricatures, but oh well...

Female barbarian grayscale

found my original scan before any computer work

Diablo 3

They finally announced D3. Here is a repost of some D3 inspired art I did a while ago.

The female barbarian I had trouble with because I did the figure separate from the background. The figure was just a graphite drawing and the stone work in the background I did in watercolor, dabbing with a rough sponge for the texture. Unfortunately the sponge technique turned out to be nearly photographic looking and so the figure looked cartoony and unrealistic in front of it. So when finishing them in the computer I had to basically ruin all the detail on the stone and make it look like it fit with the figure, because I didn't want to spend 30 hours more on the figure trying to make it look photographic.

Albert Einstein Quotes

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

If you read "The Power of Now" by Echart Tolle this one will sound familiar:
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Imagination is more important than knowledge...

Hulk doesn't smash!

EDIT:fixed the image

Cartoony pic of the Hulk. SPOILER--Don't read this if you're going to see the movie!! This image is about as good as the movie, not that good. The acting was well done but the Hulk was not. If the name of the movie was "Bruce Banner" then fine...But the hulk battles all left me feeling the Hulk was a wimp. There was none of that "more angry=more powerful" stuff. He yelled a lot but never really went nuts. And the CG was still lacking, closeups of his face pulled you right out of the movie and the body didn't look like muscles moving under skin at all.

I read a couple less then stellar reviews of the Indiana Jones movie then went to see it. I was way too influenced by the reviews and didn't get much enjoyment from the movie. When it was over I thought "it wasn't that bad, I wish I hadn't read those reviews..." I really don't like the Shia Leboff guy, one of those actors I just can't forget is an actor. Like Nicholas Cage (who chose his last name because of the "Luke Cage" comic book)-he's a good actor I think, but he's always just Nicholas Cage, not the character he's playing. For me anyway. Still haven't watched Ghost Rider...

So my movie reviews:
Hulk ***
Indiana Jones ****
Kung-fu Panda *****
Love Guru ***
Ironman *****
Forbidden Kingdom ****

Age of Conan

So I'm playing the Age of Conan game and it's a "mature" rated game. There's topless women and blood splattering all over and whores hanging out around town. I start a conversation with this Madame to get a quest from her and the name of her whore house is "The Bearded Clam". Now that's mature. Says something about the geeks making the game.

It's a pretty good game because it's based on R.E.H.'s world of Conan, and that it's different from other MMO's, with the mature theme and all. It really has it's issues though. Buggy and the graphics , while real high rez, are real boring and uninteresting. Of course it's hard not to compare any MMO to WoW, and that game has had 3 years to iron out the bugs.