Studio Revolver Sketchbook available for purchase

If you haven't noticed on my sidebar, there's a link to the Studio Revolver Sketchbook. When I first posted this, we didn't have a way to order it before. But now you can give us money for a book of collected paper, thru the internet no less.

Just say "I want the hot stuff", "I want the hot stuff", "I want the hot stuff" three times, or just click this link- Studio Revolver Sketchbook

IT CAME FROM THE SKETCHBOOK AGAIN!!!

This resulted from a trip to Charlotte for Free Comic Book Day... Back when Mark was part of Revolver Studios.. But we weren't even named at that time...

Why so dramatic.. I have no Idea.. just more sketches that I like from the past..

The White Stripes

I had to do a marathon 3 day back to back all nighter in the studio to finish a hot( hot as in they need it ASAP, not hot as in top secret, cool) storyboard project. I ended up listening to a lot of music, and on Pandora- my music service of choice, I ended up with a lot of White Stripes..

Anyway, all done now, and I did a little peeking into their history, and it was very interesting.. More importantly, they themselve are very interesting characters.. So I did a quick picture.

That's all.

more from the Sketchbook

It might seem that I'm trying to "get over" and just pull old sketches to fluff of the blog.. But I have to admit, these life sketches are some of my favorite artwork, and I've never shared much of this with anyone before. and without further ado.... Oh.. I have added a market sketch I did last night.. I've just about finished my collection of the cool gray Copics.. They almost like working with paint..

BTW. this sketch was probably done around 2004 when I was working caricatures at Six Flas.

It Came from the Sketchbooks

Publish Post

I have some ideas brewing in my big ole' noggin, and quite a few of those Ideas are related to making this blog a little more interesting.. Well to begin something only a little different, I'm bringing it back old school..

Actually not really that old, and nothing to do with school. I rummaged thru some old sketchbooks, and found some stuff I really like ( and have never, ever shared with anyone..

So here's the first sketch, done when I was doing some time drawing caricatures at Six Flags.. During that time I did a lot of sketching, as you'll figure out in the next few weeks.

Redeemer Final pages.

I was holding off posting these until I could at least get through all of them.. At least present the first few sequentially.

But I'm still working on them, and I don't want to rush.. So I'm just posting the first two that I've finished.. If you want to see the breakdown of the story, click on the sketch or comic tag; I put up the breakdown for this story at least a year agon.

I'll talk more about my approach and whatnot when I have more energy tomorrow..

Later,

t.

Ringslingers Cover sketch

Was cleaning up yesterday and found this cover sketch I did for Ringlingers.. I didn't use it cuz I didn't like Morgan's face, the girl in the up front, and I didn't like that Eric, the guy in front, could be seen as shorter than Morgan.

Surfer Card breakdown.

As you can see... This wasn't much of a "sketch" card.. I had a concept and wanted to know it was going to work out..

Initially I sketched out this concept and just threw some markers on it.. I really like the Silver Surfer but wasn't that hot about Galactus. So I spent some more time working on the Galactu s Face that you see in the pencil sketch.

I actually use the old "graphite-rub" technique to get the drawing as close to the original as possible.

I used a purple "Pitt Pen"( from Faber Castell) to ouline all of the shadow areas. This is the technique that I learned from Brian Stelfreezes water color workshop. You fill the shadow areas with a strong purple in the starting stages. That's the only part of the technique that I used on this. The card really resisted any watercolor pigment soaking in.

So I figured I'd have to rely on gouache. This is when the real fun started.. The pain went down very smooth and even. I made sure not to use too many colors on G's face.. I felt that three values would honestly say everything I wanted.

From there I just noodled away. Did a lot of color mixing, but I would completely cover up the previous color to keep the number of values down to around three on the face..

I keep mentioning G's face, and that's because I feel that's what pulls the composition together.. SS is cool, but he's kinda easy to do.. G's face really grounds the image into reality. And I keep mentioning the number of values because if you start getting too many colors on the pictures, it starts to fall apart.

I feel that a painting should be able to look very good with only 3 or 4 colors. If it's not looking good, then you just haven't used the colors the right way.. The inclination of most beginning painters is to find that special color that will make it right.. It doesn't.. It just makes a mess. So that was my philosophy as I searched for the right colors for this. And I definitely did some trial and error.

The cool thing about gouache is that you cn re-wet it and smooth out the colors. BUT another mantra I paint by is that you don't get honest gradation only by a smooth transition between two colors.. You need to have a honest transition between the right harmony of colors.. Or course I've limited myself to only three- but I kept searching for those three that played well together.. So in the end.. I didn't do any smoothing of color.

No colored pencil on this on either.. Which transitions into the Doc Strange card.. It was started about the same way as the SS, But I used a collection of Pitt pens to add a little more color at the beginning.. I threw in as marker as I could then shifted to gouache and then colored pencils.. It was a very mixed media experiment.

(BTW, the thing that makes Pitt pens so grand it they are pretty much like writing with transparent acrylic paint.. They play very nicely with watercolors, acrylic, and gouache.

That's it..

*edit* I just noticed.. It's not just my monitor.. Blogger lightens up any pictures that I upload to it.

Marvel Masterpieces Round 3: Silver Surfer, Galactus, and Dr. Strange

I've decided to start posting some of my MM's artist sketch cards.. I've already finished them all, but I didn't want to throw them all out at once.

I'll be posting a couple of new one's each week.

*edit* I just realized how badly my monitor is calibrated. I fixed( as best I could) and cleaned up the colors with some levels and curves.

Quick Sketch

Nothing more to say. but it wasn't actually a quick sketch.. I really noodled at this over the past week and a half.. I was inspired after looking through Massimo Caneavale's website( he does the cover art for Northlanders).

that's all.

Cover for proposal

I finished out a proposal job with this final mock-up of the cover.

Artifacts for White Wolf

I got the go ahead this week from my Art Director at White Wolf to put up some small illos I did for him back in December.

This was an interesting project, because it took me back to my industrial design days when I rendered a lot of projects.. The project went surprisingly quickly, and I tried out a "different" techniques.. I usually like to do my BW work in watercolor and gauche, but this time I used markers( which was/is the instrument of choice in product rendering)

The markers came out surprisingly crisp and I took the BW renderings into photoshop and put color on them using a lot of adjustment layers.

I've posted the thumbnails as well. For the Hieroglyphics I reveal my cheat.. Create a textured BG and then paint on a new layer that is set to bevel and emboss.. Adjust the setting so that it creates a shadow and then a highlight. Then on another layer, color in the shapes using with the layer set to "multiply"..

Okay here's the art.

Final Cover

I put a lot of sweat and tears into this final cover.. I kept tweaking it to get the right "polish" or feel that I wanted.. I finally figured that I needed the backlighting to be ver strong and almost flat..

One of my issues when I paint is not having enough value difference between my shadow areas and light areas.. I battled with the idea of which light source was stronger, the blue one coming from the box or the yellow one coming from the over head lights.

I finally realize that the back light had to win out, and I think the picture finally came together from therer.

It interesting how when you render "honestly" you sometimes get results you aren't totally happy with, but you know is right. I wanted the girls face to look much "cuter", but when I rendered the lighting correctly/honestly( as best as I knew how) It looked right, but the "cute" wasn't there as much as I wanted.

But I'm happy with the forms I created and I feel that they create some good forms on the characters.

that's it.

Cover for Ringslingers

I'm on the road to finishing the final cover. I'm posting the final inks and flats right now.

White Wolf: Immortal Sinners

Here are some paintings I did for the White Wolf Immortal Sinners Book. It just came out recently. I did 4 images in the book, and I have to say I particularly enjoyed doing them. I made a point to do them mostly non-digital.

I did a bit of color touch-ups to get them more desaturated( I used to using a lot of color, and the whole vampire motif calls for a feeling of lifelessness) I'll post scans of the originals, without any photoshop magic in the future.

I decided to take some excerpts about the characters and put them with the images. I really think much of the interest in the images come from comparison to the character's description.

T-shirts!!!

As many know I'm a part of Studio Revolver with Georges Jeanty, Dexter Vines, Jason Pearson, Tom Feister, John Christopher, Casey Edwards, Kevin Stokes, and Bernard Sheppard.( Check out the studio website here)

Well we made some t-shirts for ourselves, but Yes, You Too Can Own your Own T-shirt for 19.95!!! Actually we're only charging around 6 dollars, but this price might increase a whopping 4-5 dollars if we use a different vendor. Pre-Order your tshirts here.

Well, get your own..

Cover Crazy

Here are some concepts for a cover I'm working on currently. It's taking some time to create some final art that feels as good as te sketch.

Sketchies

Just some skecthins.. One I did this morning. The other, well, I made a big collection during a training class I did last year.. You may or may not believe this, but I can listen better when I'm sketching!! no kidding.. luckily my old boss, and artist/designer himself, believed me and made no fuss.

Mechanical Golem

Done for another ArtOrder weekly sketch entry.. I did this one in about 3-4 hours.. too long yeah.. But I wanted to go from pencils to finish with little/no digital.. I had to clean it up a little in photoshop, but everthing is pretty much done on paper..

I'm trying to find my analog roots again lately. I'm not totally happy with my results from doing things digitally.. I find that I can't do some brushstrokes and other spontaneous things when working on the computer, and I feel like it keeps me from finding my "voice" at times because I have to find workaround to those limitations.

Plus working analog make me think a lot further ahead..

EDIT--
Okay.. I got this pic into my studio and worked it over in a bit more in Photoshop. So much for that analog stuff I was just talking about.. Photoshop is like bacon.. It makes everything better!

Cowboy prelim

Here is a prelim for a image I did for White Wolf.. The book should be coming out in the next few weeks. It's called Bloodlines.

Garreth for ArtOrder

Another weekly sketch for Jon over at www.ArtOrder.blogspot.com

I put this on in late, so we'll see if it's included in the round-up.

I was working on this one, and kinda just kept moving.. I like how it was developing, and it would be a great comp for a final pic now.

Here is the original descriptions:
Everyone knows the standard fantasy races - elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. Few people are aware of the Garreth - a race of tiny humanoids that populate the desolate region around red dragon lairs. They live off the charred remains of unfortunate adventurers, stealing away with trinkets that are too small for the notice of the mighty red dragon. These trinkets are used for trade, and to fashion their clothing, armor, and weapons. The Garreth have also been known to barter services with the red for higher end trinkets... such as scratching that annoying itch the red can't reach, organizing the gems and coins, or tricking adventurers into rushing after the Garreths - into the lair.
What do they look like, how do they live, what is the latest fashions around the lair? No one has survived to tell. Help me flesh out the details, and have a little fun in the process.


And here is my interpretation:

My Garreth:

These Garreth reside directly below the Dragon's Den.. They are gatherers and collectors.. They take the weapons and armour of toasted adventurers. They all have collections of trinkets, and they keep their bling on necklaces tied around their necks mainly, but they will affix them to anything that will show off their collections. They are vain, and as a society elevate the possession of these trinkets to a religious level.. They believe you have to purchase your way into a prosperous afterlife. They are buried with their collections.

Hierarchy in the society is dependent upon the amount of bling that you have, kinda like rappers. The more trinkets and jewelry, they more important you are. You get more by catering to the dragon more- They highest level of the clan would be the one that can best interact and bargain with the dragon, without getting fried to a crisp.

They also do the service of keeping watch for the dragon, alerting him/her to would be warriors in search of fame and glory.

More Character designs

These next two flush out the main characters for this project.

Character designs

More from the same project.

Current Project

Currently working on this project with a client.. I just finished a sample double page spread for this job.

Twice is Nice

I meant to post the Wolverine yesterday, so I guess I'm doing a little catch up( I'm trying to post every day or at least 5 times a week, even if not daily.)

Today.. Just a quick sketch..

Fresh Ink

I pencilled this Wolvie for the sole purpose of handing it off to my studio mate, and the newest addition to Revolver Studios, Unshay Sheppard.

Can you believe he just started seriously inking a month ago?!

I was pretty happy with the results.

Monster Mash

This is a submission I put in for a weekly sketch blog over at ArtOrder.blogspot.com. It's a great blog to read if you're an aspiring illustrator. It's hosted by Jon Schindehette, senior art director of D&D.

It was a fun sketch and into a realm I don't step into very much. Creature Design.. That's why I wanted to take a stab at it- I don't get many opportunities for this, and it's pretty fun, because everything you do is right, as long as it makes sense.