Green Lantern: Blackest Night Finished.

Wow.. Does it take this long to finish a painting.. I guess, honestly, no- I've had other freelance design work to do, but I have to admit.. It did take a while..

I really wanted to control the colors in BG images.. I wanted them to feel as monochrome as possible, and not get too bright and compete with the main figure.

I've posted a version just before I finished the main figure.. I like some parts of this figure before I finished it, more than the finished one...

The main figure was a bit of a challenge too.. He needed to come off looking "black" as in the color, without actually being too dark.

I do have a few very small tweaks and additions to make.. But here is the final.

Blackest Night Progress

I've been toiling with my blackest night painting this week.. Just finished laying down the shadows for just about all of the characters.

I dropped out the elephant woman in the Blue lantern panel.. And I've decided to take out the third top figure in the Sapphire lantern panel( I'll just cover her up with some opaque BG color)

Blackest Night : color sketch

Okay.. Here's the color prelim for my Blackest Night Painting..

Onto the final!

The Blackest Night.

Okay.. Here's my next painting.

One of my studio mates got me interested in the story, and plot line and history are pretty fun to look into..

I'd love to do one for all of the lantern Corps.. Maybe one day..

But for now I wanted to do one that incorporated them all. And with the full color spectrum represented, I think this one is going to be pretty fun, and right up my alley..

I'm really looking forward to depicting the black lantern in the center.. Don't know if I'm going to do a monochrome BW, or just hit it will all the colors to create the "black look"

Well hopefully I can post the comp tomorrow ..

I've included the thumbnail, about 2x1 inches too. I scanned that, blew it up ,and did the BW sketch.

Drow Vs. Mindflayer

I started this as an entry to a contest over at Artorder. It was for a book cover, and I think not fully understanding the design challenges for book covers threw off my mojo..

It took me literally over 8 hours( and more) to settle on a concept.. And then I got to painting, but realized I didn't like the layout.. I felt I was flying blind so I scrapped it..

I'd like to revisit it, but I would start completely new..

I definitely have a morgue of pantings gone wrong, but it's been sometime since I had one I couldn't complete. Usually I make sure the composition is sound, and from there I can make it work.. For this one, I think the composition isn't working, so I couldn't put my heart to finish it.

Drink And Draw

Last Monday's Drink and draw featuring Chris and Miracole Burns..

The original Monk.

Yep. I'm talking about Thelonious Monk( not the the tv show). This is a late commission from Heroes Con.. It took a while for me to settle on a final composition.. I decided to focus on his face.. Initially I tried to incorporate the piano, but the face became too small.

And the whole "Monk at the piano" has been done countless time.. I didn't think we needed another version( read imitation) of that.

Here is the prelim and the final.

Finally Finished.

I put the last bit of paint on this two days ago.. This was a fun picture to paint, and it was on of those cases where at times it painted itself..

I ended up using a lot of opaque acrylics( gouache-y like approach) for the BG characters.. That was not my plan, but Igave the the very controlled tonal range I wanted there.

The Cylclops is mainly done with transparent washes, which is my usual modus-operendi with acrylics.

On the next piece I'd like to experiment with ptting some oils on top of the transparent acrylic wash.. We'll see how that turns out..

I'll be making prints of this in the next few weeks.

BTW, the web has a way of washing out the color.. To see a more accurate version of this drag the file to you desktop and view there..

Moving Along

Still cleaning up details in this painting.. I've already repainted White Queens face and hair, so that leaves adding Storms hair.. and from there just tightening up all of the details, eyes and whatnot.

About Face

Did this illustration for my old employer.. All of the people are part of a team that puts on a yearly conference for their dealers..

This project squeezed a lot out of me. There was one likeness that I could't get right. In the end I found a happy resolution, but I never "zinged" it..

I also did the BG.. Since caricatures was my first job EVER, I gues these should be nice easy milk runs, but I was burnt out on caricatures years ago, but sometime you gotta pay bills. And besides most of the people on that card are friends.

I even put in the prelim sketch too.

MMA Caricature.

This was done for a client that wanted to parody the MMA lifestyle.. I guess the ideas of these "big, bad, and mean" with a scowl and really "phat" tatoos..

Well anyway this client considers MMA to be the lowest rung of sports fighting.. He really wanted to caricature the cauliflower ears and the tatooed coolness of MMA fighters..

On his highest totem of the sport fighting, I think would be traditional martial arts..

I definitely tried to channel a bit of Mort Drucker in my approach to this.. He is one of my favorite caricature and comic artists.

I'm posting all of the steps up to the final.

Nightcrawler - just a small detour

I took a moment and pulled out a Marvel Masterpiece card I did last year.. Nightwcrawler.. I liked this one.. I fixed the hand on it- it was looking kinda wonky before.

Wolvie at his best OR fun with pens.

Just tearin' stuff up.. This was today's warm up drawin'..

More X-men process

put down the darkest darks on cyclops and the other characters. Next I'll start the highlights and refinements.. Definitely not happy with the BG faces, so I'll probably end up doing a lot of opaque paint overs..

Stay tuned.

Xmen. in process

Working on the xmen painting.. Just a scan of the stage I"m in now.. Lot's more to do..

Cap Squared

Just a small sketch I did to start off the creativity today..

Vixen.

This was kind of a warm up for my X-men painting.

I really wanted to try out a certain style, kinda Ashely "Woodsey".. I wanted to get some of his spontaneity more than his style.. I love the idea of slinging paint on the paper and just making it work as I go along.. I started with no ref and just built things up as I went.. I did it with goauche so I can re-wet wipe away some areas if need be.. I'll probably do more work on this in the future.. I didn't reveal the whole picture because I want to finish some things off more before sharing...

I plan to do more of these in the future.

Conquest Color

Colored him up. That's it for today.. Working out an X-men panting, hope to have something by Friday.. But I'll keep updating with sketches between then.

Conquest..

I don't read Invincible.. But whenever I peek into the comic it always had a load of awesomeness going on.. The writing and the art are always ON..

I got wind of the Conquest storyline recently and got sucked in..

So I did a "quick " Conquest sketch. If you notice one is a mirror image of the other.. The less finished Conquest I thought felt a little too moody, when I think onslaught is always "stuck up" as he's destroying a planet.. So I flipped the paper and redid it, and polished it up a bit too.

I forgot to give him his robo hand, so I spliced it on in pshop.


**I called him Onslaught instead of the correct Conquest... went in and changed that.. :)

Color Study

Here's a color study for and Xmen painting I'm doing.. Just to pad the portfolio..

Goodbye MJ.

I don't think this need explanation.. I'm just drawing him way I remember him from my childhood when he was the absolute coolest artist. And I wanted one of those zipper jackets- and not the one's with the fake zipper.. I wanted all of my useless zippers to work and be authentic. Never got one...

Valkyrie Warrior Commision.

Another commission from Heroes Con.. No specific character, just a valkyrie.. The client wanted this done for his daughter, so I wanted to give it a feminine but dignified, strong feel to it..

Heroes Con Art Show

I did this for the Heroes Con Art Show.. This was a fun piece that I painted at the Studio Revolver Booth during the show on saturday..

This photo is courtest of PatCave. I don't know his real name but click on the link to see more Heroes Con artshow pictures.

ArtOrder B&W Vampires

Done for the weekly sketch contest over at ArtOrder. This weeks theme was as you can guess, a pen and ink image of two D&D vampires..

It's much too early in the morn for too much exposition, so I'll keep it short and sweet.. Maybe I'll add some colorful exposition after I arise.

OKAY... Got some sleep, and so far I'm starting off this week on a great foot.. Only good new trickling in right now..

How about some insight on this piece.. I feel like talking about it because it was a pretty long journey from conception to finish.. Time-wise I only took a day from idea to finish, but I went to a lot of different places creatively to get to the end goal.

I started with visions of Franklin Booth and Charles Dana Gibson, and even a little Heirich Kley. I knew that I wanted it to look real and very tangible, but from the beginning I knew I wouldn't be able to get a lotof good ref, even if shot some- which I did..

The thing with armor is that no matter what ref you shoot, you won't see most of th body and you're always making up stuff with armour, so you're aways creating without a safety net.

I thought about getting some scratchboard so I could do this right, but I didn't want to have to learn a new technique when the subject was already kicking my but.. So I started with just straight pen and ink .. And at first I started doing the "comic think" just tracing the outlines and adding shadows.. But I reminded myself that didn't want any outlines, and to just paint the shadows with the black.

Note that I did do a prelim thumbnail, but veeeeeery rough, of the shadow play.. While it didn't help with details, it helped me balance the distribution of light and dark.. I tried to match it with the thumbnail, because I could make out the thmbnail fairly easily, and I knew if the final matched, the composition would at least be taken care of.

At a point I was finished laying down the black, but I was very disappointed with the picture at this stage.. So i grabbed some Titanium White acrylic and started re-establishing some positive, white, areas.. The picture felt better, but the white was just too white.. So then i went back over it with some black lines, but much more delicate than before. BTW, painting on the acrylic white was easier than painting on the paper..

And for the rest of the illustration process I went back and forth between white and black.. sometimes painting over an area two or three times..

I made a mistake and overlooked the size specifications in the original assignment, so I had to add some background to the top and bottom.

Well. That's that.. hope this might help you if you try this technique.. I'm very interested in trying out scratchboard now.. But I have to say this process was pretty fun and organic.. I'd just like to find a more opaque paint other than acrylic.. I had to put down two or three layers to really cover up the black ink.( if anyone has some ideas, hit me up.)

Death.. The character not the concept.

I just finished this commision. My first picture of Death ever.. She lends herself to be drawn and painted quite easily.. I like the simple costume.

If you notice.. I'm still pimping Brian Stelfreezes's gouache/watercolor technique that I learn at his workshop last year.

When I'm doing commissions, I'm finding that I pay much more attention to composition and temperature than modeling the forms.. I try to control the temperature of the skin tones and other aspects of the image, and try to model a little as possible. This definitely allows me to have more fun with the picture.

Big in Japan: True Story.

I don't use my blog for personal stories, but this is a tale so tall that I chuckle even just thinking about it.. These events that transpired in the year of two thousand and zero are not endorsed by Blogger and Tariq Hassan makes no claim toward the verifiablility of any anecdote that follow this non-binding and unprofessional intro...

A long long time ago in land far far away( from me now) I was just another Gaijin American trying to make it Big in Japan. I started in Tokyo, and eventually ended up in Osaka, using my trusty Japan Rail Pass that allowed me to walked on any Shinkansen and zip across the country, FREE(it cost several hundred in the states, but one Shink ride could cost that much)

Anyway, at this point I was stilll "small in Japan" so with the paltry sum of yen I possesed, I found the most affordable, um.. cheapest place to stay in Osaka. INTRODUCING the Namba Park Guest House. It was basically a one building slum that was probably owned by low level Yakuza ( but absolutely safe, like pretty much everything in Japan, except for food poisoning.. oops, I digress)

The Namba Park Guest House was truly a sight to see with marble counters( installed several decades previous), wood floors( scuffed), leather sofa( maybe found in the dumpster), Cable TV( the tv actually was pretty good), washers and dryers( in the apt bldg across the street) and personal sleeping quarters( imagine 3X3 foot squares cut into the wall that go back 6ft, and each having it's own door.)

We called the sleeping quarters "the coffins". Imagine a mourge. The squares were 2 tall and 4 across, and opened the door and climbed in.. And this Mourge was a the back of the "house" separated by it's own door.. Claustrophobics had to beware. ( a lot of shenanigans went on in those coffins.. I heard.. :).

Okay just a little more set-up.. Even wackier than the Namba Park Guest House was the collection of characters that lived there. There was Rob( nice laid back from Oz, Australia), Illiterate Phil( Robs best friend from Oz also who spoke in an intelligible Australian accent), literate Phil( from Tanzania, who spoke very clearly and was fluent in Japanese having gone to University there, but bitter at his lack of opportunities in Japan) Japanese guy( can't remember his name, but he would dress up in a pink bunny suit with a tail when they went out on the town-I think he was low level yakuza), and then there were always people in a out hanging around- kinda like friends. I never knew who was actually living there, and who just sat on the sofa all day. Okay.. I'll cut the set-up short.

One day, I'm down and out with some sort of flu/cold/make you feel awful bug. So I'm on the leather sofa just feeling bad. And then someone, I think Rob-nice australian, tell me some dude outside is looking for a black guy.. I guess he knew this would be one of the few places to find one in Osaka(in tokyo that would be no problem) And I ask, "for what".. And the tells me he's looking for a black dude to be in a music video. And of course, being small in Japan, I had to inquire abut the monetary reward for doing such a thing like a music video.. And tells me 10,000 yen, around 100 bucks, and I said "ten thousand yen!?!? GREAT!! I'll do it!" ( remember I was still small in Japan) Quick story, I talk with the dude( I'll call him Producer X) and he says he'll be back in a week or something blah blah.

A week or so later, Producer X does show up, true to his work.. BUT.. The producer or director( someone important to the video shoot) is passing a stone.. He's really apologetic about "wasting my time"( he did know I was small in Japan and had no time to waste) I was pretty happy about the situation because he bought me lunch in the diner down the street.( still small, remember) He said lets do it in a month.

During that month, many significant events transpire

After doing some small "English teaching" jobs, illegally with only a tourist visa, in and around Osaka I lucked out and found a longer term illegal job that paid me enough to happily subsist on rice and bread( there was a bakery across from the small school) Only problem was that rice very expensive there, in my opinion.

At this point I was living at the Greenpeace In Kyoto( no connection whatsever with Greenpeace) It was a slight step up- I actually had a really bunk bed there.. I was in a shared space, but I usually was the only one there, so it was like having my own room. The psychotic house owner/house mom Chikako didn't make things easy, but she definitely made them fun.

Okay Month passes, and I go back to the Namba Park Guest House at the time that I agreed on with Producer X, and yes he also shows up.. And another adventure begins.. Of course the end result is the video that you see- but I'll fill in the details of that later.

But this is the turn that took me on the path that made me Big in Japan!!

Female Loki

I did this commission over the weekend at Heroes. Its was for Brian Methot. He told me to choose a character and Casey Edwards, sitting next to me, said what about female Loki.. And I really dug that so here is the final head sketch.

Poison Ivy

This Poison Ivy was done fairly quickly as a last shot to get a new print ready for Heroes Con.. I liked how it come out.. but I can also see some areas that could be done better.

But in the end, I found a nice organic process when I did this one.. I'd like to do some more pics of other characters in this style..

BTW, I have prints left.. Drop me a line at my email if you're interested.

CROM!!

Okay.. It's not Conan.. But I didn't have any better names. I did this for a call for B&W entries over at ArtOrder.

The process for this picture is a something new for me.. I very used to starting and finishing an illustration in Photoshop.. But usually for linework I always go with actuall pen and paper and then scan it.

I wanted to simulate a scratch board technique, ala Booth, but without having to actually use scratchboard.. So to begin this images I did a lot of getsture sketches, read blobs of black, and then painted white on top of them the pul out details. I did a lot of back and forth between the white and black and scraped quite a few concepts before coming to this one. Also, each character and the background are all on separate layers..

Invincible!

I've been wanting to do something invincible related for a while now.. This color sketch only put a small dent in that longing.. I'd like to do something a lot more involved.. When I get time, I'll be on it..