Headless horseman

Sketch card commision

Sketchcards

Finished these two last night.

Iron Man Sketchcards..

I've been working on some Iron Man sketchcards lately, so here are my first two approvals.

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.

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.

Good times and Fun Cards: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Haven't been around for a while due to the holidays and just being darn busy. I'm updating my design portfolio and spent all last week photografin' brochures and flyers and stuff.

I'm also working on quite a bit of stuff that I just can't show right now.. So, things have been a little light..

But... I did finish a Buffy sketch card commission that's pretty interesting.. So here it is.. with no further ado..

New SketchCards: Red Skull & Wonder Woman

Here are a couple of new ones.

EbayTastic!

I'm trying my first run with E-bay.. A bit confusing for my tastes( but where else do you go?)

I"m putting a Kingpin sketchcard up for grabs. check it out here>> Kingpin listing.

I'm curious to see how things turn out.

Post Convention Sketchard

Here's an Iron Man sketch on Studio Revolver sketch stock I put together at Dragon Con.

Marvel Masterpiece !! Artist Proof.. Red HULK!!

Here's a Marvel masterpiece artist sketch proof I just got approved.. I started with a drawing on a Studio Revolver car( that I also finshed, as you see), and used that as a study for the final card.

BW Copic markers and then acrylic paints. I haven't used acrylics in a while( been sticking with watercolors lately) so it was like meeting an old friend.

I used to work exclusively with acrylics then jumped to oils (for the experience), and then watercolors(for their speed and easy transport), so I just haven't had a reason to do much with acrylics until now.

I'll be painting all of my artist proofs, and I have some cool ideas in mind already.

New Sketch cards

The members of Studio Revolver put together some sketch cards that we sell at convetions.. I've just been playing around with them, testing different techniques on the and what not.. you can se the results.

Marvel Sketch Cards '08

The paint is still drying on these. Had to do let a few go without adding some "final touches". I guess they're supposed to be "sketches" so I don't feel awful. Still would have liked to add some more "bling" to these guys.

final cards

Here are the final inked and toned cards.
Here are the final inked and toned cards.

Card Commission

Wow.. It's been over a month since I last posted.. I have been drawing-quite a lot. And that's the reason that I haven't had time to post. I have some stuff I'm itching to share, but alas, I signed some silly contracts with some non-disclosure clauses in them.

But.. I've got a great opportunity to do some sketch cards for Michael DiBenedetto. Here are the cards in the sketch phase.. keep posted for the finals- coming soon.

The gang is all here: Marvel Masterpieces

Sketch cards for Upper Deck.. My approach changed quite a bit as I got deeper thru the stack, and I ended up doing the latter cards with marker.. And then I went back and added marker to the first one's I did. I definitely loosened up as I progressed thru the cards.. It was a fun project.