It was reading the early Eastman & Laird TMNT comics and playing the RPG that really cemented my desire of wanting to write and draw my own comics. The only other comics I'd read at that point were some older X-Men reprints (that had Arthur Adams covers, Dave Cockrum interiors, and John Bolton backup stories) and Archie comics that had a different artist every story––Kevin and Peter were doing something different, and seeing their names above the logo on the cover made me realize these guys were just making stuff up and drawing it––not a factory of creators contributing to a long-standing legacy brand.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
TMNT 40th Anniversary Pinup
It was reading the early Eastman & Laird TMNT comics and playing the RPG that really cemented my desire of wanting to write and draw my own comics. The only other comics I'd read at that point were some older X-Men reprints (that had Arthur Adams covers, Dave Cockrum interiors, and John Bolton backup stories) and Archie comics that had a different artist every story––Kevin and Peter were doing something different, and seeing their names above the logo on the cover made me realize these guys were just making stuff up and drawing it––not a factory of creators contributing to a long-standing legacy brand.
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Magic The Gathering: Helga, Skittish Seer
Here is Helga, Skittish Seer, one of the Frogfolk, who despite bing my 3rd card revealed, was my first to draw. The set was released in early August, and since Wizards of the Coast has already revealed my version of this card, I can share the artwork and process for creating it.
The process started with the brief from my art director Aliana Roodasking for Helga, a Lemur Tree Frog sitting on the banks of a pond staring into the distance while absentmindedly conjuring water magic. They wanted a tone of adolescent angst and loneliness. WotC provided me with an enormous PDF with reference for the frogs and their clothing as well as reference for Helga's specific character design.
I started with a pencil version of Helga on copy paper to get the pose and mood of the character right. I then placed another sheet of copt paper over her on a lightpad and drew her costuming. The brief also called for a specific blend of frogfolk and ratfolk architecture in the background, so that was done on another sheet as well which is why there is a void on the background pencils. Lastly I penciled a version of her twisty water magic.
With the pencils/layouts approved by my art director, I moved on to inks. I printed the digital composite out and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion Lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol to use the printout as a guide as I inked with Copic Multiliner SP pens. The art director for this card requested not to have any large or dense areas of black, so I kept the linework fairly open and was restrained with the amount of texture.
The inks were then scanned back into Photoshop where I could start the coloring process. This stage. called flatting' is the professional version of coloring-in-the-lines. Just flat color is placed in to establish everything's base colors. the art director also liked when my linework was softer in my Mouse Guard work, and wanted everything to have a dark brown color hold (ink lines colored to be something other than black). I also established other color holds on Helga's eyes, the water bits, and the entire background. Here are the final rendered colors for the art (sans card borders). I did the light and shadow and texture by using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush.
I have prints and playmats of Helga available for sale: https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/category/magic.
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Bloomburrow Tee
I was given a lot of free reign and asked to draw an adventurer from Bloomburrow in my own style that summed up the cozy but serious vibes the setting provided. They also asked me to hand letter a version of the logo, but allowed me to take liberties with it. Of course, because it was a silk-screened shirt, there were color limitations.
To the left you can see the baseball version of the tee WotC sent me, but below I'll go through the steps for creating the art.
These pencil drawings were all assembled in Photoshop and tinted to ultimately help me see everything clearer when I'd get to the next step.
Happier with the four color version I turned it in to the Art Director––but he surprised me by suggesting to add some more colors to make the water magic pop in the final.
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
Infant Melon Dragon
Here is my finished colored Dragon (twentieth in the series). And below are my steps to create it as well as the community submissions.
For #DiscoveringDragons, I post two or three prompt words for everyone to make into a dragon. It's a nice framework for artists of any skill level to focus some time on an 'assignment' to shake the rust off or get the pencil moving again––all while also being loose enough that there's plenty of room for individual expression and interpretation.This month the prompt was two words: Infant & Melon
I opened several tabs of google image searches of baby dragons, watermelons, & cantaloupes.
Using my lightpad, over the top of my pencils for the dragon shape, I drew new details of the horned melon and the inner fruit-seeds for the belly and tail vines/leaves. All of these pencils were scanned into Photoshop and assembled with some quick color blocking to get my layout where I wanted it.
I printed out the above design at full scale and taped that onto the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Using a lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol as I inked the dragon. I used Copic Multiliner 0.7 pen to ink the art.
The inking on this piece was a subtle affair of getting the horned melon rind texture right, and then using lighter weight lines for the seeds (imbedded in the fruit) and a slightly different texture of the leaves.
Most of of the color selections were already established in the rough, but I played with the final value/hue choices for a while before getting to this point.
For the final colors I used a bit of the paintbrush to make the tip of each 'horn' of the melon skin a darker orange, and then the dodge and burn tools to add shadows and highlights to give the dragons some form.
Below you can again see the final Dragon...