Sketch dump! So these are some studies, and some watercolor practice. I'm really seeing what people mean when they say watercolors are the hardest medium to reproduce, because no amount of camera/photoshop tweaking seems to get the colors right. I think I need a few white-light bulbs and a better camera lens.

Oh, and Julie handed me an owl stamp while I was inking, that I felt compelled to use. Totally completes that last one.

Here's the Christmas/new years card I sent out this year. I need to work on getting a decent digital reproduction of watercolors. I tried both scanning and photographing it, and neither was capturing the subtle tone and hue shifts. I had to do a whole lot of photoshop tweaking, and I still couldn't get it very close to the original painting. I might have to use a professional scanning/photographing service next year. Ugh.

Here's an illustration I just finished recently. It was for a weekly contest on a forum I frequent. It didn't win, but I think it turned out decent. For those who aren't familiar with the characters, these are from Mike Wieringo's Tellos

Playing around with some heavy brushwork combined with hatching. It didn't turn out too bad, especially since this is pretty much my first attempt at inking water. The contrast on the ripples seems a bit too high, but I'm pretty sure halftone hatching on the water reflections would look really, really bad. I'm gonna have to research some pen and ink artists, and see how the masters handled it!

Anyway I'm either gonna throw some quick watercolors on this, or maybe just photoshop tones.

Playing around with the idea of making a Halloween card. I realized halfway through that the illustration was way too dark, but I threw this together anyway.

another pen/brush/ink illustration for the heck of it. There are a few areas that are like acid on my eyeballs (some of the clothing folds, etc), but for the most part I'm happy with this one.

Damn, I really fell off the wagon with this blog thing eh? Well I intend to get back on! I've got a few more woodsman strips that just need some touching up, and I can continue with it to where, you know, something actually happens. That'd be cool right?

In the meantime, I've been playing with ink some more. I've been trying to really nail down the steel-nib pens, and I feel lately like I don't completely suck with them anymore. So here's a warmup from today, this was about a 90 minute piece.

Whats that you say? Stop stalling and post more Woodsman stuff? Sure, it's just, uh... I'll be right back.

#11.

I had some issues with this one. I screwed up the first panel, and tried to cut it out and replace it using a technique Matt Bernier goes over on his blog. Well, suffice it to say, I should have given it a practice run before diving onto my bristol wielding a razorblade. I did, in the end, manage to replace the panel with a shiny new chunk of bristol, but I had to digitally remove a few wobbly cut lines that strayed into the panel borders.

Anyway, next week: Talking heads! Exposition! Nudity?

#10

A warmup study from a photo of an old-school bodybuilder. I threw some half-assed tone and highlights on it in photoshop. Did I say half-assed? I meant crazy awesome. Anyway, I'll have some more "The Woodsman" panels up later today.

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