For the Money

It's hard work.

Really hellish doing this with the monprice tablet. But I'll adapt. Tried to switch to the cintiq as the only monitor. But when Photoshop got glitchy and my neck got stiff, I decided the cheap tablet wasn't so bad.

Bruised Ego

It turns out if you google something mentioned in a blogspot, the google corporation gives it preference in searches. When I google the North Park Drawing Group, a mention I made of it here years ago with my drawing of model and friend to some, Sabrina, shows up above more pertinent info on the group. Well, the North Park Drawing Group has started an instagram. Our instagramistress did not take a picture of my drawing at the North Park Drawing Group today. Nor did she take one last time I was there, and did not post the one she took of my drawing when last she deigned to point her iphone at my paper. Now she is a swell kid, and I am sure she means nothing by it. But being the petty person that I am, I will post today's long pose from the North Park Drawing Group and let the google spiders do their thing.

I used black paper, a white chalk pencil, and a soupçon of colored pencil.

Then again, maybe I just suck.

Oh, another thing. I bought a collection Tales from the Crypt from Bud Plant and noticed that they invariably have 7 panels per page. Is that a requirement for Marty's self-publishing jam?

Tom and Ellis are making my head spin. Here is another one I did on black paper a while back. This was a shorter pose and I did not discover using a white charcoal pencil underneath the colored pencil (it won't work the other way around). The shadow across the belly is kind of compelling.

This is cover art I found on Movies Unlimited and is the way I'd like to paint women, except I keep forgetting to do it this way when I have a model and colored media.

PR for myself at OAFCON 2015

I used to tell my students about skull proportions. Make sure you can visualize a brain being present in the skull. It helped their proportions. Scrunching the ear too close to the eye is something a lot of people do.

Re the headline.

Shameless self promotion for OAFCON

My favorite Con and maybe the oldest lineage Con in the country.

Appropriate that I use a shot from the first San Diego COMIC FEST to promote myself.

WIP-Ms Valkyrie layouts

Smedley steps down as Daybreak Games president

Perhaps of some interest to those of you who worked at SOE at some point.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/smedley-steps-down-as-daybreak-games-president/0153042

Thompson Sighting!!

Being a proper American now, Ronald Thompson wanted to visit the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. I came along to make it a mini-Blue Sky reunion. I even brought along sketchbooks, and after a few hours of inspecting the place, we sat down for an all-too-brief attempt to capture something of our historic surroundings via that time-honored method, pencil-to-paper:

Thompson was reluctant at first...It helped that I'd brought along one of his own sketchbooks for him. I'd had it since we used it to source those (wunderbar) pages that Ron contributed to the immortal "T.A.G. Annual Sampler." He perused a bit of his old work (which pleasantly surprised him), and those rusty gears began to re-engage....

Lookit this incredible-ness. There's no Thompson like RON Thompson!! 

 Seriously at work.

There were digi-pix a plenty, too.

A steamy day down in S.D. After the ship, we stopped by the Bob Hope Memorial sculpture group next door. It's a pretty good Bob, but a kinda crappy Memorial (can you tell I'm bitter from getting cut out of the commission? The artist who did it was kind of a douche--originally it was s'posed to be divided among 5 local sculptors, but douche-y worked HARD to cut all the other sculptors out of the deal). The Hope memorial is completely eclipsed (and outright dwarfed) by the even more heinous Seward Johnson "Kiss" sculpture. Really tacky. And weird.

We got stuck in downtown traffic--surface street traffic that had every route from the seafront to the freeway blocked solid both ways. It was like Comic Con was going on, but apparently it was just downtown workers, residents, and a whole lot of visitors (we heard lots of German and Japanese...plotting revenge, perhaps???).

But the traffic didn't sour our day--just our armpits. We had a damn good time. Woulda been even better if we coulda roused a few more T.A.G. alums to join us. As Thompson said, "NEXT TIME, DAVIS!!"

Marty Sketches to Prove He's Alive

Doodles (or should we call them "dawdles"?) based on a friend's were-monster story. His dad was named Biff Demmon...who was Biff Demmon? In the fantasy/comics universe, you might recognize the name as belonging to the nefarious hunter in Frazetta's best comics story, "WEREWOLF."

At the time his dad (the real "Biff" Demmon) was roommate to the writer, who ganked his moniker as a sort of inside joke...how cool is that? (And yes, I met his dad long ago when we were lads at school together....)

BONUS for Ellis: a Drew Friedman drawing of...Larry Storch (!!!)

Roughs-doodles-I'm busier than it looks

I got more of the RPG illustration assignments. Have to do those kinda quick. Super roughs done while I was waiting for a haircut. I also accepted money for more Ms Valkyrie comic page art. That is hard work.Not made any easier by my imac cintiq setup being nuked. I have to table that strip based on the poem until I'm done with the paying work.

 Roughing out the RPG work

I was watching someone else draw and paint in photoshop. Saw them rotating the image instantly to make their strokes easier .
"How you do that!"
Found it on youtube. Shared toobar presence with the hand tool.
R hotkey.
The doodle above was a joy to do hatching from every angle.
Personal Game changer for inking in photoshop.
Especially with the cintiq no longer usable as a second monitor.
I can use it as the single monitor, but believe me, it's not fun. Too small.

I did these as I listened to Gentlemen Broncos and Get Shorty on the Listen to a Movie web site.
Color next. Then I have to crank on MsValkyrie. Really glad I discovered that rotate image trick.

Color. Kinda monochrome.

Quick Strip

Based on the intro page poem.

Just roughs now.
4 pages total, with intro.

Involving fantasy seagoing tribal warfare between two blue skinned races. 

One winged.
Poem / story by Chris Wong Sick Hong

Thumbnails. I'll do them in photoshop tomorrow.

Very loose. As much silhouette as I can manage.

ULTRAMAN is coming back!

Something  Tsubaraya Productions has got in the works. Love how they made Ultraman more organic looking as he was originally conceived. Looks far cooler than Pacific Rim

Been awhile since I posted.....

Here's a gaggle of sketches and doodles from my sketchbook. Got a lead on a part time job here in Sac, hoping to hear more tomorrow.

Freelance wip

Color and touch up to finish it.

Truly WIP. Did everything but the central interest first.

A Wizard girl picking a lock.

Totally erased the sack, changed the shadow passing over the big vase/urn.

And these still have to be colored. I've learned my lesson on color.
These will be very pastel and likely as not monochrome.

Lot better without the sack.

Onto color dabbling.

Did the color. Stuck with the idea of just coloring a drawing

Comic Con San Diego 2015 Day Three and Four

 Saturday

 A lot more costumed fans turned up

A huge crowd was gathered around this booth. I saw a bunch of good-looking people sitting at a table signing autographs with microphones hovering above them. I didn't recognize any of them until people in the crowd started waving at this one blonde woman yelling out to her, "January!"

 Slightly less of a crowd about this table, but just as good-looking a person sitting at the table.

 Entire population of DC hero and villain cosplayers gathered on the back steps.

 

Baby Edward Scissorhands looking puzzled and bored.

  

Some kind of Harley and Deathstroke the Terminator

 Thought this was amusing. Stumbled across this picture on the internet one day. Apparently sometimes these bi-colored lobsters are caught, half-brown, half-orange.  Looks like "Deathstroke the Lobster" doesn't he?

 This woman did a good job on her Mortal Kombat character, Mileena.

Sunday

This year's TAG group had a picnic lunch on the lawn behind the Hyatt Hotel.  So many missing members...