Roller Derby 2

Man, I love drawing roller derby girls. Doing posters for the Rose City Rollers is the perfect excuse to draw sexy-super-heroine-punks (not that I need an excuse, but it does help me feel legitimate when my wife sees pages upon pages of vixens knocking each other silly in my sketchbook).

Here are two of the sketches. The first one got the go-ahead, but I'm really fond of the bratty jammer in the second one. Maybe I can re-use the character for next year.

On a side note, I changed the comment rules so that anybody can comment now (upon approval since I got spammed).

DONE....

...with the drawing. Now for hours of painting in PS. I got some acrylic paint from my rad in laws for Christmas, which I am sorely tempted to splash all over this thing, but I don't think its wise to learn a new medium on a drawing that took FOREVER. Getting the new Zelda and Call of Duty for my DS didn't help either. I also found out that I get to do another Roller Derby poster this year, so much of my holiday has been spent drawing pretty girls on roller skates slugging it out.

Portfolio 4 progress

Still plugging away at this one. Getting close to finishing up the line drawing, drawing bricks is as fun as drawing leaves, then its off to the land of Photoshop for a day or two (or three).

Portfolio #4

This one is taking a very, very, very long time to draw out. Here is a small section of it...pretty obvious what I'm working on. All yesterday was spent doing a perspective drawing, all today is hair.

Portfolio #3

This one didn't take very long too do, but it was fun to jump back into charcoal for a bit. My mom #2 (ie: beloved mother-in-law) raised the idea of a holiday card a few weeks ago. Originally my Goldilocks piece was going to be a standard "Goldigrizz and the 3 Humans" image, but with the holiday looming (and my wife's promise to help me print and mail cards) I decided to make it more along the lines of "Goldigrizz and the 3 Klinkits". I had thought of using a polar bear, but it looked too much like one of those CG coke adds, so I had to go back to the grizz.

On a side note, I lived with a Klinkit once, his name was chuck Chuck CHUCK CHUCK BOOM!

Also, I thought about coloring this in Photoshop, but I realized I'd be too tempted to make that bowl of porridge look like a bowl of blood...

MDHP 4 On Sale!!

The fourth volume of the online comics anthology MySpace Dark Horse Presents continues to bring you a wide range of genres and classic characters in the Dark Horse tradition. For the first time, Star Wars debuts comic content online with Dark Times: Blue Harvest. Our commitment to webcomics continues to shine with contributions from online-strip creators Chris Onstad, David Malki, and Kate Beaton. Eric Powell’s backwoods-charm-filled series The Goon is the subject of an “interpretation” from Gossip Whore Ann Romano. Joss Whedon teams with Season Eight cover artist Jo Chen for a special Buffy the Vampire Slayer story, and Guy Davis brings us an all-new installment of The Marquis. Oh, and my first short story is in it too. I'm curious to see how it looks in print because I may have totally botched the saturation in Photoshop. MySpace Dark Horse Presents Volume 4 collects 165 pages of the online anthology! (On Sale Dec. 2, 2009 / $19.95)

Portfolio #3, just right

Bet you can't guess my third Portfolio Piece is based on. I wasn't planning on doing this one, but I'm not quite sure how to go about doing the one I want to do yet. This piece just jumped into my sketchbook, so I think I'll pursue it for awhile while I stew my other idea for a bit.

Portfolio Piece #2, Reluctant Vegetarian

This is an old idea revisited. Originally I made an etching of the troll under the bridge giving up his carnivorous ways, but I never quite finished it because etching is a long and arduous way to make an image that I never really took to. I had a lot of fun working on this painting, even if I'm not quite happy with how the reflection turned out. I felt I was at risk of overdoing the blobs of color in the water, so I called it quits. I think I should have added some foreground rocks into the pool of water to break up the reflections, but working back into watercolor is risky business. Honestly, I think like the duck the most.

Portfolio #1 Color

Here's the Jack piece colored in Photoshop. I think I need to let it sit for a day or two to see if I like the washed out tones. The problem with Photoshop is that you can tweak stuff endlessly, it makes it even harder to know when something is "done".

Portfolio Piece #2

Here is the top half of the sketch for my next portfolio piece that I worked on today while at work. I was rather pleased with how it was coming along, but when I proudly showed my wife she gave it a "huh". With the help of my uber-tuned husband senses I was able to deduce that she was unimpressed. When I pressed her on her opinion she finally admitted, and I quote: "I just don't like monster drawings". This isn't as bad as the time she didn't recognize a certain character from Star Wars (which she let slip in front of my buddy Josh, nerd friend #1), but I was a bit taken aback since I have spent a considerable amount of time in my life drawing monsters. It's one of those skills I have been working on since childhood and which I imagine will only get better until I draw my last monster and drop dead at 98.

I mention all of this because my wife is my best critic, and I can always count on her to give me an honest opinion on my work, and she brings up a valid point: some people don't like monster drawings.

Oh well, can't win 'em all.