A Solar reaction in the sky

Hi everyone. Hope you all had a good Thursday.

I can't really complain. My day was better than it was yesterday. I managed to spend a little bit of time making a little more refined Solar, Man of the Atom sketch.

I wanted to add his 'power glow' around his hands. But I was afraid that if I started trying to do it I would end up making a huge mess and get really frustrated. I'll give it a try some other time.

Which is funny because the valiant style of power that Solar often had glowing from his hands was visually so different than what I was used to seeing in Marvel/DC and I believe Image comics at that time. It was one of the elements that drew me to my first experience of Valiant comics... The Unity trading card set.

My best friend and I bought them whenever we found them. And between the two of us we had them all. The characters were so different. I had to find the comics to read as they were intended. And oddly enough, I never did get any of the Unity books. But my brother and I really got into XO Manowar, Magnus and Solar.

And I owe it all to that first glimpse of an art style that I had never seen before. But was the dose of alternative comics that I was really needing.

Anyway, it's mega cheesy. Has tons of anatomy problems. And really isn't the best thing I've drawn in a while. But hey, it reminds me of those old comics. So I like it. Hope you do too. Have a great evening and I'll see you back here for Friday's sketch.

Solar, rough

Good morning everyone.

I had a rather interesting day. Mostly due to the condo construction. But I did finally get a few minutes this evening to do a very quick rough sketch of Solar, Man of the Atom.

I have been planning on sketching this character for quite some time now. And it seemed that every time I sat down to draw him, the idea either completely slipped my mind, or the technology would prevent me from making it happen. No longer.

I'm probably going to change this composition before it's finished. In the meantime, it'll do as a rough draft. Hope you all dig it.

See you back here for the real Thursday update. Good night everyone.

Flickering lights, and frustration

Hi everyone.

I had every intention of sketching a new drawing this evening, but it appears that my Bamboo tablet and MacBook are fighting again.

Every time I plug the tablet into one of the two USB ports, all I am greeted with are the four blue lights on the hot key buttons flashing. And the inability to use the tablet at all. I wonder if the Bamboo and laptop will ever want to play nice again. Which really sucks, considering that the reason I have the Bamboo is for sketching on the go.

I'm off to bed. Sorry everyone. I'll have to do a new sketch tomorrow at lunch.

Cold Snap

Hi everyone.

I'm sitting here listening to the latest series in the Penny Arcade, PvP, Wil Wheaton Dungeons & Dragons podcasts. As usual the adventures of Acquisitions Incorporated continue to make me want to game again. While at the same time cause me to laugh out loud, multiple times. It would be so much fun to roll dice with these guys.

Anyway, their latest adventure starts in the winter and they have to trek to a dwarven town in the snow. This made me want to do a sketch of a character undergoing a similar voyage. I haven't done a snowy sketch in quite some time. I actually like the way that it turned out. I tried some new tricks in how I colored the image. Some of them I'll end up using again.

Hope you all like it. See you back here for another sketch later today.

Unnamed Wandering Monk

Good evening everyone.

I'm waiting for some laundry to finish drying after spending a great day with the GF and my daughter, so I decided to get a quick sketch in.

This evening's sketch is of the as yet unnamed half-elf monk that I'm preparing to play in an upcoming D&D adventure. It's been many years since the last time I have rolled some dice. And I'm really looking forward to starting this game. Especially since I'm going to be playing a Monk character. I have often been told by previous DMs that they don't allow the Monk class as a playable character as they were far to powerful in their upper levels. Looking at the Monk outlined in D&D 3.5 they do sound very powerful in their higher levels. But to be fair, I don't think that I'll ever reach those levels. Though that would be pretty darn cool.

I'm sure some of the character design will change once we actually start gaming. We'll have to see what happens.

Anyway, have a good evening everyone. And I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Late night...

Hi everyone.

I ended up getting home around midnight. It was a long day at work, and I just realized that I need to go back to write up a weekly report tomorrow before I go pick up the GF and my daughter. Good times.

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to do my sketch today. But I'll try to get at least one done this weekend.

And now if you excuse me my bed is calling me. Good night.

Technical Difficulties

Good evening everyone. This is a little embarrassing, but I'm sad to say that the blog has experienced some technical difficulties regarding tonight's sketch.

I arrived home later than I originally planned. Not in a bad way. My daughter fell asleep on me while the GF was watching her show tonight, and I had to stay and let her sleep. Too cute. But that's neither here, nor there.

I arrived home and after doing some laundry, I attempted to do my sketch of Solar Man of the Atom in my MacBook using my bamboo tablet, only to find that it would not maintain a connection on the MacBook. Fearing that there might be a problem with the tablet, I then spent the next hour or so online looking for any postings with similar problems that I was experiencing. I didn't really find anything like my tablet's symptoms, so I then moved on to my Mac Mini. At that time I found that it does in fact work, but only from a powered USB port. Of which my MacBook only has one that is reliable (so says the internet), but apparently that is starting to fail. So... my laptop is not reliably powering my tablet. This saddens me. So, I guess for the remainder of my time updating this blog, when I do a digital sketch I'll have to use one of my powered USB hubs.

But it's too late for me to do a sketch right now. I have to get some sleep. I'm sorry for the lack of an update. I really wanted to do my Solar sketch. But I'll have to wait till tomorrow to get one done. See you all then. Have a good evening, and I hope none of you have any USB problems anytime soon.