Thursday, October 28, 2010

Halloween Sketch, Part 2

Good evening everyone.

I had some time today to do more work on my Halloween sketch again. Yesterday didn't quite work out for me, so I had to go another day this week without an update. I guess it's not that surprising seeing as how we're getting ready for our Halloween weekend. One party for us, and an fun filled day with our daughter. Time just slips away faster than I'd like sometimes. Oh well.


I refined the face of the vampire, spending the most time on his eyes. I was really trying to get the demonic frenzy of the Chiroptera from the OVA, Blood the Last Vampire. The eyes caused me to redo the vampire's face at least twice today. After calling it quits on his face, I decided to started to refine the girls face as well. Tomorrow I hope to finis the sketch up some more.

I hope you all enjoy the sketch and I'll see you back here, one more time before the weekend.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Halloween Sketch, Part 1

Good evening everyone out there on the interwebs.

You might be wondering where I was yesterday? Ok, most likely not, but there is a good reason I didn't post a new Sketch yesterday.
I was working on a musical project I'm trying to work on with my Uncle. We did a quick recording of a song concept that I am working on a couple of weekends ago, and he sent me the files to work the other day. And since we were super busy this last weekend, I didn't get to start playing with it until last night.

Anyway, today's sketch is part 1 of my Halloween sketch. I have been wanting to do a sketch of my version of the classic vampire for a while now. So here is the rough outline for the sketch. I may change the entire thing tomorrow when I start working on it again. But for now it is what it is.

Hope you all enjoy the sketch and I'll see you back online tomorrow for Part 2.

Good night.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

A weathered veteran

Another good evening goes out to you all.


I spent a few minutes today (well, maybe about 20 or 25 minutes) on a sci-fi sketch. The sketch features an intergalactic infantry soldier who has spent his entire career maintaining the safety of his planet, and those in the same system.

Oddly enough, the incredibly dangerous career he maintains is what has kept him in such great physical condition. All he has to do is survive a few more years and he'll be able to retire a hero, and a legend in the corps. Let's hope he makes it that long.

I hope ya'll get a kick out of the sketch and I'll see you back here tomorrow for my last sketch of the week before a very busy weekend.

Have a great evening.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Quickshot

Good evening out there in internet land.

Welcome back for the Wednesday sketch update. I once again had to finish this up at the last minute, and so I'm gonna make this short just so I can actually post this on time.


I am not sure why I wanted to do a western sketch. But there you go. Sometimes you just have no say over inspiration when it strikes.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and have a great night's sleep.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

D

Good evening out there in internet land.

Hope you're all enjoying a nice fall night. Perhaps with a scary movie. Or a cup of tea or coffee. Or even a slice of pumpkin pie.

When fall rolls around, especially the Halloween time, the anime Vampire Hunter D jumps into my thoughts. I remember the first time I watched it on cable. If I recall correctly it was part of a mini-anime-marathon. I believe it consisted of Casshan, Robot Carnival, Vampire Hunter D and there may have been another one in there.


I started to do this sketch yesterday, and due to a crazy filled night didn't get it fleshed out, or posted. So I decided to continue working on it today and made quite a few adjustments along the way as well. And even as I was starting to flesh out the rendering I realized that I really should have raised D's right hand more as it's really static right now. Having the sword pointing down to the right corner would give the illustration the life that it is sorely lacking.

Which is kind of amusing considering the fact that D is half vampire.

Anyway, despite the lack of emotion/movement, I hope you like the sketch. See you tomorrow for my next sketch.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Thai Boxer

Well, I'm getting this one in under the wire aren't I.

Tonight's sketch is of a Thai boxer. Practicing his leg checks. One of the most amazing things about Muay Thai kickboxing is their use of the shins.


They are both offense (destructive kicks with the shin bone to the legs, body and head) as well as defensive. They use the shins to block those kicks coming in to the legs using them like sharpened shields.

I've seen a lot of fighters unable to walk after a round of effective usage of Thai leg kicks. The muscles swell up and block the blood flow in the large arteries of the leg. Which of course leads to the leg starting to shut down, as well as some major discomfort. Obviously.

Anyway, tonight's sketch is a homage to that amazing utilization of the lower extremities. Hope you all enjoy it.

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Peter and the Love of His Life

Good evening everyone and of course it's time for another Thursday update.

Today's sketch is another Spiderman illustration. Oddly enough when I sat down to do my sketch today, my original idea was something a lot darker and more violent. But when I started working on the figure layout, I had the sudden urge to draw my favorite web slinger and his lovely wife.


Yes, as far as I'm concerned Peter and MJ are still married. Their relationship, and balancing their real lives with the super hero world was one of the most entertaining dramas I remember in Marvel back then. Tuning in every month was so much fun, not just because of the great action and humor that you expected to see during the usual Marvel outing. But you never knew what was going to find its way into the private lives of our heroes.

Anyway, I hope you all like the sketch. I'm off to bed now. Enjoy.


Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Nobody Owens and Silas

I'm getting this posting in before midnight comes along, and my laptop battery dies.

Since it's October, and I've started reading The Graveyard Book again, I decided to do another illustration of Nobody Owens, and the undead that watches after him named Silas.


This book is charming in a way that only Neil Gaiman could achieve. I can't wait to finish it. But at any rate, I need to get to bed.

Have a great evening everyone and I hope ya'll get a kick out of the sketch.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Google Fu and Ninjaboy

I know, 3 posts in one day from ol' ninjaboy. Pretty unheard of.

But I just had to share this awesomeness I stumbled upon. After my last update I decided to see if I could find any wallpapers of Chris Bachalo's The Witching Hour comic. What I did not expect to find in the first page of Google Image Results was one of my sketches. That of Miss White, from the mini-series. How awesome is that?


And something else that's pretty crazy, is that I did the sketch almost a year ago. It was done 10/15/09.

Spooky.

Anyway, I thought you'd all get a kick out of it. I know I did.

Sleep well. I'm about to do the same.

Black Cat

Once again I find myself inspired by my computer wallpaper. That's one of the reasons why I like to use art for my wallpaper.
If I find myself in the trenches of an artist's slump, I'm rarely more than a quick glance behind my work for a last minute dose of inspiration.

This Tuesday edition of ninjaboy's sketch-a-day is inspired by a pretty damn cool illustration by Chris Bachalo. He is one of those funny book artists that I always come back to, and when I start pouring through his work again I realize that I never really left his books. He's worked on so many titles that I've been a fan of I doubt a year goes by that I don't read at least one book that he's illustrated.

However, I would say that the exact book that I fell in love with his illustrative styling was The Witching Hour. I remember seeing an add for the first issue in an issue of Wizard magazine while I was attending the Art Institute. My roommate and I usually walked down to our very local comic shop downtown every new comics day, and on this particular day I remember being excited as The Witching Hour number one came out. We got ready to walk to the comic shop, then I had to walk up to a print shop to pick up a project for school, and wouldn't you know it, it started pouring. Hard. And my roomie was such a pal that not only did he accompany me to the comics shop, but he also came along with me to the print shop on the other end of town.

The entire time we were both conflicted as we were excited about our new books in the thin plastic bags we had them in, but were also concerned at the amount of water coming down on those thin bags.

Needless to say, we got home looking like a couple of drown hippy rats (yeah, we both had long hair) and enjoyed our books.

Chris was really playing around with page layout in those books, and would take that experimentation even further in his next series Steampunk but I was hooked. His women were glamorous and beautiful, his male characters had weight and strength, and his compositions were fantastic.

Anyway, this illustration has nothing in common with any of this other than the fact that he has been doing some illustrations for Spiderman and I decided to sketch Black Cat, since he did a pretty cool version of her himself.

I hope you all get a kick out of it and I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Yesterday's Batman

Finally, here is the sketch that I couldn't post last night.

Not a lot to it really. And I think I did it in about 2 or 3 minutes.

Party on Dark Knight. Party on.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Bunk...

Well as you may have guessed, the iPad version of blogger doesn't allow you to post images. And when I tried to add this to my original post, I accidentally posted it. So there you go. So close to not missing a day's sketch. oh well.

All iPad update

Good evening everyone. Welcome to my "all iPad" update. That's right, today's sketch and blog post was done entirely on an iPad.

I was reading some comics on our work iPad, when I remembered that I hadn't done my sketch yet. So I fired up one of the many sketching apps installed on this thing and started drawing with my finger. And yes, I drew Batman.

Hope you all like, and now it's time to hit the sack.

Note

Friday, October 8, 2010

A super fast Spidey

Well, I didn't get my sketch posted last night. Honestly I don't know why I didn't get it done, but none the less it wasn't posted by the end of the day yesterday.

And honestly you can probably see why. It isn't much of a sketch. Just a very fast outline of everyone's favorite neighborhood spiderman.

I might finish it today/tonight. Or I might do something different. I haven't quite decided yet.

Either way I wanted to get it posted before I forgot about it again.

See you all later.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Aya, part 2

Well how about that. I actually got to finish up my sketch for today!
As promised, I spent a little more time refining the linework then adding some basic colors to the image. Not much more to really say about that. It turned out pretty good. I made her face a little rounder than it should be. But I don't think that will take anything away from being able to identify her.

Have a great evening and I'll be back here for a Thursday sketch tomorrow.

Tuesday's post by way of Wednesday afternoon

Well last night didn't work out at all well enough to facilitate my getting the sketch posted.

Yesterday I watched a trailer for the latest game in the Parasite Eve series, The 3rd Birthday, and I have to say that I was rather impressed. It was a well put together trailer, and the gameplay looks fun.

Plus it looks rather impressive as a PSP title. It may be one of the last games I buy for the system, if it really is on its deathbed right now. But we'll see.

Either way, the trailer made me remember my first year at the Art Institute when Parasite Eve had just come out. Most of my friends were playing it at the time, and there were mixed reviews. Mostly everyone liked the story and the concept of the game, but some aspects of gameplay were troublesome. That being said, this was 12 years ago now so I can't exactly remember what the problems were. But they weren't enough to keep people from playing the game.

Anyway, I was feeling nostalgic so I decided to do a sketch of Aya, the main character from Parasite Eve. I didn't get enough time to fully flesh out the sketch, so I'm posting the outline that I did manage to get done. I'll try to refine it more today for today's real update.

Till then.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Nathan, ready for business

Well now, this was a rather unexpected sketch today. I knew that I wanted to draw something a little outside of my normal material. And that I was probably going to end up drawing an american comic character or something along those lines.

So, I sat down with the MacBook running CS3 and my good ol' Bamboo tablet and to my surprise I ended up drawing a character I haven't thought about in years.

Cable.


And I guess it shows that our lives had drifted apart based on the fact that I drew him with the mechanical arm and eye on the wrong side of his body.

Time was, Cable was my favorite marvel character. I loved the mysteries behind him, and that he was a badass. But not all powerful like so many other characters.

I wanted to give the character some colors to help define the shapes, but I didn't want to take the coloring to seriously.