Thursday, February 24, 2011

X-O, from a couple days ago

I found that I actually had some time to whip out a quick sketch earlier this week. And I was feeling nostalgic so I did another of my favorite Valiant comic characters. X-O Manowar.
Kind of a silly name, but made for some really interesting stories.


I have to get back to work now, but I just wanted to take a minute to post the sketch before I forgot about it again.

The move is taking up all of my time outside of work. And the snow that has been falling off and on for the past two days has really been doing a great job of making this week prove to be rather interesting.

Anyway, if I get some time to do another sketch I will. Otherwise I'll see you all when the dust settles.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Heads Up: Moving

Hi everyone.

I just wanted to let you know that this week my family and I will be moving. And as such I probably won't have very many sketches posted this week.

I'll try to get some done, but there is a lot of work to do this week so I don't want to make any promises.

Thanks for the understanding and I'll see ya' back here next week.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Yeah, I was wrong

Well this sucks. I didn't get a sketch done yesterday.

I had a super busy day at work yesterday that went into the night and before I knew it, I was going to sleep around midnight and I hadn't put my stylus and Bamboo to work in CS3 or SketchBook Express.

Yikes. I'll try to get at least one sketch done this weekend.

See ya'll then.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

My how time flies

I can't believe it's Thursday night already. I'm not exactly sure where this week has gone. But I do know that our housing situation, work and the periodical distractions of D&D books have been having a greater impact on time than I originally had thought.

I do know that I managed to work on two sketches this week so far. That's not good, considering I should have had 5 by the end of the day tomorrow. I will try my best to have a third done for posting tomorrow though.


The first sketch is me working out my new character in our next gaming campaign. I will be passing off the role of Dungeon Master to another eager companion and once again will be using my dice to combat baddies, rather than playing as them.
I have decided on portraying a Bard this venture, and I have some great ideas for the character. I really wish that I was able to play him from first level on, but the requirements of the next game are dictating that I start at a higher level so as to actually have a fair chance.
Anyway, this sketch is me working out what the character could be. Both visually and in my head. Not much to look at, but hey, it was a Monday 'warm up' sketch.


The second sketch is actually one that I have been working on a little bit over the last two days. It is of the oldest Stark children from the book A Game of Thrones. Sansa, as regal as ever despite her youth. Rob with his enthusiasm and desire to be the leader he knows he can be. And their half brother Jon Snow. The bastard with his own path to walk in the cold north.

Hope you all dig. I'll be back tomorrow sometime with my final update for the week. Though it looks like I'll have a few hours to myself on Sunday so perhaps I'll work on some more sketches to make up for the poor performance this week. Or maybe I'll spend that time playing video games.

I haven't quite decided yet.

Friday, February 11, 2011

And I'm spent...

Hi there out there in internet land.

I am completely spent. I had two nights in a row of little sleep, and had a very draining day. So I'm going to make this short and sweet.

At lunch I started drawing a sketch of good ol' Logan. I really liked the head and face and was really liking the way it was coming together.


Until I drew the body.
Then it lost something. I'm not sure what. It may have just been me being tired, but I quit on that sketch and moved on to this one.


And I liked this one a little more. The head and face didn't have the same style I was going for, but the rest of it seemed to feel a little better.

Then I decided to start inking it. And that's when I ran out of time.


And now, I'm going to bed. Hope you all dig this Friday triple-shot. Don't get used to it. :P

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Why I didn't post a sketch yesterday

Well it happened again. I didn't post a sketch yesterday.
But I have a good reason for this. And mostly because it will also affect today as well.

First off work has me a little busy right now. But I should have this task handled today.

However, this weekend my gaming group and I are planning a power session to see if we can complete the campaign. So to prepare for that I have a lot of maps to draw before Saturday. I had to go get a pad of grid paper to help speed along the process last night. And boy, did it speed up my workflow.

In the past I had been either using the wet erase grid pads we have to draw out maps at game, or if I have the time I would make my own grid paper then draw the maps. This took a LOT of time.

Eliminating the grid drawing made it so I was able to blast out 3 maps last night, and I'm pretty sure I can get more done tonight. Which would be awesome considering I have 6 more maps to go.

So there you go. It's an excuse, but I feel that it's a pretty good one. I may not have sketched something, but at least I was still doing something artistic. And it is going to be used for the greater (geeky) good.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

What happened to Monday?

You ever had one of those days that seemed to go by at a normal pace. Everything seemed to be going good. Traffic wasn't that bad. Dinner was great. Then the next thing you knew it was midnight?

Yeah, that was my Monday. Probably the biggest factor in my sketch not getting posted was the fact that my daughter did not want to go to bed.
But that's not to say that I didn't get anything done yesterday evening. After she fell asleep I managed to draw out two of the last 11 maps for the D&D campaign that I'm running.

... when I should have been updating my blog. I even had two sketches to post and everything.
Oh well, that just means that you get 3 today.

The first is of one of my favorite green, super strong, comic book tanks. The Savage Dragon. He quickly became my brother and I's favorite Image character. I'm a HUGE Erik Larsen fan, and his Dragon stories were really fun to read.
Though at times I do wish he'd slow down and render out his pages a little more, but I completely understand his 'do as many books as I can to tell these awesome stories' method. And honestly, I don't mind.


The second and third sketches are of Red Sojna, everyone's favorite scantily clad counterpart to Conan. I picked up Savage Tales #1 in the Comixology app [iTunes link] the other day and it was a great read. I haven't been that into fantasy digest style comics in the past, but I had a lot of fun reading this one. And so, me being the unoriginal artist that I am, I decided to do a sketch of Red showing someone why they don't put their hands on a lady's equipment.

I'll let you figure out which equipment was touched on your own.

I didn't like how static the first sketch was from yesterday, so I tried to make it move lively today.


Hope you like all the sketches. I know I had fun drawing them. And I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Friday, February 4, 2011

A Dungeon Escape

Good evening everyone.

I'm gearing up to head to bed for the night. But I couldn't do so before I posted my sketch for the day.

I only had about 15 or 20 minutes to get a sketch done today, and when I put my pen to tablet I found the sudden urge to sketch Link escaping the castle with the Princess Zelda.

Anyway, I hope ya'll dig the sketch. And I'll see you back here Monday.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Super Spy

Hello again. It's me. And I'm back for another update.

I didn't think that I was going to do another female sketch, but while I was looking through some art saved to my laptop I had the sudden inspiration to draw Black Widow.

Honestly, I haven't followed her much past the early/mid 90s. I remember her being a pretty cool character, but she never seemed more than a secondary story element to me.
A good case in point would be the story arc in Uncanny X-Men, with Jim Lee at the art helm, where Logan teams up with her and Captain America in present times, which happened to mirror a mission during WW2 when the characters had a similar mission. Or at least, that's how I remember the story reading... I'll have to dig out my Jim Lee Masterworks trade to see if I'm totally butchering that storyline or not.

Either way, it was a fun story arc to read and she was a really interesting (if not easy on the eyes) character for this narration. However I didn't feel the need to find her in another comic to see what the rest of her story was.

I do know that in the Ultimate Marvel Universe she hooked up with Tony Stark, video taped them having sex, and was killed(?). All of this I found out in the book The Ultimates 3, Issue 1.

Anyway, I wanted to draw her more as her Spy role more than the superhero image. Not much to the sketch, just spent some time putting lines on 'paper' and then added a fill.

Hope you all dig the sketch and I'll see you back here again tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

I'm back, I'm back, yes I'm back

Well hello there internet. It seems like it's been so long since the last time I was putting words and pixels up here.

A combination of sketches falling apart, working on a different one and work keeping me busy I haven't had any updates in quite some time.

As you may remember, I've been working on a new Bonnie Lass sketch, trying to make a more polished/finished sketch for the super talented Michael Mayne.
The layout I started working on actually looked pretty good. Or at least, I thought it did. Until I started working on the environment some more. Then the piece just seemed to fall apart.

I tried and tried, but after a good amount of frustration I ended up returning to my first sketch and began refining that image. After all, I didn't want to keep everyone waiting forever.


So I present to you a better inked, flat colored version of my Bonnie Lass sketch.

Hope you like it. And I'll see you all back here again tomorrow with a new sketch.