That Moment (Friday Bonus)

I know what you're thinking. Woah dude, this sure is a departure from your usual fare of daily sketches. Indeed, it is.

I always have been, a hopeless romantic. One of my dream projects is to illustrate and write/cowrite a story about the romance between Peter Parker/Spiderman and Mary Jane. They've been my favorite comic book 'couple' for as long as I can remember (hear that Quesada, an old fan of Spiderman LIKED them together!!!), and I've always enjoyed reading about their relationship trials. Especially while married. It's always struck me how powerful their love must have been for them to stay together through all of the chaos and torment that the life Spiderman brings home.

Anyway, I was listening to some Prince while I was sketching and before I knew it I had drawn a pair of young lovers. Of course they're both over 18. Get your mind out of the gutter. :P

This was actually started yesterday, but I didn't decide to finish it until today. I'm actually rather partial to it. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Anyway, I just got some good news that I won't be working this weekend, so on that note I bid you all a fantastic weekend.

The Murky Wood

Happy Friday everyone. I downloaded the free version of Puzzle Quest on the iPhone yesterday, and even though I have only played a few minutes of the game, I was already inspired to draw a ranger. Perhaps I'll refine the character and make it 'my' ranger from the game. But we'll see what happens.

Once again, this was done in CS3 on my MacBook using my Bamboo tablet.

Hope you all have a great weekend. I'm not exactly sure what my will bring, but I'm hoping to see some good music late this evening.

Have fun and I'll see you all back here on Monday.

Do you remember Eric Draven?

Hi everyone.

Last night the GF and I caught part of The Crow on MTV 2 last night. I love this movie, but not as much as I adore the original graphic novel. However, I was completely blown away by the fact that they aired the movie at all. The editing on it was horrendous!

I mean, if you're going to butcher the movie with your edits then don't air it at all. The entire scene in Funboy's House was just awful to watch. It made no sense, and seemed to have no order. Just a series of events that led to Funboy being hauled into the bathroom.

I mean, they edited out some scenes of violence, but not others. They edited out all references to drugs. They edited out the cussing. I couldn't even watch further than the scene where Eric dispatches T-Bird. It was absolutely terrible.

So to help myself forget that atrocity, I decided to draw Eric myself. It's been a long time since I drew this character. But it was a blast. I even tried a refinement on the style of coloring/sketching in CS3 that I made a mess of yesterday. I'm starting to get my own rhythm and style. I think.

Anyway, hope you like it and I'll see you all tomorrow.

A Messy, Messy Ninja

Hey there everyone. I had a fun filled day today, so I didn't have much time for a sketch. So I decided to play around with some custom brushes I got for Photoshop and the result is this very messy, almost not worth posting, sketch of a ninja.

At least this time the ninja is going to get the better of the Samurai.

Done in Photoshop CS3 on my MacBook with my Bamboo tablet.

I'm still getting used to Photoshop. It's been a long time, and a lot has changed since Photoshop 7. Bear with me, I'll get back in the swing of things. Maybe I'll even do sketches in ArtRage and import them into CS3...

Hmmm....

Wow, I suck at this blog thing...

Well, I did it again. I missed another post. But to be fair, I had a super busy day yesterday. Both professionally and personally. It wasn't a bad day, rather it was one of those days where you constantly have something to do and when you finally take that breather you realize that it's now time for bed.

I'm sure you've all been there.

Anyway, I managed to get a new program to do my art in. And as such, I decided to try and do today's piece in the style of Jason Chan. I've been watching some of his videos available from Massive Black and to say the least I've been inspired. I'm really branching outside of my normal 'digital sketching box' by trying his method. But I must say it's a lot of fun. I hope to get some more pieces like this under my belt. And who knows, maybe I'll start to get better at it.

Today's piece, while being inspired by Jason Chan, is also inspired by the last PSP game I played. Jeanne d'Arc. If you haven't tried it you really should. It's one of the best tactics styled games I've played in years. And it's one of the best looking PSP titles I've seen in a long time as well.

Hope you all dig it, and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Missed Me!

Hey everyone, here's a fast post.

I ended up doing another Street Fighter pic. this one is of a young Ryu going up against Guile. Hope Ryu didn't just give the fight to Guile with this missed kick. One small mistake can be catastrophic to a fighter. Especially against an experienced fighter.

Anyway, it was a very fast sketch as I had a super busy day today.

The other is another Caine sketch that I did last night. It's the softer side of the wandering monk.

Hope you enjoy the sketches and have a great weekend. I'll see you all back here on Monday.

My name is Caine

Today started off with a bit of sad news. David Carradine passed away. I won't get into the particulars of how or why, that's not my place. Especially since I am completely not in the know, or in Thailand right now. But I will say that I was really saddened to hear this news.

Obviously, I was too young to watch Kung Fu on television. I was around for Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. But was actually disappointed with the show, so I wasn't a regular viewer. However, I did LOVE the Kung Fu movie. David captured my imagination as Kwai Chang Caine. Not to mention the fact that Brandon Lee was in the movie too. It was hokey, and had a very predictable plot. But it was fun.

Then a few years ago they released the original series on DVD and I fell in love. It is a refreshing dose of television, not just for its time, but today as well. It teaches such basic life lessons that people often overlook, but that martial arts training has always tried to instill in its practitioners.

Caine's search across america is nothing short of wonderful. The characters he interacts with are varied and colorful, and at the end of each episode you truly feel like he touched the people in the episode.

So today's sketch is inspired by Kwai Chang Caine. Is it a perfect rendering of Carradine? No. It is none the less an interpretation of the character. One that became an influence on me, even long after its prime.

If I have time I may do another sketch showing the softer side of Caine. But we'll see what happens.

Have a great day everyone. Enjoy the sun.

Rise Centurion

We are working our way through The Tudors at home. Granted very slowly (it's hard to sit down and watch something new for an hour with a baby running around the house), but we are working through it.

But recently if we have some spare time at home and need something on that I can tune in on from time to time, I've found that I'm watching episodes of Rome again. And yes, this show is fantastic on second viewings as well.

I'm not going to go off on what makes the show great, again. So instead I'll just let you know that it inspired today's sketch.

It was done in the free version of ArtRage on my MacBook and using my Bamboo tablet.

Hope you all dig.

The painting I did in the background for yesterday's image was fun. And I think I'll try my hand at digital painting again in the near future. We'll see.

Have a great day everyone. Enjoy the sun.

Storm

Hi everyone! Welcome to the Tuesday installment of sketch-a-day.

One of my favorite authors is none other than Neil Gaiman. When I was a lad, I started reading his spectacular Sandman series. Yes, I started reading them at an age that was probably under the suggested reader base as illustrated by the "Suggested for Mature Readers" label on the books. But not by much. I was in my teens. Just more to the early than late. But honestly, I felt that I was more mature than many of my peers at that time and that then let me into the group of authorized readers for the series. But honestly, that series was fantastic. It really changed the way that I looked at funny book writing at that time, and I honestly feel that if I hadn't read that book I'd still be reading the shit that the big 2 are pumping out to the masses today.

But I hadn't read one of Neil Gaiman's books until a couple of years ago, and the first one I read was American Gods. Wow, what a fantastic book. My girlfriend is mega awesome as she had the copy of the book which led to me finally picking it up for a read. It's such a great story. So much so that I secretly harbored thoughts that my first male child would be named Shadow. But then reality set in and instead we dubbed a stray cat around my girlfriend's townhouse Shadow instead.

Today's illustration was inspired by a photo of an extreme thunderstorm I stumbled upon on the internets. And I decided to try and do a 'digital painting' of a thunderstorm. And while I was finishing it up, I just decided to draw a character inspired by American Gods into the foreground. I'm not saying that it is intended to be Shadow. But I felt that the overall feel of the piece reminded me of American Gods more than anything.

I created this piece in the free version of ArtRage on my MacBook, using my trusty Bamboo tablet.

Hope you all enjoy it.

Kunoichi

Hey there everyone, and welcome to a Monday installment of Sketch-a-Day. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We had a really good one here in the Pacific North-West.

Today's sketch is of a random kunoichi, or female ninja. She's probably getting ready for a mission, or is about to receive some instructions from her sensei. I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

I hope to revisit this character in the future. There are elements about her that I really like, and elements that I really wish I had planned out better.

I also used her as a vehicle to try out a new style of drawing faces. Hopefully it starts to evolve into a more cohesive style sometime in the future.

Anyway, I hope you like it. Once again it was done on my MacBook using the free version of ArtRage and my Bamboo tablet.

See you all tomorrow.