So here's a random sketch...

I just haven't been able to keep up the after hours pace....since I go back to work after dinner these days, Boba Fett is mocking me, Cap and Wolvie are asking, 'WTF? Paint me, sucka!'

So I literally dug around my stack of sketches to see what I could post...


My brother and I watched the epic version of Watchmen when he was visiting for Christmas. Since I can't sit still for 3+ hours, I was sketching...and of course I did some Watchmen related stuff...here's a pic of the raft from the Black Freighter.

Boba Fett 04

Here's the colors for Fett...I'm pretty happy (despite yet another terrible scan!) with how it's going, the oversprays have blended pretty nicely...but I had the gray undersuit color mixed a little too thick, the transparency didn't vignette as well on the lower legs - I'll have to put in a lot of pencil work to bring those darks back out.

Boba Fett & Cap/Wolvie 03's

I masked off the background and painted in the white to knock back that gray, so I could hopefully have more saturated colors for the back grounds, and I think it worked! A hazy, hot, blue Tatooine sky for Fett...


...and a warmer 'explosion' toned background for the Cap/Wolvie pic. I'm really happy with the blending of colors against that really strong black that was in the underpainting. You can still see elements of it, but it's not so dominating, bringing the focus back on the characters.

I also put in a bit of halo'ing around the characters in both pieces, hoping to set up an easier transition between foreground and background.

Boba Fett 02

Well, this is coming along nicely. I played around with the texturing technique a bit more. I really diluted the black paint, so it turned into this watery gray, making it so it didn't overpower the blacks in the blending. Then I really took care to do the wet overspray, again with very light paint sprayed over water drops, then blotted with a paper towel. I spent a lot of time on that, to get the weathered and beaten look of his costume.

The next step for this and the W/C image, is that since they're both going to be relatively backlit, I need to mask off the characters, and put white into the backgrounds, before bringing in the color. This is a sad lesson learned with that failed Sky Doll background, so it's kind of a guess to see if this approach works...

Boba Fett 01

Since I'm going to be sharing some colors (greens and grays) with the Cap/Wolvie piece, I needed to get this one started as well, a pic of everyone's favorite Bounty Hunter, Boba Fett.

Who saw that Rocket Firing exclusive figure coming out this year? Badasssssss.

Anyways, here's the pencil transfer to get started.

Grrrr...*Updated

Who else didn't get a Battle Cat yesterday? I got an email this morning saying my order had been canceled - after it NEVER went through! Bummer, man...

*After reading some facebook comments, this isn't a screw you to TF fans, and that I'm switching over to Mattel from Hasbro, FAR FROM IT! It's a screw you to Mattel.

Cap/Wolvie 02

All right, here's the transfer, with the blacks and textures laid in. I decided to go back to a looser style and technique, more along the lines of the Holmes/Watson piece, still the most successful of the bunch.

And honestly, the reason for me to paint...if I wanted ultra clean, I'd just to it digitally. Making paint spatters is fun, and the motivation to do something standing up, and using my arms, rather than sitting behind the computer desk all day.

Cap/Wolvie 01

I wanted to get back to Cap, and put him in an action pose...I've been watching the reruns of Band of Brothers, so I decided to do a WWII version. I love the idea of Wolverine fighting in WWII as well, and that possibly being the first meeting of the two (or maybe that's canon now?)


I know the image I created is probably a mess of continuity, so I'll try to make the claws look bone-y, rather than metal...but that's about as much effort as I'll put in it, I just want it to look cool...my Anonymous Poster friend can roll his eyes at my commitment to continuity. *wink*

Sky Doll 05

Yeah...this calls for a re-do. Fortunately I have the original pencils intact to do another transfer to a new canvas.


Why do I give myself a Fail?

1) Color is absolutely muddy, and given the subject matter's tone, light and happy, warm colors were a must, not moody and dark.
2) No other colors were tested; I had the book in front of me that had lovely coloring which I ignored completely, so even though this is my version of Sky Doll, she is not accurately portrayed.
3) Wanted some sort of sky background is not enough reason to completely wing it, with doing a sun and non-cloudy looking clouds. I should have drawn in something to guide me at the very least.
4) Hard surfaces - no testing was done, and the wings, jet packs, and seat of no impact at all, they blend in with her too much...and they just came out bad. You can't tell the difference between her armor, the metal of the seat, the mechanical components, nothing.
5) A bunch of BS highlighting to cover all those mistakes. Fail.
6) A technical issue, the thick textural paint for the canvas was too thick, it turned out, and bubbled, so there's little holes along the thickest ridges.

I like the drawing so much, that's it's definitely getting a redo, but I'm going to set it aside for a couple weeks to get some distance.

I promise to be back next week with something good!

Sky Doll 04

Hmmm...wellllll......nope. The warm colors on the gray turned to mud, I really didn't know what I wanted for the colors for the suit, so that one purple color became all/everything, then I wanted to do a hot pink burn all around her, and it layed down orange and muddier still.

I'll try some pencils on top to see how it goes, but it's trouble, kids...

Sky Doll 03

I had already masked off the figure, before remembering to scan, so that's actually some tracing paper over the background, it's not actually that light, but this is the transferred drawing onto the canvas.

I'm a little worried about this, I should have done some lighting/shading comps to really figure out what I'm doing...I thought I would just find the tones with the color...and I realize this is stupid. I have what could four different surface types; skin, plastic/shiny armor, fabric, and hard surface metallics - all clearly delineated within the relative tightness of the drawing...

Sky Doll 02

I took the sketch and blew it up to full size, and redrew it...I added more mechanics to the little floating seat, and into the faux wings - not really sure how that's going to come out, since I haven't really tried hard surfaces yet. It's a little worrisome, but since it's a practice piece, there's no place to go but forward! Gotta learn how to do this someday...

Sky Doll 01

Who's familiar with Skydoll? My buddy scored the 'making of' sketch book at Comic Con some few years ago, and showed it to me; I ended getting obsessed over the artwork. I had seen their (Barbucci/Canepa) work with some European Disney titles and just loved it. So I ordered some of the books from Amazon.fr, paid INT shipping, only to have Marvel release it last year! At least I could read it now...

But, who doesn't love those big hardback albums, versus the US paperback trades?


So that's the next practice piece - I like that sitting pose on the little floating seat - that's the 'One.'

He-Man Final

And here it is. I'm fairly happy with (again the scan was a little uneven - the saturation is better in real life) but the face still bothers me, it seems to be a different style than the rest of the piece, or more comic book-y line art than a portrait?

And again, I re-learned a hard lesson about pre-production with that mist...not quite as dynamic as I envisioned, but that's because I winged it, instead of coming up with some designs beforehand. Professionally I never do this, but when it's just for fun, I always screw it up!

He-Man 05

So this is most of the pencil work, I actually hated the first face the somehow came out of the base drawing, so erased the whole thing down to the color, and redrew the face. So it's a little different - it's looks better, but it suffers from a bit of over-rendering. So now I'm going to break out the airbrush again, and add a bit more saturation to Skeletor and He-Man, and do some highlights.

He-Man 04

Colors now for the illustration. I went with a deeper orange for HeMan, trying to take what I learned from the Cap piece, so we'll see how that goes when then pencils take hold. I only used a matte for the background, the figures or over-sprayed atop each other, to hopefully make them come together despite being wildly different colors and tones.

He-Man 03

So much scarier with the blacks....BOO! All right, time to mix some colors...

He-Man 02

Here's the fleshed out drawing from the layout pencils, now I need to paint in the blacks and add some texturing.