Graphic Design and Illustration.

Posts from the ‘Illustration’ category

Image of the Month – December 2015

December_2015

Trying to get something in before the big move. On to bigger, and hopefully better digs! So to start the month off I tried a little something different.

This was a quick warm up sketch done my hand using a Zebra Brush Pen. I was watching a documentary on Billy the Kid and thought I would play around with the story a bit.

I also wanted to use a different colour palette. So while I am sometimes of two minds when it comes to the artwork of Noelle Stevenson, I do admire her use of colour (it tends to be quite different than mine – less saturated than what I tend to choose) so I stole… er, borrowed some colours from a similar composition she did. Check out her work over here.

I then added some extra effects to achieve a slightly old-time effect. Turned out rather nice. Enjoy!

Image of the Month for November, 2015

November_2015

Time to start this up again! This image was originally done for a Threadless post a while back.  It is a pen and ink sketch with some colour thrown in from Photoshop. I re-did the colours a bit for this image. I could sure use from tranquility in my life right now! Enjoy!

Getting Ready for Inktober!

Inktober_2015 Banner

Inktober is coming up soon. For more information about what Inktober is about, follow this link. Last year, I chose a theme of sketching out whoever was walking by my window that day. It worked out fairly well most days. I only had to break the rules a few times. You can see the end results following this link here, and you can see a few of them with some quick colour dropped in here.

This year I wanted to do something a little different. Last year I designed a character for a local comic convention. It wasn’t chosen, so I felt I should probably use her for something else. So for Inktober, I am going to have the character, now dubbed Northern Lights, interact with various Canadian superheroes. To help me out with this I expanded to Canadian comic characters or characters that were created by Canadian based comic artists. I will also break the rules twice to cover some comic heroes that inspired the overall costume design for Northern Lights. The list will go as follows:

  1. Wolverine
  2. Captain Canuck
  3. Guardian
  4. Nelvana
  5. Scott Pilgrim
  6. Johnny Canuck
  7. Fleur de Lis
  8. Puck
  9. Deadpool
  10. Major Mapleleaf
  11. Red Panda
  12. Sasquatch
  13. North Star/Aurora
  14. Delilah Dirk
  15. Cassie and Tonks
  16. Superhero Girl
  17. Northguard
  18. The Grenadier
  19. Shaman
  20. Batgirl
  21. Mr Monster
  22. Ms Marvel
  23. Box
  24. Spider Gwen and Squirrel Girl
  25. Gary and Zii from Ménage a Trois
  26. Kid Thor
  27. Superman
  28. Hero Bear
  29. The Red Ensign
  30. Cerebus the Aardvark
  31. Northern Lights solo

At least that is the plan. Hopefully it all turns out well! FYI, Deadpool is kinda controversial. He apparently has claimed to be Canadian, but there is quite a lot about the character’s history that might be suspect, so who knows?

And now for my weapons of choice:

Pens

  1. Pentel Pocket Brush – my first brush pen. I was introduced to it in school 20 years ago and fell in love. A great pen that can create both fine lines and thick lines with lots of character.
  2. Zebra Disposable Brush Pen Fine – my new favourite brush pen. A much harder tip than the Pentel, and can still create a wide variety of line weights. The lines are more fluid and sharper than the Pentel as well.
  3. Tombow Brush Pen Soft – the softest tip of all the felt tip brush pens I will use this year. Good for medium to thick line weights. Though the thicker line weights break up a bit.
  4. Kuratake Disposable Pocket Brush Pen Fine – a softer tip than the Zebra and a generally heavier line weight as well, but cannot make quite as many varied line weights.
  5. Gelly Roll white pen – a white ink pen with a fine line. Goes down pretty good as long as the dark ink underneath is bone dry.
  6. An old fine line Sharpie. A really really fine line. Only good for small details or fixing up lines made from the other pens.
  7. Bamboo reed pen – I picked this one up from a local art supply shop that was going out of business. I have no idea what kind of lines it will draw. I am anxious to use it.
  8. On old pen nib – waaaaay back in the day, I was interested in calligraphy. I never really was very good at it, but I managed to inherit quite a few pen nibs from my grandfather. They were the pen nibs he would have used in grade school. Will be interested in how this one turns out.

This should be an interesting upcoming month. I am currently trying to sell my house and work has been very busy lately. Hopefully I will have the time to do all of this! Enjoy!

Old @Sketch_Dailies Postings

While doing a little research on personal art projects for a future blog post, I decided to compile all the @Sketch_Dailies submissions I have done since I first started doing them last year. Being a busy guy, I don’t always have the time, but I like to make certain I submit something every couple of months or so.

Many of these submissions have been reworked since I originally posted them to Twitter, and some are still the originals as posted to Twitter. It also contains one image I didn’t have guts to post. Not telling which one! Click on the image above to get a much larger, and more detailed image.

You can read a quick blurb about the @Sketch_Dailies project from a post a wrote a while ago here. Enjoy.

Image of the Month – June 2015

Super Hero Kid Cartoon

This little comic is inspired by the works of Scottie Young, a really great cartoonist and comic book artist. If you haven’t already, you should check him out.

This comic panel features two of my favourite DC heroes from my childhood in the 80s. The blue guy with the horns is Blue Devil and the green guy with the antennae is Ambush Bug.Both of these characters have problems with their suits not being able to come off. Blue Devil’s suit is magically grafted onto him and if I remember right, the zipper is stuck on Ambush Bug. I thought I would be fun to make fun of it as potty accidents are a staple of growing up. As I am rediscovering the hard way these days.

Enjoy.

Image of the Month – May 2015

Back to the Future

This is heavy ‘Doc! Earlier this year, the twitter feed @SketchDailies had the topic of Marty McFly from Back to the Future. Trying to come up with something a bit different, I tried a gender-bending Marti McFly. A few months later, and here’s a coloured version. A print can be purchased here.

Crackpot Starwars Theory

Starwars Ep VII Stormtrooper

Please Note: I originally wrote this post shorty after the first teaser trailer realesed a few months ago. Now that the new trailer has been released, I still think much of what I have written still holds up… and quite a bit of it has been blasted out of the water. I’ve decided to post this anyways. You never know. Just remember, this is total speculation on my part.

So I’ve had some time to take in the teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Wars trailer, and I have a few crackpot theories I’d like to share.

I figure I would share them here in case I’m right and have proof I thought of them first! Or it will be something to laugh about if it turns out I’m way off base.

Crackpot Theory #1

I found it strange that after nearly 30 years of time, that the Empire would even be around. Sure there could be a few strongholds out there in the fringe’s of the galaxy, but the Stromtroopers have slightly upgraded equipment and the Tie-Fighters look like they are in good order, and I would imagine that would not be the case if the Empire is just a few rag-tag Star Destroyers carrying on the not-so-good fight.

So what if they aren’t the Empire? What if the Stormtroopers are fighting for the New Republic? If the Empire did fall to the Rebels after the destruction of the second Death Star, it only stands to reason they would commandeer all the left over Empire equipment. Weapons are expensive. Why turf a perfectly usable Tie-Fighter when you don’t have to?

I would also imagine a lot of the Empire’s Military Command and fighting force would wind up working for the New Republic as well. At least the ones not tried for war crimes. This would mean quite a bit of the New Republic’s infrastructure might not be as loyal to the Rebel’s ideals as maybe everyone would like. Without stealing too much from Captain America 2 The Winter Soldier, it wouldn’t take too much imagination to think that maybe the Empire is still secretly carrying on behind the scenes, waiting for the right time.

So maybe our frantic guy in a Stormtrooper uniform at the beginning of the trailer is someone (perhaps a new recruit) who saw something he shouldn’t have and has maybe been left for dead out in some hostile desert? It’s a thought.

So, if this is true, why is the Millennium Falcon fighting Tie-Fighters?

It’s possible, idealists like Luke, Leia, Han (an idealist? work with me here) and Lando weren’t fooled by the Empire’s influence on the New Republic and have been marked as counter-revolutionaries. So we basically have the Empire in the guise of the New Republic fighting the Rebels… again. We’ve scene this historically in Earth’s various revolutions. See both the French and Russian Revolutions.

Crackpot Theory #2

I think our black Stromtrooper might be Lando’s son. Think on it. Early rumours indicate the girl is maybe Han and Leia’s daughter. The next generation of Star Wars hero’s might just be the actual next generation meeting up though a whole series of bizarre coincidences. That has J.J. Abrams written all over it.

Crackpot Theory #3

J.J. likes time travel and alternate timelines. Just look at Lost, Fringe and the Star Trek reboots. Maybe everyone travels back in time and erases the prequels a la X-Men Days of Future Past? Too much to ask?

Image of the Month – April 2015

Woman's profile

This piece was done almost entirely on my iPad using the Procreate app. It was originally black and white only. All the colour info and a little bit of texture was added in Photoshop afterwards. And some white was added in for more contrast.

The original image created on my iPad.

The original image created on my iPad.

I love drawing the human face and profiles are pretty easy to do. Even fairly realistic ones like this. And on a side note, I drew this out while watching Guardians of the Galaxy.

A print of this image may be made on Society6. Enjoy.

Brush Stroke Drawings

March_2015

Here’s three vector brushstroke style drawings. I fell in love with this style of drawing many years ago. There used to be a clipart supplier in Canada called Image Club, and they had quite the collection of these back in the day. At my old, old job I used to trace out printouts of their drawings for practice during downtimes (never used in any work, I promise!), so I got pretty good at knowing how to put these types of drawings together.

These ones were for a project that was never used. I think they turned out pretty good, so I thought I would share them here. The plane is my favourite. Enjoy.