The Clown Prince of Crime

Hand drawn, then digitally inked and colored. 

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August-September sketches

During Wizard World Chicago-I managed to pick up some books that I had been meaning to read-one of them being the much acclaimed Maus. 

I had heard of it before, but never got around to reading it. It was fantastic! I have read and watched different media regarding the Holocaust, but this book was a great read (at least for me it was).

Hence the first handful of sketches were of SS officers and similar WWII subjects. Then it was back to good old fashioned anatomy sketches....

Digital Painting Exercise 2 (source image from Character Designs.com)

Here's another digital painting exercise I did in Photoshop, once again I used a source image from Character Designs.com....I'm pretty satisfied with how this one came out.

*Update 9/23/2013*

Softened some of the rendering from my last post. Also adjusted the position and proportions of the girl...difficult part of this little exercise was readjusting everything from the original...which I did waaaay back in 2008...I included the original to show how far its come along.

2nd July sketches (digital)

These are my second set of July sketches. All are digital and off of reference photos, the point is to get more confident inking digitally. Kind of hard to do this on the Wacom, but I feel if I get it to a certain level I can save myself a lot of time as opposed to doing it by hand.

July Sketches

These are just sketches I did in the first half of July. Most are hand studies or facial of drawings of random people/characters. All are pencil and ink drawings except for the last one.

Digital Painting Exercise (Source photo from Character Designs.com)

I completed this way back in early June. This was meant to refine my digital painting technique, lately I have been using more square brushes with textures in Photoshop. To get the main tones down, and then refining them with an airbrush, they have been coming out better than some of my previous work. Now the goal is to  find a way not to over refine everything and leave some elements in my painting 'blocky'.
 

Viking Character

Wow! its been way too long since my last post here on blogger...most of my work these days goes on FB. More feedback and comments than what I receive here, I think I will update my blog from time to time but whatever gets more exposure is what I'm going to shoot for.

Anyways here is a Vkining character that I did a few years back, I did while I was working a night shift as a guard. It wasnt devloped much, but I did it as a practice on a comic style penciling (I included an inked version, also from a previous post).

I wanted to work more on the costume so I went ahead and did roughs on his: helmet and battle axe, silhouette, and a rough of his overall concept/look. Here is where I am at the moment....

Vulcan

This particular character I have been working on (what seems like forever) was one I made my last semester in college for my portfolio class. He's supposed to be an alien mercenary....

Fast forward to 2006, this time I changed him around and really made this little piece as a color study and to try my hand at digital painting...

Then I made this digital inked piece in 2008....

Which I then colored....

So yes this dude, has gone to his many phases, now I'm determined to give him a final look and add him as an addition to my portfolio :) so far this is what I have....

Demons!!

Remember this guy? Yes I inked him, he looks slightly different from the original pencil drawing but some of his proportions were off and I felt like I had to adjust them a little, BUT I like the way he came out....colors are soon to follow.

Cheers!

*Update 5/8/12*
 Color rough, not sure what to do with the background?

*update 5/11/12*

Another color revision, I thought it needed more warm colors...

Patrick Kane Painting

Well, well, well...its certainly been too long since my last post. And now I'm ready to keep you kids updated. Awhile ago I did a quick study (off a photo) of one of Chi-towns sports star....Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks...

 Its was meant more as a practice in digital painting techniques, but recently a relative of mine liked it and asked if I could make a print of it for him.

....I thought this was a chance to improve the art and make it look better. So I decided to paint over the original to keep it closer to the original and really make this 'summbitch' pop! hope you guys like it.

*update 4/12/12*

*update 4/13/12* 

I changed the compostion to give him some more movement, added a background and gradient to finally call it a day for this one!

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Busy, busy, busy

Sorry guys about the recent inactivity. Its been a crazy couple of weeks but I will try to upload recent work as soon as I can. Stay tuned. :)

Bill the Butcher Caricature

One of my fave characters from the movies is William Cutting a.k.a. "Bill the Butcher". Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of the villain from Gangs of New York is nothing short of AWESOME! He made the movie for me, as would any good actor in a major motion picture. In short, I picked him to paint because his character is so effin' well known, and a challenge. To capture a familiar face and get his personalty in an illustration.

I have only gotten to the initial "smoothing" phase of the coloring, still some passes to go but I like the start :) ....to be continued.

*update3/6/12*

I smoothed out the rough colors from the one I previously uploaded and added some textures to the characters clothing (shirt, vest, and tie) so far so good....next is to go over and smooth it even more in PS and add highlights and all that jazz...in other words so far so good.


*update 3/14/12*

After spending a couple more days on this one, I think I finally came to a point where I' m happy with it. One thing I feel like I missed was the characters hair, it still feels somewhat flat and I worked it a couple of times over but nonetheless this one really Im content with. See for yourself.

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