ASIFA - Fall 2010, Part 2

More work from this current session. I'm fairly happy with several of these. This season has been good to me when I've been there, but I've missed a few more sessions than I like to. I may have to make up for it with some life drawing from elsewhere.

I'm Star of the Week?

I was featured as the Star of the Week on the NYCSSC blog Action Weekly today, which is the league in which I play Inner Tube Water Polo. Considering how impressive I know some of the people in the league are in their daily lives, I was very flattered. I offered to do a quick illustration for the article, and figured I would cross post here as well as putting up some of the process images. Final, watercolor under-painting, and quick thumbnails.

I actually have really mixed feelings about this piece - Inner Tube Water Polo is supposed to be a light hearted, social first and competitive second kind of league and I wanted to make sure the illustration reflected that. I know that's the direction NYCSSC wants the league to move, and the friendly games are more fun. Unfortunately the fact is, as often as not it's a physical and intense game where cheap shots are easy to get away with and tempers can run high. As a player, I'd like to eventually do another piece for myself that I think reflects actually being in the pool.

Comps That Didn't Suck

Whenever I get ready to paint or ink, I'll usually do a small quick thing in my sketchbook first to get my arm and brushes moving around before anything serious can go wrong. Often they turn out terrible and devolve into me making a bunch of lines and shapes, sometimes I get a small image out of them too. Or in the case of the egg, not so small.

ASIFA - Fall 2010, Part 1

This season I finally started getting some of my 1-2 minute gesture drawings to actually scan! Here are a couple, along with one of the standard renderings from the 3-5 minute poses I usually post. I've missed a few sessions this fall but I still have a decent amount of stuff to post.

This most recent sketchbook of mine is slightly water damaged from being in my bag with my trunks and towels during this past season of Inner Tube Water Polo. The good news is that our team won the league championship, the bad news is that scanning out of it is that much harder. I'm suffering through it here for the next couple weeks and then I should be ready to move onto the new sketchbook.

Set Design - Methuselah Hub (Cross Post)

About a month or so ago, I began working on Benthic full time. I've started a blog for everything specific to the process, which I very much hope you'll follow at Benthic - Below the Surface. I'll continue posting my life drawing and work from my other illustration projects here, but (for the time being at least) some of my work that is both sketchbook and Benthic related, I'll simply cross post.

In any case, one of the inbetween stages of the graphic novel process that doesn't fit neatly into any categorized step is designing each of the settings. Not only important to catch the mood of both the scene and the setting itself, but also important to know exactly where everyone is standing, where they are moving to and from, and what parts of the room we need and maybe don't need to see. I usually do this after I thumbnail, and as I pencil. I try to work out the settings a scene or two ahead of where I am; far enough ahead not to slow me down when I get to pencil I page in a place I haven't designed, but close enough that the place is still fresh in my mind for drawing the entire scene.

Attached is one of the concept pages for the hub on the Methuselah, which is basically the equivalent to a bridge or CIC. I made a couple changes on the fly while drawing this current issue but all the major ideas are there from both a mood perspective and from an overhead layout of where everything is.

Random Offerings

Some random things I had laying around the last sketchbook that were worth posting, plus an old pencil sketch of Nephenee that I scanned ages ago and forgot to post.

ASIFA - Summer 2010, Part 3

A few more drawings from Summer. Both of these were actually great sets, but drawn mostly back to back so that they don't scan well at all. These are what was salvageable.

The current sessions have been pretty great the past couple of weeks, looking forward to putting stuff up.

Freaky Sketchbook Comic

So in my last sketchbook I decided for a bit that I was going to try drawing a comic actually in the book. To make that section of the sketchbook a comic itself. As you can see, I did this for one splash page and half a page.

I then got excited about it, and bought a special sketchbook just to do a project like this in. Then everything I drew in it was crap. None of it was inked, so maybe there is still hope. In the meantime please enjoy the experiment.

ALSO. I am discovering the joy of hand lettering. This is because how much I hate computer lettering Benthic. Dicking with the text in InDesign and the bubble in Illustrator at the same time is my least favorite thing to do, possibly on the planet. The people who do this professionally need to be diagnosed. Hand lettering is a pain, but at least I feel like I'm eliminating a step on the back end.

ASIFA - Summer 2010, Part 2

I realized a few days ago that we're three weeks into the Fall 2010 sessions of Naked People Superchallenge, I only put up one lousy post of material from Summer. Honestly, there were a lot of bad weeks through Summer (this may have been the craziest summer of the last five years for me), but I have another couple posts worth of decent stuff.

Amanda Grey

So I've been very lazy about posting the past few months. I have not been lazy, however, with drawing. So I'm going to be posting a lot over the next few weeks, and am starting this off with a bit of a double header.

This is a tattoo I drew for a very good friend of mine.. The color study was the real challenge, since its hard to project what ink is really going to look like when it is going through darker skin; though I am excited to see how close I got once the tattoo is finished for real.

The Issue Merger

The new cover of Benthic -Book 1, in ink. I haven't decided how I'm coloring this yet...

ASIFA - Summer 2010, Part 1

And the life drawing returns! Last week is the last session of the Summer so I need to stop slacking on the posting. I was really all over the place this summer, but there's some good stuff to show. Enjoy.

When Characters Get Real

Benthic #3 is taking god damned forever. BUT. Still doodling other stuff.

I've been revisiting a lot of the characters from Red Crane in my sketchbook again. Here is Xun on an alcohol fueled rant. He was so drunk that he made me not leave enough room for his feet again.

More Reliving My Childhood

This all happened.

ASIFA - Spring 2010, Part 4

Wrapping up the previous season today, with the rest of the ladies from the spring.

Spiderman, Spiderman

More messing around with ink and Photoshop. I think this color palette is retarded, but I kept it anyway! Bahahaha! Enjoy.

Alice; Testing

I'm putting together a new illustration portfolio. The last year all I've done is work for Benthic and none of my portfolio shows what I can actually do. Also, my color work is rusty, and I love color. I've just been cranking out stuff today, and heres some stuff I did as an exercise for an upcoming piece.