This one was simple.  I was in the midst of a Watchmen phase and didn’t want to draw the same old characters.  However, I still struggle with anatomy and faces, so I picked a character that was both faceless and his form was a little more vague. Again not the best work.

I can’t really say why I picked this one.  I think I wanted something without a lot of background to paint, wanted to focus on the character itself. As usual I don’t own this pic, it was just a familiar character with a well inked picture. However, this was the first time I stepped away from the shading and highlight technique with the burn and dodge tool, focusing instead on painting with colour variations.  The results aren’t perfect but I am not sure its terrible either. However I am not pleased with the skin tones and that continues to be something I struggle with. I shall try to work on it.

As I said this one is special.  It was a specific request of my nephew Austin, who has an affinity for the Disney-Pixar film Cars.  Though he’s less than three years old and still has trouble forming sentences, he informed me that his favorite character was The King, played by racing Legend Richard Petty and modeled after his famous 1970 Plymouth Superbird (or so I am told as I am not a racing fan). So this one is meant for Austin.

Its another slightly sloppy one.  I haven’t added the detail and shading I normally would, because I intended most of the detailing to be done in paint.  I am hoping to correct some of the misshapen, poor angles and disproportionate elements of the picture. I will also be adding some of the more specific details of the characters like his sponsor stickers and a better set of numbers. However, I didn’t think I could draw something in organic, trying to draw things consistently shaped is still something I struggle with, but I am working on. Honestly I thought a car would be too much of a challenge but to be frank I think it turned out all right.

Again this is one that will continue to evolve so check back in on its progress.

When I first bought my sketchbook I thought I would start easy, with a character I am very familiar with.  Yes that’s right, Spider-Man again. There is nothing really to brag about here, its just a quick sketch that really tells me how much harder I need to work at this.  The detail is sloppy, the body proportions are all over the place. And its small. Really small.  Its a far cry from the gorgeous splash pages I envisioned in my head.

Groan…

Again this was one I did with the burn and dodge tool.  Part way through this one I thought about switching to using colour variations rather than burn and dodge, but went ahead and finished that one, saving further experimentation in another technique for a different picture. This is another one that I need to go back and work on because I was a little intimidated by the hair.  At some point you may see an update about this one so don’t be surprised if this comes back again.

I couldn’t wait to start showing off the new art, so despite having just set up the blog I thought I would post any ways (happy Vic? ).

Wanted to share with you what was my first attempt at digital painting. This grew out of a curiosity as to whether or not I could do a digital paint job of someone else’s work (since none of mine were inked at the time, nor worthy of painting). So I sought out a familiar piece.

This is a Spider-Man panel from years ago by a favorite of mine Mark Bagely (former artist of Ultimate Spider-Man). I chose it because, first its a pretty well inked image that demonstrates the character and movement well. Second its a character and artist I am familiar with. So I started to experiment. The first step was just laying in the base colours with the line art remaining as the top layer in Photoshop. I also added a gradient to the background just to separate the character and give the whole picture a little life…probably not what’s usually done for backgrounds, but I am very much an amateur.

Encouraged by these results I continue to experiment further adding shading and highlight to the character using the techniques described to me in a You Tube video. I followed the instructions using the burn and dodge tools to give dimension and detail to the character. I’ve since learned other techniques that are better suited to painting a variety of images as the burn and dodge tool don’t always get the desired results. But for this first attempt I think I did pretty well with just burning and dodging.

Though its certainly not perfect I thought it was a great attempt and kept working adding some colour to the background.  This proved more tedius then I would like and though I left it as is, I am tempted to go back and rework the background.  Of course I kept all the source files so it shouldn’t be a problem to improve the background.  But for the time being this is the final version and I am pretty pleased with it.

So that’s it my first experiment. Of course this has encouraged me to keep trying and keep learning.  From here I’ve done a couple different images and continue to experiment.  I am also in the midst of learning inking to cover all the basis. Now I won’t be featuring the step by step breakdown of the evolution of an image with all the stuff I paint. But since this was an interesting experiment I thought I would demonstrate the picture’s evolution.

Hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for more.