A couple of TV portraits...

Whew...long time, no posts. Not surprisingly, I've really failed at trying to maintain this thing. :O Well, maybe this time, FOR REAL, I'll be better. I'm trying to be more productive and more efficient, drawing more and drawing quicker. I enjoy drawing portraits, so I thought I'd paint a couple of folks from TV shows I've been catching up on: Ron Swanson from "Parks and Recreation" and Damon from "The Vampire Diaries". Ron I finished in an evening, 6-7 hours and Damon I took a little longer on because real work got in the way, probably close to 10 hours spread out over a week. Both made just in Photoshop, and were painted directly in color as opposed to my old grayscale with color overlay layers method. The coloring is a bit flat, but I think Damon is already a vast improvement over Ron, so hopefully I'll continue to improve at that rate. They were fun, and I think they were good exercises to force myself to work as fast as I can and try to finish jobs in just one sitting if possible, and not to overthink and overwork them to death.

Inception: The Big Under comic book cover contest

Over at DeviantArt, they've held a cool contest to design the cover for the digital comic prequel to the movie. While working on my entry, I saved a few images to put together a little work-in-progress presentation.



The sketch to get the composition down, using some movie stills blown up to ridiculous proportions and some cobbled together fake photos to get good heads and bodies together. Saito is the focus of the story so he's nice and big. And Cobb and Nash are the main players so they are featured over movie characters like Arthur, who is less prominent, and Eames, who isn't present at all. The biker was made with the Pen Tool so he'd be very bold and graphic.



Laying in a cool, textured background with a high-res spray paint brush



Saito and the mysterious woman with the gun mostly finished. I've also added the red rising sun with vector shapes. Used a layer mask and the high-red spray paint brush to give it a distressed, grungy feel as it faded away.



Thought I'd skip ahead to the other faces before finishing Saito. A very rough Cobb and a place holder silhouette of Nash. I decided to add some appropriate Japanese text in the background to strengthen the Japanese theme that this cover should convey and to fill a bit of a hole in the composition. The word is 'dreamer'.



At this point Cobb's face is pretty much done. And I go on to Nash's face. I figured it was much more important to allow enough time to nail the likenesses and then I'd get to their clothes at the end. The clothes will come together much quicker as they don't need to be as detailed and look exactly like the references. This is just a couple minutes of quick, sloppy brush work on Nash's face, how all the faces start out early on. And then details are refined as the brush size decreases and the value range is accentuated. The mysterious woman has been refined a bit.



Unfortunately, I have a habit of not keeping track of my progress very well and we have a big jump here to the finished cover. Nash is finished...well, everyone's finished. Tweaks to the levels to make everyone pop more compared to my flatter, less dynamic ranged original drawings. The mysterious woman has her dress fully rendered now. I've added color via a few overlaying layers. Changed the background a little, created a solid white corner at the bottom that seems to deteriorate and fade as we move diagonally to the northeast. And I fiddled with the text in the upper right a bit, I wanted it to be subtle but not non-existent. Noticeable, but not overpowering.

It was a lot of fun to make, I loved Inception so staying motivated was no problem. And the tight deadline forced me to work fast. And this was the first full illustration I've tried to create in Photoshop as opposed to Painter, so I got to try out some nifty brushes and learn a lot about painting in Adobe's environment. I really liked it and look forward to diving into another painting soon.

To close, here are a few detail shots.

Sketchbook - Sometime..I dunno, September-ish

Watched all of "Mad Men" in the last six weeks or so. Incredible show. I was obsessed, so I figured I'd sketch a few characters. Mostly trying to train my eyes and hand to work well together, no grids, minimal training wheels, just trying best as I can to capture the angles and proportions and likenesses freehand. Mostly happy, I think they're recognizable.

On the right is Sookie Stackhouse from "True Blood". Above her, a thumbnail of a painting I may attempt sometime.

Sketchbook - let's say....August 2010

I said I was gonna start a sketchbook, and I have...just haven't been doing a good job of sketching everyday yet.



Here's some skull angles, trying to get some figure drawing basics hammered down, working from the inside out. And Iron Man and my watch since I had my watch and an Iron Man action figure around.

Over 1,000 visits!

In the last couple days, I just surpassed 1,000 visits to this little ol' backwater blog. Not too bad for just having a couple of links out there for people to find. Many thanks to those who linked my blog on their own or mentioned "The Office Strikes Back" on Twitter! I appreciate it.

Now I feel more obligated to actually have more worthwhile posts on here if people are actually gonna be visiting.

"You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."

Wise words, Homer.

No sales at Comic-Con. Ahh well, I'm sure at least two, maybe three, people walked by and were mildly amused by the poster.

I've got some ideas on future posters to paint, but I think I'll take a break after all the toiling away on The Office and scrambling to get it ready. I'm going to start keeping a sketchbook regularly, something I should've been doing like...ten years ago. Maybe I'll post up some of my pages occasionally if I should feel so bold.

Beautiful Widgets Weather Pack - Dharma Buttons

As seen a couple of posts ago in my Dharma clock skin, the companion Dharma weather skin is now available for Beautiful Widgets. Since I had the Dharma clock, I felt I needed a LOST weather skin to better pair with it. Something that emulated the style of the Dharma Initiative graphics and logos.

Trying to deliver all the icons for the necessary weather situations was a bit of a challenge when adhering to the two-tone Dharma Initiative style, but I'm pretty satisfied with how they turned out. Let me know if you have any other better ideas for graphics! I love hearing feedback and suggestions.