Quitely

I googled myself yesterday to find that the three first image results were all drawings that I had done for Project Rooftop. Not sure how Google's search filter thing works but I'm guessing that means that those are the drawings that got the most exposure to people online. What's funny about that is that for Project Rooftop, I intentionally try to draw like someone else, Frank Quitely.

So, I wish I could articulate to those of you that don't know who that is, why he is as awesome as he is, but I'm sure if you look around, you can find people to do that to a far greater effect. In fact, here's one.

Even though I have tried pretty consciously to mimic Quitely because he's become one of my favorite artists, I generally fail pretty hard at doing that because my basic drawings aren't very good. Here are the pencils for a Wolverine drawing which was the first time I got an honorable mention.



It's pretty old. Wolverine's face is hilarious and not Quitely at all but this is before I just tried to straight up ape him completely. Here is that drawing colored. In the one that comes up in google there are more drawings on the side of it but those sucked so I cropped them off this one.



This also shows up in that google search eventually, it was a comparison of how I drew in 2005 compared to 2010. As you can see, 2005 was an unfortunate time for me. And yet people never told me how bad I was. Enablers. Very nice guy saw this on twitter and put it on his Firestorm blog. So that's why it shows up.



Another Project Rooftop contest was Aquaman. I love Aquaman so I had to enter it. Here are the inks for that. Never scanned the pencils because they were too light and loose. The benefit to trying to draw like Quitely for me has been that I can draw way less initially because I do almost all the rendering in ink. Maybe that's a problem.



Here's that drawing colored. That splashing behind him was a lot funner to draw than to color. I'm sure that shows because I didn't bother coloring it. Also, that A on his chest in gray looks really weird. I thought it worked even though it feels completely out of place. I've never been a very good designer either.



When Dwayne McDuffie died recently, there was a call from Project Rooftop for Static drawings and so I did one. I can honestly say, I never watched the Static Shock cartoon nor did I read many of McDuffie's comics but his impact on the industry was undeniable and I wanted to draw something to honor that with the other people that contributed in that.



And so I did another shameless Quitely inspired drawing.



Lately, I've been drawing stuff that I really liked and drew growing up because I think a lot of the things people my age were into growing up is starting to become nostalgically cool. So I drew the Power Rangers. The idea was to make it like those awesome covers that Quitely does that are sparse but have a big impact. Yeah. About that. Didn't work out.



But you know, eh... whatever.



I think there's something really helpful about drawing like people like Quitely who has a very distinct style because it seeps into your drawing when you stop drawing and the more you do that with different artists, the more you get a style that is a Frankenstein's monster of cool people. Right now, I don't think I have a monster but we'll see how that goes.

Ditko

This is a drawing of the Creeper, Hawk and Dove, and Shade the Changing Man.



They are all DC characters created in part by Steve Ditko or completely by him.



They prove that you can make interesting superheroes that aren't interesting because they're violent or angsty. They don't shoot guns. They don't kill. They don't wear black. They're awesome.

JLA

This is my drawing of the JLA. Just the pencils.



The idea was that a year ago, I really wanted to draw the JLA at their best. Because I was, and am, convinced that every comic book character is the best when Grant Morrison writes them, I made sure to use the line up that he used when he wrote them in 1997ish. But it's not 1997ish, it's 2011ish so I updated the costumes appropriately. These are the inks that I did on my computer. Because in 2011ish, drawing on a computer is a cool thing to do and I desperately want to be cool. These are the inks. Notice, I completely changed Wonder Woman and Batman's costumes but none of the anatomy mistakes I made last year. That's a commitment to mediocrity.



When I colored it, I used a lot of color holds and only bright colors. This bold, over the top, pulpy interpretation of the Justice League is how I look back at Morrison's JLA run. When I read it, I didn't know who Grant Morrison was, I only knew that the stories were insane and the faces, drawn by Howard Porter mainly, were usually ugly to me. Also, that batman had shoulder points offended me on some guttural level that, to this day, makes it hard for me to go back and read what are surely some of the best comics ever written. At least that's what people tell me. And I want to believe them because I want to fit in.



But who doesn't?

Look at Batman.

Magnus... THE ROBOT FIGHTER!!!

Okay, so there was this older comic book character named Magnus. He was very high concept back for that time in that while other superheroes fought all sorts of different variations of evil, Magnus had a specialty. Yes, in theory he could fight tyrants, thugs, and mad scientists but he did not. No, instead Magnus focussed the core of his fighting activity towards the asswhooping of robots. Why robots? Who cares, Magnus was around to fight them and them almost exclusively. That's why I did this drawing showing Magnus doing just that.

Here's the pencils


Here's the inks


Here's the thing all done


I don't feel like labeling the whole thing but I'll just give a wordbank of characters and you can place the names where you may.

Terminator, Iron Giant, Robocop, Astro Boy, Rosie, Maria, A femmebot, Optimus Prime, that kid from A.I. whatever his name is, the Bad Robot, Bender, R2D2, C3P0, A.W.E.S.O.M.O., Alpha, and the robot from Lost in Space. I know its not a complete list of all robots and you may be wondering, "What about robots like Data, Gort, and Wall-E?" Well my answer to you is this: I don't want Magnus to fight them. Because he would crush them. And I don't want that. Thanks for looking.

Hey look, I drew Batman and Robin. Unusual..

I think I've drawn Batman and Robin pretty much more than any comic book characters ever. That's just because they are awesome. When I'm bored, and I scribble stuff, most likely my doodles are of them two. It's just like... an uncontrollable urge. Some people can't help but hit people over the head unconscious, drag them home, carve them up into pieces dipping parts that would identify them into a vat of acid and eat their flesh but I draw Batman and Robin instead. Anyhow, here is the latest picture of them. This is an homage or swipe or whatever you'd personally like to call it of an iconic Carmine Infantino drawing


And here is mine.

The pencils:


The inks:

The flats:

And finally the finished one with lots of airbrushing and effects to hopefully distract people from the fact that its not all that well drawn.


Thanks for looking.

The Defenders

Here's another collaboration I did with the San Joaquin Graphic Arts League (yes, that's what we call ourselves, impressive huh?) This time around we decided to do The Defenders because it was another super hero team that consists of four reasonably popular superheroes. Technically, it was my pick and that was all the logic I put behind it. Next time up we'll be doing either Jem and the Holograms or the characters from Wizard of Oz fighting flying monkeys. It should be awesome. Anyhow, here are the individual drawings that I received from Frank Stone who was kickass enough to ink all of the drawings for us.



Okay, so this is my Silver Surfer...



This is Mike Dimayuga's Doctor Strange... To see more of Mike's work go here



This is Frank Stone's Namor the Submariner... To see more of Frank's work go here



And last but most popular, this is Betsy Luntao's Hulk. To see more work of Betsy's work go here

I would also like to note that Frank named all of these files DefJam_charactername which I think was pretty hip of him. I certainly didn't think of it ever the process of working on this jam picture until it was pointed out to me by him in his file naming.

After some coloring and cutting and pasting and frankly, sorcery, I was able to come out with this here...




I was going for like a cool mid nineties alternative feel with the unsaturated colors and the squished font. I think it worked. And it conjures up the idea of bananas I think because it's so damn yellow. That's still pretty edgy and stuff, I think. Bananas, I mean.

Thanks for looking.

A Casual Stroll Through the Lunatic Asylum

So here's a picture I did on Halloween almost entirely to have something to do on Halloween.



Something fun, I mean.



It's festive though, right? They're all scary and stuff.

Avengers Assemble! If you feel like it... No hurry....

So it's been awhile since I posted anything and I should post more not less. That's just how things should work. Anyhow, here's a drawing of the Avengers I did awhile ago. I thought it came out pretty good. Because I made an effort to remember, here are the steps I took to put this one together.

The pencils...



The inks...


aaand I'm done.

It's Supergirl

I have no idea what it is, and it's certainly not some kind of perversion, but some of my best pictures are when I draw Supergirl. Why? Not quite sure but here are two older drawings I've done of her that I particularly like...




Granted those are older so they actually are not that good in comparison to things I do now but I still think they are pretty decent in comparison to the stuff I was doing then. You know what I'm saying? Of course you do. I just think its impossible not to draw Supergirl pleasantly. That's just her factory setting, you have to work to make her look pissed off or slutty but a real sweet looking Supergirl? That's just fun to do in between scowling Batman and enraged Wolverines.

Anyhow, My buddy Frank Stone who is a phenomenal artist was saying I should bring him something to ink so I thought about it and figured If there was one thing I wanted to draw back when I was sketching for something to bring him, it was Supergirl and so...



That's exactly what I did. I'll note it was a long time between the Supergirl holding a puppy drawing up there so I felt I could do the whole "somebody holding an small animal" thing again without any guilt. Also I sort of forgot about it till just right now. So I handed that off to Frank at the aforementioned artwalk and he sent me this email the next day.



Now, I dunno about you, but I thought that was awesome. Probably the best inks over any of my drawings primarily because they were not done by me. Huge thanks to Frank again, and again you can see more of his work over here... So later on that night I was able to get this done.



Look at that, the picture from start to finish. That's pretty rare with me to do that kind of breakdown. Might do it again sooner because it looks kinda cool all laid out like that.

Robin the Boy Wonder

Another month another comicbloc contest for me to waste inordinate ammounts of time on. I managed to sneak a win last month with my star sapphire picture that I despised but I didn't pick that months' challenge, so I had little say in the matter. I did win this months so of course with Battle of the Cowl coming out and all the former boy wonders going all crazy and shit. I have been using nonphoto blue pencils so you'd think this work is cleaner right? Wrong. The awesome nonphoto blue prisma I was using is out of stock where i bought them before which meant i am using these shitty ones that don't erase. Ah well.



Now just add water and throw them all together...

The Seven Soldiers of Victory

This is another contest I entered just for the fun of entering contests and it's a pin up of the original seven soldiers of victory. The theme was golden age and I think the group represents everything awesome about the golden age of comics. You got the big time pulp hero in Crimson Avenger,

you got the western stories with Vigilante,


the fantasy with Shining Knight,

you've got the superheroes with a child being put into extreme danger... and tights in Star Spangled Boy and Stripsey,then of course the same thing but with bows and arrows in Green Arrow and Speedy. Because archery is badass!

Hmm, if the blue turned just a bit ago, that is totally not intentional. Sometimes I just can't control the font that appears on my screen. Hope that isn't a link to nowhere...

Anyways, so I put these all together with some magic and no computer work whatsoever and this is the end product.
Feel free to click it and see its true size. I think it will show in full size anyways, its done so in the past.

Anyways, hope all of you (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) like it and stuff.