12/27/10 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2010 - Rough for color image and the genesis of an idea

We are are having a real winter here in Kentucky. Our first snow was right after Thanksgiving and now we have had several measurable snowfalls since then including only the 2nd or 3rd White Christmas I can remember! The snow has stirred creative plasma from the past..

Gil Kane (p), Tom Palmer? (i),
cover Marvel Premier #15, 1974

Iron Fist is a comics character I have followed since his first appearance in Marvel Premiere 15 back in the mid 70's. The setting of the characters origin story is a mystical Asian city high in the snowy mountains: K'un L'un is obviously inspired by the mythical city of Shangri La. Danny Rand (the current, and at that time only known, Iron Fist's real name) is only a child at this point and the expedition to find the lost city by his father, mother, Uncle and himself is memorable for the adventure aspect, the tragic loss of a parent, and the search for a more enlightened way of life. All these concepts dug deep into my tween brain. I think I really empathized with the young Daniel's plight and envied the adventure and life he was about to embark on. Men are suckers for stories about sacrifice and honor - that is why war movies are able to evoke so much feeling in us - even among the most stoic and staid of us. We are hardwired to go out and fight tooth and nail against the imminent danger to our families without a moment's hesitation or regard for own safety. Even as children we have this instinct... that is why we are drawn to certain sports or hobbies.

At that time the Martial arts were a great mystery  and held me tight in and fascination - people like Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were incredibly influential role models. This period was near the height of the martial arts movie craze and I remember an incredible poster hanging in the hall at my elementary school Linlee.

Neil Adams, cover
Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #1
 Magazine, April 1974

It was fifth or sixth grade and I was absolutely stricken by envy for the fellow artist and classmate (Mark Desmond?) who created this image of Bruce Lee applying a flying leap kick to strike down his enemy. This large, poster-board masterpiece I later found out was a recreated Neil Adams (who would soon rise to near god-like status in my pantheon of comic artists) cover from an issue of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu - a Marvel Magazine. This revelation elevated my ecstatic longing even more since this was a more adult (almost akin to Playboy! not for nudity but intense adventure) form of comic than what I was currently reading and very elusive (much like Shangri La) publication for me to ever attain or read. (For an eleven-year old boy in 1974 there weren't a lot o back issue buying options like we have today! No comic shops, no internet, no eBay!).

So anyway, I was a faithful follower of this Marvel character and very much enjoyed the early story arcs (never liked IF as superhero - but have always felt he was better suited to the adventure genre!

Paul Gulacy (p) Jack Able?(i), HoSC-MOKF #29, June 1975, 

I wished he had been treated more like Marvel's other MA inspired character, Shang Chi, who got to live in a Bruce Lee Meets James Bond world.

James Steranko, cover
Doc Savage #3, February 1973

The Shang-Chi - Master of Kung Fu comic enjoyed the best art Steranko never did! Here is a sample of that seminal comic by another 'revered on high' artist: Paul Gulacy.

I was too young to experience most of Jim Steranko's comic work and only saw a bit of his work through his self published mag. But I think I did get this Doc Savage (another influential comic and pulp character on my young impressionable psyche) comic with his cover art. The black and white image is an illustration from the novel based on the Chandler detective series and proof that comics are very incestuous in the way one artist influences another. Frank Miller was thought to be very cutting edge with his graphic high contrast black and white style he used to great success in his noir crime comic series Sin City.

James Steranko, Chandler - Red Tide, pen and ink 1976

Frank Miller , Sin City, 1991-1992

Sites and blogs I have referenced from or been informed by during the writing of this post:

http://nealadams.com/magslist.html

https://spaceintext.wordpress.com/

http://www.giantsizemarvel.com/

http://marvel.wikia.com/Doc_Savage_Vol_1_3

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/steranko.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Miller_(comics)

http://consequentialart.wordpress.com/tag/sin-city/

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2009/02/02/ten-of-the-most-bad-ass-women-in-movies/

01/22/10 - Digital Link to Sketchbook Pro File in Google Docs

Sharing!



Here is a link to the actual file that the above image was created in from Sketchbook Pro 2010. If you have the program (really nice 15-day trial versions available online) you can download the .tif file and play with it as you like!

• Image005.tif - Google Docs

01/19/10 - Digital - Painter 11

Two really quick and loose sketches from a new install of the trial version of painter 11. Sometimes a program just clicks on the first take. The tool was the "6B real pencil" it senses tilt with your stylus to the tablet. So you can approximate the the thick and thin lines you get with a real pencil. Nice, when it works. It is still a little buggy...

10/06/09 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2

Another digital sketch - with a favorite program of mine for getting stuff down fast: Sketchbook Pro 2. I saved this with the rough sketch layers on - kind of shows my working process of refining from a very loose shape to a tighter pencil line. Inspired by a college student I saw and drawn from memory.

10/29/09 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2

Catching up on stuff from last year - this was inspired by two things: the clear bright light of autumn and trying to catch a sense of motion (leaves and paper blowing in the wind as the dog lunges). Not to say I did either of these concepts justice - only to document that they did move me.

12/02/09 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2

Here's a digital sketch from memory of a 1970's pinup. As time passes the models from 1970's and before just seem more aesthetically pleasing - before cosmetic surgery became so common.

01/01/10 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2010

Happy New Year everyone!
Here's a quick Santa head I did in Sketchbook Pro 2010. A great program!
The old jolly elf is not so easy to draw and paint. Haddon Sundblom did some incredible work for Cocoa-Cola.

05/30/08 - Digital - Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro and Painter

Some digital drawings from the last couple of months. Photoshop CS2 , Sketchbook Pro 2 and Painter X. These are all drawn without reference - just from memory and imagination.

02/16/08 - Digital - Photoshop Painting

I have been recuperating at home the last week after after a week in the hospital. The meds and bed rest had me all revved up with no place to go. But I have been able to get in some time and progress (I think) on my Photoshop CS2 digital painting skills. Here are some pieces created in the last couple of days.

Lady Washington and the treasure cave are from my head and Dorothy and the Tobbogan Lady are from photoreference (but still free hand drawn without sampling colors).

07/24/07 - Digtial - Painter X (Rocks!)

Just installed the trial version of Corel Painter X on my home machine and I have to say it quickly sold me on the need to upgrade from version IX!
Here's a quick little piece (Note: I used auto-clone and the pencil tool to trace a photo reference) to look at - boy, is this easier than Photoshop (much more intuitive - you can take your knowledge of real art media and translate to this program)!

06/27/06 - Comic - Digital - Painter IX

Believe it or not I taught a class on cartooning for high school students last summer (2006) at Berea College for a college prep program called Upward Bound. I guess if you do something long enough someone will eventually take you as some kind of expert (or as a wise friend said to me years ago: "In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king." Quite true Hemang, God rest your soul.)

They were a rowdy bunch and shook my confidence in my ability to teach the class - I won't do it again without a fixed computer lab (try handing out and taking up laptops every class, ughh!!). We created a blog and used Photoshop to computer color their hand drawn original comic strips.

As a demo for the class I created this little comic strip completely digitally using Corel Painter IX.

10/16/06 - Digital - Photoshop CS2 - Painting practice

When I stick to B/W images my Photoshop painting doesn't turn out too bad. This was done with the following tools: #2 pencil, conte pencil (both dry media brushes), and airbrush set at 50% flow. I added the layers palette from Photoshop in this jpg so you could see for yourself.

Again, if anyone is interested in looking at the source files for my digital work - post a comment and let me know - otherwise I will just post image files.

07/25/05 - Digital - Photoshop and Freehand

Here I have taken the life drawing scan (from the previous post) and colorized in Photoshop:



Then applied a watercolor filter to the colorized file (still in PS):



Then backtracked and used Macromedia FreeHand to vectorized (16 color steps) the first colored PS file.

10/21/06 - Digital - Photoshop CS2 - custom brush

More digital work in Photoshop CS2. This time trying to get a custom brush for hair to work. This is probably my best success at creating a custom brush, but I still have lots of questions, such as: can you only use it one direction? You can actually see the group (circle) of different sized dots I sampled to make the brush from on the top right of the image.

03/26/05 - Digital - Photoshop 7 colored scans as BD cards

Here is a Birthday card design I did for a cousin back in 2005. The line art is hand drawn and inked then scanned. I used PS7 to color (airbrush, color holds on some lines) and add the text.

06/09/07 - Digital - Photoshop CS2 painting practice

As I stated in an earlier post - I struggle with finding a method to paint in Photoshop. Here I have included a practice piece based on a tutorial from 2dArtist (an excellent online PDF art instruction magazine) by Henning Ludvigson.

Not nearly as nice as what he demonstrates - I have put my questions down on the piece. The basic idea is that you frequently re sample the color for your brush (with less opacitiy or flow?) after you originally block in 3 or 4 shades across a curving surface. The goal is to have a nice blend across the color transtions - NOT THAT I DEMONSTRATE THAT HERE!

09/16/06 - Digital - Photoshop CS2

Both of these rough color sketchs were done in Photoshop CS2 with my Wacom Intous 3 tablet.

I am still struggling with digital painting, especially using Photoshop. There are so many ways to approach a color piece and then there is the complication of custom brushes.

Photoshop is probably the most powerful graphics program but it's not very intuitive (good at simulating real media techniques).

07/01/07 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2

This cashier from Home Depot was drawn from memory with a wacom intuous 3 in SketchbookPro 2. When I want to get something down in color quickly and easily this is the program I use.

If anyone ever wants to see the native files with layers and everything just leave me a comment on the particular post and I will add a link. Otherwise I will just post images as a jpg or gif.

08/29/06 - Digital - Sketchbook Pro 2

Digital piece from this August. Really just some small pencil sketches from my imagination that I colored. All done with Wacom Intuous 3 tablet and Alias/Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 2. I start with a 2B pencil for the sketch. Then create a new layer - swap the order - and start coloring flats with the wide brush. This is a really neat aspect of SKB2 - you can go right to coloring without worrying about layer blending mode - it just anticipates that is what you will be doing. There really aren't that many tutorials available for this program, perhaps because of it's simplicity? But the Autodesk site has some if you become a member (lower level membership is free!).

Look for SKB2 native source file here (.tiff) PS: this won't work in any program although it looks like a common tiff file!!

09/10/06 Digital - Painter IX.5

Some more digital work, drawn from my imagination, done last month, this time done in Corel's Painter IX.5. I read a quote recently that said you don't sketch anything you haven't really looked at...I guess you can see what I pay attention to. Here's the link to get the trial version.

Watch here for a link to the Painter native format source file (.riff)