Lady Blackhawk! - Progress

Sorry for the lousy digital camera shot of the artboard. I am making progress on Lady Blackhawk. I didn't work on her much today because of other pressing work. Still she is coming along and I suspect she will be done tomorrow. So far I have inked everything I planned to in on her. I am playing with the highlights right now and will start to really define the white hot spots as I go. More tomorrow!

HAWK-A-A-A-A!

Quick post today. I was busy all day finishing up some roughs for a client and I'm a bit tired. :)

This may or may not be my next Cason Cutie. I have wanted to do another black leather character and Lady Blackhawk came to mind. I know there is a similarity to another Lady Blackhawk I did for Royce, so I may have to change it up. But then hasn't every pose been done at one time or another??? At least she is out of the cockpit in this one. :)

Mary Jane Watson

Or Mary Jane Parker to some. Anyway, here is post number two for today. I had wanted to do a companion piece of sorts to the Gwen Stacy I did a short time ago and here it is. As innocent as the other piece was, this one is more sexual. For better or for worse, it's how I see the two characters. Not that I am a Spider-Man reader. Just an observer, really. :)

Mary Jane is on eBay tonight, for anyone interested. Here is the link: Mary Jane.

I hope everyone has had a good weekend!

DREAM GIRL

Good morning! Here is the second commission for Tim. Dream Girl of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Ink, acrylic and color pencil on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes paper. Thanks again Tim!

There will be a second post this evening. If you have time, drop by for another Canson Cutie.

BLACK CANARY - Finished

Here she is. Finished her up this morning. This one has a lot more acrylic than most. To get the shiny areas to have some real nice hot spots, I left those areas without black ink and then did a wash of white acrylic paint, just enough so that even though the paper color was still showing through, the color was a lot lighter. I did this a couple of times and then hit the hottest spots with pure white. Darker paper is really tougher but I think it was a good choice for this piece. Thanks to Tim for this commission. We will have the second of Tim's choices tomorrow: Dream Girl of The Legion of Super-Heroes.

PHOENIX - Rough

Quick post today. I'm about 80% done with a Black Canary Canson Cutie but I am too tired to finish tonight. So for now, I present a sketch done early today of Phoenix. I think she will be a follow up to the Black Queen on eBay right now. Maybe I will do a Marvel girl after that. Hmmmm, got some green paper over here...

Have a good weekend everyone! :)

The Black Queen - Finished

I said I was going to try doing this piece on black Canson Paper. Not a good idea. It looked terrible. I'm sure someone with more experience using black paper and color pencils could pull it off but not me. Live and learn. One day I might try again. Hate to have it defeat me. :)

So Jean Grey ended up on the color paper that she looks best on. I will be posting her on eBay tonight if anyone is interested.

Update: Auction Link

The Black Queen

From the sketchbook, Jean Grey as the Black Queen. It was a strange day of miscellaneous work today: Getting files ready for a client, writing a proposal/estimate for a new client for a job (got it, btw), and meeting with another person via Skype, to discuss a potential project. While doing all that, I was sketching this on little pieces of paper, and refined it here in my sketchbook.

I have a couple of Canson Paper commissions I am working on and one of them (Black Canary) will be on black paper. Never having worked on black paper, I thought I would do a test run with a different character first. The Black Queen persona of Jean Grey fit the bill for a character with a black shiny outfit, that is not too far off from Black Canary. And if this one works out, I can put it on eBay. If it doesn't, I've learned something. I hope. :)

HERCULOIDS - Color Comp

I have finished the determining the values and have scanned the original art into Photoshop CS3. At this point I am playing with colors. I am working from from cool to warm. I must confess that I am a novice with color theory. I don't have a formula, I just go with what looks right to me. I've had complements from people who's color work I admire so I might not be too bad at color. Either way, this is pretty much the road map for the color when I start painting.

HERCULOIDS - Values

This stage isn't done yet but you can get the idea of what I am doing. At this point I am trying to establish the lights and darks of the piece, the values. The heavy lifting of the entire process will be taken care of here. I'm using a main light source in front of and below the characters. Secondary light will be coming from behind and giving a glow to the outer edges of some of the characters. I have also added the logo and roughed in some of the extra movie poster copy.

Still have a ways to go. :)

Sketchbook Sunday

I haven't finished the Herculoids commission to a point for the next process post. And I don't want to rush it. So I thought I would share some sketchbook work.

If you thought the Canson Cuties were just slapped on the paper and ready to go, this will show you different. I treat commissions just the same as any other job in that I will do some roughs to get a feel for the character and a good pose. Also any image done on the dark Canson paper, like the Scarlet Witch image, had to be worked out tight enough in my sketchbook because I was projecting it to the final paper. I can't use my light table with the dark paper. The image doesn't show through. The Insect Queen pose was dropped in favor of the final one I auctioned. And there is even a Cloak and Dagger idea at the top that I have yet to use. Supergirl, at the top, ended up as a painted piece.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. More Herculoids tomorrow!

THE HERCULOIDS - Concept to Pencil

I have been working a bit at a time on the HERCULOIDS commission I am doing. Gathering references and doodling the characters here and there. Here are the preliminary steps before I transfered the drawing to the board it will be painted on.

Top: These are the three concepts for the commission. It was decided to mixed the movie poster elements of B with the layout of A. These sketches were done in pencil.

Middle: I've enlarged the chosen layout for comparison to the tighten up pencils. There are some changes of course. I changed the stance of main figure in front. At the time I did the rough I didn't pay attention that he wears a skirt/loin cloth/thing. The position of his legs in the original sketch made it a revealing situation. So less action, more heroic, and everything stays where it should. :) Also, with the addition of the logo and credits at the bottom, I had to close up the characters a bit vertically.

Bottom: Here is a relatively tight finish. I may take one more pass at it before I transfer the drawing to the final board. This is done in pencil on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 copy paper. The slight repositioning of some characters were done to keep the viewers eye in the illustration and not wander out. I've added some arrows to the image to show what might not be very apparent when looking at the image.

The next stage will be projecting the image to the illustration board.

I hope everyone is enjoying the first weekend of Spring!

Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide

For the last four years I have been providing artwork for The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (CBPG), from Gemstone Publishing. They are intros for different sections of the Guide written by J.C. Vaughn. Prior to the comic book style introductions, the were all text. J.C. thought it would be more entertaining to have a comic book style introduction in a book about comic books. That makes sense to me.

So he contacted me to join the fun. The staff at CBPG provides me with scans of rare comics and other tidbits that I need to produce the artwork, working from J.C.s script. I then put together the whole package, pencils, inks, colors, lettering, production, etc.
Every year we change a some elements of the introduction "About This Book", to reflect new or emerging trends in comic books, but the introductions for the different "ages" of comics stay the same.

The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide goes on sale March 25th.

Auction News: For those that are interested, the auction for my artwork featuring Medusa ends tonight around 7:30 pm (est).  Here's the link: Medusa

And now for something completely different...

No Canson Cuties tonight folks. I've got a lot of commercial work I am trying to finish up. (Meanwhile, one of my neighbors is laughing maniacally outside in her backyard. It's a bit frightening.) Gonna try to have the weekend free for some chores I have been putting off and to work on some commissions.

So today's post is the finished line art for a t-shirt design for a clothing optional 5K race in Georgia. It's called the Fig Leaf 5K. Hence the fig leaves that are strategically placed on David and Venus' private parts. With the sneakers and water bottles, they are ready to go. :) I did design the rest of the shirt, but it is mostly text and not that exciting to share here. This was completely done in Photoshop.

Don't forget, tomorrow is the official start of Spring!

Catwoman!

This one is a commission piece for our own Brian Jones. Definitely one of my favorites. :) This was done with ink, color pencil, and acrylic paint on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper. Thanks again to Brian for the commission!

Two auctions are up right now. Lana Lang, Insect Queen ends tonight and Medusa still has a couple of days to go. You can see them here.

This morning I got a email from someone in France, who asked if they could bid on Medusa. I said "yes" of course. I still get a kick out of my original artwork going out around the world. Thanks to the internet, my work has the potential to reach anywhere there is a connection. When I started working as a commercial artist, there wasn't an internet as it exists today. To promote your work you would have to mail out samples, postcards, tearsheets, and/or buy an expensive page in a art book that went out to art directors. In there you would be one page of a few hundred at best. And you might be restricted to North America.

Fast forward a few short years and my portfolio is viewable by anyone with an internet connection. I use my iPhone to show client my work either from the web or in a gallery I have on it. We get new technology every day and I think we get use to it just as quickly. But stepping back every so often, I am amazed at what we have now, compared to 5, 10, or 15 years ago. My first mobile phone was in the early 90s. It was hardwired in my truck. I think I paid about 25.00/month for 10 minutes of airtime per month. And you didn't want to see the cost of going over those minutes. A big clunky handset in the truck with a coil cord to the base. Sounds ridiculous, but it was only 15 years ago. BTW, where is my flying car?

Medusa

We continue our adventure through lesser known but favorite characters. Today we have Medusa, of Marvel Comics' Inhumans. This is done with ink, color pencil, and acrylic paint on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper. And she is going up on eBay tonight, for those interested.

Update: Auction link.

If all goes to plan, tomorrow: Catwoman! :)

Jennifer Mays - The Maze Agency

I did a great deal of work for Caliber Comics back in the 90s. It was a really cool time to be in comics in that we were all having fun. I mean, we were making comics, how cool is that? I got to work on some very cool titles at Caliber. I did Negative Burn, Dominique, Dead World (trading card), Apparition, War of the Worlds, Raven Chronicles, Mister X, and The Maze Agency for Caliber.

When I heard that Caliber was talking to creator Mike Barr about publishing Maze Agency, I was immediately let my editor James Pruett know I wanted it. Luckily, Mike liked my work enough to approve of me joining him. Mike provided me with some copies of Alan Davis's design work, Adam Hughes' design work for the series and a really cool script. I was a fan of the series before so I was excited to be working on it. Mike Barr great to work with. We had a few conversations on the phone and he was always professional and provided a welcome constructive critique. Good times. It was too short a run though. The last time I talked with Mike was when IDW published a 3-issue run of Maze a few years back, to wish him and the series the best. I still think it would make an outstanding TV series. I don't know why no one has picked it up. And if Mike Barr ever calls and says lets do Maze Agency again, I will be ready.

Thanks to Steven for the Jennifer Mays commission and for taking me down memory lane.

Convention News!

It's official, I will be a guest at this years FX INTERNATIONAL SHOW in Orlando. I will be in Creators Alley, but as of right now I do not know where my space will be. As we get closer, I will let everyone know. As always, I do start up a small sketch list ahead of time. It gives me something to do as soon as I sit down at the show. So if you are going to be attending the show, and would like a sketch from me, let me know.

Lana Lang - INSECT QUEEN!

My fondness for the Legion of Super-Heroes has been well established here. But I don't think I have mentioned how much I love the old Superboy comics. I have quite a collection of them. The oldest is Superboy #11 (Nov-Dec. 1950) which featured the second appearance of Lana Lang. And her first cover. The rest of the collection is a dozen or so misc. issues until #50, and then it's complete. A couple of Lana's best Insect Queen stories involved the Legion. The one where she became a Legion Reservist and the one where they battled Mordru are my favorites.

Insect Queen's origin is pretty silly by today's standards but still enjoyable. Lana helps an alien who in turn gave her a Bio-Ring that enables her to take the shape and abilities of any insect. The accessory every girl wants, right?. :) Now I know the above image doesn't have her mask on. Frankly, I don't like the mask and it covers her face too much. I mean really, who doesn't know about her Insect Queen identity? :)

This is done with ink, color pencil, and acrylic paint on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper. And she is going up on eBay tonight, for those interested.

On deck for tomorrow, a character I drew for a few issues way back when. A certain blonde ex-CIA, ex-poor little rich girl who owns an amazing detective agency. Was that too on the nose? :)

The Enchantress

This one was commissioned by Tim. I'm glad I took the time to do the Polaris piece on green paper as a test run because it took any guess work out of doing this one. With everything I am throwing on these pieces, I should just call it "mixed medium". This one has ink, color pencil, white acrylic paint, and Prismacolor marker 60% Cool Grey. Gets a bit wordy. But the paper is still the same 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper. Thanks Tim for the commissions!

I doubt anyone will be able to guess the character I am doing for tomorrow. :)

Polaris

Today we have Polaris, of X-Men fame. I decided to try out the green Canson paper with something other than the commission I will be doing tomorrow. Darker paper presents different challenges than the lighter paper does. Because almost everything I do starts light or white, and works to darks, thinking the other way is tricky. Still, it's not that big of a deal and this one came out okay. :)

This was done in ink, colored pencils and acrylic paint on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper. And she is going up on eBay tonight. :) If anyone is interested, she can be found here!

Have a good weekend!

Wonder Woman!

Today's Wonder Woman is brought to you by Jose. This is a commission that he requested, a Greek style Wonder Woman. At first I thought to draw her two dimensionally flat, like some ancient Greek vase art. But I don't think that is what he wanted. Thank you Jose for the commission. This is ink on 11" x 17" Canson Bristol Board.

The Scarlet Witch

Wanda is the subject for this commission for Tim. She was done in ink, and color pencil on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper. Anyone else wanting a commission can contact me by email. Also, my last Canson Cutie, Crystal ends in a couple of hours. Here is the link.

Thanks to Tim for this commission. This was a fun one.

Phantom Lady & Commissions

Today we have the finished Phantom Lady. She was going to be up on eBay tonight but I got an offer based on the preview yesterday. I got a few commission requests that I will be working on and spending more time on the Herculoids painting I am working on.

I am working on some jobs but with the waiting period still in effect for some bigger (time consuming) contract jobs, I will still be accepting a few commissions. I won't put up another sketch auction but I will price them the same.

Prices are:

60.00 (shipping included) for single character inks on 11"x17" Bristol Board.

85.00 (shipping included) for a single character mixed media on 11"x 17" Canson Color Paper.

Painted commissions are priced individually.

International shipping will be more. Just check with me.

Enough of that stuff. Anyone else enjoying the longer daylight in the evenings? I sure am. I think tonight might be time for a trip to the beach when Deena gets home from work. :)

Mixed bag day

Busy day working on a variety of projects. I worked on some logo designs for a client, and started inking the artwork below. This is just a small area of the final art. More about it when I finish it. But here is a size to think about: The final art will be 5' wide x 2' tall. Big art. 

Also started another Canson Cutie. Any guesses as to who she is? She will be done tomorrow. I've had a few people ask about commissioning one of these pieces on color paper with ink and color pencil. And I have taken a couple already. If anyone is interested in getting one done, just shoot me an email for the pricing details.

Crystal! (Please don't call her Inhuman)

9:30pm Eastern Standard Time, did anyone think I would miss today? :)

Here is another Canson Cutie. I really don't know much about Crystal but I do like her design. The hair band works for me for some reason. She was done in ink, color pencil on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes Paper.

And she is eBay bound as I type this. :) I hope everyone had a good weekend!

Saturday morning with Gwen Stacy

Today I present another in the series of color paper pin-ups I have been doing lately. This one is Gwen Stacy. She was the first love of Peter Parker and she met a tragic end. Gwen is still a fan favorite to this day probably because of it. This piece is ink and color pencil on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes paper.

I will be posting her on eBay tonight. I do have four other auctions for those that might be interested. You can find them all here: Gene's auctions 

Have a good weekend everyone!

Power Girl

Power Girl done in ink and color pencil on 11" x 17" Canson Mi-Teintes paper. The color of the paper is listed as sky blue, but it is more of a blue-gray tint. She is another one destined for eBay tonight. Okay, back to work. :)

Charcoal Paper Beauties

Things are a bit slower than I would like around here. If anyone has followed my Tweets on Twitter, they will see I have been dealing with my usual bouts of insomnia again. My problem is I can't shut my brain down to get some sleep. Add a little bit of worrying and that makes the sandman stay far away.

With so little work and so many hours in the night, I bounced around from art board to art board while listening to the various podcasts I subscribe to. First there was MacBreak Weekly. More tech with Tekzilla. An episode of Diggnation. The Battlestar Galactica Podcast (featuring series creator Ron Moore providing commentary on the previous aired episode), and lastly, two episodes of No Agenda with Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak. All keeping me company until 5am.

I finally played with a PITT Artist Pen BIG Brush I bought about a month ago. This is an oversized version of the brush pens you have probably seen artists use for convention sketches. I photographed it on a piece of art to give it scale. It is actually very easy to use and I got some great lines out of it.

Both the Tigra and Black Canary below were done with this pen. I did use some smaller Micros (05 & 08) for some of the details like Tigra's stripes.

I went in with color pencils and color ink for an extra kick. Both were done on 11" x 17" B&R Pastel & Charcoal Paper. And both will join Supergirl on eBay tonight. :)

Supergirl!

It had been too long since I have painted the Maid of Might, so this is what we have today. I took pictures along the way to show the process again. Nothing earth-shattering but it still might be interesting to some. The final image is acrylic on 11" x 17" Strathmore Cold Press Watercolor Paper. I will be putting her up on eBay tonight for those that might be interested. My seller name is Gene_Gonzales. I'll put a link to her tomorrow.

In other news, I am starting to put together my newest sketchbook for conventions. I am hoping to have it ready for the FX International Show in April. Which means I have to put this together quick. This time it will not be perfect bound like the first two, BUT it will be in full color! Full color cover and interiors! I am planning on it being 48 pages, but that may increase. More on this later.

You're the devil in disguise...

Got a new sketchbook yesterday and today I got to use it. I love a new sketchbook. This devil girl was done using Col-Erase pencils and some Staedtler fineliner pens for details. After scanning her I started playing with the background color in Photoshop. Though this devil girl is too "realistic" for what I want as an end product, I liked her enough to share.

Now thanks to the title of this post I have Elvis Presley singing in my head. :)

Speedy

Here is a sketch I did today for Shane in his Teen Titans sketchbook. He already has a few killer pieces by Darryl Banks, Bob McLeod, and Kelly Yates. Tough group to follow! This is done in ink and graphite in an 11" x  14" Canson sketchbook.

Restaurant Art

I love going to a restaurant that has butcher paper over the table. We went to a great restaurant in town this evening called the Bone Fish Grill. When I saw the tables I borrowed a pencil from the hostess and she brought me some crayons later. Fun was had. Since we were in a seafood restaurant, I went with a mermaid sketch. Don't know what that says about me. :) And sorry for the lousy digital photo. I am actually surprised it came out this good with the low light conditions and the fact that the camera in my iPhone isn't that good and has no flash.

The con was fun yesterday. Got to meet up with John Beatty, Craig Zablo, Casey Jones, Kelly Yates, Joe Pekar and a bunch of others. Picked up a sketchbook from Shane to do a Speedy (Roy Harper) sketch for him. I really must set up next year. I am planning on setting up for the two day show later this year. All in all we had a good time.