Marker-made Mary Marvel

I need to wake up this sleepy blog, so here's another one of the 9"x12" marker commissions I take on occasionally. This one is from a while back, but I don't think I posted it here. At least, I hope not. Pretty sad to have a blog in reruns.
I just finished a fairly large painting which I will be posting next, along with some process stuff, so please stay tuned.

I'm also finalizing my plans for San Diego Comic Con, July 17-21, which is creeping up fast. I'll post the info soon.

I hope everyone is doing well out there.

Psi-Judge Anderson commission

Here is a commission I painted a couple of months ago of Psi-Judge Anderson (with Judge Death in the background) from the 2000 AD Judge Dredd comics. The original measures about 12"x18" and is painted in gouache. 

Post-Wondercon post

 

Thank you to everyone who stopped by my table at the big show. I had a wonderful time talking art with so many enthusiastic fans of comics and all things fantastic. An extra thanks to those of you who purchased prints, books, or original art. Your support means the world to me.

Speaking of original art, above is a sampling of the commissions I delivered at the convention. All of them were drawn on 10"x14" watercolor paper in pigmented ink.

Sketch of a Ziegfeld girl with flowers

LINE convention booklet on sale now!

Good news for the folks who were looking to pick up my convention booklet of line art but couldn't make it to a show- it's on sale now in my shop. Just click the link in the sidebar to order your copy. Thanks!

Vampirella

Here's another gouache-painted commission I finished a month or two ago. I decided to paint out most of the line art and allow this to be more of a painting than a colored drawing, the latter of which I seem to lean toward instinctively.

Vampirella is probably a little more cheesecake than I usually do, but Frazetta painted her, so that makes it okay. The original measured somewhere around 12" x 18", I think.

Under Ivy's Spell

Thanks to everyone who made the New York Comic Con a great show. I'm just now getting back into the swing of things at home and will be following up with everybody who has contacted me about books and commissions.

Speaking of commissions, at left is a painted commission I completed recently. Nearly all of my favorite artists worked traditionally, so I sometimes wonder why I am drawn to digital color so much in my own work. Of course, after screwing up something in gouache for the millionth time with no cmd+z to lean on, I don't wonder so much.

More soon.

The Many Moods of Oa

Oa is the home planet of the Guardians, little blue folks with big heads and red robes who float around screwing up the universe and then send out Green Lanterns to fix it or make it worse or something. Here is what I came up with in Photoshop for their central location.

One major problem from an art direction perspective, with GLAS and anything Green Lantern in general, is the overabundance of green. It can be difficult to come up with nice color palettes when everybody and everything in the scene is glowing green. Matters were not made better with the introduction of Red Lanterns, as we now had the world's weirdest Christmas to deal with.

Anyway, I tried a few things with Oa. Some were just different times of day, others were different takes on the palette. I think we went with the greenest one.

    All images © Warner Brothers Animation

GLAS Pitch Posters

Drawing by Bruce Timm - Color by me   ©Warner Brothers Animation

 One of my first jobs on Green Lantern Animated Series was to help pitch the concept to the network. I was asked to create some artwork to use as posters in the pitch meeting. It started with a sketch Bruce Timm did in a Sharpie marker, which I then colored in Photoshop (image above).

 

©Warner Brothers Animation

I then worked up a few concepts to illustrate the scope of the proposed series. I tried to keep it loose in an attempt to match BT's original sketch- not an easy thing for me to do.

©Warner Brothers Animation

Throughout the process, I had regular notes from Bruce to help me capture the feel he was looking for. Bruce has an amazing collection of classic sci-fi pulp book covers, and we often referred to that stuff for the somewhat retro feel we were going for. We would later find out how hard it is to stop CG folks from over-rendering the hell out of stuff and piling on obnoxious textures, something that is decidedly not retro.

©Warner Brothers Animation

The posters served their purpose and the show was greenlit. We then started down the long road to actually designing everything in CG, a medium most of the crew wasn't overly fond of. My journey into madness had begun... 

Green Lantern Animated concept: Rigel Ruins

©Warner Brothers Animation

Here's a BG concept from my time as the lead designer on the Green Lantern Animated Series at Warner Brothers back in 2009/2010. I produced so much stuff it is all a blur, everything from characters to BG's to full-on CG models in ZBrush (something I had to learn on the job). It was a crazy time. I haven't looked at this stuff since I produced it, but I'm cool with a lot of it now, so I figured I'd share a few things.

I plan on expanding my galleries a bit to include more of my studio work now that most of the productions I worked on have aired. We'll see how many gems I can unearth from a pretty big pile of dirt.

It's all part of a "spring cleaning" of sorts to get any worthwhile old stuff out there and out of the way.

More soon...

Wolf

A little wolf sketch just for fun. I might draw more animals.

NYCC, Line book update, and a Dejah Thoris

Click for full image - WARNING: contains delightful nudity

Hello again, folks, and sorry it has been a while. I've been busy working on lots of stuff, none of which I am going to tell you about. Ha!

I will be attending the NEW YORK COMIC CON, October 11-14!  You'll find me sitting in Artist Alley as usual, and everybody knows that's where all the action is. As soon as I have my table number, I'll post it here. I don't know if I will be taking any commissions, but I will also post those details if I decide to.

I have been getting quite a few e-mails about the "Line" book I did for SDCC 2012. My apologies to the folks I haven't gotten back to yet. Here's the scoop: I had a small stack leftover from the show, but I still need to go through and count up what is spoken for and what I have left. As soon as I do that, I will post any remainders up here to purchase. I'll try to get to it soon.

Speaking of the Line book, posted here is a drawing in the book from a commission I painted a little while ago. This is the preliminary pencil drawing.

Thanks for stopping by.

Silk Spectre Thumbs

I have tons and tons of thumbnails for many of the covers I have done over the years. They almost always start as very small (2 or 3 inches tall) sketches in my sketchbook or on loose bond paper. I often scan them and add some color in Photoshop to help sell the concept, but sometimes I just send in sketchy pencils, as in these thumbs for the Silk Spectre cover I did recently.

This collection of 8 poses is what I sent to DC to pick from, and we wound up with number 7 as the first choice, with 8 as an alternate if I preferred. I stuck with 7 and turned in the finished cover a few days later.