Marvel Monday [slash] Music Monday

Around some parts of the web it's Marvel Monday an activity that I've been meaning to take part in for quite some time. So here's a quick Marvel Girl drawing (probably the best of Jean Grey's costume decisions)



Bonus here's something that I've did a while ago but forgot about until someone reminded me. I'm taking part in this project called the nomadic playlist (a project I happen to be holding up at the moment with my next addition cause I'm lame), it's a traveling sketchbook and thumb drive where a song is illustrated in the sketchbook and added to the thumb drive. This is my page for Mount Eerie's Voice in Headphones and I will update with my next one once I stop being lame.

Happy Wonder Woman Day

So apparently in some places that are significantly cooler than where I currently am (namely Portland Oregon and Flemington New Jersey) it Wonder Woman Day. They're having some great events to benefit some really good charities and you can find out some more information here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23440. I wish I would have found out about this sooner so I could have gotten involved somehow, maybe next year. Anyways I was inspired to paint my own wonder woman so here that is:

What a beautiful face I have found in this place.

Okay so I've been trying to wrap up the work for my course for the past few weeks and while working on that realized that I needed one more painting for the exhibition because:
1. Some of the earlier ones weren't as strong
and
2. May as well because I had the time.
Anyways here the final piece of work going towards my masters degree. This is one of the loosely based on a song type illustrations, more specifically for Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", except less plane and sea and more spaceship and cosmos. I've been obsessed with the song forever, way to many memories and such come along with it, and I'm kind of surprised I hadn't thought of using it sooner. Also was one of the biggest contributors to my picking up the ukulele (long story).
So I'll be constructing/installing the exhibition for the next week or so and then it runs from the 18th-28th (full details below). So if you happen to be in Brighton or somewhere in the UK and want a holiday, or more impressively somewhere else in the world and want an even bigger holiday you should show up.

Rounded a corner and rounded corners.

Okay so I'm settled back in the UK for a while as I finish up my MA and after a couple of moves I'm finally stationary enough that I've been able to get back to work. So here's a new painting that I've done over the last few days.
I'm still having some trouble getting the colors to reproduce digitally so I may need to play around with it a bit more.

It's no secret to people who know me that I'm a fan of rounded corners, I was sitting at my desk last night and had this moment of I wonder what my stuff would look like with rounded corners thus this happened:

I think that I might actually prefer it with the rounded corners and may try adding it to some other things that I've done.

New Minicomic

Here's a minicomic I did a week or so ago for an mass drawing exchange and I thought that I post it here to share as well. It ends up being 8 pages and was accordion bound so it could be easily folded out. Looking at it now I think I really like the idea but would like it to be longer and not quite as rushed so I'm hoping to have time to redo/improve it sometime.

The Inhumans In Love

So I had a few down days earlier this week while I was waiting for a end of term review and decided to do something for fun. I've had this idea lately of not especially heroic super hero moments. So in this case kind of a timid love things going on with Black Bolt and Medusa. For those who are not especially familiar with the characters the important bit to know is that Black Bolt doesn't speak because his voice makes everything explode and tends to level cities and such. I think I kind of love second tier superheroes like a whole bunch, maybe I can do some Alpha Flight stuff at some point what with my childhood love of that premier Canadian super group.

Anyways I leave for my visit back to the states of Thursday so posting may be sporadic for a bit again.

Graphic Novel First Look

Okay so I've been promising a peek at the graphic novel I'm working on for a while so now that it's more or less in it's final stages (hopefully) I've decided to throw a few spreads up here. Trying to pick out stuff that doesn't ruin the story but is still interesting. Also leaving out all the text blocks and text for now even though it's basically taken care of, basically if there's a large white space imagine that there's text there. Expect a few more of these type's of post in the near-ish future as I continue to feel like sharing. Note these won't necessarily be posted in any particular order until I do a big here a final pdf type post sometime in the future.

Valkyrie

Hey there, well I finished the painting for my book last night and all that's left is to figure out a cover, scan everything and the graphic design and type forever. I'm hoping to get all the pages scanned at some point this week so I may throw a few preview pages up here at some point.

In the meantime here's something that I did last week that I just got around to editing for the web. I needed a break from the book so I took a day off to just work on something else and had this sketched out from a little bit ago. Something funny happened to the background color when it was scanned that I can't seem to fix so just imagine it more magenta-y. So now that my life isn't as consumed with my absurd book-page-finishing schedule hopefully the updates can be a bit more frequent, as I'm sure I'll need a fair amount of breaks from the editing and layout processes.

Oh and also t minus 26 days until my US visit/vacation/temporary reprieve.

Houndstooth is really hard.

Here is as promised one of those sporadic postings that I had promised a bit ago so that you know that I haven't fallen down a well or something. This was done for an exhibition which ultimately fell through, but at least I managed to get a piece I liked out of it.

There hasn't been much time for anything else new as of late as I am in the midst of my book and it's absurd self imposed deadline. Basically right now it amounts to 2 finished fully painted pages a day for the next what feel like forever so that I can have most of the artwork done before my visit back to the US. Maybe I'm post a few teasers here and there as I start to scan some of it. I feel like I should have some sort of sign off phrase for these post.

I don't even like Captain America...

So I managed to finish that paper surprisingly early and have a couple of down days since it doesn't make sense to work on my thesis work until I have the meeting with my adviser on Thursday, anyways long story short here's something new that was just for fun and has no real relation to anything else I'm doing.

I've never really been one to draw superheroes (with the exception of those occasional project rooftop submissions last summer) but I seem to have be reading a bunch of superhero books lately and was introduced to a couple of really great new animated show that are gorgeous (spectacular spider from the equally spectacular Sean Galloway and batman the brave and the bold, go watch them now they're really pretty and fun). I'm not sure why I choose Captain America, especially since he's always been one of my least favorites, usually him and superman pretty much top my list. I have to admit that I didn't really know any Captain America villains so I just used the wonderful all purpose henchmen of HYDRA. Oh and since there were way to many dudes I also put in Madame Hyrda, who I only know about because she's in a episode of X-men Evolution which I really like, shut up it's awesome. As always feedback is awesome.

Littliest Bird finish

Here's the finish to this one in all it's washed out blogger glory, but that seems to be a problem for everyone so I'm not going to worry about it. If anyone has any thoughts they are as always appreciated. I think I may take a bit of a break from these for right now and focus on creating an overarching narrative of some sort rather than these one shots, so expect sporadic posting for a bit again.

Maple Leaves finish... finally

Okay so here's the finish that I promised over a week ago, apparently I did manage to get distracted. And by distracted I mean started the painting over because I didn't like the colors followed by a quick-ish freelance piece for the Texas Observer (I'll post it sometime after the issue comes out). Maybe I need to jinx myself more often, I could get used to a little more of this sort of distraction, the paying freelance kind not so much the having to restart midway through bit. Anyways what you think people of the internet? Thanks and hopefully more soon.

They are zombies!... Finish

Here's the latest. There are bits of this I'm really excited about, I like the really minimal line work and am trying to figure out the balance between this and the really pattern-y stuff like the last painting. I've also recently discovered mixing a bit of concentrated watercolor in with the gouache which really makes the colors pop, though you can't really tell in the scan on this one the pink is a bit brighter than it appears on screen (and even worse once publish to the web, anybody have any suggestion on how keep images from being washed out when put up here?). General thoughts/feedback/etc? Thanks everyone and expect more soon.

EDIT: Thanks to Mark and Justin for their help with the color problems, still needs a little tweaking but a vast improvement.

They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!

Here's the latest sketch this one's for "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!" by Sufjan Stevens, this may have just been an excuse to draw zombies. You know the drill final to come if it doesn't suck.

You and I finish

Here's the final for that sketch I put up a few days ago, still trying to get a hang of this painting business but I think there's some improvement here. Mostly just trying to get this whole using a brush for line work thing. I'm still at the point where I like the sketches more than the finals but I'm going to get the hang of this if it kills me. As always feedback is really appreciated and more to come soon.

Static Electricity finish

As promised here the finish for that sketch I posted a few days ago, turned out alright I still have a lot of work to do on this whole painting thing. Mostly I'm having trouble getting the nice sharp lines of a pencil with brush. Feedback would be much appreciated.

1/16 Skecthbook Scans

A bit of new sketchbook stuff, been playing with gouache lately more to come.

first sketchdump of the new year part 2

and part 2, mostly I've been just doing lots of exploration hence the vaguely schizophrenic appearance of the work as of late

first sketchdump of the new year

I decided to scan my sketchbook from over the holiday now that I have access to a scanner again. I'm going to go ahead and split this into 2 post because there's a fair bit of stuff.

stag

One more from the sketchbook.