Capleton

A quick painting of the Reggae Artist Capleton.

 Here is a quick Bio for those of you who don't know who he is...

http://www.last.fm/music/Capleton?ac=capleton

John Carpenter's The Thing

Another addition to the John Carpenter theme...
The Thing is one of my all time faves...so I thought that I would do a quick paint for practice.

****update...I realized that the values were really bad and it make the picture look like s*it. So I went back and reworked them a bit.

Mega Man Tribute

Well, the deadline for the Mega Man tribute book submission has come and gone, and I am pretty sure that I didn't win. No worries,, I was just glad to be able to contribute. This is not the final entry, I actually colored the final submission, but that was before I got any tips on adding color to the things that I drew...(it was pretty bad). Anyway, I just wanted to share the submission..now that I have a little bit more knowledge about the color process, I might go back and color this one when I have some time. We'll see...

Darkseid Likes Flowers

More color practice...

Snake Plissken

For color practice..

John Carpenter's They Live

John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors. I did a series of paintings where I painted all of his movie posters. Halloween, Escape from New york, etc. etc. This was the only one that I did not do. Now I can say that I did all my faves! Not 100% as accurate as the original, but as close as I could get..

Here is the original:

RoboCop!

Using the same process as the skater, I also worked up a more detailed drawing of Robocop (I LOVE Robo!)...so to honor the new Robocop statue that they are proposing to build in Detroit..here is that work up as well. The process here is basically the same, you just have to take more time when selecting the areas of shadow. Because of this..it takes even longer..but I think that the result looks better here...

I started with a drawing...scanned it, and followed the same process as the skater. The result is a clean drawing ready for coloring. (above)

Then add flat colors (above)

Then use Hue/Saturation to adjust the values (above)

Then add hilights..(above)

...and Voila..there is a new sherrif in town!

Skater Color Rework..

Normally I like to do a post a week...and I have fallen off of this schedule. I mainly realized that I was starting to post a lot of crap for the sake of posting. I have also begun a Photoshop class in coloring and digital painting, which has so dramatically improved my working knowledge of Photoshop and how to use it to color. Although the tools are not exactly as user friendly as Painter..it renders pretty beautifully if you know how to use it.
 I redid a drawing and decided to color it using Photoshop...

Basically the process starts with a sketch or drawing. What I was missing before was to sharpen the drawing using the unsharp mask tool, and to then also adjust the blacks and the whites in the layers adjustment settings. This removes the paper grain that is usually picked up in scanning. (above)

The next step is to begin to block in the colors. This part takes soooo long....you are basically using the magic wand tool to select areas in the drawing. I learned here that the magic wand is an unforgiving tool. With the combination of the magic want tool and the paintbucket, you have a basic layer of color laid down. (above)

Then using the Hue/Saturation menu options and the magic wand tool (again), you then move on to adjusting the color values so that they compliment each other. Looks much better here... (above)

Then you copy the layer once you have the colors the way you want them, and start to apply the brush values to make it look like a painting. Using the flat layer as a basis, you use lighter and darker color of the same value and add shadows and hilights. (above)

Just about done here...I then added ambient sunlight in the background so that it has the effect of the sun going down. Looks more convincing here.. (above)

There are a couple of other things that I could to with some trick brushes in Painter...but for the most part this is good to go! Woo Hoo!

The Afro American

The "Afro American" not my character...quick post for color practice..figured that I should post some art on my art blog...

Manny the Bot!

 

So after going with "Manny the Robot" for a while...I was talking to someone and they said "hey...I saw your Manny the Bot" pages...which immediately sounded better than Manny the Robot...
It has a ring to it...and with that I proceeded to slap a cover on this bad boy!

I think that this is the final cover, I still have some time to make any changes, but since it's my first comic, I figured that I didn't want to try and get too crazy with it.
So here it is! Now on to promotion!