Society Pages: Mr. Terrific

Okay, I was going to show off my Dr. Mid-Nite sketch first, but Mr. Terrific here didn’t turn out so well, so I kind of want to get him out of the way. Wow, this one went wrong. I re-drew almost everything except for the torso a number of times and I probably should have re-drawn that as well. He’s kind of lopsided and one hand is bigger than the other. Ugh.

Here’s the awesome Johnson original:

Then my lumpy, lopsided pre-colored verision:

And the final, colored piece, yeesh:

Haha, the finished product definitely looks like the kind of thing I would have drawn when I was about 10. Oh man…

Society Pages: Dr. Fate

I was talking to my buddies Ben
and Rickey about one of their many train rides in to their big time city jobs. They had been talking about picking a superhero team and drawing that team’s members one by one. They told me about the idea, so I piped up that I wanted to draw my favorite team, the JSA. For more on their sketches, keep an eye out on their respective blogs.

Seeing as how I’m not much of an artist, I must resort to looking at an existing image and drawing it out. Basically copying it, but not tracing. I actually started on a Dr. Mid-Nite that I’m pretty happy with, but I left it at work and haven’t had a chance to finish coloring it. Well, tonight Em and I were at Target and I picked up a 50 pack of Crayola Super Tip Washable Markers so I could really show off the JSA’s vibrant costumes (there’s even 12 Silly Scents markers!). Well, I was pretty excited about my new markers (like I used to get as a kid when I got a brand new box of crayons) so I decided to give another JSAer the Dietsch treatment. Dr. Fate won the spot and here it is, first the image I copied, then the black and white and finally the colored version.

For what it’s worth, I start off with a pencil, sketching out the details and even where the shadows fall. Then I go over and outline things with a thin Sharpie. After that I fill in the shadows with a thicker black Sharpie.

After finishing the outlines and erasing any leftover pencil marks, it’s time to color. Crayola markers are a bit light and don’t saturate the paper as well, but they’re cheap and I really like seeing the drawings in color. Black and white is cool, but I love seeing those basic colors come to life. If Sharpie made a full line of cheaper markers, I’d be all over that. Of course, the problem would be the headaches. At least with the Crayola’s I’m guaranteed not to get a headache.

With the drawing over all, I skipped the cool hand effect which removes the light source. Even so, I still kept the shadows, but ditched the light spots in the original. I think this one came out pretty well. Em helped give me a second pair of eyes which helped. I’ve still got no idea what I’m doing and should definitely study anatomy or at least get a super poseable action figure that I can use as an artist model. Heck I could even use one of those How To Draw books, wonder where I could get one of those…

Halloween Scene: Leatherface and Michael Myers Drawings (2008)

As I mentioned before, I’ve been having some fun drawing lately. This time I wanted to do some larger pieces based on classic images of my favorite slashers. Below you’ll find the original and my direct (though nowhere near as good copies). One of these days I’ll stop doing these drawings on the back of scrap paper so you won’t see the text through the white parts.

I’ll start with the one I’m not as happy with.

LEATHERFACE

Unlike the Michael Myers drawing below, I decided not to do the big time Sharpie fill-ins (mostly because they made me kind of dizzy). This was the first time I ever drew a chainsaw, a dude holding one or a mask made out of human flesh. I think it looks okay, but still cartoony. Ah well, it was fun.

MICHAEL MYERS

I had a LOT of fun drawing this one and like I said above, got a bit dizzy with all the Sharpie blackening. There’s definitely some parts where I didn’t get the original down all the way (the placement of the knife, etc), but I think it captures the thing pretty well in black and white. I wish I had a blue marker that wouldn’t look like a fourth grade art project. Those shadows and the hair sure can be hard to draw. But I’m starting to finally get hands. I think. I guess we’ll see.

Enjoy!

Halloween Scene: Posters!

I am not a good artist. That has to be said right off the bat. It’s something that I’ve known for a long time, relegating my artwork mostly to the margins of my note books throughout school. But recently, I’ve rediscovered how much fun it can be to just draw something. Maybe I’ll even post my “100 Ways To Kill The Hulk” strips I’ve been working on over the past few weeks. I’ve got five int he bank.

Anyway, I’ve been talking to a lot of my buddies lately about drawing and decided to just keep up with it and have some fun. Why not? So, in the spirit of fun and Halloween, I decided to take a crack at interpreting the posts of the scary movies I’ve been watching over the past week. Hopefully I’ll keep up with this practice because, like I said, it’s fun.

Below you’ll find the original followed by my drawing and some commentary. Click for a larger view.

All four drawings on the page. I forgot to set the flash, but I liked the orange tint this picture ended up with. Very Halloweeny.

HALLOWEEN

What really struck me about this poster that I hadn’t really noticed before is how the pumpkin mimicks the hand holding the knife. I’m not so good with hands and even worse with fingers, but this one was pretty fun. Not a bad way to start off.

SUSPIRIA

This one’s my favorite of the group, which is funny because it’s the movie I understood the least (though drinking during it probably wasn’t a great idea, nor was blogging at the time). I like this one because there’s lots of different elements going on, from the house to the spirial to the different heads to the hair.

HALLOWEEN II

Hmm. Not the easiest poster to draw, especially with my negative amount of knowledge when it comes to anatomy or bone structure. Again, drawing this poster made me appreciate it even more. The skull in the pumpkin motif is really cool and they even get the details down to the teeth and the eye sockets, both of which I had trouble drawing.

THE RUINS

I like how the neck and mouth turned out on this Ruins poster, but I wasn’t able to really portray the vines and plants covering everything. I also wish I hadn’t messed with the background behind her head, but what can you do?

Hopefully I’ll get to Serial Mom (though I also might skip that one, not sure yet), Freaks which I watched tonight and Halloween 3: Season of the Witch which I’m watching as I type.