Cross-Hatch Dog

Here's a bit of commercial art I did. The client for this was the Frye Corporation. They requested an illustrated image for their web site. They originally had a photo version of this but decided that they wanted it to look hand drawn. 

I'd been itching to experiment with some cross-hatching ala Franklin Booth, Alfredo Alcala and Rudy Nebres. Obviously, I'm not comparing myself to those masters (not even close) but those are the guys I had in mind when working on the idea. 

Unfortunately, my office/studio has become more of a storage room since we moved so I didn't have the room to use real pens or brushes (ie, no place for me to use ink that the kids couldn't reach). So I ended up simply drawing all of the line work using Sketchbook Pro 2011. There's no comparison to the real thing but it got the job done.


There was a color version but I'm not crazy about how that turned out. Here are a couple of grayscale versions along with a lineart-only version. 

Grays/Textures

Grayscale

Lineart Only

GREEN .rough sketch.

Just for the hell of it, here's a rough of what I'm gonna do next. It was inspired by my son, who this morning said, "Daddy, draw me green super hero." Now, keep in mind that he's only TWO years old!

No idea where he got that idea from but I got stuck on which green super-hero to draw, so I decided on the only 2 I could think of at that moment. Still not sure which Green Lantern is about to get his skull popped like a pimple...

Beware His Light!

When I hit a wall (ie. can't draw or figure out what to draw) I like to color or ink over some of my friends' sketches or unfinished work. One of my closest friends, Aris Iliopoulos, has a particular 'fun-ness' to his art that quickly becomes contagious. For as long as I've known him (almost 20 years!!!) he's always been sketching, whether it was on drawing paper, looseleaf or a good old-fashioned Diner napkin.

Here is a really rough sketch of his that I cleaned up and colored. I fixed some of his anatomy a bit too 'cause he's just &$^ing lazy sometimes.

Ah, I miss those Diner days! Here's to you, "Artie"!

Superman: E-Lo Style

My buddy Emilio Lopez did a cool redesign for Superman, inspired by DC Comics' upcoming 'reboot'. I liked it enough to do this sketch of Supes trying it on for size.

Emilio's original design can be seen here: LINK

Heh...

I don't have any new artwork to share but I came across this online somewhere. Hilarious.

SUPERMAN, MAN, man, man... (Color)

I whined like a child about this one BIG time on Facebook. Sheesh. While it's not nearly as bad as I felt at the time, it was still a lesson in frustration for me. I just couldn't get it to look the way I wanted. Luckily, my friend Emilio helped me patch it up and tie the whole image together otherwise I probably wouldn't have even posted it. Thanks, E-Lo!

Hopefully, I'll just improve with each image.

SUPERMAN, MAN, man, man...

My second image of DC's big trifecta. I wanted to do something that captured what I thought was the essence of the character. 

Colors are coming up next.