Sketchbook 006

Some figures after de la Fuente.

Sketchbook 004 and 005

The figures on the left of page 5 are after Leopold Sanchez.

Heroes Con tomorrow!

Sketchbook 003

Secret Invasion

Here's a secret: this Secret Invasion Sketch Cover is on eBay right now. If you're interested, go have a look here.

Sketchbook 002

Sketchbook 001

I've been meaning to do this for a while, so here it goes. I've finally started actually sketching on a (semi) daily basis in my little tiny sketchbook. Whenever I manage to get a couple of pages filled up I'll be inflicting them on you here. Bear in mind that I may spend less than 5 minutes at a time drawing in this thing, so it could be a while before I actually fill up two pages. Also, as today's post shows, I may get the urge to do some color experiments after they get scanned in.

All of this is due mainly to the inspiration of guys like Dylan Teague and Edward Kinsella (among others), who do some amazing sketchbook pages. Plus, I'm hoping I can snap myself out of the artistic rut I've been in.

By the way, when you click on thumbnail above, the image you'll see is the actual size of the sketchbook.

Post Convention Hangover

I had honestly intended to update the blog (complete with pictures and everything) while on the road to Toronto and New York over the past two weeks, but I just never found the time. We had a great time at both shows and everything went off without a hitch (if you don't count the delay leaving NY Sunday night to keep the skies clear for the Pope).

I won't be giving a blow by blow account of our trip, but I do want to thank everyone who came by my table at both shows - and I want to especially thank the following people - Spencer Beck, Jay Williams, Aman Gupta, Tiziano De Santis, Ty Buttars, Kevin Boyd, and of course Matt Mezick for the awesome backstage tour of Phantom of the Opera.

Here's a few of the sketches that were done at one show or the other.

Batman

Rejected Cover Sketches: Thor 83

Back in 2004 when I returned to Marvel, one of my first assignments was to do covers for Oeming and DiVito's six issue run on Thor. This sketch was for issue 83, which quite obviously featured a few guest stars - Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk, who are seen posing politely behind the star of the book, Thor himself. Sadly, It was later decided that Hulk wouldn't be appearing in this issue after all. The cover sketch wasn't technically rejected, I was just told I needed to remove Hulk, since he was previously engaged and would be unable to attend the festivities in Thor #83. Since this composition clearly wouldn't work without Hulk's massive frame in the background tying everything together, I scrapped it and started over. Here's the final version - colored by Laura Martin:

Captain America: Fallen Son Sketch Covers

Two Fallen Son sketch covers I did that eventually found their way to the magical land of eBay.These were both drawn with one of those PITT brush pens (and a little bit of prismacolor pencil). Surpisingly, the cardstock cover was actually a pretty decent drawing surface. I've got a few more of these laying around here somewhere that I'll post eventually.

Hellboy!

Yeah, I know...just what the world needs - another blog. Well, needed or not, here it is. I'll be using this blog to post sketches, paintings, experiments, thumbnails, layouts, unpublished art and anything else I feel compelled to inflict upon anyone unlucky enough to stumble onto this page. I'll try to update it fairly often with whatever I happen to be working on, and you can relax - my rambling comments probably won't be nearly as long as they are in this first post.

To kick it off, here's a little Hellboy sketch I did sometime last year and recently decided to paint. It was done with markers and inkwash and then scanned into Photoshop to be subjected to my "coloring". Despite the fact that the good folks at Marvel actually allow me to do painted covers for Captain America, I'm a real novice at painting. Plus, I've only been doing color work in Photoshop for a little over a year, so I consider myself a beginner not only as a painter, but as a digital artist. These little speedpaints (which I define as 2 hours or less) are a good way to experiment and learn - and hopefully eventually bring something new to the published work.