Spider-man

Very quick sketch in Photoshop-

Dave Stevens (1955-2008)

Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens passed away earlier this week.

I never met Dave, and I don't have any funny or interesting stories to tell about him, but I loved Rocketeer. I loved the pulp inspired sensibilities and the ultra cool avaitor's outfit topped off with an Art Deco inspired streamlined helmet. I loved the criminally underrated movie that had a perfect cast. I loved the image of the Rocketeer atop the observatory with a Mauser in his hand (that he'd just taken from a KO'd Nazi naturally), American flag waving behind him. It felt to me like a character that had been around for decades, right along with the Phantom, the Shadow, Tarzan, and the Lone Ranger - an instant classic.

It's quite a tribute to Dave Stevens' talent that a character who only appeared in a handful of comics (five? six?) had such an impact, at least among comics fans. I know the general public probably couldn't pick the Rocketeer out of a line up, but he endures as an icon in the comics universe as far as I'm concerned. Even as I type this I can see the 3" high Rocketeer figure that has stood on one of my bookshelves the last 15 or so years - standing guard with his hands on his hips.

Click here to read a nice remembrance of Dave.

Swamp Monster Thing Man

Another old speedpaint, slightly updated.

You Say You Want A Revolution...

Portrait

Just goofing around again in Photoshop, trying to get the hang of this "painting" thing -

Civil War Soldier

Just a quick value study to try out a new rake brush I made in Photoshop. I doubt I'll take this any further, but if I do I'll post the finished product here.

Female Orc

Another older speedpaint - this time it's a female Orc warrior that was done for a weekly contest on a concept art website.

Soldier

So here I am, looking through some older speedpaints, and I realize how much I enjoy the look of the looser strokes I was using when I didn't really care about the outcome, and I knew nobody would be seeing the end product (unless I wanted them to). Part of the reason for this look is that I was teaching myself how to paint in Photoshop and wasn't bothering to noodle in the details - just focusing on the broad strokes and learning how the brushes behave. I don't necessarily dislike the tighter rendering I've used on the Captain America covers, but I really want to use a more painterly style eventually. We'll see if it happens.

For the record, this was done from reference sometime last year.

Full Circle

As a follow-up to my last entry, which featured the oldest surviving artwork from my childhood (both of which just happened to be drawings of Spider-Man), here's my most recent version of Spidey - a speedpaint from sometime late last year. Unfortunately, there's some pixelation of this image, but I couldn't find a higher resolution version.

By the way - yes, I changed the layout of the blog again. I'm still trying to find a template I like until I learn how to build my own.

Armored Warrior

Nothing original here - in content or composition. This is an old speedpaint that I reworked with some new brushes. Something occurred to me while working on this - if I had done this as a pencil drawing first, I would never have ended up with the armor as it appears here. By going straight in with color and using light to define planes spontaneously, you can get some unexpected results. The Frazetta influence is obviously quite strong here. I wasn't consciously emulating him, but Frazetta has cast a shadow so long and pervasive that virtually every fantasy painting seems to be informed in some way by his work. After I finished some color adjustments, I was certain that this was very derivative of a specific Conan painting, and sure enough, a quick search proved me right -




Like I said, nothing original here.

Viking Barbarian

This morning's speedpaint is some sort of Viking barbarian. There's a bit of a cartoonish element about this one that I kind of like, but there was no real thought put into it at all. Still, I definitely wasn't going for realism here. This was done in about 20 - 30 minutes in Photoshop 7.

Battle Angel

Another recent speedpaint based (very loosely) on the Battle Angel Alita Manga. I threw in the U.S. Army star as a design element. Incidentally, IMDB reports that James Cameron is slated to direct a Battle Angel movie scheduled for a 2009 release. Check it for yourself here, and a 2005 interview with Cameron about it here.

Centurion

I've decided to post a few recent speedpaints that I've previously shown anonymously on another digital art site. While trying to teach myself digital painting, I wanted critiques that wouldn't be colored by the fact that I'm an employed artist. First up is a Roman Centurion, with and without background.

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.