Commissions for September!

Its been crazy busy for me since I started my work on Star trek/Doctor Who: Assimilation2 so I've been unable to do many commissions. But I squeaked a few through this month. Here they are!

see this image in progress here
this image is available for auction until October. go bid here.

see this image in progress here

Golden Age Sandman

I'll be signing and sketching this weekend at the Wild Pig grand opening in Kenilworth, NJ!  Come by and say hi if you're in the area!.

Anyways the owner of Wild Pig and organiser of the event had asked for a commission. I've been extremely busy with Star Trek/Doctor Who pages lately and haven't really been doing commissions, but when he told me what he wanted, I jumped on it.

Golden Age Sandman!!

This is visually one of my favourite characters and he looks great in B&W.
I decided to do the whole thing in ink wash.

Materials:

This is everything I used.

mechanical pencil. gum eraser. Higgins black ink. 2 sable hair #8 brushes(1 new for fine line work and 1 old and a bit beat up, used for broad shading and fillin blacks.

The paper I prefer is Arches. It's around $60 for this pad, but well worth it. 20 sheets of cold pressed, 100% cotton, 140lb, 18" x 24".
I generally cut the page in half to give me 2 12" x 18" pieces. Perfect size for comic book pages.

I start by sketching on the much cheaper 8.5" x 11" printer paper.

 I later project this image on the larger paper and retrace only the lines I want. This gives me a much cleaner image on the watercolour paper to paint from.

 Now I roll the gum eraser gently over the pencil lines.

This give you a lighter image that won't show through some of the more translucent ink wash.

 Now I mask the edges to get a clean frame for the image.

 now I start with filling in the background blacks using the older brush so as not to wear out the fine point on the new brush which will be needed for the detail work

 I generally try to complete the backgrounds first, knowing that I'll spill into the foreground character a bit, knowing that I can later clean it up.

 I use the new #8 sable hair brush for the high rise detail work.

 city close up.

 gas gun close up

 Again I use the new brush with the refined point for detail work on the mask. I then bring in the old brush with an ink and water mix to add the grey brush stokes for shading.

 I use the same ink/water mix over the the other brush strokes when they've dried. Because the ink water mix is translucent, adding another coat over the old, makes the brush stroke darker.

  I keep using this layering technique over and over again in the spots where I want darker shadows. That's how you get the variance in the depths of the shadows.

 gas mask close up

 I use this method with the old brush to finish up the jacket.

You'll also notice I removed part of the masking so that I could finish up the gun which overlaps the border.

My favourite part! removing the masking and truly seeing the work for the first time. of course the ink gives off that very distracting glare in photos, so ....

here it is scanned in.

Waiting For Amy!

No this is not an announcement for the long awaited Christopher Guest/Kevin Smith collaboration, ( if you get that reference, you win the "no-prze") its actually just an illustration dedicated to the most romantic sacrifice in science fiction. Rory the Roman!! 

If you're a Doctor Who fan you know the story, if not...

Well, watch Doctor Who. (What the hell's the matter with you?)

Ah well,  here's the jist of it: 

Basically Rory was erased from the universe but a piece of him remained in Amy's memory. Later in "wibbly wobbly" space time, a "past" was created from her mind to trap the Doctor. part of that "past was Roman soldiers based on a book she had when she was a kid, but one of the soldiesr came from that memory. Rory was recreated as a Roman android facsilimile. Later she was dying and the only way to save her was to put her in a box called the Pandorica  that would heal her and the Doctor would pull her out of it in about 2000 years. Rory, realised that a lot can happen in 2000 years and insisted on standing guard over the Pandorica until she was released. 

2000 years later, the box is in a museum and there is a legend about the mysterious centurion who guarded and followed the box throughout history. They were reunited and all was well!

He spend 2 millenia waiting for Amy 

(then she asked if he remembered to tivo Jersey Shore and he was all, "I'm sorry baby, I was kind of busy watching over you for 2,000 years", and then she's all, "Well that's just typical!" and then he's all like, "Fuck this shit! I don't need this aggravation" and... well, you probably know this argument.) 

o.k the ( ) part didn't actually happen on the show.

Anyway, I wanted to show you this artwork in progression and let you know its available for auction. It will be auctioned at Comic Fusion's Super Hero Weekend charity drive to benefit SAFE in Hunterdon which is a not-for profit agency serving victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. 

Learn more about them at their website! 

These first 6 photos show the work I did with India ink over pencils I did earlier. I use a sable hair #8 brush for the whole job.

Now  I apply a watered down red gouache over the cape .

and its done. G'night all!

If you're a fan of Amy Pond you may also like to go to the Comic Fusion site and bid on this.

 The Amy Pond sketch is an Amy Pond study I did for the Star Trek/Doctor Who series before I started .

These were done so I could practice painting the character but these faces were used in actually used issue 4.
This is actually a piece of Star trek/Doctor Who:Assimilation2 and you can own it if you go here and bid.

Unfortunately the chance to bid on these have come and gone. Congratulations to those who won. And Thank you to everyone who participated in this wortyh cause!