Yet again, I'm doubling up with this week's set of life drawings from random photoref. (Someday I'll have to downgrade to a single piece per post, but my buffer of these pieces remains prodigious.) First above is a recent-ish set from March 2019, while the second is an example from very early on in the effort (December 2016); note that the latter features a sketch based on cosplayer Jia Jem's interpretation of my Kei from Dirty Pair.
Note: In case these text intros seem repetitive, I should tell you that...
2019-11-04 14:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Really short on time this morning, as I have to finish inking my variant cover for Venom: The End by this afternoon, so I can't comment on this post as much as I'd like. Wellp, if I get the chance to go back and flesh out this puppy with more text, I'll alert you folks with an update.
Anyhoo, above you can feast your eyes on a selection of 70s-era Red Sonja comics drawn by the great artist Frank Thorne; for the record, these are non-consecutive pages scanned from a repr...
2019-11-01 14:32:52 +0000 UTC
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To be honest, I dunno about posting Marvel or DC stuff here, especially of a recent variety, so I'm keeping this cover illo's title off the open aspects of Patreon. Shh!
Anyhoo, issue #5 of the new Marvel series Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda, written by my buddy Jim Zub, features a brief appearance by characters that Rick Mays and I created for 2019-10-31 13:37:03 +0000 UTC
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Welcome, $3 tier Patrons, to a Wednesday feature normally reserved for the $5+ tiers; just thought I'd show you a bit of the extra content you're missing out on! Hope you'll consider upgrading someday (HINT, HINT)!
For this week's "damsel in distress" (DiD) post, behold a gallery of images addressing my long-ago creation in Dirty Pair of a bondage trope now ubiquitous in DiD art (especially on deviantART, anyway): namely, the airborne tape drone. VWIPP!
The galler...
2019-10-30 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Check out pt. 1 here. To repeat that essay's preamble, a li'l copy/paste:
Stumbled across this slightly puzzling document t'other day on an old flash drive, so I thought I'd post it here. This appears to be a long, rambling justification written circa 2000 for drawing hawt, mostly nekkid young folks in my own notably idiosyncratic version of the Dirty Pair's universe; note that all the materia...
2019-10-29 13:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Yet again, I'm doubling up with this week's set of life drawings from random photoref. (Someday I'll have to downgrade to a single piece per post, but my buffer of these pieces remains prodigious.) First above is a recent-ish set from March 2019, while the second is an example from very early on in the effort (December 2016).
Note: In case these text intros seem repetitive, I should tell you that I schedule a month worth of these life drawing posts at a time, and copy/paste the same text each time.
Below, enjoy the hi...
2019-10-28 13:00:03 +0000 UTC
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I'm giving Failed-Project Friday the week off so I can try a new type of Patreon post: Namely, digging up reference images I've used for various convention panels discussing various aspects of comics storytelling.
The manga pages above were all used as examples in a panel I participated in a few years ago re: action storytelling in comics both Western and Japanese. All of 'em involve a blazing shootout from 80s- and 90s-era manga, but show very different approaches to conveying the action.
The first two images in the gallery were...
2019-10-25 12:51:09 +0000 UTC
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And now, the rest of my sketches from last weekend’s fine show. (Along with the likewise great Heroes show in June, BCC is an almost starting throwback convention, given its spotlight on comics and creators as opposed to the TV and movie focus that most other supposed “comic conventions” inevitably shift towards.)
The piece above was a Halloween cosplay illo featuring Ninjette and Emp from Empowered. Yay!
Next up, a ROM SpaceKnight sketch, painfully pieced together from two utterly contradictory pi...
2019-10-24 13:41:04 +0000 UTC
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(Pt.1 of this series can be seen here.)
To repeat (or to copy/paste, more specifically):
For the most part, I only have photocopies of my older con sketches, but for these 1999-era pieces, a commissioner from Back In The Fabled Day sent along scans of the original pencils. To be honest, photocopies might be better, as these pencils are surprisingly light and low-contrast; I had to level-adjust them in Photoshop t...
2019-10-23 14:04:48 +0000 UTC
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Just got back from Baltimore Comic-Con, where I cranked out a fair number of con sketches during the show. Would’ve posted some of them here over the weekend, but I bricked my iPhone before the trip, so I was offline and phoneless the whole weekend. (The horror! The horror!) Did manage to get some wonky pics of the pieces with my tablet, though, so here are the first few. Note: Can’t do a image gallery post from the app version of Patreon, so I’ll have to post these as insert images. If I get a chance, might t...
2019-10-22 13:22:14 +0000 UTC
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Yet again, I'm doubling up with this week's set of life drawings from random photoref. (Someday I'll have to downgrade to a single piece per post, but my buffer of these pieces remains prodigious.) First above is a recent-ish set from March 2019, while the second is an example from very early on in the effort (December 2016).
Note: In case these text intros seem repetitive, I should tell you that I schedule a month worth of these life drawing posts at a time, and copy/paste the same text each time.
Below, enjoy the hi...
2019-10-21 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Found a few more of these! The first one above, by the way, is by far my favorite of all of 'em.
To repeat (or, more accurately, to cut & paste) from our previous Failed-Project Friday:
I'm stretching the definition of "failed project" a tad with this one, as my work for this particular job did, in fact, see print. The only "failure" involved was the sad reality that I eventually lost the job.
Anyhoo, for a time in the late 90s, my budd...
2019-10-18 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Based on a neat idea for art requests suggested by a higher-tier Patron, here are some 2011-era con sketches featuring the main Empowered cast cosplaying as other characters, theoretically for Halloween! (Okay, not really, but bear with me, won't you?)
Fun bit about the final sketch: A few years ago, two kindly cosplayers dressed up for Emerald City Comic-Con as Sexy Librarian Ninjette from this illo (and Maidman), and I got to shoot a few pics of 'em as reference. Looked great; u...
2019-10-17 13:00:00 +0000 UTC
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For the most part, I only have photocopies of my older con sketches, but for these 1999-era pieces, a commissioner from Back In The Fabled Day sent along scans of the original pencils. To be honest, photocopies might be better, as these pencils are surprisingly light and low-contrast; I had to level-adjust them in Photoshop to a far more pronounced degree than I normally use with contemporary graphite-based images.
Anyhoo, as you can see, "damsel-in-distress" pics have constituted a fairly constant portion of my commissions at c...
2019-10-16 13:34:03 +0000 UTC
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Here's a clump o' sketch sets based on monthly art-request suggestions solicited from the $5 and $10 tiers, drawn mostly in Clip Studio Paint as I continue to play around with the app's various brushes.
Images 1, 4 & 5 are based on Empowered and Dirty Pair characters switching up costumes, per the "Halloween cosplay" riff a kindly Patron suggested.
Images 2 & 3 are follow-ups to the one-pager from a month or two back that pitted Kei vs. Ninjette, as poor Emp f...
2019-10-15 13:34:19 +0000 UTC
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Yet again, I'm doubling up with this week's set of life drawings from random photoref. (Someday I'll have to downgrade to a single piece per post, but my buffer of these pieces remains prodigious.) First above is a recent-ish set from March 2019, while the second is an example from very early on in the effort (December 2016).
Below, enjoy the higher-res, raw and untweaked grayscale scans as PSD attachments.
2019-10-14 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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This month, it's time once again to solicit some art requests from the fine folks in the second-highest Patreon tier! All 66 of you $5 Patrons* have a rather outsized impact on my monthly total, so I figured I might as well give you a separate post to make your suggestions for topics. Fire away!
As before, down in the comments section below, feel free to suggest any characters, intellectual properties, situations, or other ...
2019-10-11 21:55:44 +0000 UTC
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I'm stretching the definition of "failed project" a tad with this one, as my work for this particular job did, in fact, see print. The only "failure" involved was the sad reality that I eventually lost the job.
Anyhoo, for a time in the late 90s, my buddy Joe Rosas and I did a series of illustrations for SPIN magazine. I drew the line art, and Joe colored 'em (on photocopies) with markers; at the time, he was one of the kings of marker-based color guides at Marvel, in the era before Photoshop took over ...
2019-10-11 13:01:57 +0000 UTC
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Stumbled across this slightly puzzling document t'other day on an old flash drive, so I thought I'd post it here. This appears to be a long, rambling justification written circa 2000 for drawing hawt, mostly nekkid young folks in my own notably idiosyncratic version of the Dirty Pair's universe; note that all the material that follows was worked up (or ripped off!) on my own, and has little or nothing to do with the original DP milieu from the Haruka Takachiho books or...
2019-10-10 13:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Been quite a while since the last time I posted any pages from the initial story I was drawing for Empowered vol.12, yet over the weekend I was able to knock out three more pages from that DiD-riffic flashback scene. In fact, these pages aren't so much a continuation of the narrative seen earlier, but rather a semi-Metatextual Emp interlude that would be intercut with the rest of the previous pages; here, she's discussing her (former) sel...
2019-10-09 13:04:47 +0000 UTC
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Whoops, forgot to post these in September!
Above are my thumbnails for issue #5 of 2018's Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell, a six-part miniseries written by me, drawn by Carla Speed McNeil, and colored by Jenn Manley Lee. Previous roughs from issue #5 are here...
2019-10-08 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Yet again, I'm doubling up with this week's set of life drawings from random photoref. (Someday I'll have to downgrade to a single piece per post, but my buffer of these pieces remains prodigious.) First above is a recent-ish set from March 2019, while the second is an example from very early on in the effort (December 2016).
Below, enjoy the higher-res, raw and untweaked grayscale scans as PSD attachments.
BTW, haven't checked in a while: Is anybody getting any value outta these high-res scans?
2019-10-07 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Just didn't have time to set up a Failed-Project Friday post this week, folks; my apologies.
Based somewhat loosely off the first round of October art requests (from the $10 tier), here's another bunch of sketch sets drawn in the iOS app version of Clip Studio Paint, as I continue to familiarize myself with CSP's brush selection.
The first image above is based on an old Nancy Drew "damsel-in-distress" image that I was already familiar with, as roughly 20 years ago I was commissioned to draw my own version of it. (Alas, I di...
2019-10-04 13:43:57 +0000 UTC
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Whoops, forgot to post these in September!
Above are my thumbnails for issue #5 of 2018's Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell, a six-part miniseries written by me, drawn by Carla Speed McNeil, and colored by Jenn Manley Lee. Previous roughs from issue #4 are here; and more info on the overall project 2019-10-03 13:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Following up from last week's spanking-intensive excerpt, here's the second half of a bedroom cosplay scene removed from Empowered vol.9, mainly (but not entirely) because I needed the pagecount for the sprawling action scenes at the end of the book.
This is the original ending of the story "Power Stripped," complete with the sudden and jarring transition between cozy post-coital scene and poor ol' Ghost Writer jackin' i...
2019-10-02 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Yet again, I'm doubling up with this week's set of life drawings from random photoref. (Someday I'll have to downgrade to a single piece per post, but my buffer of these pieces remains prodigious.) First above is a recent-ish set from April, while the second is an example from very early on in the effort (December 2016).
Below, enjoy the higher-res, raw and untweaked grayscale scans as PSD attachments.
2019-10-01 13:01:04 +0000 UTC
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Behold, a final bunch of digital-art sketch sets based (at times loosely) on art requests I solicited from my kindly Patrons during September. Thanks, folks!
The first two sets were drawn in the Procreate art app. In the first set, gotta love the Patron idea for Emp's supersuit in Bubblegum Crisis hardsuit mode. The second, life-drawing-based set just barely qualifies as art-request-related due to the fact that two of the female lower torsos were referenced from cosplay pics of Cowb...
2019-09-30 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Following up from last Friday, which showed the first five pages of what would've theoretically been issue #1 of this failed pitch, here are six more pages, the last ones I would ever draw for the project.
Below, I'll cut & paste info from last week, with a few notes about the pages afterward:
These are1986-era pages that I drew but did not write from the superhero comedy Dangerous Affairs, ...
2019-09-27 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Still running way the hell behind on a cover illo today, so I'm grabbing some odds and ends from the ol' PATREON folder for today's post. (God forbid I break my streak of every-weekday posts.)
First up is an extreme rarity: A Gen13 pin-up I penciled for Wildstorm (well, that's not a rarity), but featuring inks by my buddy and Kubert-School classmate Tom Raney! Very few times was I ever inked by another artist during the Gen13 era.
Next up, a cellphone photo of a p...
2019-09-26 16:06:05 +0000 UTC
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Running really far behind today, folks, so I'm grabbing the only thing I've got handy on the ol' hard drive that's distress-related and features a decent scan: namely, the first half of a bedroom cosplay spanking scene removed from Empowered vol.9, mainly because I needed the pagecount for the action scenes at the end of the book.
The pages above were the original ending of the middle story "Power Stripped" from vol.9, in which Emp is pitched a frankly degrading autobio book deal by the ghost wr...
2019-09-25 18:49:51 +0000 UTC
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