Happy Halloween (Robot Costume)

It's Halloween and it's also my birthday! Happy Birthday to me!

Anyway, I found this drawing in my sketchbook but I don't remember when I drew it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I drew it in pencil and my wife inked it.

The drawing is of a Halloween costume I made 8 years ago. I wore it one night to a party at Alex Ross's house. Below is a picture of the actual costume. The autograph on this photo is from Rich Koz (A.K.A. Son of Svengoolie) who is the guy in the middle dressed as the Penguin. The guy the left is my buddy Chris Turek dressed as a Kanamit (From the Twilight Zone Episode "To Serve Man").




Have a safe and happy Halloween!!

"By Crom!!" (Sketchbook: Conan)

Here is my weekly Monday post only two days late.

This sketch was based on a still from the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film which makes me a complete poser, I know. I did change the head to be more in lines with the traditional comic version (Specifically John Buscema's work).

This is the first time I tried a deliberate comic style on a drawing. Meaning I looked at way some Conan comics were inked and tried to ink that way. I used a Pentel Brush pen for this.

I like the drawing, but my wife pointed out that in black and white, it's much more obvious that his sword is a stand-in for his penis. I guess this wasn't as obvious in full-color photograph? Whatever. I think it's better than some of previous brush-inked drawings, obvious phallic symbol or not.

Bone Dog: Page 5

There are a few significant things about this page. First, it's the first I've done with a dip pen (a.k.a nib pen). It's also the first one I've done on this larger size of Bristol board.

I consider the dip pen a success. They are hard to use, but India ink out of a bottle is so much blacker than using markers or Mircon pens. Plus, if you use a more flexible nib, it's a lot more expressive.

Up until this page, I've been doing comics on 9x12 Bristol board. I really wanted to have more space, so I "upgraded" to 14x17.

It was nice to have all that breathing room. I really felt that it made drawing the details a lot easier, since everything was bigger. The lettering was easier too. Great success all around.

Then, I scanned it.

The first problem is that my scanner is 10x14 (or thereabouts), so I had to scan this sheet in four pieces and put it together in Photoshop. I didn't mind the extra work so much, but my 6-year-old Mac did. The file on this thing was huge. I think I actually heard my computer wheezing when I tried to do any kind of manipulation. I can't tell you how many times I had to restart my computer while working on this one page.

Anyway, if you see stray pen marks or mistakes on this page, I'm sorry. I just couldn't torture my poor ol' Mac anymore.

On the upside, the India ink scanned great!

Sketchbook: Cuttlefish

This is a quick and dirty scan from my sketchbook. This is a cuttlefish from another National Geographic article.

I think I saw the original picture and said to myself, "that looks really hard to draw, better get to it!" This is how I torture myself.

I inked this with a micron pen, in case you were wondering.

Sketchbook: Hiram Bingham

This is based on a photo of Hiram Bingham that I found in a National Geographic article about Machu Picchu.

I used a Pentel brush-pen I bought so I could practice brush inking even when I wasn't at home.

I've been getting back into EC comics lately and while I wasn't trying to emulate the style exactly, I was definitely inspired by it.