Celtic Warrior

Friend of mine, Artist on Marvels Fearless Defenders and all around nice guy Will Sliney brought out a book he's been working on called 'Celtic Warrior The Legend of Cú Chulainn' and you can pick it up in all good comic book stores now!

Will is working on something at the moment and he's asked a few artists to knock up some Celtic Warrior pieces for him. I was lucky enough to be one of those artists.  To keep up on everything Celtic Warrior make sure you're following Will's twitter account here.

I have always been a big fan of the Cú Chulainn legend, it was great to see it done in a book that does the tales so much justice.

Here's my rendition of Will's Cú Chulainn, hope yee dig it!

Wolverine iPad Pic

Yooo! Apologies for not posting anything last week but the man flu was placing a pretty decent rear naked choke on my ability to do anything. And I was so busy this week playing catch up I didn't get to do anything outside of work for the blog. I can actually count the hours spent on the drawing board for myself this week on one finger :P buuuuuuuut I remembered late last night that I hadn't finished that Wolverine pic I started on my iPad. So I thought, why not finish and post that?!

So here it is. It was such an experiment from start to finish I kinda feel that that's what I'm left here, and experiment where I started drawing Wolverine and then tried doing a BG, both seem a little distant to each other. I'm pretty aware now of what I can get from the iPad so the next iPad pic I post will be a more rounded set of images.

Drawing on Sketchbook Pro, played with in a PS express and WrapCam and a griffin stylus was used

Sample Script - Daredevil v3 #1 written by Mark Waid

 Okaaaaaay got round to finishing off that sample script. Here it is. Hope yee dig it.  Trying to do way more of these, I'll be starting another next week.

R.I.P.Damian Wayne

Hi folks

Had one of those messy weeks this week and didn't get to finish the sample pages. They're almost there, one page left, but I want to post them all up together instead of dragging them out into 3 blog posts. Soooooo in the spirit of blogging at least once a week I do have something to post in the absence of the sample pages.

It was a sketch I started doing last night. Kind of a 'cool down' sketch after finishing work for the day. But yesterday I saw a new group on Facebook called the Irish Sketch Society you can see em here . So I decided I'd do something Batman themed.  What I scratched out is pretty much what you see here. And since it was a cool down drawing I really wasn't to pushed about anything too technical, just look at shapes and composition. Since Damian Wayne, the new Robin died last week I thought I would draw a grieving Batman.

So here's Batman outside his cave. Just spotted a dead robin, that could have been killed by one of the bats in his cave for all he knows. Obvious play with the colour red here for Robin, Batman almost with the blood on his hands the red leaves from the trees outside the cave to show his spirit flying away. 

Usually spend about 30 - 40 mins on a warm up drawing, spent about an hour on this.

Daredevil Samples

Struggling to do blog work, thought I'd have more this week. This was the only page worth posting as the rest are still scribbly blue pencils.  Between getting work finished before I start production again next week life is a bit messy at the mo but I'm still aiming to get the full test done by end of week next week. 

Here's page 1 of Daredevil v3 #1 written by Mark Waid, illustrated by ... I dunno yet and I'm avoiding finding out who/looking at the actual published pages aaaaaand any other sample pages posted online in case they hinder my illustrating of the story.   Hope my stuff holds up.

My earliest memories of DD are of him boxing in that yellow costume and in the 90's Spidey cartoon. In both those media a big deal is made of DD's gymnastic ability of sooooo I thought an MMA fighter who also does gymnastics would be a goof point of reference. Que one of my all time fav fighters GSP for reference. More to come soon, Hope you all dig.

New Character, iPad Cover & a Commission

Hey folks,

 Sorry about not posting last week I was just swamped and spent more time running around meeting people than I got a chance to sit down and draw. I did post some material on Twitter and Facebook to tie me over until I got to posting this week.

 Soooooo here's a few things, a new character that I've been working on for quite a while, her name is Carrie and she fights zombies. We'll see more from here in a few weeks time in a small comic. I'll post it up intermittently as I knock out some comic test scripts first. Also since I got an iPad for Christmas and I previously drew up a cover for my iPhone ( see telephone Tess here)  I thought I'd draw a cover up for the iPad as well. Aaaaaand Im also gonna post a commission I finished this week. Any of you Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" fans might like my version of Rand Al'Thor. So lets get to posting the pictures, that's why you're all here anyways!

First of, Carrie and my iPad cover

 This is Carrie, some of you will have seen her last week on my twitter and facebook in a less rendered pic, here's the inks on her.

 I was originally going to have Carrie on her own on the cover but it didn't really win me over so I tried to come up with a few ideas. I thought about doing a regular zombie but that didn't win me over either so I thought about incorporating the iPad itself into the pic and thought well and well the idea of my iPad turning me into a mindless zombie when I'm using it sounded like a good idea. So here's me on the iPad.

Another zombie on the iPad, This one seemed to go down really well yesterday so I think I'll also do a iPad zombie series of sketches. Might just be my warm up sketches for a while

 A whole bunch of zombies on iPads... Just me or is there something really eerie about the glowing apple logo?

 here's a coloured Carrie

 and here's a blue Carrie, you'll see why I did this in a sec

 Aaaaaan here's what the back of the iPad cover will look like

 so here was an amalgamation of everything that just wasnt winning me over, i thought there was too much going on so i simplified it a little more

This worked waaaaaaay better for me but i thought that Carrie was a little Dark

Better so there's the cover and here's the back

Left my Bennessy Logo/Signature on her lower back like a tatt, originally I had it on the back of her coat ( cause I have it on the circles on of shoulder as well). This is just for the iPad cover Carrie doesnt really go around with the Bennessy Sig on her.


So that's the cover. And since I did post last week here's the super extra bonus post this week. Rand Al'Thor from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. i didnt know anything about this guy when i was asked to do the commission, Had a bit of fun with it after reading up on the character, hope you all dig it, the client liked it a bunch!

Mermaid commission

Here's another commission I did. Kinda made me think of somebody witnessing an alien abduction. Enjoying playing with pure black and white not using colour/greyscale. Client liked it, Hope you do too!

Hunger Games Commission and an iPad WIP

Hi all,

In my new efforts to blog far more often here's the latest pieces I've done.

The first is Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I told a friend of mine that I listened to the audiobook not so long ago and in the first book a number of moments stuck with me and I hoped to illustrate some of them. (All of which I'll illustrate soon, I Really enjoyed the first book. And now that I've written it here I HAVE to do it ). My mate Paddy remembered this and since his wife Miriam is a BIG hunger games fan he asked me to do a pic for his wife's birthday. I was more than happy to and was given a direction of ' Maybe a pic of Katniss in the woods hunting deer or something?  She likes those parts of the books.' So I got to work,

This is what I came up with. I'm pretty happy with the result, but more importantly Miriam is! Happy birthday Miriam!

I thought about using Jennifer Lawrence's likeness in the pic, but when I was doing some prep one day I developed a few more designs that I thought were stronger, this one is my fav.  I'll prob do a few more iterations of her yet, she's a great character.

On the note of her hunting I put in two deer amid the trees in the BG, I played around with their negative shapes, tried to give the idea of movement and as they are not both in perfect silhouette, it's almost like Katniss can almost hear them both somewhere in the foliage.

I wasn't going to blog these but they got quite a good reception on Facebook and Twitter so I thought I'd better throw them up here. It's a Wolverine WIP that I have been doing in my spare time on my iPad. Here's pic one from my iPad that I have done with my new stylus

All are done in the Sketchbook pro App using the Griffin Stylus ( many people have been asking what I did them with) , which I really recommend. Still a long way to go with em yet but fun to do and there will always be an iPad drawing on the go now so expect a lot more to follow.


 January has actually been pretty good, I got a rake of commissions in so I have enough Pic's to post for a while. If anyone else would like a commission please contact me via Twitter/Facebook. 

Another progress Drawing: Batman and Catwoman

Hey Everybody

Here's this weeks post. It's a very (very, very very) belated wedding present for two close friends of mine. One night over a few beers my friend told me he'd love a pic of Batman beating the living daylights out of Spidey. Me being a colossal Spidey fan said "Grand", I'll draw one up for your Wedding, only Spidey will be annihilating Bats!

Now after sobering up, keeping the idea that it was a wedding present and my friends would have to look at this for quite a long time I thought Spidey smashing up Bat's face was the wrong way to go. So I tried to go with something a little 'classier'.  This was pretty easy to figure out what it should be considering Batman was the requested hero, so Batman and Catwoman seemed like the perfect route to go down. 

The trick with this was to make this look like Bats and Catwoman are actually in love. Much like my friends Brendan and Helen. And NOT like a typical over sexed up, fan boy mess of a drawing. It was a wedding present, it had to be right.

So after struggling with it for quite some time starting something, finishing it and starting something else again. I eventually landed on this one. Fell on my feet here having struggled with it for so long. Love is supposed to make people strong and weak, I think I managed to keep the character of both of these iconic comic book heroes while reflecting the love that doesn't make Batman stand so tall, and makes Catwoman give up a little bit of her balance.

Anyways here it. If you read all I had to say above, thanks you're a proper legend!

Some really roughs first just to get it started, I'm liking making more decisions while inking/clean up these days

Started working in the details, I use Sketchbook Pro for most of my digital inking and cleaning up my storyboards

I zoom in and out a lot when I work on pieces like this, its important to see all of what you're working on

Here's the final inks on the Happy couple

After I get the drawing/inked part sorted it's into PS for some painting for a variety of brushes.

Here's a C.U. on Batman and Catwoman. I usually leave the brush editor out so I can twist and move the brush

After I get to a point with the digital flats I bring up the opacity on the greys. After going back and fourth This was the final Black and White of the piece.

I turned back on the grey on the characters and played with the Bat Signal splatter in the BG. The whole idea about displaying the bat signal was even over the city Batman watches, Catwoman still has all his attention ( corny and sort of against the character but hey, this is a wedding present :P I can do this because artistic license and stuff!)

Here's the final piece, a colour change and a re-edit of the bat signal. 

I showed the piece to my friends last night, I woke up to a Facebook message this morning. Everybody's happy :)

I'll have another blog post very soon! Laters

Pics!

First post of the new year! Hope you're all keeping well.  These are a couple of presents I did for a few friends of mine for Christmas/Birthdays.

The first one is for a friend of mine who asked me one night to draw her a Panda. I was surprised how much a film like Kung Fu Panda had subliminally seeped a default Panda design in me, so when I noticed this coming through in my roughs I went right back to basics blocked out a tonne of new shapes, just really quick gestures. 

Best to keep everything crazy rough at the start so trying loads of new shapes and gestures is a good thing to do and it helps prevent you over working a drawing and falling in love with what should only be a preliminary sketch and never the final product. I always find that when the shapes/pose have been rushed and not planned out/experimented enough always leaves you with a product that lacks that special something and is usually riddled with mistakes. This is the longest part of my process. It deserves the time when this has been figured out the rest falls into place.  

This particular image was when I was playing with some dog-like characteristics and shapes with the Panda. I was told a long time ago that if you're trying to make an animal character likeable it really helps to add some dog in the design/character of the animal. It's something worth keeping in mind, it always helps me anyways. Here's what I came up with. His name is Peter Panda

 The next one is for my girlfriend, it went through a few iterations again. I knew immediately it was going to be a film noir style to it. I got to play around a bit with this one. The original pose of the woman in the pic I really liked but I kept on changing my mind about the environment. I eventually settled on the last. Got to play around with some new brushed in PS that I have been enjoying. I don't think I've gotten the best out of em just yet, but something is starting to click. This is Lady Fatale

One of the many iterations

Here's the Christmas card version

and here's the final one. My fav

And here's another, This is a Mouse Guard pic. David Petersen's Mouse Guard is class! If you haven't read it I recommend you do. This was a present for a few friends of mine ( They're married now so I can cheap out and get em one present :P Ha!) They have some great art hanging up on their wall and i thought that this would fit in with the rest of their original pieces.

Since they're a married couple I kind of liked the idea of couple of mice running away together and the scape of what is at a mice's disposal in these books is huge. I had a lot of fun working on this one too.  I find drawing a good set of wings extremely satisfying. Got to play with a few new textures in this one as well.

More to come soon getting to the other end of the to do list. Hopefully I'll have as much to blog nest time as well.

Snookered

Hellooooo,

I keep getting busy and leaving the blog idle, so I set myself a new goal. I'm gonna start blogging once a week, whether it's work in progress or fully finished pics it's going up. No excuses! The Internet knows no mercy and neither does my guilty conscience. Soooo I'm really gonna try and stick to this. This means 4 more posts before Christmas and I'm going to continue blogging during the holidays. So let's get started.

Almost as soon as I said that I'd blog once a week on twitter I immediately blanked! Perfect timing. I had nothing. What I was doodling was pretty dire and forced, I haven't actually had a block in a long long time just couldn't shake it off.

Yesterday I remembered that I started saving pics into an inspiration folder ( I hadn't used it in a while). It's full of stuff I thought was pretty cool and it inspired me, but I was too busy to do anything with it at the time so I kept the pic until I had some time to do something with it.  This was the pic I used a inspiration yesterday

It's Duffy. Something about this pic just really hit home and I was doodling ideas straight away. Much better ideas, stronger drawings ( anyone else think she kinda looks like a living Gwen Stacy? Just me? ).  So with Duffy in mind and a project I want to get off the ground next year with Gary Reynolds I drew this,

I'll get to colour this next week and I'll also want to draw something so there SHOULD be a couple of things on the blog by Friday 14th. See you all on the blog for them! Laters

Alright so here's the rest of this post, I started dropping in flats. This process usually takes me a while because I'm partially colour blind. But I have a umber of palettes saved for such an occasion. So I took from a couple of em for this one. This usually leaves me with a general early idea of whether the palette works or not. I probably spend more time on this than any other stage, other than thinking about what I'm going to draw. It's time well spent if you ask me.

This is what that stage looks like. I used to paint primarily in grey before I went to colour but now since I use a number of saved palettes i find it easier to paint with colour and cross reference that with a greyscale. I can then make changes in the greyscale or the colour version, whatever one I feel that I'll get the most out of at the time. Here's what that version looks like,

I think you can tell that in this greyscale I played around with a darker skin tone and black stripes on her top. Something about it just wasn't working for me so I ended up going right back to the drawing. I ended up taking out the dangling strap

I just wasn't able to see it in the colour version but when I brought it back to the line I really felt that the strap kinda ruined the whole flow of the pose. I was happy enough from this point on so I felt comfortable making any additional changes while painting.

Here's some flats with a shadow thrown in. The shadow just helps me see the shapes better when I go to paint it, just I know the kind of brush stroke I'm looking for.

The first thing I do when I start painting is always the eyes. If I get this part right I have the character set, I'm happy. If I feel near the end that it needs another touch up, it gets one. I think the eyes are one of the most important part of the pic. It's where people are going to look, if the eyes don't rest there permanently they are def going to stop for a second or two or slow down before they look at the rest of the pic. I'm sure we've all heard that the eyes are the window to the soul, so give em some time to get em right.

From here on it's all painting and texturing. Going back and forth with greyscale and flipping the image so I know It's all working the way I want.

So this is it almost there.  Pretty happy with how it's looking and at this point its pretty much going to look this way at the end. I always feel like sprinting to the end when I get this far, that's when it's time for a tea break/sleep and come back at it fresh so you don't end up spoiling anything. I'm still fixing things at this point and adding in stuff so best not to spoil anything important.

The Thong. I was referencing a pretty unique thong. I thought it looked fancy, everyone else thought it looked wrong or it had fallen down so best nip it in the bud and make the change. Here's a thong we're all familiar with. I think it was the right call, looks better for it.

This is it almost there. I put up some wallpaper, threw in a few more shot glasses and yes the pool balls actually say 69, Hi-Oh!!

So after a few fixes and the final lights put in here's the finished version, beside the all important Greyscale version I use throughout painting it. I think it lets you see how one informs the other

I ran this past my girlfriend Amanda last night ( If you're into make up and similar stuff like that check out her blog here ), funnily enough she said, "what if she had a black top". I thought that was kinda funny since I tried a black top early on in the process. I shrugged it off thinking it cluttered the palette, but I'm willing to try anything at any stage if it makes what I do better and did up a black top version. I think she may have been right, I honestly can't choose between the two.

More posts to come real soon. I'm hoping to get one more out this week and I'll have another one for sure on the blog next week. Trying to do a lot more with the blog from here on my friend Peter McNally is knocking up a load of great posts over on his blog and it's inspired me to do something similar. Check out his blog if you haven't before it's one of my fav's

 I hope you all dig this I'll do more like it soon, Laters