Shrek Blows
I have gone on many a long-winded rant as to why I think the Shrek films blow. This is my opportunity to put it all down in one place, succinctly, with visual aides.
Work in progress
(Click on the image to see a larger version)
This is a detail of a piece I am working on for my new postcard. I am really enjoying doing all the values, and I can’t wait to get into the color. Doing it all in Photoshop, using custom brushes. This is the second version of this, as I needed to redraw the people to look more like my characters…
Choice Bits
Lesson learned: You have to find all the little bits you love to do in an illo, and then do pieces with nothing but those parts. That’s the plan at least.
Save Loomis
I seem to remember coming across this on the web years ago, but there is a movement to preserve the out of print drawing instruction books created by illustrator Andrew loomis. This website has the entirety of several of his books scanned in for your browsing. Some very good core-drawing skills, ala How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.
http://www.saveloomis.org/
Craig Mullins
Man. I have been a HUGE fan of Craig Mullins’ artwork since I first played Marathon, the classic FPS on my Mac back in college. He did all of the most influential cocnept art for Bungie’s games. His website is a must-see, loaded with his amazing digital paintings. I haven’t seen a whole lot of illustrators’ tutorials around recently, which I think is a shame, since they are so valuable. I found a few tutorials Craig Mullins did on the web, and they are fascinating:
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7731
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7840
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/974
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7863
Barely Conscious Drawings
Been doing a lot of drawings in my small Moleskine sketchbook on the subway, as I enforce a strict No-New York Times rule (limited to the paper edition), for the time being.
Stuff from the Lab
Been playing around with all of the settings in Photoshop’s custom brushes…some pretty amazing effects…very good feel to them…
Ashley Wood
I’ve been seriously out of touch with the comics world over the past decade or so, and every once and a while I’ll stop in a comics shop to see what’s going on in the painted graphic novel world that Kent Williams / Jon J. Muth / Sienkiewicz et al helped make huge. Ashley Wood seems to be the current rockstar of late, and there’s a lot that I really, really dig on his site. Would love to see more about his process. Looks like a very cool intersection of handmade work with nice digital touches…
My current paper of choice…
Arche’s Aquarelle hot-pressed watercolor blocks are my current favorite paper to work on. The glued-around-the edges block is very handy, saoks up the paint just right and takes pencil very well to boot. Always good to have many blocks of this lying around. I use the 12″ x 16″ 140lb the most.