Sketch Attack: MEDIEVAL!

The next Sketch Attack has now been posted. For this round, designer and illustrator Phil Balsman chose the wide ranging topic of "Medieval." While I've always dug the subject matter, having this broad a subject had me scared that too many options would lead to little turnout, but I was very (and happily!) wrong. The work looks great! As for myself, maybe not so much, but more on that later, for now, let's see how I got there...

I knew dragons would be popular so I wanted to stay away from them (I was correct, BTW), but I knew that it would be hard to resist. Indeed, my first doodles involved a warrior or knight shielding himself from a dragon's flame, albeit the dragon was never in the frame. The warrior was also going to be bloodied and beaten, and possibly on his last legs as he defended a child. Sounded cool, but again the dragon idea wasn't sitting right with me. I did, however, determine that I kind of wanted a more down to earth feel, hence the battered warrior. A little more inspiration was in order.

I turned on the Netflix to see what I could stream, and found the British movie Ironclad. I gave it a whirl, and it got me thinking Knights Templar. Those would be my warriors. I can't really recommend the film completely unless you're a big fan of gore, because it has it in spades! Anyhoo, I at least had my knights. But what would they do?

With the movie The Grey out in theaters, I decided they should fight wolves. If it's good enough for Liam Neeson, it's good enough for me. And, yeah, "they". I drew a few KT characters that basically resembled the A-Team with Snake-Eyes. I then turned to composition, and from the beginning I determined the cool Snake-Eyes Templar would be front and center lopping off a wolf head, and the Hannibal/Neeson character would be on his knees with a dead wolf at his feet. And then I didn't feel so well.

Out sick a few days, I finally returned to my drawing and started laying it out. And so far, I dug it, and kept going, but then I just couldn't place the kneeling Liam just right, and lots of erasing ensued. Frustrated and making a mess, I gave up on the sketch and decided to start fresh.

Before I did, though, King Arthur (Clive Owen version) came on free TV last Saturday afternoon, how fortuitous! I watched it for the first time, enjoyed, and felt reinspired. Back to the sketch, laid it out better than the first time, and went clean through till I had a decent pencil sketch.

For the next few days I fiddled with it, until Tuesday night when I decided to sit down and finish up. Unfortunately, I tried to lay in some ink, which I've never been great at, and it became questionable rather quickly. Blah. I stayed with it, though, gave it my best, and made my inks nearly as dirty as my pencils. A couple of saving decisions included making the wolves black and using just one color, red, for their eyes and the Templar crosses. I felt this gave the sketch a good unity at least.

The next day, on due day, I fiddled with it some more, and finally scanned it in. The last element was the motion blur I added in Photoshop to Snake-Eye's sword as it hacked across the wolf in the foreground. Call this my Ironclad inspired moment.

That all said, sadly, while this one had the most days(!) spent working and most research probably done it's my least favorite of the 4 thus far. Not saying I hate it, and maybe being ill didn't help it's progress, but something about just didn't feel as good as the first three.  Oh well, it's done, and the next Attack has been picked. I may just chill out and use only pencils on this coming one. We'll see, for now, here's the sketch and be sure to check out the rest of the latest Sketch Attack!

Sketch Attack: MECHAGODZILLA!

This time it was my turn to pick, and I went for my favorites: Godzilla and Friends! Well, actually the theme I gave was Toho Kaiju 1954-1975, AKA the Showa Era, and I provided this handy dandy chart to choose from:

I think, as far as giant monsters go, the only one that didn't make the cut was the Giant Sea Serpent from King Kong Escapes, and that's only because I wanted to keep to this 36 character grid. It's basically just a white Manda, so no big loss. Anyhoo, the gang seemed to be pretty excited about this one, and many characters were chosen. The first batch of sketches went up today, and there are AMAZING pieces there! (even though looks like a couple strayed from the Showa Era a bit, still awesome) You can check them out here: http://sketchattack.tumblr.com/

As for mine, I chose MechaGodzilla. I fell in love with the big MG early on in my life, and to this day no G-Foe has ever been more badass. That said, I was super intimidated to draw this. 1. It's a lot of pressure to pick the topic and deliver the goods. 2. I've never been good at drawing this stable of characters. 3. I wanted to pay homage to my all time favorites and not suck!

My first SA (Sebulba) came together well after doodling the character in my sketch book for awhile. The Sherlock one had less prep, a few character drawings and a small thumbnail, and I was off and running. Easy Peasy. This one, ouch, the first week and a half of sketching went about as well as any of my Kaiju sketches have ever gone: badly. The last one, though, gave me a modicum of hope, but I only had this weekend left to execute something!

I started the drawing on Friday night, using gray card stock paper as my canvas (figured MechaG=Grey, right?) but could not get down a composition at all. Frustrated, I turned on some inspiration, the Best of Godzilla 54-75 Soundtrack, and went back to work. After a bit of dirty sketching, I got a comp I liked and a drawing I started to dig. Definitely better than my previous attempts. I think the music made me forget about trying to get the character right, and more just loosen up and be true to myself.

The next night, I went in and changed a few things, made two of his fingers shoot off, and added his eye-beams. I mean, seriously, MG is just a big weapon, I had to show this! But then while looking at ref for some details, I noticed a HUGE error, I gave MechaG five fingers in instead of four!!! Oof, that's a lot of erasing. After finally fixing, taking away one the shooting fingers, I exposed his left leg more and noticed the placement of it was waaay off. Blah. A solution would have to come tomorrow...

Last night, after a trip to Ikea and watching the end of the Giant game, I sat back down to (hopefully) finish up. First, the leg issue. After failing to set it right, I decided the sketch needed an extra element anyway, smoke and fire! Sometimes introducing a new idea into the mix super charges you, and this one did. Fire and smoke added, it was time to decide whether it was done as a sketch or if there would be more. After some conversing and coaching by my wife, I decided to work in some ink and color by hand. Stabilo colored pencils, FW Acrylic ink, some acrylic paint (can't recall the brand), and a Papermate black pen (!) made its way onto my drawing. It became a mixed media assault, and in the end (which came at some point thankfully, that last hour was a blur), I dug that I did it.

So, now that I've explained all that, maybe next time I'll take pics along the way, here's my latest Sketch Attack...MECHAGODZILLA!

Again, here's the link to the fantastic rest: http://sketchattack.tumblr.com/

Sherlock Scan

Here is the original scan for the Sherlock sketch I did for Sketch Attack. Note the warped look caused by the dying scanner. This was why I decided to mess with my sketch further.

Kung Foodies!

After years of talking about it, I finally launched a food blog with some friends. Kung Foodies will be our spot to give restaurant and product reviews, share recipes and tips, and just spout our love for food. If you dig reading about food, then give our palates a check! http://www.kungfoodies.com/

Sketch Attack!

One of the newest additions to my life is Sketch Attack. Started by one of my coworkers, SA is a Tumblr site where current and former employees of our company will be working on sketches on various subjects. Our frequency is about every two weeks, and so far our assignments have included Star Wars and Sherlock Holmes. I'll post mine up here as well once all of the sketches for a particular subject go up. Here now are my two so far:

Star Wars: Sebulba
For our first attempt, subject picked by SA founder Pat Brosseau, I decided on the evil, or should we say competitive, Pod Racer from Episode One: The Phantom Menace. Of all the faults the new series had, the idea of the Pod Race wasn't one of them, and Sebulba emerged as one of the cooler characters of the series. Standing essentially on his hands, the character easily lent himself to interesting positioning. This was also my first serious drawing in awhile so I really worked at making every detail seem right. At the same time, I got really messy with it, too, which felt pretty good. I thought about inking it, but exhausted myself, and afterward just didn't have the heart to muck it up with potentially (probably) bad inking. A fun Sebulba quote later, and wallah:

Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock and Watson "versus" a Lovecraftian beast.
Next up, Corey Breen chose Sherlock Holmes. Timely with the new movie just coming out, Corey was the only one to actually tackle that movie's version with very good results. I've never been the hugest fan of Mr. Holmes, but have loved the Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. retelling. That said, I opted for a more classical look with my sketch, but added a very unHolmesy element with the inclusion of a tentacled beast in the Lovecraftian vein. I figured that Holmes and Watson were just about from the same era, so why not the crossover? This was fun to do, but I learned a valuable lesson when dealing with something coming off panel: figure out what the damn thing looks completely first! It wasn't till I went back and thought this over that the sketch really started flowing. The eyes on the beast tentacles gave it a sort of goofy look which I kind of liked. The last step of the sketch sort of happened because our scanner is a bit messed up and couldn't give me a clean scan. Coming out sort of like a paper texture, I decided to duo-tone it and white out Watson and some of the background tentacles. I think the result gave it some nice layers:

And these two are just the start, the rest of the Tumblr is filled with excellent artwork, so please give it a check, and look for the next Sketch Attack around the week of January 23rd! http://sketchattack.tumblr.com/