Requiem Sonata ch2 pencils 16-20

Here's an update with more pages of pencils for chapter 2. I hope you enjoy them!

Life Drawings - eyedrum session

Here are a few of the good drawings from today's 2 hour session at the eyedrum in Atlanta. It's a really fun and interesting space to draw in, and everyone there is 11 varieties of inspiring. Seriously, I saw some awesome acrylic and oil painted works in the 2 hours which make me feel like I need to push myself even more. I think the most important aspect of any artist is that sense of pushing yourself and your art past your current limits. The moment you think you've learned all you need or that you settle on just one media or tool, how can you continue to grow? With that in mind, I hope you enjoy my attempts at getting better at drawing the human form and using watercolors and a sanguine colored pencil.

Tools: Watercolor and Caran d'Ache sanguine colored pencil
Paper: Stillman and Birn Delta and Gamma sketchbooks respectively

Invader Zim Commissions

Here are 2 recent commissions that I finished this past weekend. They were both a lot of fun, and I got to crack open some new pens which was a nice change. I forget sometimes what it's like to draw with a fresh Zebra fine pen, cuz boy is it different from one that's pretty used. 

Tools: Zebra Fine Brush Pen, Pentel Color Brush and Copic Multiliners

Paper: Stillman and Birn beta paper

Megaman X sketch

"I guess I'm not powerful enough to defeat him."

Megaman X because I couldn't sleep so I may as well draw a scene from one of my favorite games but with a little of that patented Jorge style depression. In the first stage of Megaman X, he runs up against Vile, a much stronger robot who is in a ride mech with huge fists and it's a fight you literally cannot win. He beats you to submission and then traps you, and of course, in the game, they can't show things like X's arm being knocked off or dents and all that. But if I was drawing that scene in a comic, after Zero rescues X, this would be that panel.

Requiem Sonata Ch.2 pencils 11-15

Here's another batch of pages for Requiem Sonata. I'm going to take a brief break from it, although I'm sure I'll still draw it from time to time since I can't really escape it. I have a short story I'm going to try to draw and print up for Heroes Con this. Wish me luck!

Pencils as always in my Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook!

R is for REMUS

R is for Remus, first son. Well, not really, but sort of. So, I started drawing comics when I was 17, mainly just aping what I saw and what I liked but it was fun and nothing really serious came from that. Remus was the first thing I created that had some depth to him.

Remus was the son of a business man and a Romanian dancer. His dad was rarely home, and when he was, he was abusive and mean. Remus's only solace was his mother, who was both kind and naiive, and unfortunately she couldn't leave her husband as the times just wouldn't allow it and she was a stranger in America. Well Remus's father brought home danger with him, and in the middle of a skirmish, Remus's mother was killed and Remus was left at the mercy of his father's enemies, The Wolves of Sariel. The Wolves was a sect of religious vampires that sought to use their strength to fight for God's flock, using the devil's gift in the name of the Lord. So Remus joined the group, and in the 80 years since then, he's been one of the Wolves most proficient and steadfast killers. Remus is the only vampire in the Wolves that is feared by their opposite number, the Crusaders. The Crusaders were vampires who, unlike the Wolves, were victims of religious persecution or of the law being used by the corrupt. While the Wolves represented the strength that people could draw from religion and each other, the Crusaders represented the hate that festers in people and they were survivors of their own tragedies, like hatecrimes and racism.

In the end, the Wolves of Sariel was probably too big for my 19-22 year old mind, so I ended up leaving the comic aside after a while to focus on other stories like Good Night Mrs Goose and KCNO, which were more managable with smaller casts and more focus on character building than social commentary. One day I'd like to return to Wolves but in a more restricted and more pointed manner so I don't end up with my cast in various places and it feels hard to jump between them. SHEESH!

Tools: Zebra Brush Pen and Pentel color brush
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook

Short Story thumbnails and character designs

Here are some prelim drawings and designs for a story I plan to draw soon.

Q is for Qiang

Q is for Qiang, Zhi's older brother.

Qiang is a prodigy much like his sister, only at the violin instead of the piano. Qiang and his sister often performed together at concerts and were almost considered the idols of the classic music scene. But then he stopped performing. I wonder why, and I wonder what he's been up to.

Tools: Prismacolor Turquoise lead holder
Paper: Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook

P is for Pilar

P is for Pilar, another character from a-NOTHER story I'm planning.

Pilar is a Hispanic woman who suffers an immense life changing tragedy. She joins a Muay Thai kickboxing gym in the hopes that it'll help her relieve stress and give her something to do, but she never anticipated how much she would fall in love with it. The story is about finding purpose in your life again after life cruelly rips purpose from you. It's going to be a lot of fun, I hope, filled with fights and drama and I hope, actual warm hearted stuff. I know I write a lot of tragedy and sad stuff but I do like seeing these characters happy. Sometimes.

Tools: Zebra brush pen
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook

O is for Oscar

O is for Oscar, another story I've yet to draw but want to get to eventually.

Oscar is a sheltered Hispanic boy who lives at home with his very protective and close knit family. Since he was small, he's always dreamed of being a fine artist, his favorite field trips were to art museums and he's read every book on fine art in the library. However, his parents don't want him to be an artist, at least not professionally. They would rather he get a normal job and just do art as a hobby. This stifling environment starts to eat away at Oscar, so he signs up for a life drawing class as an act of rebellion. This class will change his life, and also he's never been in the same room with a nude woman before.

While this isn't how my life as an artist started, I know that this is a pretty common story for young artists. The feeling that your family or friends are trying to reality check your dreams is a real one, and I wanted to explore that in cultural sense as well. I hope it'll be a fun book!

Tools: Pentel pocketbrush pen and Copic multiliners
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook.

Requiem Sonata Ch.2 Pencils 1-10

Here are pencils for the first 10 pages of Requiem Sonata chapter 2. I'm still drawing them in my Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook, which is 9x12 inches and is considerably smaller than my usual working size of 11x17. Still, I find this really comfortable. The panels don't seem to be stopping me from doing dynamic work, so I'm grateful for that, and in fact, working smaller allows me to be more flexible with work anywhere. I haven't been super productive lately due to work woes and life woes, but when I can scribble a few panels I feel a ton better.

My pencils now are a lot messier because I like to have room to play in my inks. Instead of refining the lines down to the final one, I keep them loose and let inker Jorge decide which line is best, or if needed, redo the area. This adds a lot to my speed because I'm not sitting and dwelling over problems, the me of tomorrow is a better artist than the me of right now, so leaving things up to his more skilled eye is a great confidence boost. Anyhow, here are the pages!

Akuma

Akuma meditating. This was a sketch request for a customer who is awesome as heck! I hope he likes it!

The chi is painted with Daniel Smith Shadow Violet, which has that awesome granulation in it naturally. I was hoping it would give the look of some ethereal substance so i hope that comes across. For his body, I mixed a similar tone Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson and Payne's Gray and was able to keep the granulation only in the energy. I finished it off with a Caran D'Ache supracolor pencil to add in some lines to his head, mainly the jaw line and his nose.

Materials: Daniel Smith and Sennelier watercolors
Paper Stillman and Birn Beta Paper.

N is for Nilam

N is for Nilam, another character from a story I've yet to draw.

Nilam is an Indian American girl who survived the great floods. She and her father escaped into a high rise as the waters washed away most of civilization as we know it. In the process of escaping the huge waves, her legs were injured and she can't walk. Her friend, Araceli made her the wheelchair she uses, but Nilam's father does not like nor trust Araceli. His wife died in the flood and he refuses to let his daughter be taken from him, especially a weirdo like Araceli. Nilam is a strong and patient girl, while her father laments their situation, Nilam tries to make the best of it, choosing to celebrate what they have than be sad about the past.

Tools: Pentel pocket brush and Copic Multiliners
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook

M is for Marie

M is for Marie, a character from KCNO. The entire book is available online to read here: KCNO

Marie is not a character who was very popular, in fact for most of the book, people tended to dislike her because she had ideas that ran against the other characters of the comic. I think characters like Marie are ESSENTIAL to storytelling. To create characters the audience can disagree with, that is important to creating a world that feels real. Too often I'll read a comic, or watch a movie, or see a tv show where characters are all in agreement, or it's a character who is so unlikable that you hate them, but either of those can be boring. Like, SUPER boring! Character's should feel like people, not motivations, or cut outs or NPCs in a video game. A good character, whether you agree with them or not, is a character you want to see become better, no matter what they do or who they hurt, and Marie does hurt some people in KCNO. But I find that most people, after they read the book, like Marie a lot because she does become a better person. She's one of the more dynamic characters in the story in that she makes amends for being a jerk and she ends up happy. I don't think I knew what I was doing when I created her, but I think now I understand why a character like her is so important to good drama.

Tools: Pentel pocket brush pen
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook