Imagination

Your mind will take you on amazing journeys. So next time you get a chance, instead of focusing on real things that are, try to concentrate on stuff that isn't.

New York

I'm a little behind on things because this week I went to New York. I liked it. Apparently nobody likes each other there, but apart from that it's really nice. While I was there I drew the people, because there are lots of them. I drew these on the subway or in coffee shops. Then I inked some of the ones I thought were interesting.

Witch King of Angmar

Hey, here's a low quality scan of a piece I made that I will be submitting to the Gallery Nucleus LOTR show. I'll probably update this tomorrow with something that better reflects the physical piece, but here's the gist. (edit: This is the better version now)

Final Devils

Here are some of the finished portraits for some of those New Jersey Devils from last week. I tried a few different ways of finishing these up, but same basic idea of taking the drawings I made and using scanned textures to color them. Hockey! Go Devils! Please win a game eventually!

Patrik Elias #26

Martin Brodeur #30

Travis Zajac #19

Jaromir Jagr #68 

(I had to use his pre-devils look because just try not drawing that beard)

Andy Greene #6

Devils Process

To celebrate the start of the New Jersey Devils hockey season, I'm in the process of making a bunch of portraits of the current players. Sometime soon I'll show a few of the finished pieces, but I thought this would be fun project to show some process on. All of the pieces were documented at the same time, so each step will be shown on a different piece.

For these portraits I wanted to try something new, and decided to employ a process that incorporates my favorite basic structure for drawing processes. 1- Make a drawing carefully 2- Make a huge mess on top of that drawing you just worked so hard on 3- Clean up where necessary.

Here is the first step which would be the sketch. This is Martin Brodeur of course. I spend a while trying to get the likeness down. Trying to get a recognizable portrait, but focusing on getting a certain mood from the player. When I get the line drawing down I trace it onto bristol. Then on the original sheet I go back in and quickly lay in a very scratchy value structure to make sure the way I want to compose the lights and darks will work. Drawing of a face.

The drawing on bristol (Andy Greene) gets a more descriptive treatment with colored pencil. Still fast and loose, but more refined. The way this part work is basically the same as inking the drawing, but with a colored pencil.

The last physical step are ink and gouache washes. All over Cory Schneider. I like the colored pencil drawings, but for nothing beats a brush when comes to making things a little more lively. From here I will take the drawing into the computer, where I do imaginary things to it until it is finished. Later. That got long; thanks for reading.

Opportunity

Don't think about the consequences. The world is your oyster. Eat the world oyster sissy!

Teamwork

Together everybody accomplishes more. Band together with the folks around you and take advantage of each other's strengths! The sky's the limit!