Dejah Thoris - Again!

Hey hey!

Well here is another drawing of Dejah Thoris out of my sketchbook. I like the pose and over all layout of this. Woola (the dog), I took inspiration of a pug puppy I saw on a video last week named Marshmellow. I want to achieve a sweet demeanor despite the unusual features.

Deja’s face looks quite off on this but that I will fix once I enlarge this for the final art. The window frames the scene well and gives it sort of an “Art Nouveau look”. I added white key lines around Dejah to separate her from the night sky (her hair was particularly getting lost).

I want to give her exotic features, I am thinking like Morena Baccarin - from Firefly...you know the “space-whore” (there, now you don’t have to google her). I am planning on changing the jewelry and making it a bit more stylized and artistic looking as well as adding pasties (metal, shiny pasties).

Have a good weekend all!
Patrick

Ivy Doomkitty!

Here is a drawing from my sketchbook of one of my Facebook friends Ivy “Doomkitty” Turner. I had a lot of fun with this (even though I have a moral objection to Steampunk stuff). The clothing was fun to draw and the pose was well positioned (plus Ivy’s curves are are never boring, you never get a chance to use a t-square when drawing her I can assure ya!).

I was talking to an art friend the other day about some of the things I look for when looking for photo reference and the position and pose shape came up (well I brought it up actually). This is one of those things that drives me nuts with artists and photographers, learn to pose your models! I like to look at the over all shape that the subject creates. Does the silhouette give you a clear idea of the subject? Does the pose have drama or tell a story? Does the postioning seem awkward or forced? Does the expression on the face of the model match the pose? Are the subjects hands as expressive as they should be? These are all questions one should ask when dealing with poses (I’m sure there are more but I don’t want to keep rambling.

I would say that the main issue that I have with this particular drawing is that she is missing an arm, missing limbs can subconsciously affect how the viewer percieves a drawing or photograph. I know that the other arm is just hidden by her body but it forces the viewer to fill in the gaps, plus it misses an opportunity. What opportunity you may ask? The story telling kind I says! I can’t remember when, but in one of my other rambles I commented on Norman Rockwell and his ability to tell a story with just one single picture. Imagine this picture with Ivy’s other hand slightly forward holding a gun, or cigar, or a gas lamp, or a pocket watch (Steampunkers LOVE their pocket watches!). Now all of a sudden you just added another detail to this picure, another wrinkle to the story.

I will eventually draw this one larger with more detail, better shading and more hands. This intitial drawing is a nice starting point to what I think will be a great drawing (eventually).

Have a great weekend!
Patrick

Hell Hath No Fury.

Well it’s Friday and here is a bunch of demon girls. The Model is Tasastock from Devientart.com who takes photo references for artists to draw. I had fun with these.

Dejah Color Test

Quick color test in Photoshop. I know she looks a bit red but that is on purpose as she is a red martian. This is not by any means what I would consider a final. There is a lot of clean up that I would do and the chrome jewelry would be a lot more detailed, but for a test I like it.

One thing that made me really happy about this piece is that when I had it in Photoshop and blown up on 24" iMac screen, I didn't hate the drawing. I typically am so self critical that seeing all the flaws blown up like that kills me but with this drawing I felt really good having it blown up.

Dejah Thoris Thursday!

This one is more of a facial study but it was fun none the less. I will probably make a full size illustration of Dejah Thoris (from Burough’s Mars Series) and this is a good start. I like her strong nose and eyebrows, it gives her a bold and exotic look. Dejah is an iconic sci-fi character that was the basis for most heroines after that (including Princess Leia - watch Return of the Jedi and try and argue with me).

I like the crown on this drawing but I’m not in love with the neck piece. Her jewelry will definitely need to be planned in advance, it is an opportunity to draw a lot of shiny metal so that should be fun. Finding the right pose is important and I am not going to limit myself with a pose that has the same profile of this. While there is something to be said for efficiency of using initial drawings, it can often limit creativity.

See ya all tomorrow!
Go Giants!
Patrick

Nekkid Wednesday!

Hey all! Well Wednesday is here and I have yet another post. This one was fun. I liked the pose because it had unusual lighting (bottom lit), foreshortening on her face and her feet were interesting and fun to draw.

I spent more time with the initial drawing this time before doing the pen work and I think the result is a lot better. I need to start playing around with hair more, Adam Hughes is a good example of where I want to get where drawing hair (well drawing in general really). The way he draws hair in particular though is very interesting, as though it’s a secondary character and not just an after thought. Hair can have a lot of personality and make a character very distinct.

One of my favorite all time illustrators is Norman Rockwell. If you study a Rockwell painting, you will notice that there are certain objects that seem to take on a personality of their own; a baseball glove, a policeman’s hat, a grease rag in the back of a mechanic’s pocket. This anthropomorphism adds story telling and depth to the art and draws us in to this world that Rockwell and other good artists are trying to create. Just because I happen to be drawing a naked woman in this case is no excuse to neglect that.

See ya all tomorrow
Patrick!

Tuesday Cheesecake

Well it’s Tuesday and so here is a cheesecake post! I chose this one because the pose was “very Gil Elvgren” (one of the great pin-up artists of all time). The photo reference was borrowed (such a nice term) from METArt.com which is basically a porn site with the occasional good conditions for drawing material. While the girls are quite lovely, they tend to be too skinny, overly photoshopped and prone to posing in too many crotch-shots (artistically lighted crotch-shots, but crotch-shots none the less). I’ll stop saying crotch now.

I like how the breasts and stomach came out in this drawing, there is a subtlety to it while still maintaining definition. Her face on the other hand I was not pleased at all. I would like to see it more rendered out with more detail on the planes of the face. I think part of it is that the drawing is a bit small (8 1/2” x 11”) and I did not build up the planes slowly enough and the face became over-saturated. This (once again) is a matter of planning, which is what this drawing basically is anyways - a pre-drawing. This is the point of a sketchbook: practice and working out a drawing before the final drawing or painting. If I ever do a final showpiece of this, I will probably do another study of her head only larger, before I tackle the final art.

The lessons I took away from this is to build up slower with my pens (especially in the face and other subtle areas), pay closer attention to the facial planes and plan ahead more.

See ya all tomorrow,
Go Giants!

Been a While!

Have not posted on my blog for a while ( I have been having allergy related health problems) so I will try and do an entire WEEK of posts!!

I got a new Canson sketchbook that is begging for marker drawings! It’s a multimedia sketchbook that the pages do not bleed through to the other side and I find that quite sexy.

Here is the first drawing I did using my trusty Copic Markers. I am not happy with the head on the drawing (it seems a bit big compared to the body). This is a prime example of me being over-excited to do the pen work on the drawing and not spending enough time on the initial pencils where I am supposed to work out all the portions and problems. There are two traps that an illustrator/artist can fall into at this stage: not spending enough time on the initial drawing or spending too much time on it and over-thinking it.

See ya guys tomorrow!

Hellounge EP Cover inks!

Here are the inks for the Hellounge EP Cover. I was quite happy with it mainly because I did the majority of it in brush with black ink. This fine of detail with brush has always eluded me until I learned that I was holding the brush wrong. Now I just need to practice more!

Hellounge CD art Pencils!

Okay, so here is the pencils for the Hellounge EP cover. I was giggling to myself while I was drawing this at the coffee shop. The name of the EP is Un-living Girl so I thought I would just push the boundaries of decency and the band could pull back if they wanted to (they didn’t, and one wonders why we are all friends).

To be quite honest there were a lot of happy little mistakes with this one. First, there was the height issues. I drew the girl first and when I went to draw Señor Diablo, he was way shorter than her and so I ended up putting him in platform shoes (circa a 1970’s pimp) and that just opened the door for the ruffled shirt and tight bell bottom pants.

There will be a poster available to those who help support the band on Kickstarter so if ya want one, kick in!! Here is the link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1704244328/hellounge-is-recording-our-first-ep?ref=email

Help them out if you can and get music and art as a reward :)

Return of the Sketchbook Post!

Today’s entry is more character designs out of my sketchbook. I don’t really want to quite give away any plot points or characters as of yet so I will just post these up so you all can check them out. these are two different characters and I erased all my notes... spoilers.

Carla #0 Page 2 Pencils

There is a lot I like about this page, but I can see where I need some improvements as well. It is a heavy dialogue page so I needed quite a bit of blank space. Panel #1 I want to work on the back ground a little more, I want the apartment to look like an old lady lives there. There should be more knick-knacks and doilies (old ladies love doilies). There will be a wallpaper pattern that I will put behind the conversation panels (#2, #4, #5 and #6), so that will tie those all together.

Panel #3 is an un-bordered panel with a white background. I try not to do this too often as it seems lazy to me, but I thought it gave an interesting shape to the page and avoided too much wall paper.

This page may end up going through some redraws before I go to inks due to dialogue issues. Once all my pencils are done I will write the dialogue and place the speech balloons on the page and make room (if needed) by resizing the art or moving things around.

Comments and critiques welcome as always.

Hellounge!!

Here is a logo the I did for some friends of mine who are in a band together. The name of the band is Hellounge (obviously), so I had this vision of a Big Daddy Roth style demon lounge singer for their logo. I made this a few months ago but figured I would post it up since Hellounge is headed to the studio soon to record their first EP! I’ll be working on the cover for the EP once they nail down a title for it. I love making album covers, so much fun.

Carla #0 Page 1 Pencils

Over all I’m quite happy with this page. I like the first panel a lot, though I may add a few more cars (it’s L.A. so I think my technique should be to draw way too many cars in every city scene, then add a few more). The guy in the foreground is this guy that plays his guitar at the coffee, pretty cool guy and talented as well.

The second panel is a bit wonky in my opinion and I will probably end up changing it. I think that the angle may be confusing (opinions are greatly appreciated on this). There is a lot of detail over all on this page, but not a lot of dialogue so I took advantage of the opportunity to fill the panels up more.

The last panel I am quite happy with, Señora Flores is very fun to draw and the shadow coming off the door adds depth. Something I really want to be careful of is having too many flat surfaces. Things like walls, doors and floors should have a texture to them (even if they are covered by word balloons) to give the world itself a more organic and lived in look.

Once again, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated and thanks for checking out my blog :)

More Character Designs

Hey all. Well here are some more character designs from my comic that I am working on. I am really happy with the way the Ghost Monk is turning out but I think I need to work more on the kid and his dad.

Character Design: Señora Flores

Here is the final character design for Señora Flores. Even though she is probably only going to be used in this story, I wanted to really work hard on the character designs for all the characters in this comic as it establishes the feel of the world I am creating. I changed her look to be more in line with my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Jantz. I was originally thinking about having Mrs. Jantz show up as a ghost sometime in my comic but changed my mind. Even though the character of Señora Flores is a sweet old lady (as opposed to Mrs. Jantz being a mean old lady) I thought it was a good fit :)

Sketchbook Post

Here are a couple of more pages from my sketchbook. The top drawing is going to be the first panel from my preview book. I like the vibrancy of the drawing but there are a lot of fixes I need to make. Not happy with the car or building designs, the perspective is WAY off (but that is no big shocker as it was just practice). I want all my background art to have character and be vibrant, a living world that is as unique as the characters who inhabit it.

The bottom drawing is a design for some characters for a later story. I’m not going to go into any details about them but they are my version of gremlins and I can’t wait to draw the issue :)

More Plots!

Whew! Finished writing/plotting my comic (took a little longer due to spider interference...DAMN SPIDERS!!). Here are the rough plots, really quite happy with the overall results. This is the second time I plotted this and I like this one WAY better. The flow and pacing is a lot better, the first one had too long of a fight scene and not enough build up. The previous ending was also really rushed which meant that the story lacked a satisfying ending.

When you have an action story, whether it’s a comic, movie, tv show or book - people tend to remember the big action scenes. It’s always “Oh man! That was SO awesome when...”, but without the build up to that action, the audience is not invested in the characters and the “bad-ass” parts lose their impact. The same goes for the ending. If something I am watching has a terrible ending (Sopranos, I’m looking at you...) the audience feels cheated.

Your reader is investing time in your comic, they should get something in return. A payoff. It’s important to give them something worth looking at and worth reading. A story that invites the reader into this world that you are creating and makes them want to come back.

The previous plots I did for this story (full pages as well) lacked a lot. I love the fact that only a year later, I can make something that is far superior to the original.

Thumbnails and Plotting

Here are the thumbnails for the first four pages for my comic Carla Calaveras, the short story is called "The Preview of Doom!!" and is going to probably be somewhere between 8-12 pages. This is something I want to showoff the character as sort of a pitch piece to publishers and potential readers.

The thumbnails are pretty much my writing method, I draw the pictures then write notes on the side as to what is going on. I don't usually write scripts and have no dialogue written out yet (that's usually last) but I'm sure the dialogue will be quite clever what ever it turns out to be :)

I have more thumbs drawn up and will post them four at a time.

Carla Re-Design

Here is the redesign of an original character that I am working on again. I love the character and the world that I was creating for her, so I thought I would take another swing at it. The original pages were stolen a few months back as well as a bunch of the original source material that I had been working on.

(P)imp

I think that Peter Dinklage is awesome. He really makes Game of Thrones a truly fun show to watch. Here is a scan out of my sketchbook for an idea I have for a Tyrion Lannister pin-up that I think would be pretty cool. I may not get to it right away as I am anxious to get some sequential pages done, but this is definitley one I plan on doing.

Post Artum Depression...

Well, I finished my Si'nbad art last night (a bit earlier than expected). I really must say that it turned out way better than I was picturing it in my head. I posted the direct scan with no touch ups (warts and all) and am quite happy with it. The only real downside at this point is that I don't know what to draw next. I am thinking Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris or Shanna the She Devil (I really want to go with a scantily clad, sword wielding bad-ass women with possibly a dinosaur, alien or monster in the back ground).

Details about the artwork: 11"x 17" on Strathmore 500 using copic markers and black colored pencil.

Inappropriate Mother's Day Card...

Well Mother’s Day is approaching and here is my idea for the card I may make for my mom. I am on the fence about giving it to her as she doesn’t always appreciate my sense of humor (especially on holidays). The up side is that her reaction would be priceless...

Boring post #2: Line work

I went ahead and scanned in the line work for my drawing just to show you all the process that I have developed (and by that I mean “stolen from other artists”). When I transfer the art, the initial lines are very simple and minimal. I don’t want too much detail because I want some freedom to draw and shade in the marker phase of the illustration. I also am not worried about the quality of the lines at this point, they are boring and “flat” looking. I will add varied line thickness and depth once all the shading is done.

I will start shading the face first. This is the most important part of the drawing and if I mess it up or I don’t like it for what ever reason, I can start over without having invested a lot of time on other parts of the drawing.

Tight Pencils

Hey hey! So here are the tight pencils for my Si’nbad pin-up. I fixed a lot of the stuff that I was not happy with and added more details on the costume. I normally don’t take the pencils this finished but I wanted to have something a little more polished to give to my model for helping me out.

The next step is to light box the art on to bristol board using a fine point liner pen (I use the copic liners because they seem to hold up nicely to the copic markers and don’t smudge). The liner pen stage won’t be as detailed because I want to have some freedom with the markers when I get to that stage.

Step 3: Rough Pencils!!

The next step on our journey to completed illustration is the rough pencils. Here is where I work out more details, proportions, etc. in a more manageable size. The next step is the tight pencils where I further the details and change the things I'm not happy with. Among those things are: The guns are too big, I want them to be a little smaller and cooler looking (I'm not Rob Leifeld, bigger guns does not equal cooler). I'm going to change the expression on her face, I want it to be more "flirty and mischevious" and not "scared" looking. I don't like the way the vest is behaving, I want it to look more dynamic to convey action. Lastly I don't like the Lekku (her head tendril)..(yes, that is what they are called, yes I have that kind of knowledge just floating around in my head and yes I am THAT much of a Star Wars nerd) that is behind her and want it to look more "flowy".

Step 2: Value Study

So after I get my idea for my pin-up I do a value study. I tightened up the thumbnail from the previous post and fixed some things I didn't like about the first thumbnail. The proportions are a little better on this one and I like the facial expression a bit better.

The next step is to blow this up and redraw it on to some bristol board... stay tuned.

Si'nbad!

Here are some sketches of my SWTOR character. Just getting a feel for the character. I doodled these at work while ripping jobs and talking on the phone.

Figure doodles!

Here are some gesture drawing/ pose ideas for a reference shoot I want to do soon. I have been doing a lot of figure drawing lately and my work is improving quite a bit I think. These are basically “notes” taken off of drawings, paintings, pinups or photos that I want to shoot my own reference for in more natural conditions.

A lot of these poses are from a Gil Elvgren book (talk about a true master), he’s such a great pin up artist. I plan to take photos using these poses but from different angles as well. I also plan to start painting again soon (we’ll see how that goes! Lol).

Spartacus Character Studies

Here are more studies from my sketchbook for my Spartacus pages. There are many things that I am trying to accomplish with these pages. First, I want to capture the characters more than the likenesses of the actors portraying the characters.

I want to get a more natural look with my drawings, my friend Rachel pointed out that I tend to draw a lot of sharp edges and elongated, rectangular heads. Once she told me this I really started seeing it more in my art. To rectify this, I am forcing myself to start out with circles and ovals in the initial sketch as opposed to squares and rectangles.

Layouts!

This is basically how I write comics. They start out as a series of thumbnails and then I make rough layouts where I work out any problems, look for tangents and tighten up character design. Pacing, time elapse and clarity are all very important to comics (or any other media that tells stories visually), and this step is very crucial to good pages.

I tend to get drunk sometimes while doing layouts. I find that drinking helps relax your mind so that you can see the story in a different light. Often we get too wrapped up in seeing something one particular way and need to step back.

I like to reference great visual story tellers. Will Eisner is probably the king when it comes to sequential art, but you should also check out Darwyn Cooke, Becky Cloonan and Sarah Picelli. Another good source is Genndy Tartovski (from Dexter's Lab, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends). Particularly Symbionic Titan.

Study a Broad...

Thanks to Emily for modeling for me. Here are some preliminary sketches...

Every Set Back is an Opportunity...

So last week my car was broken into. They took my backpack that contained (among other things) my full set of Copic cool grey markers and three sketch books. They took my portfolio that had over 48 pages of comic pages that I had done over the past year to show off at conventions to try and land a job somewhere. Now I have nothing.

This is really exciting! No I haven't gone crazy, and I'll tell ya why... life has given me a blank page, and there is nothing I love more than a blank page. I bought an new sketch book and started working on some new comic art. Here is my first sketch book post, I'm working on getting character designs at the moment.

First Post!

Well, this is my comic art blog! My name is Patrick Barr and I am an unpublished, unknown, aspiring comic artist (I know, I know... "jeebus! Not another one!"). I gotta do what I gotta do. I love comics and I love making comics. I like the challenge of it. I love telling stories and I love drawing.

On this blog I will be posting sketch book scans, thumbnails, sequential art and pin ups. I will take commissions (if anyone is interest in that sort of thing). I will occasionally rant about things that have to do with comics, the comic industry or artists. I promise that I will do my very best to keep my politics and religious beliefs (or lack of I should say) to myself as they have no place on a comic blog.

I will also answer any questions one may have about my process so feel free to email me. I also welcome and encourage comments, critiques and complaints.

Thank You
Patrick