World's Finest

Here's a painting of Batman, Superman and Robin I made as a gift for a friend.  

The original was painted in ink and watercolour in a single tone, which I colourized into a couple of different shades in photoshop.

NBA Time!

A new NBA season tips off on Tuesday, which is like waiting for Christmas for hoops junkies like me.  Usually throughout the year, I watch a lot of games while doodling in my sketchbook during the timeouts and commercial breaks.  Below are a few of the many doodles and quick portraits of current and former NBA players I drew during last season.  Some of these were already shared on my twitter feed earlier this year, as I tend to post sketches like these throughout the season.

I'm sure I messed up the likenesses on all of them, but keep in mind that I drew these quickly and directly in ink without any preliminary underdrawing in pencil.  This is my usual method when I'm doodling in my sketchbook, as it helps keep things fast and loose and prevents me from fussing over "getting things just right".

All of these were drawn in ink and coloured markers on paper.

It's been a while...

...since I posted anything on my poor, neglected blog.  There's a good reason for that -- I was busy this whole year working on my first graphic novel (more info on that later), so I had very little new art I could share.  Now that I've finished the book, however, I'll be slowly getting back into the swing of things and posting a bit more regularly here.

To start things off, I thought I'd share an image from a recent story I drew for the excellent Batman Black & White comic book.  The wonderful Chip Kidd and I collaborated on a fun 8-page story for the debut issue of the relaunched series and I was thrilled to be able to draw some of the world's most iconic superheroes.  Chip was extremely generous and wrote a great script for me to draw and it was delight to work with him.

This is my favourite page from the story and features Superman (obviously).  Though the book is printed in black and white (with grey), I actually painted it in my usual two-tone process and I thought I'd share it here in the red tone that I originally envisioned.

Portrait of Ursula K. Le Guin

This was a recent illustration I did for California Magazine, to accompany an interview with noted sci fi author, Ursula K. Le Guin.  I have to say I hadn't read any of her works prior to receiving this assignment, but after researching her, and reading the excellent interview, I was very intrigued and found her to be a fascinating person.  The research and the drawing were so much fun to do that this became easily my favourite illustration that I've done this year.

The final art was drawn in ink and composited digitally to make the image (the red and the black parts of the image were drawn separately and merged in photoshop).

Just for fun, I thought I'd post all the various research notes, concept thumbnails and rough sketches that I made in my sketchbook on the way to creating the final art.  They're shown below, with all the silly reminders to myself about approaching deadlines left unedited.  I hope you'll find them of interest.

The Frightful Four!

These are 4 drawings I did recently for a fundraising auction for the Doug Wright Awards.  They asked a bunch of artists to contribute pieces on the theme of "super villains" so, after a bit of canvasing suggestions on twitter, I decided to draw the old Fantastic Four villains, the Frightful Four.  I always thought they were a fun group - especially Paste Pot Pete, or the Trapster as he was later known.  Any supervillain whose main weapon is a glue gun has gotta be fun, right?

I don't normally work in such a cartoony/animated style, but it was fun to stretch and try it out -- it was definitely an entertaining way to work.  These were drawn in coloured inks on bristol, and were each approximately 11" x 14" in size.

Fantasy

This was a small piece I did as a submission for the Calgary Comic Expo's artbook.  I don't know if they'll use it, but it was fun to paint anyway.  The theme of the book was "Weird Tales", so I tried to come up with a fantasy related piece.

This one was painted in gouache and ink on board, something I haven't done much of lately as I've been playing around with pens and coloured inks. I often post snapshots of rough sketches or thumbnails on my twitter feed and you can see an example for this piece below.

Jason Williams...

...is White Chocolate.  I always thought that was a funny nickname.  JWill was one of the most entertaining players during his career and got a few comparisons to Pistol Pete, which I suppose Ricky Rubio also gets nowadays.

I drew him here in his Sacramento Kings jersey, because that's how I'll always remember him - on the break, dropping elbow passes to Chris Webber.

Like the previous drawing, this one was drawn in ink and gouache on board, from reference.

That shot is going in...

...because it's Larry Bird.  This was drawn for fun in ink and gouache on board, from reference.  

Scenes from the Apocalypse

These are some illustrations I drew last year for the University of Toronto Alumni magazine.  It was for a feature on various scenarios of the apocalypse and their odds of coming true.  Naturally, a subject like that allows me to stretch my imagination and have fun.  I especially enjoyed drawing the "Giant Robot Attack" scenario.  

The big image with couple at top was the interior opener illustration, while the large yellow background one below was for the cover.  And the fellow in the window was a spot illustration, depicting a possible pandemic.

All of these were drawn in ink and watercolour on paper, with some colour tweaking and processing in photoshop.

Muddy Waters

A quick portrait of McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters, drawn as a present for a friend.

Upon seeing this, my friend asked, "Gee, are you going to make a book of blues musician drawings?"

To which I replied, "Oh hell no -- every cartoonist does that."

This was drawn in ink and marker with a bit of tweaking in photoshop.

Popular Science portraits

My apologies for the gap between posts on my blog -- I've been tied up for the entire winter finishing up a large graphic novel project as well as experiencing terrible computer problems!

Anyway, to rectify the lack of art here, I thought I'd share 3 illustrations I did for Popular Science's December 2012 issue.  These are colour portraits of a few of their "Inventors of the Year", along with their inventions.  

All 3 illustrations were drawn in software -- mostly in Sketchbook Pro (my go to app for drawing).