As Quickly As It Starts...

You ever started something and then realized later that this isn't exactly what you thought it would be at all? Thats how I feel about this blog. I started it really because none of my artwork belonged on my social blog, so I thought I start a new one where I could meet other artists and network with them and talk about different things whether it be techniques, publishers or whatever. Turns out, thats not really how it works...

I've seen several professional artists on blogger, and I've been by their sites many times, commented, asking for help/feedback, and recieved absolutely nothing in return. I've been looking for social art rings and illustration/comic author rings to no avail. I've joined several art sites, including Deviant Art, which I realize only really caters to people who are a.) already professionals, b.) who draw nothing but fan art or c.) people who draw or photograph nude people. Thats it. There's no section there really for someone who's just looking for direction in finding what to do or how to meet other artists of similar backgrounds looking for the same thing. Someone suggested to me that I start my own social thing, but that takes ALOT of time, and I dont want to start something where it would be just me in it and no one else....cause that's not much different than this blog right now.

I mean, it started off good, but as I've noticed, I've had like only 7 different people visit my blog in like the last 2 weeks. Thats it. So, unfortunately, I think this little 'experiment' is coming to an end. In about 2 weeks time, I'm going to officially close this blog, as well as my memberships to other 'art sites'. It was a good idea, but lacked in just about everything. I'm not going to go back to posting my art on my other blog either, because it doesn't belong there...I'm just not posting it anymore. I'll still do it from time to time.

And with that said...I guess I'll post this. These are the steps that I went through to make my profile pic. Yeah, not to exciting. But enjoy anyway.



-Charles

Lions, Colors and Throwbacks Oh My....

This post was inspired because someone (*cough cough* Teems *cough cough*) wanted to see some color pictures. They're not the best, but they're all that I have at the present time.


So this is a drawing that I did a while ago for someone. At the time I was working on a now defunct graphic novel and they saw me doing sketches and drawings for it and asked me to do a picture for them. At the time it was cool cause it allowed me to draw something different than my novel and for me to draw something I don't normally draw. I can only assume though that this picture is now crumpled up in a land fill somewhere entertaining sea gulls and what not. So, as you can see, its of a lion cub. I guess it turned out okay, nothing major really. I decided to add color to it, and it finally turned out like this:
These are 'old' pictures, so they were uploaded through a digital camera and not the current scanner I have access to. The smear in the lower right hand corner is me covering up the person's name that I put there. I think this was the next to the last picture that I drew for someone else...and I really don't like doing it actually. I wish I copied the last one I did before I gave it away, but I didn't. Lessons learned I guess.

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And these here are the old school throwbacks!! I used to love some Looney Tunes...and I loved basketball. Put them together, and its like the ultimate mashup!! And then some little movie called Space Jam came out and totally ripped my idea!! Anyways, these pictures are ridiculously old...from like 1995 or so. Yeah, I was drawing then too. I think for my age then though, I was pretty good...too bad I gave it up and only recently came back to it. I was about 11 to 14 years old when I made these pictures, so if they aren't the best, bare with me. Oh, and these were done on a huge tablet, I can't remember the dimensions, but the paper was at least 3 times the size of standard 8x11 paper.

This right here is the oldest one. Its of the Tazmanian devil. I drew this when I was about 11 or 12. I guess he's supposed to represent Shaq (the Orlando Magic used to be my favorite team). Other signs to tell this is an old picture? Well, thats the old Pistons jersey of Grant Hill...and the NBA on NBC logos I had going on there. And yeah...those shoes you see are the old Penny Hardaway's and the patent leather Jordan's. Hey, what can I say, I was and will always be a sneaker buff.



This one right here is of the Chicago Bulls in their prime. Bugs as Jordan, Wil E. as Pippen, and Sylvester and Kukoc. Yeah...I told you I loved basketball. All the characters I drew from memory, which is why Bugs looks a tad off. And by looking at these old pics, I see my body proportions were off too...but you learn I guess from old stuff. Anyways, I drew the patent leather Jordans again (funny how they made a hell of a comeback), and on 'Pippen' he has the old Nike Pippens (I had a pair of those...the re-released Air Uptempo's), and I forgot the name of the shoe's I put on Sylvester. Oh, and Tweety is in the pic too, but somehow he got cut off. Oh, and around this time I found out that mixing red and orange color pencils looked wicked, so I had to start putting that in all of my pics then.


I loved my red-orange pencil, and it went to work in this picture. We've got Wil E. as Kevin Garnett, Daffy as Penny Hardaway, Plucky as Lil' Penny, Guy from the Monstars in Space Jam as Patrick Ewing, Marvin and Van Exel, and I don't even know what the Red Haired guy is...I just drew him in cause he was cool in the cartoons. Oh, and Tweety as the ref. This was just an excuse to fill that whole page with random coolness such as the shoes, the red color, and characters I liked. I wish they still made those Penny Hardaway shoes though...I wanted a pair!!






This was the last picture I made in that sketch pad. Someone showed me a picture of Dragon Ball Z before it was even airing here in the states, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Turned out when I actually saw the show, it was 95% filler and wasn't all that great at all. Anyways, here are 'inspired' characters from the series. As you can see, I still didn't give up the red and orange at all. I thought it would be cool if his 'blast' made a shockwave when he shot it, hence the concentric waves and such in the background. And I wanted to draw the street all torn up...so that's whats going on there. Even after all these years, that pic is still unfinished. Damn shame.

Yep...I hope you appreciate the color, and the brief flashback down memory lane.

Oh, the color pencils I used were good ol' Crayola.

And as always, clicking on the pics will make them bigger.

-Charles

The Works While They Were "In Progress"

I used to post my artwork on my other blog, but it didn't belong there...it just felt weird to talk about randomness, then post artwork, then talk about more randomness. And going through the archives of my blog, I found the rough drafts of some of the pictures I posted on here. I always post the finished (or close to finished) products up here, so I decided for a change of pace to post what they initially looked like before I actually finished them. Yeah, granted some of them are much further along in the finished stages than you probably wanted to see....but I'm kinda iffy about letting people see my stuff before its starting to come together. Oh, and I apologize for the resolution and picture quality. These were taken before I had a scanner...with a digital camera. And in the words of Erykah Badu: "Keep in mind that I'm an artist...and I'm sensitive about my shit...."


No Named Character

This is my anime inspired one that I posted a while back. I know that you're supposed to finish the penciling first before you finalize things, but I get impatient and want to see how it comes together. Plus when I'm inking, I find myself adding in alot of detail that wasn't there before. So here you can see that I basically have the head down, but I haven't added any detail at all to his chest (or the open 'scar'), and he doesn't even have a right hand.

Okay, now you can see that I added some more cables, outlined his left arm, added a right arm (finally!!) and inked his chest.

And the Final.


Ninja

Here is a picture of my ninja before I started adding the background. I initially was going to keep it like that, but it looked too basic for me.

And the 'Final'. You know, I pretty much uploaded it when it was 'complete', the only thing thats really different is that I decided to start adding a background...which isn't finished yet.


Spiderman

And here is my Spectacular Spiderman. I was still in the process of inking his right shoulder, and like the previous picture, I was going to leave it like that, but it looked a little too basic for me. So in the 'final' version of it, I added the webs in the back as well as the spiders within his web...and I think it came out better that way.

The Final. I think it looks much better with the webs and spiders.



Dragon

This one here is of my dragon. I was just doing the initial outlining. I knew I wanted to add scales to him, but I was trying to think of a way where I could do the illusion of him being covered in them without actually drawing them. Yeah...didn't work out that way and I had to do the whole thing.

And the Final. I actually made the dragon longer than what I was planning on doing at first, but it worked out. As you can see, I had to 'scale' the whole thing, plus do stippling for the wings so they didn't look flat in comparison. Also, I added spinal horns and gave him snake-like markings. This one, actually came out pretty well. Not 100%, but decent.



Transformers

And finally we come to one of my favorite ones...the Transformers. Looking back at it, alot of things went wrong in this picture. I'm not going to point them out though, because I don't want your eye to be focused on those. But as a whole, it came out decent enough.

I was fairly done with it. I still needed to ink alot of Optimus Prime and Galvatron's arm in the foreground. Galvatron's shoulder needed more detail as well...

Here, I added more detail to Optimus Prime so he didn't seem so 'flat'. I also added the Autobots insignia on his shoulder too as well as more detail to his chest. Oh, and the 'lens flare' to Galvatron's hand too.
'Final' Product.


-Charles

Wither Away

This is one of my newer, unfinished pictures. For some reason a little while ago, my drawing style shifted into pictures that actually have some meaning, other than just stuff I see and think to myself "hey, that looks like something that would be cool to draw". But recently, I had to go back to my old way of drawing, because my graphic novel would never get done.

So anyways, this is supposed to be a picture of a figure who's withering away, or eroding. His head is hollow, and you can see debris flowing freely from it because he's withering away due to alot of different reasons. And his hand (and shoulder) is also deterriorating and seeping up his arm until his whole existence will to go back to the form from which he orignally came. Deep huh? Also, I wanted to show that he has different levels and that he is made up of more complexities than from what you see with the naked eye, so I kinda drew him as an 'exploded view' of different puzzle pieces that all come together to make him whole. As for his head, you can see this pencil outline that I drew at the top that's supposed to go on his head, but I think I'm going to remove it because it doesn't flow with the rest of the picture.

Like I said, its a work in progress, so several things might change or be added when I'm actually done with it. I tried to use different techniques too...like stippling for the hand, shoulder and the debris from the head, as well as some simple comic metallic shading here and there. As always, uploaded through Picassa.


-Charles

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman!!

I love Spiderman (but I'm starting to hate the Spiderman movies...). Spiderman was the first comic book that I ever read...and I loved the artwork that was made my Eric Larsen when he had a brief stint as the artist for the comic. I thought even then that his style of Spiderman and how he drew him made him so cool looking. This is a picture of Spiderman that I drew a while ago and was contemplating on adding more of a background. But I think that if I did, the web would get lost in the lines somewhere, so perhaps later on.

Nothing too spectacular (terrible pun...) about the picture, other than this is the symbiote Spiderman, with his classic red and blue costume underneath. I was thinking about creating another Spiderman picture, but its still in the 'thinking' stage right now. The usual routine...Picassa..."I'm Feeling Lucky" blazay blazay.

I want to post newer things, but I can't as of right now, cause I'm using most of my free time doing sketches and prelims for my graphic novel. I'll definitely post some things on that when it gets more to a completed stage.



-Charles

The Return of the Ninja

This one of the early drawings in my sketch book. At first I just created the anime style ninja with no background, but it seemed rather flat to me, so I was going back to it and adding the background. The background I chose was a traditional japanese themed dojo set at night. I'm still working on it, and penciling it in whenever I have the chance, but since I have artist's ADD (or ADHD...whichever it is) I can't focus on one drawing at a time. And since that I'm starting the rough pencils and characters for my graphic novel, I really haven't had the time to go back to this one...but I will. Overall, I'm glad how it turned out...I made him muscular without him looking too beefy, which is usually what happens when I draw male figures. I don't draw too much anime stylized stuff...so this one was different for me.

As usual, uploaded through Picassa..."I'm Feeling Lucky"...the standard affair.

-Charles