Weapon X

Wolverine

This Week In Drawing...

Beginning here and now is a new weekly segment where I will showcase all the art I've done in the past seven days, aptly titled This Week In Drawing.

While tidying my work space it occurred to me that I'm now drawing more than ever. I don't just mean work on Teuton or other sequential projects, but I'm also doing more commissions and practice sketching than ever before.

This increased output of art is no accident. I'm trying very hard to hone my craft and become speedier. While there aren't always a series of finished pages and pieces I can show off in a week, there are lots of little sketches, unfinished drawings and lost thoughts on paper that accumulate. It's here in this segment those will be shared.

Powie.

This week I worked on two Marvel sketch variants commissioned by a regular patron of Stadium Comics. The dude is a huge fan of The Punisher and challenged me draw Big Pun dispatching the variant covers' titular characters as harshly as I could imagine.

First was The Death of Spider-Man variant for Ultimate Spider-Man #160. Although I didn't read that storyline, I was aware the Punisher was partly responsible for Ultimate Spidey's downfall. So I chose a composition that reflected that particular plot, but also recalled The Punisher's first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #129. (FYI; my favourite Spidey/Punisher comic is Amazing #577)

The second cover, Wolverine #310, I began loosely without much forethought into the composition. Whenever I think of Wolverine scrapping with the Punisher, I think of that issue by Garth Ennis and Darrick Robertson that saw Logan getting his face blown off and being steamrolled. What I recall most is the reaction of Frank Tieri, who was writing Wolverine at the time, and was so very pissed at how Ennis handled Wolverine that Tieri responded in kind with Wolverine #186. Though I think Ennis got the better of them both. Frank Castle proved to be the far nastier fighter in both comics, and Tieri suggesting the Punisher is a closet homosexual at the end of his respective book felt like juvenile name-calling. 

Anyway, this is all to say I couldn't get the image of a shotgun blast to the face out of my mind. I was really pleased with what came out. I put more work into the pencils than I normally do and got cold feet about inking it...

Another commission that came my way was for a young boy's birthday. The lad wanted a Mega Man, and that's exactly what homie got. Here's the sketch and the final...

And of course there was this weeks entry to Spitballin' Comics: Sailor Moon. As I say in that blog post, she's a character I'm largely unfamiliar with and I had low expectations for this particular sketch. My first draft looked like she was doing something indecent with her wand. Then the water colours caused the ink to bleed. When I thought it was pooched I left it for a time, and when I returned I was able to make it work.

Then there is always my regular comic work. This week I turned in the final page for the Teuton: Volume One reprint. You can see all the new pages for the reprint here and here.

While working on Teuton: Volume Three, I'll also be doing interiors for a story called The Forgetting in the third issue of Undertow, which is written by Luke Donkersloot and impeccably illustrated by Gibson-Fucking-Quarter. Learn more about Undertow @ The 7th Wave, and hear Gib talk about Undertow with the wonderful Alice Quinn from TdotComics here.

Here's some early page roughs and character designs for the book:

Lastly, here's some character roughs for a story I'll be writing as well as drawing. I won't say any more about it just yet:

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

 

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY IS UPON US!

 Here are my final three sketch covers that will be up for grabs today at Stadium Comics. These were certainly fun to do, but I was worried I wouldn't finish them in time as they were sprinkled atop my already heavy workload. 

I'm very excited for today. I'm waiting for my partner in crime, Fearless Fred Kennedy, to roll into town and then it's off to the races!

To all my pals at TCAF, The Comic Book Lounge, Image Collections, I say: Have an excellent day, my friends! I look forward to seeing all the awesome sketches you'll no doubt be doing today plastered on the interwebs!

To all you casual readers, the innocently curious, and the closeted  comic lover, I encourage you all to visit your nearest comic retailer and support your local artists!

So long!

ARTWORK BONANZA

TEUTON: Andrus Tamm

My character sketch for Teuton's central protagonist, Andrus Tamm. I've thoroughly enjoyed designing characters for the book overall, but Andrus remains the most fun for me to draw. Although he looks like a fairly standard knight, the little touches in his armour and boots and so forth were all fun to research.

The armour knights wore varied. Things like chainmail were standard, but obviously nothing was mass produced back then--each article of clothing and armor was handmade by a tradesman, and therefore was as unique as the individual who crafted it. So I got to play around and give Andrus neat boots and a bitchin' cape. And of course his helmet, which I loved thinking up. I have to acknowledge a similarity to Magneto's helmet. Maybe it was in the ether, etched into my subconscious after years of reading comic books, but I certainly didn't look to it directly as inspiration. I wanted something sleek and powerful looking. Something that could be medieval, but would stand out in the chaos of a battle scene. There you have it.

More character sketches to come...!


YOROKU SAKI Album Cover


My good friend "Yoroku" is a skilled musician who creates music fueled by high concepts. He's great, one of a kind. His forthcoming album is still gestating. Evolving, he might say. Rest assured, it will come alive like nothing else when he arrives at his destination, where ever it may lay.

The feel we wanted for the cover was retro futuristic. Together we looked at numerous pictures of what people in the 1950's and 60's imagined the 21st Century would possibly look like. As a permanent resident of the 21st Century, looking at those pictures made me feel somewhat bitter. Back then there was optimism for the future, it seemed, judging by the wonderful illustrations I saw. The space race was going, the world was simultaneously growing and shrinking. Now it feels as though it is crumbling. Today our visions of the future cap at 2012, if you're superstitious. If not, the outlook still hits a wall at 50 years time, when scientists estimate our planet will have had enough of us--when the tides will turn and some cataclysm will wipe us off the board. Who knows?

I painted this with the best intentions. For a change I wanted to feel hopeful that a new generation will rise up and reign in the tyrants, the zealots and the politicians who all seemingly work to reach that brink we all fear in our secret heart. Inspired in part by 2001: A Space Odyssey, my favourite science fiction film, I painted this because I was tired of being afraid of whatever waits over the horizon.

How I'd rather walk side by side with friends and loved ones along some beautiful golden path to see the glimmering tip of an emerald city poke over a faraway hill, instead of finding some desolate landscape from a Cormac McCarthy fever dream.

Whether he knows it or not, the piece symbolizes my friend "Yoroku" finding his true potential through music in a future world more wondrous than ours. Good luck to you, my friend!


KILL BILL: The Bride Meets The Wolverine

In an earlier post I spun a yarn detailing my affinity for drawing on envelopes, and how one such envelope was the bi-product of a piece of fan-fiction I dreamed up one nerdy summer. That fan-fiction was a silly action-packed meeting of The Bride from Kill Bill and Wolverine, the most well-known X-Man around. Well, I discovered my attempt to draw that story in sequential panels on an old hard drive. I started drawing the story arbitrarily, with ninjas attacking the duo, and never made it past what you see below. Some things work out for the better. Enjoy!