Full-page illustration of Reyes - attempt to flesh out an environment… That’s not an ambiguous desert.

Gouache/Acrylic/Ink/Digital, 2012.

Reyes, ghost girl extraordinaire.

Ink/Graphite/Digital, 2012.

Previews for another image soon-to-be-finished, another mood board/preview illustration for Sweet Thing.

So here’s a little redesign of Ganondorf I did last semester for Scifi/Fantasy Imagery. A fun and interesting experiment in mixed media— The original drawing is this sort of crazy mashup of ink, pencil, and acrylic paint on bond paper.

Let me tell you something about bond paper: it rocks.

It’s got the functionality of tracing paper minus those awful inconsistencies in opacity, just a very even white all the way through. Best of all, it’s really made for tracing over a pencil drawing with marker and ink— meaning it doesn’t bleed through at all! Paint is of course not recommended as it’ll wrinkle it up, but since the point of this exercise was to produce a digital image the surface quality was less important here.

I also went ahead and threw up a process sketch to give you an idea of how it evolved.

Common question: What pen do I use to ink?

You can find a black brush pen by Pentel in basically any art store or online.
I prefer it to hand-dipping brushes in ink for the convenience and portability - I even letter my comics using this pen, too. Its properties allow it to give really thick strokes and really thin marks, and since you squeeze the base of the pen to pump more ink into the bristles, you can actually allow it to dry out a bit and create scrumbling effects. It’s also amazing for large area black fills, although those I usually leave for later and do them with an inkpot so as not to waste my ink.
A Pentel is usually going to run a little less than $10, and the ink refills are only $2-3. Very worth it.
The main flaw with these is that they are not at all waterproof - when wet they bleed a rather attractive purplish ink, although that can actually be desirable in some cases.

My current favorite pencil is my Kohl graphite dispenser - the hardest graphite I could find was an HB and I’m still getting the hang of it, but since it’s so versatile I’m hoping that it’ll become the erasable equivalent of my brushpen. Before I had this I penciled my illustrations and comics simply with a 4H drawing pencil. (I prefer a harder lead over a softer lead like 2B, because the marks are lighter and easier to erase).

Yet another Sweet Thing preview.

Although at this point I’m sure I’m really just trying to prove to myself that I don’t only want to draw people…

I have a favorite pen… And indeed, it’s definitely not waterproof.

Top tip: If you’re going to walk your finished comics pages over to the library to use their largescale scanner…. Don’t do it in the rain.

(Page taken from new chapter of Sweet Thing).

I decided to do Mignola’s Hellboy, inspired by N.C. Wyeth.

It’s as though my geekiness and my artsiness had a bastard.

It’s funny how things that are meant to be will just turn out - This one took about a full night’s work to complete.

Acrylics, 2011.

An innocent story for innocent people.

And yes.

One cat is holding knuckle dusters.

The other, a moltov cocktail.

So it’s times like these where I sit around and I think,

“JEEZ, today I’ve got to illustrate this gorilla monster gettng electrocuted!”

…And then I realize that my life is not so bad.

2’x3’, quick self portrait study, about an hour’s worth of work.

Progress detail.
Ganondorf, mixed media, 2011.

Sometimes the only way to make a piece better is to start over…
And sometimes digital just isn’t enough by itself.
Currently re-doing a Ganondorf redesign.
Before/After. I’d put this at about 60% done.

(Tumblr photobombed me. Appropriate.)

Sketchbook, 2010.

Sketchbook, 2011.