d r a g o n b o n e s    

Another character from My Name is Earl – the ever lovable Randy, played by Ethan Suplee.

I dropped back to the 5 minute limit for this one, but while I made his face too round (see the reference photo here) I did find some features that I felt helped to improve the likeness factor – namely the ‘eyebrow dents’ and the mouth gesture.

Suplee does a great job making the character just plain lost, and I was pleased that the portrait seemed to capture that.

Another of the characters on the show is the lovely Catalina played by Nadine Valazquez.

Alright – I’m just going to say it. I don’t like to get all ‘fanboi’ in general, but I think Miss Valazquez is just downright stunning. Problem is that this makes it all the more frustrating when I don’t feel like I got her portrait to look like her.

Yes, I had some technical difficulties with my tablet when I was trying to draw her.

No, that’s not a euphemism.

But really? Wish I’d gotten this one to look a bit more like the reference photo. Maybe I’ll try again down the road.

The Lady and the Sea…

A while back, a friend of mine told me that a band she was helping to promote was getting a lot of search engine leads for “Retro Sailor Girl”. This led to a discussion on my style and how she thought I should make a stab at that very subject.

So today, a mere… year or three  after that discussion, I started sketching some rough ideas for the idea.

I also have a bit of a thing for the art nouveau movement and thought to myself “Why not add that to the mix?” which is why you may have noticed some nouveau elements to the sketch work on the left. I like the concept, and if time allows, I may just go ahead and create a poster once the image is complete.

I definitely need some better reference materials though. Doing this completely from my imagination is leaving quite a bit to be desired. I’m ok with that so far because I was just trying to get the rough idea down. Here I come, Google Images…

…and a Little Jason Lee

As part of my warm up process, I was doing some more fast portraiture. I feel like I’m making significant progress here, but I’m still a long way from where I want to be.

My buddy Mark and I talked about efficiency of line and that age old advice that every art instructor has tried to beat into my head: stop drawing sketchy lines – have some confidence, lay the line down, and move on.

You may have noticed – I just don’t do that. Confidence really is the key, and that will come with practice.

I took a luxurious (compared to my 3 and 5 minute portraits) 10 minutes to draw this one. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of My Name is Earl on Netflix, so I elected to use promo photos from the show for the portrait. The likeness seems solid, but it’s definitely still too sketchy.

Going to do some more of the My Name is Earl crew, so stay tuned…

In honor of the 4th of July:

Always been a fan of Norse mythology. Thanks to that, I’ve never been a huge fan of Marvel’s version of Thor. I know, I know – just being honest. He’s a god, and he always seemed… awkward in the standard Marvel world. In recent years, I think that they’ve done a much better job of placing him within the world without making things so odd.

At any rate, when the folks over at Xion decided that the May Art Jam would be Thor, I figured it would be a good time to have a go at the ol’ Odinson. I decided to make his costume a bit more traditional – a bit less… tights.

As should be obvious, this needs a lot of work yet – especially in terms of Mjolner. I like the more traditional shape of the hammer, but it needs some knotwork to finish it off. This was really just meant as a quick sketch though, so perhaps another time.

Another in my 3 minute portraits series. This one includes Keira Knightly, Steve Buscemi, and Steven Tyler.

Note to self: in order to keep things more simple, and (for lack of a better term) ‘sketchy’ – stay with a smaller brush when sketching things out. Thicker brushes work fine if you’re just trying to block some forms in, but when the ‘finished’ image is going to remain a sketch, a finer brush (as demonstrated by the Keira image) is a must. Too much gets muddied when using a larger brush and moving fast.