X-9 Round 2

I am in the midst of working on the second Secret Agent Corrigan story for King Features. This will once again be printed overseas in Scandinavia like the last story was. I hope at some point they will be reprinted here in the US.

I've got a Thing for you.

It seems I haven't posted any comic related drawings on the blog for a little while now. I have been doing lots of storyboards but not much in reguards to comics...howvere I am in the midst of working on a new X-9 story and I'll post some from that soon. In the meantime here is a commission I just finished for a nice fella named Mike who's opening up a new comic store called Little Fish Comics I believe, down in Virginia. I've owed Mike this drawing since Baltimore con a few months back and he was nice and patient so I went a little further than I normally do for a con sketch. Patience is rewarded.

A Bust, a Girl and some Wood

Back in school for the final 4 classes, or 3 now since this week is gone. The semester has just zipped past.

This s a Grisaille that we did in today's class with Doug martenson, next week when it's dry we'll go and glaze on the color. Doug was showing us the work in class of Odd Nerdrum and many of his painting in this fashion.

In patrick Connors clas we started our last assignment, a painting of a cast, done in a warm grey palette of earth colors, in my case Burnt Sienna and Mars Black, then I wiped out. Conners did demo for us to show us how to proceed which was great.
This is my newest wood cut for my print making class. I'm almost done carving it and I'll make a test print next week.

Admiration de l'escroche

This is a drawing in pastel done in Scott Noel's class in the cast hall at school. Warm light vs cool light as the model turned to face the l'escroche by Prud'hon.It was a great pose. This was the first pastel where I used color and Scott gave us pep talks and critiques during the two week pose as well as showed us work by Degas who I have been studying intensely lately.

24 x 32 on Reeves BFK paper.

Happy Thanksgiving

Been a super busy week here as I am sure it has been for everyone out there. School, work and the holiday rush. Taking today and enjoyinging the gift of frienship,brotherhood, love and the bounty I have in my life. Hope you all do the same. The pic above is an in-progress cast drawing of the bust of Brutus by Michaelangelo from my cast Drawing class with Oliver Grimly.

Halloween Figure Drawing

This charcoal drawing was done at my friend James Lipovac's studio up in north Philly at a sort of Halloween/artist party. Our fave model Shanna who we've all drawn so many times came up and we got to mix friends from DCAD where both James and I teach and our new buddies at PAFA. That's always cool when you can do that. I think this drawing is interesting, though not great as I think the Coronas were having an effect and my concentration was a bit off, but it's evocative and has a sense of space in it's smearyness. This is something I have been very much working with and dealing with at school, especially in my class with Scott Noel. How can we create a space, use a space, is it a evocative, moody space? Great artists all create an amazing sense of space in thier work, Degas, Antonio Garcia Lopez and Jack Kirby. Crazy, fractured space, intimate space, deep space? How an artist breaks up this space can have everything to do at times with how the drawing or painting succeeeds or fails in pulling you, the viewer into thier vision, their world, their emotional tempature and state. This is a concept I am becoming more and more concerened with in my work at school and I think it's something I deal with as well, but in sometimes a different way in my comics and animation work. In both of these venues I think SPACE amnd the use of it in the sense of perspective is essential to give a dynamics to supeheroes and help flat drawing create a sense of depth. I'm interested to try and add the poetic sense of space I am learning and working with in my peronal work at school to my commercial or comics work.

This drawing in my old way of thinking would not be finished enough, I would want the entire figure rendered well, distint, the background finished to a high degree. But I have been really challenged and forced to consider space and mood, in a more poetic sense and less in a literal or almost journalistic, by-the-numbers way. My first way of thinking used to be that the figure would be dominate in attention and the space secondary. Though not a great drawing, this piece has more a sense/concept of space as a poetic enviroment that the figure is a part of and not nessecarily the most important or dominate statement.

St. George Cast Drawing

This is a chalk drawing on black paper of St. George from the cast drawing class with Patrick Conners at PAFA. The idea is to basically draw in white chalk, doing essentially the reverse of how we usually work. Conners says that type of drawing at PAFA this was sort of a specialty back in the day. Next its another drawing cast drawing on a toned paper then a painting using white and two earth colors for the final project.

FAILURE!

Well I blew it. This week's homework just fell apart. I can say it was because I was running on very little sleep for several days in a row pulling my double life as student and commercial artist and as a result my concentration was off, but in the end I just swung and missed.

I may go back and try and save this one, repaint the second garlic bulb and see if I can pull this one out. The thing is you can learn from failure as well. This was a rough week painting wise but a good week drawing wise.

Let's hope next week is better.

Drawing About Space

This drawing is from my Life Drawing class with Scott Noel. This week Scott had us tackeling/exploring space yet again. In fact we set up and started drawing this weeks in class drawing without the model who was a few minutes late. After getting our weekly pep talk and lecture from Scott who showed us more work by Dega and two more artists my tired brain can't recall at this moment we looked around, chose our view and started drawing.

The basic idea is that the drawing was about space , about creating a sense of space and then the figure would be included instead of the figure being the main object and the enviroment being secondary. I choose a good angle I think which had a nice passage of objects from the foreground intop the back but also a deep back space that included the open door to studio 6. A small shaft of light shown through and across the floor giving yet another compositional device point toward the models head.

By the time I had my block-in going teh model arrived and took his place. I worked on massing shapes creating a sense of depth and trying to mass together areas so the drawing wouldn't be like a thousand shards of glass all vying for your eye's attention. Scott pointed out how brilliantly both Dega and Ingres massed drawings into simples shapes and thoes shapes also helped create a sense of depth even in silouette.

This drawing is in new pastel on Reeves BFK paper and 24 x 30. as the time wore down I was rushing to get the drawing to a good complete state. I then had a choice, I could spend the last session drawing the face of the model or unifying, finishing the background and now the drawing just wasn't about the models face. I choose to finish the overall drawing to push/united space, value and shape and didn't spend that time on the face. I think it worked and Scott did too, he said that I made the right choice and that a drawing can become about something else than you intend it to be.

Artist and His Muse

This was the in-class drawing we did this week in Scott Noel's class. The original model couldn't make it so Scott posed for us, but then another model was able to make it so Scott had us draw her in. The object of this week's lesson was to really try and draw the composition in two values, than slowly add more. Just as I started to add the darker tones the class was over. This is pastel on Reeves BFK paper, 24 x 30

Male Figure Painting

This is from the first session of a two week pose in my Life Painting class. How nice it is to have two weeks instead of part of one class to paint a model. Next week I'll go back in a rework the background to bring it up but cool it down more to bring the figure forward and of course do things like finish the hands etc. We painted direct without using the imprematura we have been doing all semester but we are still using the limited palette we have been using all along. This is on a 16 x 20 canvas in oil.