Nibs Pens and The Big Brush

this weekend while battling a cold just strong enough to keep me fairly foggy headed i went to the graphaids 40% off everything sale and spent too much money. those awesome nibs looked so cool with the old timey graphics I bought a whole bunch, for a dollar a box it was a steal, and they are awesome. Craig Nelson one of my painting instructors in school would always insist on using brushes you think are too big for the job, i've been using that approach with my inking and i like it.

the big piece was my scratch pad underneath my pages that ink, usually testing the line of the different nibs as well as wiping off excess ink before brushing. I tested out a fairly big Japanese calligraphy brush and this was the resulting sketch...painting with ink is very fun

MINOTAUR

a work in progress cardboard sketch. I usually paint these cardboard drawings but maybe not with this one, I'd totally lose all the detail not much room to paint the form

some old sketchbook stuff and a wurmler of the west title illustration for the follow up I never got to for flight anthology

Life Drawing

Titmouse my current workplace had a great workshop last night , Sylvain directed it. We had several short poses where we focused on continuous line never lifting the the pen(i was using pen) and finding where lines meet on the body for instance the arm meeting the torso. I hadn't done it in a while but it was a lot of fun from bottom to top is the general progression of the night the title of each piece indicates time and excercise

Forest Walker

it doesn't seem that original but i still like the idea, it was a character in a dream she had a white head with branches like bleached driftwood and a cloak like rolled soil with flowers and exotic plants covering the cloak and giving the character it's color and texture
i'm gonna try and paint it..

Painting Studies

Really trying to force myself to paint more and treat it just like I approach sketching. Get a lot of small thoughts and ideas out down quickly and work out some themes and techniques. these are acrylic on cardboard. Just bought some holbein acylic polymer gaouche which i'm interested in using trying to achieve a more lush painterly look without ever using oils haha

Tales of TMNT 56 color guide

This is the color guide I created for 56 since I'm not coloring the covers I wanted to do something that would work well in flat colors with very little rendering, it took awhile to get the color scheme right

New Pens and Paper

so i'm working on a really cool project doing boards, dave johnson is the character/concept artist doing some pretty damn sweet designs, sylvan who is a film board artist is art director. i'm really getting to do some fun stuff on boards..anyhow i've been getting some good inking tips from dave this paper and these very cool brush pens, japanese of course, are really nice. the ben can do some really nice dry brush especially on textured paper and stay sharp, i cant slather on the ink like my aquash pens but they will definitely work well together

Pieces of History

I was gonna talk primarily about these amazing maurice noble pieces I just bought , which are very important parts of animation history. These pieces some of which are from the Chuck Jones / Michael Maltese/ Maurice Noble masterpiece "boyhood daze", but how could I not mention the Historic election of nov 4 of which my girlfriend smartly bought a copy of the LA times ,most of the other papers thoroughly snatched up. I've never seen so much positivity and uplifted folks that seem to truly feel proud and connected to their country, possibly for the first time...I've came across some of the most amazing conversations in the past few days and they have al put a smile on my face.
Back to Noble. My love and adoration for the Chuck Jones masterpieces really made me take notice of the brillaint acompanyment that Noble was to Chuck. Chucks work just did not have the same impact without Noble's layouts. Together they are pure magic! Their work remains one of the most influential works of art on me to this day. Also just picked up the Noel Sickles scortchy smith book which showcase the comic strip and sickles simply amazing illustration work. You can see his influence on the amazing alex toth. Also picked up Chipp Kidd's Batmanga! the paperback has one of the coolest covers ever! what a great book.

Cintiq Doodles

some spare time work doodles

Tales of TMNT 56...inked

just finished the inks incorporating pens and brush
i'm really loving using the pens, the holbein drawing ink is amazing for the nibs

TMNT ink test

trying out the new ink nibs
a lt of excess ink scribbles

Waiting

On a walk last night looking into dark living room I got this idea. Tis' the season to enjoy cold weather (fingers crossed in los angeles) and to look carefully into the dark corners from within the safety of the light.

New Weapons New Scale

So after seeing one of my favorite artists new work jpleon (johnpaulleon.com) I was inspired, and got some good tips about the nibs he uses. So I am once again trying to see if I can implement quill,nibs and brush together. Falling Oaks yes that's new stuff in that picture will be my new ink testing ground. It also is a really fun exercise in storytelling and coloring, I'll talk more about that later. Anyhow I've loaded up on inks and supplies I'm working on a new technique for the next tales of tmnt(56) and as you can see I'm trying to get a new sense of scale and physique between the different turtles. Hopefully you can see the little nuances in in muscle definition and size as I really thought about their weapons and combat methods and personalities. Can you tell who is who? If your a turtle fan and participate in turtle communities feel free to post it where appropriate, i'd like to see if turtle fans in the know can guess which turtle is which. and i kind of like the samurai sash en lieu of the belt.
p.s. that deleter pen holder is the ultimate! I just figured out it can hold any and all nibs as some of the other simple wooden and plastic holder are specific to one sizeand it has a more ergonomic grip to boot!

Kirby Hulk

I really love the very simplistic, Frankenstein-like monster of Kirby's early Hulk renditions and other artists take on that hulk. That kind of inspired this quick sketch

Tales of TMNT 56...

i'm really excited about this issue...the one with the logo was the clean rough the top guy finished pencils

Tales of TMNT #50 pages

Since Mirage posted these on the site I will post them here too.

Tales of TMNT #50 out today

here's some sort of static "trailer" for the book...at the very least some panels i liked
p

sketchbook raw

cafe doodles while i write and drink coffee in the cafe
looking at so many people i would love to do a book on profiles and or women's hair. The different styles textures and graphic shapes of women's hair makes it really fun to draw
one thing i've noticed about drawing various people, it sucks whether the drawing came out "well" or not if you didn't really capture the character of that person, i need to work on that