Pop/Life

Foto Friday!

2012-01-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

It's Foto Friday! The weekend is a'callin', but let's get in our photo-referenced goodness for the week shall we?

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This one was incredibly fun. I did it as a joint Christmas present (yeah, it's late, waddaya want?!?) and Thank you to a pair of incredible friends. The thank you is for introducing me to The Walking Dead. Most of you will know it as the television show currently burning up AMC, but it was a comic first and is still going in that format. It's one of those things I'd been wanting to get into for some time, but just never got around to. I noticed, a recent shindig at said friends' home that they had a near-full run of the series, and I spent the next few weeks devouring the trades.

I'm passing this off to them tomorrow. We'll see how it goes over. (And yep, the cat's theirs. Cutest cat ever. We bonded recently.)

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ZOMBIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

Manic Wednesday!

2011-12-28T00:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome back! It's Manic Mon-...Wednesday! Well, it's also Christmas recovery time, so it actually doesn't feel that manic around here, the opposite actually. The presents are opened, the family(ies) are hosted and the kid is happy. Life goes on though and 2012 is just round the corner. Time's a'wastin'... let's do this!

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How was everyone's Christmas? Things went pretty smooth around these parts. My wife had the genius idea of avoiding the malls to get all her shopping done. I wish I'd gone the same route. -sigh- Never again, San Diego malls, never again!
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My wife got a me (among other things) a swanky case for a tennis ball that I caught at the 2008 US Open. It was hit into the crowd after Roger Federer won his match, and it's still maybe my favorite sports memory. I never got a proper case for it while in New York, and then we moved out to San Diego and it stayed in a closet until remember by my wife. It's got a purdy, new home now and it makes me smile when I look up at it from my desk.

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Anyone see Hugo? Was it as good as everyone is saying it is?

2011-01-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

Manic Monday!

2011-01-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

It's the start of the week, and there's a lot to do. Let's get started... it's Manic Monday!

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In geek news, there's new photos up for the movie versions of Captain America, Thor and the X-Men. They all look pretty cool. The mash-up/ Photoshop train wreck of the X-men photo is pretty damn awkward, and I'm not really excited about Azazael, the female Angel or Mystique, Jr.

....Other than that, said Mrs. Lincoln, the play was fine...

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Flex Mentallo is a comic from the mid-90's that not only doesn't suck (as most material from that decade does, on average), it also holds up extremely well as one of the Best. Comic. Stories. Ever.

It was written by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly, and really that should be all the recommendation you need. (Really, have they put out anything that was less than excellent? I can't think of anything) The book was in legal limbo for a long time, due to the origin of the protagonist being essentially a panel for panel take on that old Charles Atlas "Hero of the Beach" ad in comics fifty or so years ago.

The rights and moneys have been sorted out for a few years now, and it's a bit of a mystery as to why DC Comics has sat on this book. Well... they're sitting no longer! (The link is to a rather excellent NPR comic piece in whole; the Flex bits are towards the bottom) It's due for release in the fall, and I will be first in line at the store.

I've read the books, which had a minuscule print run and, due to never being reprinted, command big bucks on sites like eBay, and they are really very, very excellent. This should be a no-brain purchase. Put aside some money now and then make room next to Dark Knight, Watchman and All-Star Superman.

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After all that, you had to know that a Flex Mentallo sketch was coming right? It was fun to play with such an over-the-top musculature. Hoorah for Flex! (The bit of dialogue is from the mini-series.

Foto Friday!

2011-01-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to my artblog! It's Foto Friday, which means we're using some photo reference(s) to make a nice piece of art. Oooh, purtty...

This post is actually a continuation of one I started yesterday. I was trying to come up with a new design for Egyptian deity Khepri, who got the short end of the stick in terms of deity design.

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This process of refining a two thousand year-old(!) character design was incredibly fun. I started with Kheperi, and saw that he's got the basic Egyptian God accoutrement (fancy french word, there): bracelets out the wahzoo, collar, skirt and khat. I moved on to finding a nice image of the Scarab (or dung) beetle. Like so:

Nice looking guy, ain't he?

I tried first just using the head of the guy and plopping it down on Kheperi's body. This didn't really work though. I'm not sure why. It might be the fact that bugs are so much smaller than animals (such as the cow, jackal, even the frog) that were used for Egyptian deities, and so the enlarged head seems 'off'. It could also be the fact that humans seem to relate so much more to animals than we do insects. Insects can seems very foreign or alien when treated anthropomorphically. Either way, no go.

Here's what I did instead. I took the bug, enlarged him quite a bit and draped him over the shoulders of Kheperi. The middle segment (or thorax) became the 'head' of Kheperi, the back segments (or tergites) became just drapery in back of the head) and the head of the beetle becomes just a amulet or jewelry piece. I think it was pretty clever, if I do say so myself (and I do, it's my blog).

The rest falls into place, or at least seemed intuitive to me after studying this stuff for years now. The beetle has three pairs of legs or arms. The back pair just drape over, down back. The next pair, the middle, I stood straight up. It references the Egyptian bull or ram horns we often see. The front pair of arms solved two problems at once. I was pretty sure that if I included the khat, the design would be too busy or redundant. I instead laid the front arms down and in a bit, mimicking the khat and thereby eliminating it necessity.

Whew! Design done, I got down to the fun part. I used a pose from an art reference book I have. It's gone on a walkabout, but I'll post it up when I find it.

Enjoy!

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Inspiration Thursday!

2011-01-13T20:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to my new and consistently updated artblog!

Today is Thursday, which means I'll be pulling something out of my magic art bag that relates to something that's been influencing me. This week it's Egypt again. In the past few months on this blog I've done a handful of Egypt works- a drawing from a photo here, a comic illustration there- but this week I'm trying something a little different.

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There's a lot of gods in the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. Many of the anthropomorphic (mixed human and animal) are known and referenced still to this day. These include Horus (half falcon), Anubis (half jackal) and Bast (half cat). The image of men and women with animal heads is very striking, still. I drew a couple of them when I did my comic on Hatchepsut a few years ago. (My favorite might've been Hathor, half woman/half cow)

Some are a little less... inspired.

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Take for example our (half) man, Kheperi. Kheperi is the god of rebirth, the sunrise and a couple other random bits. I don't think that he would have caught my eye, except for the fact that he's half Scarab Beetle. Actually no, that's not it. Let me clarify.

Scarab Beetles were sacred to the Egyptians; their young grow and then are born and emerge from a ball of dung that the scarab beetles pushes around town, and this seemed to the Egyptians to be 'rebirth' in action. That's all par for the course with Ancient Egypt.

What's interesting about Kheperi is how he was portrayed. If an Egyptian god or goddess were human, their specific attribute was held or rested on their head (see Isis or Maat) If an Egypt deity were half animal, it was the head of the animal (see my favorites Anubis and Sekmet) In my artistic opinion, the ball was dropped when they got to Kheperi. Check this out:

That's right, they just straight stood a Scarab Beetle on his neck! It's hilarious; it reminds me of the black bars that are used to protect someone's identity. I knew that there had to be a better way to approach this.

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And now we're going to continue this tomorrow. I worked out a sketch on how I thought Khepri should look, and started to work out a sketch. However, I was having too much fun with it and started to actually really draw the thing. You'll have to take my word for it right now that it's looking pretty awesome.

I'll see you back here tomorrow for part two!

Turnaround Tuesday

2011-01-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!

Last week I talked about the expansion of the Green Lantern universe, and the creation of a multitude of new characters, including the one that I drew, Indigo-1. This week I'm also doing a female character who functioned as an expansion (theoretically) of a male character's corner of the universe. In this case the male character is Spider-Man, and the expansion female character?

Spider-Woman!

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There's actually been a ton of Spider-Women (women? womans? hmmm...) over the years; seriously, go make your head hurt here. The funny thing about Spider-Woman is the motivation for her creation back in the 1970's. What's that motivation you might ask? Why, one of the oldest motivators of all... Money! Indirectly, in this case, as it was actually protection of copyright. It's a funny story, and the details can be found in an installment of Comic Legends Revealed. Funny, right? Not exactly artistic inspiration!

Anyways, despite her...uninspired origin... the character has gone on to achieve a decent amount of love from both readers and creators alike. Part of it's that awesome costume. It's a great use of a spider motif without being at all a swipe of Spider-Man. She's starring monthly in The Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita, Jr. and Klaus Janson. It's a good book and I recommend checking it out.

Anyways, enough jibber jabber. Here's your turnaround for the week!

Manic Monday!

2011-01-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

It's the first time since before the holiday season that I'm starting a week off not even a day behind on my blogging.

Let's do this!

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The Simpsons ripped off by Usher and/or The Hologram Formerly Known As Will.I.Am?
Believe it!

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This weekend I finished the biography on Nefertiti that I'd been reading. It's a good read, it is after all written by Joyce Tyldesley, but it's striking how little we actually know about the long-dead Queen of Egypt. How did she die? When did she die? Was she in fact Pharaoh after her husband died? Was she an actual believer in her husband's monotheistic religion (the first in history)? All of these questions are unanswered, and there is a good chance that most of them will remain so.

In fact, it seems to me that most of what we 'believe' about Nefertiti is actually an attempted articulation of feelings we have and reactions to seeing the famous bust of Nefertiti, which was shockingly recovered from the Egyptian desert less than a hundred years ago. I say shockingly because the piece seems such an ingrained part of Art History in general and Ancient Egyptian specifically that it's strange to think of its 'modern life' being no older than that of much of Art Nouveau.

One of my favorite moments in the book is when Tyldesley quotes from another of my favorite authors, Camille Paglia, from her book Sexual Personae. It's so good I'm reprinting it in full here:

As we have it the bust of Nefertiti is artistically and ritualistically complete, exalted, harsh and alien... This is the least consoling of great art works. Its popularity is based on misunderstanding and suppression of its unique features. The proper response to the Nefertiti bust is fear.

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Veering sharply from high to low, I saw Tron: Legacy this past week. For what it is, I thought it was pretty well done. It's a big, action slick Hollywood movie. But it was done well. Plus the soundtrack by Daft Punk is awesome. I've been drawing to it for a few days now and it really builds a mood and sticks to it nicely.

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A couple weeks back I posted an Iron Man bust (there's that word again) that I did on commission. This week I've done the companion piece for it. It's Black Cat, longtime adversarial love interest of Spider-Man.

Sound familiar? Yeah, well you're right. She's a Catwoman knockoff in a lot of ways. Still a heck of a lot of fun to draw though!

Foto Friday!

2011-01-07T03:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the end of the week, the fin de semana, and that means here at Pop/Life that it's time for another installment of Foto Friday!, where we do some art using reference in some way, whether that be a realistic drawing or a more graphic/comic style work using reference to guide and inform.

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I've talked a lot about this Daken drawing that I'm about to post (and I mean a lot; previous posts are found here and here) so I'm going to save a lot of the talking. I'll let the piece speak for itself. I thought it turned out rather well, and I'm officially petitioning to draw Marvel's "Daken: Sexy Son of Wolverine" starting...now!

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Inspiration Thursday!

2011-01-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to my new and consistently updated artblog!

Today is Thursday, which means I'll be pulling something out of my magic art bag that relates to something that's been influencing me.

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You'd be hard pressed to find me a better singer than Aretha Franklin. It can be almost too much sometimes, the range, depth and power of her voice. It's nearly impossible to shuffle her into an iTunes playlist, because whatever pops up after her is only going to sound light and amateurish in comparison.

Ms. Franklin isn't particularly known for her photos, but I found one recently that really struck me. It's cast mainly in shadows and half her face is receding back into the darkness. It's a moody shot. I decided to have a little fun with it and try to approach it in a modified realistic fashion. I first laid down a very loose sketch of the photo and then, rather than trying to parse out the contours and shapes from the darkness, I decided to let the darkness dictate my approach.

I started just crosshatching very minutely, trying to keep a rhythm with my pencil and not erase unless necessary. I then built up the layers, using only this crosshatching and not using lines per se.

It was a fun little exercise. I might have to use it again!

2010-11-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another installment of my new and improved (or at least much more consistent) art blog. I'm your host Alonso Nunez. Wednesdays will from now on be a little something I call 'The Missing Ink'. Basically, it'll be a day wherein the 'sketch' will be a nice bit of inking (hopefully a nice bit of inking anyways) over some pencils, usually by another artist but sometimes over my own. It'll range anywhere from a panel or small sketch up to a full page, depending on my current workload.

This week's piece is a Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez sketch (by the looks of it) which first appeared in Modern Masters Volume Five. Garcia-Lopez has quickly become one of my favorite artists; his easy, fluid motion and amazing draftsmanship are incredibly effective. This sketch is from 2004, with my moderately successful attempt to not butcher it next to it. I'd redo the cape...but that's why it's a sketch.

Next time!

Turnaround Tuesday!

2010-11-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to my new-and-improved (or at least consistently updated) blog. Tuesdays are going to be a day for turnarounds. During my last year at the School of Visual Arts, in preparation for a Wolverine/ Fantastic Four sample story I was doing, my teacher had me execute a turnaround for Wolverine, and a duel sketch shot of Human Torch and Thing.

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. I remember standing on the A train with above teacher and talking about how some of the most memorable images of characters have been from character handbooks (like Marvel "Deluxe Handbook to the Marvel Universe" or DC's "Who's Who" or the first couple Marvel 90's trading card series do it for me); images so realized that you have a connection to a character without really even having read a story. I feel like I knew, or wanted to know, characters like Phoenix, Sersi, Captain Marvel, Thanos and Black Manta... just from one image. It's a testament to the strength of the craft involved and the power of art to convey a story. Picture, thousand words, yadda yadda...

That's all a long-winded way of saying every week I'm gonna do a turnaround. This week...

Wolverine.

I'm leading off with my Wolverine turnaround that I talked about above. I still like the thing; I think it was executed well, and conveys the character nicely. (The Human Torch and Thing dual pin-up can be found at my Deviant Art page ) I'll have a new one next week!

Manic Monday!

2010-11-19T12:16:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new and improved blog of yours truly. Today marks the beginning of a rededication to blogging daily, well at least during the week. I've been doing a good amount of work lately, professional and commercial, but most if not all of it is stuff I can't show until publication. I've missed the back and forth of a dialogue that a blog entails, as well as being able to show everyone the stuff that I'm drawing or interested in or feeling inspired by.

Mondays will be a clearinghouse day, for all the stuff I've seen lately, or drawn, or thought about. Along with a pretty, pretty picture of course. I'll save the syllabus and just let the rest of the week unfold as it comes around.

- This past weekend me and the family went to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit currently at the San Diego Museum of Art. I realized quickly that Toulouse-Lautrec is one of those artists with whom I had a fairly deep recall of two or three pieces and then... not much else. His poster work for the Moulin Rouge is famous, justifiably so, and was amazing to see. The real revelation however was his sketches and preliminary drawings. Having very much what can be identified as a 'Parisian line' (confident but soft, delicate but detailed), his technical proficiency was surprising. It was a well-organized exhibition also, and well worth a visit. It's ongoing for another month, I believe.

- You picked up Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette's "Batman, Inc" yet? I was initially skeptical on Morrison's run (which started back in 2006(?)) and even despite enjoying some arcs (particularly "Club Of Heroes" with JH Williams III) I wasn't following it consistently until Batman RIP. Since then it's been incredibly exciting and fun to follow. The pacing and various art teams have made the book(s) a bit less consistent than I'd like, but if you're looking for something new to pick up you can do a lot worse than Morrison most recent Batworks, especially this weeks release, focusing on a ...er, refocused Batman, guest starring Catwoman, taking place in Japan, introducing an old Japanese Batvilain to the DC Universe proper and taking the piss out of a couple comic cliches/ tropes. Great stuff. (I have some more, specific, thoughts on Yanick Paquette's art, but I'll save that for another time)

- Prince is a genius. Not much more than that. I've lately been digging his "Camille" stuff. The aborted "Camille" was going to be an album in which Prince affected a female personae and recorded the album under that personae, complete with modified voice and themes. A lot of the work found its way onto other albums, but it'd be awesome to get it all in one place. Can you have an anniversary re-release for an album that never came out to begin with? Check out "Good Love" and "Shockadelica" to hear 'Camille' in action.

- And here's your inaugural Manic Monday sketch. Prince, with some Toulouse-Lautrec accoutrement thrown in. (Interestingly, I feel like the prelim sketch was very TL, and saved it to compare)

And here's the original, pencil prelim too:

Ms. Jackson if you're Nasty

2010-09-03T14:02:00.001-07:00

Above is a (rather blurry, sorry) photo of a Janet Jackson commission I'm working on. Or rather a fragment of the piece, which is gonna be about 14x20 when finished. It's an interesting concept and a nice artistic challenge. I'll hold off on any more, and save the surprises for when I finish and post the full piece here.

2010-08-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

Couple of older pages here, from a tryout I did for Moonstone last summer. Eegads, I don't like looking at old art! Ah well...

That's page one, and here's page two (Yes, that's Sherlock Holmes)

Bull Tattoo Sketch

2010-07-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a year and half since I've posted something substantial here?!? Man...

Anyways, this is a tattoo design that I just wrapped up. (No, not for me. It's for a friend) I did it all in brush, to keep myself from getting lost in too much 'noodling'. Only moderately successful on that front!

Almost Ten Months!?!?

2009-12-02T03:09:00.000-08:00

It's been forever since I've updated my blog, but life has settled down a bit and I going to be making this a bit more of a 'regular feature' in my life. Stay tuned.

Random Comic Fact

2009-02-06T08:50:00.001-08:00

Scott Williams was Whilce Portacio's inker before he was Jim Lee's.

(Scott Williams is of course none as almost exclusively Lee's inker nowadays)