Foto Friday!

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!!!!!!!!

Foto Friday!

And...we're back!

In trying to keep moving forward, as I wrap up my Sandman page, I'm also starting on another.

Switching gears almost completely, I decided that this time I'd do a Green Lantern page. It's fresh in my mind, and perfect for this kind of thing; it's from a recent issue of Green Lantern Corps. It was originally drawn by Tyler Kirkham, an artist with very different sensibilities than I have. That made this very easy. I knew that (depsite the original being cohesive and energetic) I could find my own 'voice' for the page fairly easily.

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It's in the early goings, but here's a panel that I've been working on:

First, some reference-



(There's also some photos of me grimacing, to get the lighting right, but it's much too early to embarrass myself that much. Sorry)

And here's what I've gotten from that-



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So far, so good I'd say.

See you next week!

Foto Friday!

It's the end of the week, and time's a'wastin'! Let's get this show on the road!

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I had a blast doing the one-off Batman page last week. I'm not that thrilled with how the page turned out (you live, you learn) but it was a nice switch-up to do a single page reinterpretation. I think it's something I'm going to try to work in to my (ab)normal routine.

Because, you know, between the blog, the baby and art I've got so much time. -sigh-

Ah well.

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This week I'm doing a page from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. I'll save the page for later, but here's a snapshot of a panel. First my photo reference:



I used this pic (the guy, obviously) less for the face per se (it's a pretty easy angle and composition and tiny to boot) and more for the subtle, double light sourcing. Beautiful.

Here's what I'm working with so far:


See you next week!

Foto Friday!

It's the end of the week, and I thought I'd end with something a little fun. It's Lucia as an Orange Lantern! Check it out (and then I'll translate that last sentence, for those of you who don't speak Nerd).

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So, in the universe of the Green Lanterns, there's... ah, screw it! Just go read up on it if you're interested. Basically I based Lucia on a comic character who's motivated primarily by an id-like need to possess things. Yes, I do see some overlap. Haha. Don't tell her I said that!

I'd have done a bit more on it, but time's a'wasting. I'll do some tighter pencils and/or inks in the coming weeks.

Enjoy your weekend!

Foto Friday!

Wrapping up the week here, and it's time for Foto Friday!

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Having just drawn Flex Mentallo for the first time (on Monday) I wanted another crack at him. I decided that I needed to approach it a little more in my style, so I went in search of some photo reference.

I've already said this before but Flex Mentallo was based (pretty shamelessly) on Charles Atlas. That seemed like a natural place to start, and I looked and looked but didn't find anything that jumped out at me. I wanted something a little too posed and dramatic. Nothing.

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I went with seemed to me to be the next best thing. You may know him as the former governor of California, or maybe as the Terminator or Kindergarten Cop, but once upon a time Arnold Schwarzenegger was a world-renowned bodybuilder. Charles Atlas was a big early influence on Arnold, and the style and posing are close enough in era that I thought I could make it work.

If I found the right one. I think I did.



Awesome right? Perfect mix of over-the-top Thinker wanna-be and melodrama. Perfect.

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I started laying out the body for Flex; I'll definitely need different reference for his head, Arnold doesn't have any resemblance really there. Not much so far, but here's how the process is shaping up.

Foto Friday!

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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Foto Friday!

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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Foto Friday!

Welcome back to my artblog, and the end of my fifth week of continuous weekday blogging! I'm your host Alonso. Thanks for stopping by. Today is Foto Friday! Let's do some reference!

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This is a short one, due to the holiday chaos and subsequent more chaos. A few weeks back I showcased some hands that I'd done for a sketchbook assignment. This week I'm showing off my feet! ...um that didn't come out right...

Here ya go! (I still really like the one of the back of the foot. Maybe it's the geometry of it, or something, but it strikes me as well-done)