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!

Egyptian Thursday!

Well, the week is a little bit over half done and there's work to be done yet! It's Egyptian Thursday, let's draw some mummys!

...or something...

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San Diego, contrary to popular belief, has actually been around as a big city for something close to a century now. It has its own share of buildings which in particular come from the Art Deco period, or to be more specific, a subset of the Art Deco period.

Art Deco, roughly the 1930's, was a design aesthetic which incorporated elements as disparate as clean geometry, human anatomy, the 'machine age' and a renewed interest (at least in the aesthetic sense) in pagan iconography, or rather non Greco-Roman pagan iconography. The last bit there combined with the discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen during that decade to form a variant of Art Deco, known as Egyptian Revival.

Egytpian Revival is more or less Egyptian-inspired buildings (sometimes architecturally or just ornamentally) combined with an Art Deco simplicity and geometric organization. It's a fun style, and one that (for obvious reasons) has been on my mind lately. San Diego has a good number of Egyptian Revival buldings and, it being San Diego, I took the opportunity to get out and do some quick sketching on location.

Fun stuff. Now I just gotta figure how to work them in to some pages...

(Oh, and ignore the marker bleeding through from the other side!)
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The Missing Ink!

Get it, the 'missing ink'.

-ahem-

Welcome to another installment of my new and improved art blog. I'm your host Alonso Nunez. It's Wednesday and that means it's time to 'sketch' a nice bit of inking (hopefully a nice bit of inking anyways) over some pencils (usually by another artist but sometimes over my own).

This week's selection comes to us from John Byrne. It's from Rough Cuts #1. Byrne has been in comics for over thirty years now, and his work on Fantastic Four and X-Men are considered among the finest runs those books have ever had. He's also had stellar runs on Alpha Flight, Avengers, and Superman, which is where this piece comes from.

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This is a splash page from The Man of Steel #6. It's fairly tight, as you can see above. By 'tight' I mean that the lines are all pretty defined, textures are discerned and line weights are present. This is one of those 'just don't mess it up' type of drawings. I'm going to see if I can have a little bit of fun with it.

The original was inked by Dick Giordano, one of the greats, and can be seen here.


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This was a lot of fun. A good inking exercise. I used only brush on this one (except for the 'S') and tried to just speed through it, reach for something a bit more spontaneous and organic. Like I said, fun.

Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: 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!)

This is a fun one this week; well, fun for me at least! It's a turnaround but also a character sheet for me. It's Cleopatra, but a very comic book Cleopatra.

As I've done research and preparatory sketches for an upcoming Egypt project, I've definitely tried to stay as close to history as possible. I'd like that project to have a decent amount of accuracy and consistency with the historical record. These upcoming sample pages however are a chance to cut loose a bit more. Here I can pull in some actual Egyptian design and costuming but also pull things from places like the Egyptian Revival movement (itself a subset of Art Deco) and comic books (I know, big surprise there, right?).

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Okay, here we go: This is Cleopatra. She's somewhere between an Egyptian Pharaoh, Jack Kirby's Big Barda and Elizabeth Taylor. Costume's possibly too busy. What do you think?

Manic Monday!

It's Monday, it's crazy, it's time to do some art!

Let's do this! Manic Monday, GO!

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Did you see my comic page that I posted up? It's my entry for a
So last week I mentioned the rather excellent Agent of S.T.Y.L.E. on Newsarama.com. I also linked to the first part of a few posts on the various Flash costumes over the years. Well, the next couple posts are up! And they are indeed excellent. Flash Fact: There's been some great costumes in the Flash universe, and there's been some awful costumes in the Flash universe. This series of articles covers them all. (Parts one, two and three are here, here and here) Enjoy!

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I've been looking at a lot of Alex Toth recently (shocking, I know) and I'm really convinced that he's one of the most important artists in comic history, right there with Kirby, Eisner and Wood. If you're looking for somewhere to get started, or looking for something new, you can do a lot worse than Creepy #139. It's a full issue of that classic magazine devoted to showcasing the work that Toth had done for the magazine up to that point.

It's an amazing book, maybe even more for the non-successes. It's fascinating to see the process of an artist so conscious and deliberate as Toth, and with works that aren't perfect I feel like you can see a bit more of his process and where he was coming from and where he was going. If that makes sense.

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Ancient Egypt continues to blow my mind. I've been watching some documentaries, and there's a lot that we still don't know or completely understand. Here's an adequate but not completely successful example: Picture the pyramids. Easy right? Big, colossal structures. Everyone can picture them, but did you know that they were all originally cased in limestone? The surface area would have been completely flush and gleamed light in the sun.

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Hey Internet friends! Here's a rough from a panel in the page that I finished last week. (Have you voted yet? Go here and read them rules! Really. You want your vote to count, don't you?) I'm usually not that into my roughs (not that I don't like them, just that I don't think that people are into seeing them much) but this one I thought was fun.

I think the markers help. Markers always help. Primary colors too.

And Batman. Always Batman.

(In my best James Brown) Uggghh!!!

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Wacky Week (of 28 February)

So, this whole week was a blogging wash for me. Lots of stuff going on. Wife flew out to Texas for a conference, I was drawing when I could, and watching Lucia the rest of the time. Next week, it's back to your regular 'post a day' artblog by me, your host Alonso.

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That was the not fun part of this post; here's the good stuff. A blog I read on the regular, Comics Should Be Good, recently had a contest/ challenge where people could draw and submit their own comic page based on a Batman story that had already been published. Sounded like fun, so I took a crack at it. It's down below, but first...

They've got a vote going right now for the 'best' of the bunch. I would sure appreciate your vote my loyal readers. There's a link to the voting here. It's kinda specific, so I'll explain here. You post down in the comment section to vote. You'll rank your top five favorite pages (in order, may I humbly suggest my name near or at the top?), numbered 1-5. Include ACBC in your comment somewhere (that'll make it invisible, and a secret ballot) It's gotta have five choices, not just me-... I mean, your favorite. And it must must must have ACBC in the post, so that it's secret and counted.

Thanks in advance.

Here's my page

Manic Monday

Its been a little crazy in "professional life land" these last couple weeks. I'm letting myself off the hook (it's my blog and I can do that), so we're skipping last week and jumping head first into this week. Me and the family spent this past weekend in Desert Hot Springs and now I'm rested and ready for a fresh week of insanity.


It's Manic Monday, let's do this thing!

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The Grammys were on? I missed the memo somehow. I think I'm still catching up on all this teevee I can now record with DVR. Ah, sweet sweet cable...

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Three songs I've downloaded recently which I'm enjoying:

* "Born This Way" -Lady Gaga
This song is really good. It took a little while for me to really get into it (and by 'a while' I mean a few days), but I'm really digging it now. A couple things that stand out: I love how effortlessly and yet how scandalously she mixes sexual orientation with God. Great mix there. I also like how such a strong message (by strong here I don't necessarily mean morally commendable; I mean rather the majority of lyrics being given to 'the message') is contrasted with such a mainstream, likable beat. It's going to be played everywhere, I think Gaga formed it to be played everywhere, and that makes it as ballsy and strong its own way as "Bad Romance" was. Top shelf stuff.

* "Tightrope" -Janelle Monae ft Big Boi
Janelle Monae rocks. She rocks hard. Her first album was great stuff, and this first single from her new one is possibly even better. I'm not sure what genre fits what Monae does; it's some weird combination of R&B, pop, soul, funk and prog rock. Or something. She's also a better dancer than you and your mom.

* "Dog Days (Are Gone)" -Florence+the Machine
This song is like a lot of the folk pop that you've gotten out of the east coast the last few years, but with a lot more scope and musical and artistic ambition. I don't know but I'd guess that Bjork, Radiohead, PJ Harvey and Kate Bush are somewhere in her mix of influences. And really, any two of those should be intriguing enough to give this one a spin.

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I just realized that of the three songs that I listed up above, the Lady Gaga song is the only one without a music video, which is funny. The song is of course new, and a music video is around the corner I'm sure. It's just funny that I'm recommending videos for "Tightrope" (here) and "Dog Days Are Done" (here), but for Gaga I got nothin'.

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Have you checked out Agent of S.T.Y.L.E. lately? It's an awesome weekly post over at Newsarama by Alan Kistler and is an in-depth look at the costume choices and 'looks' of various heroes and villains over the years. It's well-written, awesome and you should love it like a child.

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Nevermind about Gaga, I got somethin'. Here's the video* for her performance of "Born This Way" at the Grammys. Did she in fact build a time machine and scalp Madonna circa 1990? Discuss amongst yourselves.
*note: The Grammys often get their musical panties in a twist about footage online. I'll try to keep an eye on the link.

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For a round of sample pages that I'm doing I thought I should go ahead and do a turnaround for the main antagonist, Cleopatra. Before that I realized I had to design something for her to wear. The turnaround will be tomorrow, but here's the costume design.




Have a good week everyone, see you back here tomorrow.