Avengers sketch to poster in just under an hour

A request from my son to draw his favourite Avengers. As with any 6 year old(well 5 at the time), his attention span is very short, but he was very patient for all of 15 minutes while drew this. then when I showed him he asked for colours, so we sat down and coloured it together.
I then finished it off and he now has a poster for the end of his bed that he helped create :-)

 quick flat colours

adding tone

some light effects

I enjoyed this filter making Cap look like a personal favourite, US Agent!

lets hope he shows up in Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Pop art Iron man and Hulk

 

We added our own font to the poster.

 A couple hours later and its job done!
Maybe one day I'll go back and finish inking it. To be honest though, think id rather start over. Do something more dynamic! Plus ...he complained Hawkeye isn't at the front! Hawkeye?!?!

Was good fun though! :-)

Drewbag Band commission

another group of yocals in need of some cartoons were Bridgwater based Drewbag.

I did these after listening to their demos. their songs were really funny and the singer Drew Armstrong when I met him had a very cheeky monkey way about him...

hence the monkey suit.

then I had a request to do them all in animal suits..  kinda Super Mario Tanooki suit style

really nice group of lads and I hope they do well!

Rat Bandits Band commission

one of my biggest loves after comics is music, so I enjoy working with a lot of local bands.

Here's the mascot design for RatBandits (look them up on facebook)

 

 

and their front man is also trying to create his own record label

Slap it out records. so here was the final design for the logo.

Joker quicky!!

As my girlfriend showed some interest in Tim Burton, I thought what better thing to do than introduce her to the batman movies!
so the other night we watched Batman and last night Batman returns!
so did a ton of sketches of the joker, (some I'll post once I've scanned them) but this morning the one at the top page of my sketchbook I took a grainy photo of and did some quick colours.
I find I try to draw the joker a lot compared to other characters, purely because I find it so challenging to do, the psychotic eyes and the smile but also drawing the massive Bruce Forsyth chin and the long nose sitting over his teeth...

was struggling with which joker to draw too, so did both the classic and the more sinister arkham joker.
not really 2 different jokers, just at different emotional stages maybe. The more classic, him at the top of his game. Perhaps the arkham one he's more desperate and needs to be more psychological in his plots to get under bats skin...?
I did think the other night while watching Jack Nicholson remove his bandages, how great it'd be if they redid this scene in the new 52, his face being re-attached so that was the subject for a lot of my sketches.

Captain America and Wolverine

A friend of mine Des Taylor (also known as Des pop) saw this couple at a con he attended. Posted this pic on facebook,  loving the  Cap costume I took a screen shot then while ''working'' did a really quick sketch. (Couldn't help throwing in a GI Wolvie).

 Then I desaturated the colour of the red biro sketch.
then layered in colours using the marker feature on the photoeditor.

A bit of in-decision about the goggles.

Next tried different tones.

 

then I experimented with the many filters.

I really enjoy the old photo look, and actually have kept that pic on file. Should the chance ever arrive to pencil for marvel, I'm going to crop it and have it in a picture frame in Wolverine and Caps respective rooms.
Watch this space!

The final piece.

New 52 Harley study

learning to colour using the photo editor software on my Samsung note 2

just a quick sketch of new 52 Harley and then for fun Nightwing posing as batman, think shes caught him as gift for Mr J!

 

 
really just practising for the dc talent search.

2nd Cover + First plays with photoshop

Here are my first attempts at using Photoshop. Really was just putting in flat colours and using the burn and diffuse tools on selected areas. Went for the solid red colour on the back ground elements as a nod to my earliest memories of comics, the Raiders of the lost ark annual, and of course the mighty John Higgins colouring of Watchmen. I later made numbered prints of this on A3 and they were  auctioned at the Cardiff comic expo  '12.

After this first try I then wanted to try toning sections. My kids are fans of the avengers animated series (raising 'em right!) so I thought what better way to try then do an animated series style piece, using the manga esque 3 tier toning.
So that’s exactly what you see here.
Was a very quick sketch (hence the wonky sword blade, unless maybe its foam. Being a cartoon for children its safety conscious!!)

 
I then tried to go back to the preview cover and add to its pallet using the colours from the animated series piece. Honestly doesn’t look fantastic, using the burn and diffuse on colours gave it an airbrushed 80’s look.

However should there be an opening to plan designs on fair rides…I’m your man!

 
I then wanted to experiment with enhancing sequential pages using some of effects available.

 
 
You can see here in panel one using the blur tool, Sabre is far away so to give a sort of camera blur does create distance between himself and his grandfather climbing the cliff face.

Here I used a watercolour brush on the snow and mountains, this helped maintain the softness of the snow, yet the hatching on the mountains still (even with the soft edge on the colours) looks sharp and holds its shape. 

Finally in the last panel a very quick use of the gradient tool for the lassoed background.

Since these experiments I've done a few straight to Photoshop illustrations, only really to play with things learnt from imagine fx magazine. I'll post some of these is in due course.

Thanks for reading

Wayne